Can you feel the world changing around you? How can you respond? 

So many people I come into daily contact with are quietly disturbed. Slightly uncomfortable. Some can identify their discomfort, and others can’t. But most of us can feel something like tectonic plates shifting underneath our daily way of life.

My local community is coming together to develop a Disaster Recovery plan – something that I can’t remember previous generations doing. But it feels necessary today.

I wonder what you are noticing in your life?

Learning to see systems allows us to perceive and understand the world differently to how we’ve been taught throughout our lives. Those of us raised in a modern Western society are traditionally taught to perceive the world through the lens of a paradigm sometimes called the Newtonian, or Scientific paradigm. It’s a paradigm that emerged from a belief that the universe is a clock and that God is the omniscient clockmaker.

Applying the Newtonian paradigm to machines like clocks is entirely appropriate. If a machine isn’t working, we take it apart, fix or replace the parts that are malfunctioning, then put it back together and it will return to its intended function.

Are you a team leader who wonders who is calling the shots? Or maybe, you have been trying to deliver a program of work for a while but have not made much progress due to your own staff's 'resistance'. In the midst of all this, I've recently witnessed three teams and their executive managers, where the one-up leader struggles with conflict, and therefore, providing clear direction and feedback has added to the confusion by reinforcing an avoidant culture.

I take a systemic perspective of all events in my work and in these recent examples, it's been really difficult to tease out what is happening and how to influence it. Here are some ideas that may help you find your way forward. I think the truth is that we are all affected by these dynamics, whether we are aware of them or not. The sources of the challenging situation are entangled and unclear. 

If you've been following me on social media, or through my newsletters recently, you've probably seen a mention or two of Purposeful Cultures: Discovery Circles. This is a self-leadership program designed to guide your team though a series of transformative conversations, evolving your culture from the inside out. It has been designed to be delivered by those within the team or organisation, giving ownership of the process to the people who are undertaking it.

Last week I participated in an interview with a coach based in Europe about my work as a coach and facilitator in the fields of climate and ecological emergency.   

When asked about how I started in my particular line of work, I was reflecting on the epiphany I had back in 2003 (which some of you may be aware of) - that humanity was on a trajectory to possible self-destruction, which prompted me to ask myself:  

“What do I need to learn and how do I need to change my business to earn a living and contribute to solutions rather than problems?” 

As I was answering the questions for the interview, I paused and realised for the first time that I have succeeded in finding some answers to that question. 

Trust is such a huge, subtle thing, and if you spend any time at all on one of the various 'socials', you will probably witness declining trust in real-time. 

Trust is measured worldwide too. One of the most widely used tools is the World Values Survey, and it indicates that as of 2022, 49% of Australians generally agree that most people can be trusted! I was surprised by this, but maybe you are not.
Edelman's Trust Barometer suggests that business is generally more trusted than other institutions to introduce innovations to society. Over time, there has been a steady decline in our trust, to the point where it is being described as a crisis of trust.

Many organisations are engaging with more and more change. Some is forced upon them by a changing world context and others are choosing to transform themselves to be ready for the future. But with change after change, how can you keep your team energised and committed?  

If you’ve ever felt the enthusiasm of your team dwindle amidst the challenges of change, you're not alone. The question is, how can we inspire and mobilise people to not just endure change, but to thrive through it? I am a strong advocate for the transformative approach of Appreciative Inquiry (AI – not artificial intelligence! ). 

Collaboration and teaming are often used interchangeably, but each offers a different lens through which to view how we work together effectively. So, what is collaboration, and how does it connect with the concept of teaming in practice for your team?

Difficult conversations often loom large in our minds, creating anxiety and hesitation. Even procrastination, if we are honest.

But why are these conversations daunting? I spend a large amount of my professional life engaged in difficult conversations with individuals, staff in conflict, and entire teams and groups seeking to address complex challenges together. Here's a little bit about what I have learned. And i am still definitely learning!

When we see ‘poor behaviour’ in our workplaces (I use inverted commas there because it’s subjective, and there’s often more to it – as I’m about to explore), it’s easy to pass off as individual shortcomings. In fact, the invisible designs dictating interactions, workflows, and decision-making processes that shape our organisations play a significant, if silent, role in moulding the behaviour of the people working within them.

