Creating and Sustaining Positive Organizations

By Robert E. Quinn

On this blog we have written much about the lift state or what we also call the fundamental state of leadership (FSL).  When I teach this concept people find it very exciting.  Yet they are not sure they fully understand the concept or how to internalize it.  I often ask students to engage in two exercises.  The first is to examine their most extreme life experiences.  Here they almost always discover times in which they have experienced lift.  When they do, they begin to more fully understand.  This understanding can be expanded if they then attempt to mentor and elevate someone else into this state.   In my courses I have the students do these two things and then write about them.  The products they produce are often inspiring.  In this entry, I would like to share the observations of one of my students (I do so with the permission of the student).

Examining Past Experiences

I entered therapy in my mid twenties as my first marriage was dying.  Marriage is sacred to me and at the brink of divorce, I felt like a failure.  I was initially looking for validation and compassion much more than a quest for deep change.  Barbara, my therapist, had a different agenda.  She was not interested in coddling me, her goal was to help me take responsibility for my life, look critically at my character and help me find the path to living my best life.  She shared with me a vision of a fully flourishing, authentic life that it was clear she was living, and that she believed was possible through hard work in therapy.  From the beginning, she painted a much bigger picture of the possibilities if I succeeded at deep change.

At one point in therapy, I was a single mother working on 100% commission and struggling to make ends meet.  My time with Barbara cost $120/hour and although I very much wanted to continue with therapy and I knew how much it was helping me grow, I could not afford the expense any longer.  I remember feeling ashamed when I told Barbara I would have to cut back from once a week to once a month.  She responded in a way that even now brings tears to my eyes.  Barbara said that she recognized how hard I was working at therapy and that it would be difficult to make real progress by coming just once a month.  Even when people are extremely motivated, deep change can be very difficult, and it requires steady, consistent focus and commitment.  She shared with me her own struggle as a single mother at one point in her life, and recognized the financial pressure I was under.  She was leading me, but had walked in my shoes.  She offered to let me come weekly at a quarter of the cost and just asked that as my circumstances improved, I let her know and start paying at the higher rate.  This was a boundless gift that left me forever wanting to “pay it forward” to others.  I knew she believed in me.  Her confidence helped me grow stronger and made me even more driven to transform myself.

Through this time, my career suddenly began to blossom.  After three months, I was able to pay Barbara at her normal rate.  It felt so gratifying to realize I was growing and changing, seeking my authentic self and reaching for the best I could be.  For several years, I continued to see Barbara on a regular basis.  She was my best mentor and life coach.  The day arrived when she told me in essence that she thought I was ready to fly solo and while I would always be welcome to see her, she knew I would continue the journey we began together successfully on my own.  She said, “I think you are ready to graduate from therapy.”  More than any degree I had ever received or possibly any I may ever earn in the future, this was a graduation of great honor.

Barbara exemplifies the FSL to me and that relationship helps me to conceptualize the influence that someone in the FSL can have on another human being in a permanent way.  My respect for Barbara is at the deepest level.  She was consistent, tough, loving, compassionate, demanding, brutally honest, inspiring and motivating. She was, and is, remarkable.  Even now, when I’m struggling with something difficult I ask myself, “What would Barbara say?”  Barbara’s path was the road of truth and integrity.  She helped me make a paradigm shift from an entitled, victimized state to an empowered position of personal responsibility.

Before moving to the second entry, here are some questions to consider:

• When have you felt like a failure?
• Why was it important for Barbara to paint a picture of the possibilities?
• Why did it matter that Barbara was living “a fully flourishing, authentic life?”
• Why did Barbara dramatically reduce her fee?
• Why do you suppose that the author’s career began to blossom?
• Why was graduation so significant?
• How did Barbara exemplify the four dimensions of the fundamental state of leadership (Lift state)?
• What do you learn from Barbara about becoming a mentor who brings someone else into the FSL?

Helping Someone Else Enter the Fundamental State of Leadership

It is not as if I finished therapy and with all the tools I needed, never ran into difficulty again and lived forever after in the fundamental state of leadership.  My company and industry have faced tremendous changes in the past few years due to the housing market crisis.  My husband, Bill, and I had managed the family business together for over a decade.  There was a time in the past for many years when we seemed to grow almost effortlessly and created a very positive, exciting work environment.  I enjoyed working with other similarly motivated individuals and felt inspired by them to work harder and learn more so I could help each of them achieve greater personal success.

