Volume 9, Number 1

Of Interest

As we prepare for SoL’s 3rd Global Forum in Muscat, Oman, it seems especially timely that this issue of Reflections focuses on the importance of human relationships. I had the opportunity to speak with noted anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson about her take on how we “bridge the gulf,” the theme of this year’s forum. She related a story of a session she designed to improve working relationships between Americans and Iranians. In the process, she asked them what they valued most in a relationship. All answered without prompting that they valued both honesty and kindness; however Iranians overwhelming ranked kindness first, and the Americans ranked honesty first. She noted that this simple exercise sheds light on some of the roots of our cultural and personal misunderstandings: we assume that others value what we do, and if they behave in ways we don’t expect, we often attribute their behavior to bad intentions. Depending on your background, honesty can be considered as meanness, and kindness can be seen as lying. In this issue, our authors present a range of opportunities and problematic situations in which they are untangling the snags in our web of relationships to reveal more opportunities for inspired performance. Read Full Article

Feature

Beginning in 1998, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) embarked on a journey of transformational change aimed at serving more people, in new and underserved markets. IFC founded its change effort on the principles and methods of organizational learning. Their decentralized approach focused first on using dialogue to create a shared vision that would inspire, and shared spaces for innovation. Ten years later the results speak for themselves – and the journey continues. Read Full Article

Feature

In this article, adapted from Diana McLain Smith’s new book Divide or Conquer: How Great Teams Turn Conflict into Strength (Penguin: 2008), stories from the author’s own work and public sources allow us to peer inside the relationships that so often make or break the success of teams. Once you understand how relationships actually work, develop, and change, you can use that understanding to build relationships flexible and strong enough to create and sustain exceptional teams. Read Full Article

Feature

In Presence, Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer and their coauthors Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers provided an intimate look at the development of a new theory about change and learning. The theory was further refined in Otto Scharmer’s subsequent book Theory U (SoL: 2007). In both books, the authors seek to explain how profound collective change occurs. Ultimately, they tackle universal and persistent questions – What are we here for? How would the world change if we learned to access, individually and collectively, our deepest capacity to sense and shape the future? What do we really care about? How can we serve an emerging future that averts environmental degradation and species destruction—including our own? In this, the second half of an interview conducted by George Hall, Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer share their views on leadership and being present. Read Full Article

Of Interest

Many OD practitioners are asked to intervene with groups that exhibit unproductive team dynamics, and are often faced with a decision of how to intervene. In this case study of a senior leadership team at a Fortune 100 company, Deepika Nath describes the application of David Kantor’s human structural dynamics model. In seeking to address behavioral dysfunction that was hampering this team’s ability to work effectively and further a strategic agenda, she used an approach that focused not only on addressing the behavioral manifestation of the dysfunction in the team, but also at making visible the invisible source of this dysfunction i.e. the beliefs and mental models that contributed to the behavior. This two-pronged model was a powerful approach that resulted in positive outcomes for the organization and for the team. We hope this case study contributes to the shared learning of the community. Read Full Article

Of Interest

In “Love, Language, and Working Relationships,” SoL consultant member Manuel Manga contends that language and conversation are the foundation of all human relationships. Given that conversations are so important to successful interactions, how can we use them to help us construct loving and productive relationships? He reviews some of the literature in this area and proposes that we can improve our conversations by recognizing different types of conversations, and consciously engaging in them. Read Full Article

Of Interest

What and from whom can we learn? In “Learning to Teach, Teaching to Learn,” Mary Catherine Bateson offers a personal reflection on learning across differences. In particular she notes that the relationship between who learns and who teaches has been fairly constant in human cultures, guided by notions of age and hierarchy. She shares her personal experience about the need and opportunity to learn, particularly across the generational divide. Read Full Article

Feature

Seven years ago, Ann McGee-Cooper and Associates, Inc. invited nine Dallas organizations to form a learning community to share the successes and challenges in creating servant-led organizations. In this excerpt from Being the Change, which profiles many of those organizations, the authors focus on the role of servant leadership in the success of Southwest Airlines. Read Full Article