In today's intricate web of leadership challenges, are you finding prioritising to be your Achilles’ heel? It's not just you - many leaders are in the same boat. Let's delve into why prioritising has become a lost art, yet a much-needed capability in the current workplace landscape that seems highly reactive and overwhelmed with systemic burnout.

Change is a process that naturally brings up emotional responses. Acknowledging and working through these emotions can be a process of self-discovery, requiring a mix of courage and curiosity to see us through to the other side.

In my work with two organisations in the midst of a large-scale merger, I have witnessed up close how personal change mirrors the complexities faced in organisational transformation. It’s a push-and-pull between the fear of uncertainty and the promise of potential.

I have recently been working with two organisations in the midst of a large-scale merger. One challenge of this work has been engaging team members from across the two organisations in the ongoing, emergent change of this merger. This is no small feat!

During times of upheaval like this, how can we ensure staff are supported through the change, and even energized by the new possibilities that it might bring?

These are some strategies I’ve employed in my work with these groups.

I’ve been holidaying. And like many on holidays, that means I have been reading. I love reading but often don’t have the time that I’d like to devote to it. Or more precisely, I don’t make the time to devote to it.
 
This past week I have been dipping into Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer in the USA – or Turtle Island as it is known to some indigenous peoples in the USA. Kimmerer is a Potawatomi author and an academic ecologist. The book explores many topics, but a central one is reciprocity. The creation of relationships of symbiosis due to reciprocal benefits. For example, the relationship between sweetgrass and humans. Sweetgrass is respected as the first grass on Turtle Island. In traditional knowledge, there is a saying, “If we use a plant respectfully, it will stay with us and flourish. If we ignore it, it will go away. If you don’t give it respect it will leave us.” This belief runs counter to the commonly held scientific understanding that to conserve a species, we should leave it alone - keep it separate. Nevertheless, Kimmerer describes scientific research informed by traditional knowledge where the findings support the traditional understanding.  

A couple of weeks ago now, I presented “Introduction to Complexity” to the CEO and Mayor Forum on behalf of the LGA SA. I was pretty nervous about it for a few reasons. Why? 

We all live and work in complexity so it shouldn’t be a big deal! But we have hidden, unexamined assumptions in our modern Western culture that underpin our work lives. These assumptions are based on mechanistic thinking, not an understanding of living systems and interdependence. So, my presentation was always going to be ‘counter-cultural’. Being counter-cultural usually gets people into trouble. You may recall the quotation often attributed to Gandhi, but actually originally said by Nicholas Klein, a trade union activist in 1918: 

“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.” 

I am continually amazed by how little sense of agency most people feel they have to initiate change.  

By that, I mean that they usually don’t believe they can change anything. And yet, change and adaptability are our birthright by virtue of being living systems. We naturally change when the environment around us changes. (Earlier this year I hosted a webinar introducing my Changing Naturally suite of programs if you’d like to explore this further). 

So what holds things in place? The system we are in is a part of it. Our beliefs are another part. Many people have been drained of their sense of agency or belief that they can make a difference. But the ongoing belief that we can’t make a difference is continually making a difference by holding the status quo in place. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy! 

You may have already seen my very excited photo above if you follow me on LinkedIn. Needless to say, I'm thrilled to have finally published and launched my latest book, Purposeful Cultures: A practical self-leadership guide. 

My aim for Purposeful Cultures is to provide a different perspective on organisational cultures, and how we can change them. Usually when we think about cultures, we think about sweeping organisational interventions, but it starts from a very personal level.

Recently, a few organisational clients have been in situations where it’s becoming important to refresh skills in initiating difficult conversations. 
 
Some are working like crazy while one or two of their staff members are tired and complaining – and not pulling their weight. It seems these staff members are just in the wrong job.  
 
Other clients are caught up in mergers between two large institutions – so they are negotiating new ways of doing things with other teams from completely different organisational cultures – so there are difficult conversations to be had about clarifying expectations and what is most important. 

As our challenges have become more complex, interconnected, and messy, it's become necessary for us to reconsider the way we lead in an effort to address them. We need to zoom out more to appreciate the interdependence of different parts within the system rather than zooming in on the system's separate parts.

Change is all around us all the time in our work life. There are small changes of getting someone to turn up to work on time, learning how to run a hybrid team, or just having a conversation with our line managers about some feedback that they may not particularly want to hear. Then of course there are the larger systemic and adaptive changes like cultural change.