When the housing crisis hit, many of our top sales staff either left for higher commission splits at competitors or left the industry altogether.  In the back of my mind, I believed that something bigger was creating the exodus:  lack of leadership.  After all, people do not quit jobs, they quit their boss.  With a teenager in crisis at home, our attention was pulled away from work.  That was essential, but it impacted our staff negatively.  Frustration was at an all time high for me and Bill at home and the office.  With the reduced size of our organization, our duties began to overlap.  We found ourselves irritated with each other at work and a negative energy began to permeate the office.  I wanted to escape but there seemed to be no way out.

I love Bill deeply for the unique, imperfect person that he is.  He can be resistant to criticism and rather than deal with him honestly, I chose what I thought was the easier path.  He insulted our support staff and lost his temper frequently, managing from a position of fear and intimidation.  Bill was internally closed, failing to see the impact he was having on our staff and even on me.  Many of our long-term employees accepted his behavior, like a dysfunctional family where everyone sees the problem but does nothing about it.  I excused my own inaction, feigning the good and sympathetic wife.  In reality, his behavior felt increasingly abusive, and I felt obligated to demand that our employees be treated with respect.  I found myself unable to ignore the situation any longer.

In my EMBA class I was assigned to select someone that I would help understand and enter the fundamental state of leadership.  I selected my husband.  I began to challenge Bill when this negative behavior surfaced, more passionately than I knew was in me.  One of our newer co-workers was not intimidated by him and felt protective of her co-workers. She was clearly not intimidated by him.  She asked me if I was aware of my own tendency to be short and abrasive with our employees under stress.  As I closed off my own exits and considered the opportunity in front of me to learn and grow, I was able to accept her criticism constructively.  I reflected on the source of the stress for me personally, which was a result of spending too much time on transactional duties that sapped my energy rather than focusing on my natural abilities and interests.  Understanding this personally helped me see that Bill was similarly eager to reduce his stress and enjoy work more.

The important question I kept returning to was:  What would the company look like if we were our very best?  This is a very different question than the one I initially asked myself:  How can I get my husband to change?  Although initially I saw his anger and disrespectful behavior as the “problem”, as I moved forward in the process, I felt compassion for him and recognized his grievances were real and justified.  The way he managed his emotions was not appropriate, and it stood in the way of effective problem solving.  His underlying frustrations, however, were founded in reality and need attention.  Our industry demands careful attention to deadlines and a high level of customer service.  My husband’s stress was a response to the fact that delivery was failing.  This caused him to overemphasize it and neglect the previously family oriented culture of high morale and teamwork. His frustration was a gift!  If he had not been so overwhelmed and angry, the need for change may not have been so evident.

Acknowledging the problem to my support staff gave me the opportunity to validate their feelings and enlist their support in the change process.  The energy in the office has began to trend positively and there was a lot of dialogue about alleviating stress for all through consistent, predictable communication, recognizing and eliminating bottlenecks, giving up “control” for greater efficiencies and a shared purpose of excellence.   Listening to Bill and our staff helped me to see the situation as an intricate, complex puzzle.  Some of the puzzle pieces were missing, some had rough edges and some pieces were out of place.  There were even additional parts of the puzzle that did not exist yet but began to grow at the boundaries.  I grew increasingly hopeful and excited about working with everyone to improve the environment for all while enhancing our customer service and efficiency.

Let me close with a final set of questions:

• Why was the author inspired by the people who worked in her organization?
• What does it mean for negative energy to permeate an organization?
• What does it mean for an organization to be like a dysfunctional family?  Give an example.
• How did the author respond to negative feedback and why did it matter?
• What did the author learn about the sapping of her energy?
• Contrast the two questions the author asked herself.  Why did the shift in questions matter?
• What surprising insight did the author have about her husband and why did it occur?
• Why did dialog increase and what impact did the increase have?
• What do you learn from the author about becoming a transformational mentor?
• Does she now understand the fundamental state of leadership, if so why?
• How might you apply principles you have learned from the author?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 8:26 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.