A Metaphor for a Meeting Make-over

Is it a pack of wolves?
Is it a beehive?
Is it the Muppets?
NO—it’s a metaphor!

Patience dear reader, I shall explain in a moment.

Imagine that you are an employee in a group that has just had one of its newer members leave because he couldn’t work with you and your colleagues. It is time to hire a new employee. Your manager brings you together to talk about what it will take to successfully induct a new team member. So you start gossiping about what went wrong with the guy who left and why it was all about him. Then you realize that you may have had a role to play too. And your manager asks you to start identifying some concrete things you can do differently and even asks for some suggestions from all of you about what she can do to better prepare the candidate for the group’s work. All good stuff but a little boring and really you have a lot of work to do. How much longer will this meeting last?

Enter the right brain [and an inspired coach! :) ]

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine that your team is a living breathing organism. What real or imagined creature would it be? How would it move? What would it feel? How would it interact with others? How is it healthy? How does it evolve? How does it integrate new entities into its midst and remain healthy?

You look around and see that, in fact, your colleagues are doing this so you do too. Then you talk to each other in pairs about your organism. And the room is buzzing. The energy is sky high. No one is checking blackberries. Your teammates start talking and each one is more interesting and potent than the next. Not only are you getting brilliant and powerful ideas about how to integrate a new teammate you are beginning to get a much better sense of who you actually are as a team and who you want to be. There is some good discussion about what would happen if your roles really were as clear as those bees in the beehive. And you have made plans to talk about what it would take to have more of a sense of collective responsibility like those wolves.

This really happened folks.

Right brained exercises in general and metaphors specifically are a great doorway into the real work of your organization. Stash the skepticism and give it a try. And let me know what happens.

Can We Share Broken Hearts At Work?

Last month, our family suffered the devastating loss of my sister. For almost 10 days, my entire professional life came to a screeching halt. My grieving process is far from over but I am working again: re-establishing contact with my clients and colleagues, coaching and writing. And it has caused me to reflect on a dilemma that I sometimes hear in my clients.

How much of my personal life should I reveal at work?

I have no simple answers. But I do want to tell you how important it was for me and for my clients to be able to show a side of ourselves to each other that seldom has permission to take center stage.

The wonder of our humanity is that we are heart and soul; mind and body. Yet, on a typical day, we connect mostly with our minds and mouths. We even struggle to tap into our hearts when we are alone. For a brief moment of blinding intensity, I felt the full force of my clients’ heart as they shared my pain. This momentary revelation has changed us and the relationship. We are a little bit more whole now as we work together.

In the spirit of bringing our whole selves to each other, I share with you two articles which I have written for Simple Marriage.

In the first article entitled, Our Children are Zen Masters, I reflect on the lessons learned about presence from my sons when they were infants.

In the second article entitled, We Are So Proud of Who You Are, I learn about acceptance and appreciation from a HS guidance counselor.

Talk to you next month,