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Bring Your Tribe Alive!

Posted May 20th, 2010 by Robb Smith in Integral Post

In Reference to:

Dear friends,

As a follow-up to this week’s media I wanted to offer some reflections on how to bring Tribal Leadership alive in your tribes – from your family to your work or anywhere else (you should consider buying the book, too). One of our Core Values at Integral Life is to “Preach What We Practice,” so it not unusual to have put into practice the media we feature (though we cannot practice everything we publish, we do vet all of it). The language in a tribe, which could be a small work team or the entire company, is a very simple yet accessible way of assessing the center of gravity of a given culture. Remember that one of the most simple ways of gauging what’s happening in the lower-left is simply to look at the kinds of language that’s being used in the group. So the five stages of Tribal Leadership are:

1. Life sucks

2. We suck

3. I’m great, you suck

4. We’re great

5. Life’s great

I have been incorporating Tribal Leadership in my style of leadership for a bit now and here are some reflections on how to make it most effective:

Core Values: Integral Life’s Core Values form the backbone of our culture by forming an explicit standard of behavior and values. The team at Integral Life is awesome at embodying these values and we talk about them every day. We use them as a regulative mechanism for making decisions, setting policies and inspiring each of us to meet our deepest hopes for the kind of livelihood we pursue. In short: Core Values have to be made explicit. If they are not, you may not like the kind of values that are implicitly being operated on in the culture. This is as true for families as it is for companies.
Object View: At Integral Life we work harder than any other team I’ve ever worked with to regularly practice an object view of every aspect of our organization. What this means is we are constantly watching for opportunities to turn a blind subjective view into a visible objective one. We try to do this in our interactions with members, in the way we talk with each other, the language we use, the strategies that we pursue, etc. There is nothing off limits in this constant cauldron of individual and social transformation. What really aids this move is again that we preach what we practice, with every member of the team working with an Integral Life Integral Coach (including our team coaches) to make our own Unique Way of Being an object for ourselves and the rest of the team to work with. For example, my profile spells out very clearly what motivates me, what I sound like under stress, what I need from my professional interactions, how to communicate with me most effectively, etc. So my way of being has now become a social object for me and the team. (And so has everyone else’s.) The level of compassion, support and mutuality – notice, this is the degree of deep resonance of the team in the lower-left – is very high.
Freedom Language: I didn’t know what to call this category so I named it after what it does - language that alleviates suffering by increasing felt-freedom in a group. This is what Tribal Leadership does in a very simple but powerful way. (By the way, it’s also what integral philosophy does in a much broader way.) Just today I was in a substantive disagreement with a team member by email, and at the end of the email I wrote “I recognize I’m enacting stage 3 language here.” I was consciously making it known that I was choosing to come from an “I’m on top of this, but you’re missing something important here” place of discourse. His reply was “I know and I appreciate that, I know you’re holding a stage 5 place of love in doing so.” This is a liberating moment for both of us because it gives us a discourse of liberation: we don’t always substantively communicate a stage 5 “life’s great” message if we have real criticisms, but the manner in which we carry those criticisms can be loving, gentle and self-aware. This makes all the difference in the world to the typical self-contraction of dialogue.
Take Full Responsibility: At Burning Man there is a rule I love, which is roughly that you take full responsibility for your experience. Any tribe that wants to move to stage 4 has to live by this rule. If you want to be in a stage 4 or 5 culture, you have to take it seriously and act like it. Watch your language. Watch the subtle undertones of how you talk to people. You will be surprised, I bet, at how easy it is to subtly say “I’m doing this right, and no one else really is” (Stage 3). Or worse: “Why can’t we get our act together?” (Stage 2) Now sometimes these are real questions that need real introspection. But I submit that the answer lies at the intersection of a well-selected group of people who share common Core Values, a passion for the mission, and are committed to taking responsibility for their own and the group’s social dynamics in an ethos of self-awareness.

So I hope that helps add some practical value to this week’s media release, at least as we know it and are practicing it at Integral Life. And I just have to say it publicly: my team is fantastic. Life is exceptionally great for me because I work with some of the most talented, dedicated, hard-working and self-aware people on the planet. They so love you, they love our mission, and they love being in service. I want to publicly applaud each and every one of them.

Loving regards,

Robb

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on preaching...

Posted May 20th, 2010 by Charles Bowling

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Hi Robb,

Both the wordsmith and the Taoist in me are uneasy with the phrase 'preach what we practice'. I understand the allure of alliteration, and if the definition for preach is held lightly (meaning one's words and deeds need be congruent) its use approaches but does not quite pass my standard for tolerance.

The connotations for preaching are not essentially different from those of proselytizing. This troubles me on a developmental level, because i associate preaching and proselytizing with a first tier development that is mired in the 'I am right and you are necessarily wrong syndrome.' And on a personal level it goes hand-in-hand with what i call the 'should' phenomenon; which rightly has a place in parent/child relationships, but adults eschew its use and simply do not tell each other what to do.

I am reminded how the book of the Tao came into existence; a wise elder was heading home to die, and was not permitted to pass through the mountains until he set something of his wisdom into words. A proselytizer or preacher he was not; rather he simply said, this is what has worked for me.

Warmly,

Charles

41N54'51" 88W18'31"

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thanks...

Posted May 21st, 2010 by Mark Hezinger

For your post, Robb.

I have a question, or an invitation, I guess-- it seems to me like your example of being able to give challenging feedback to a team member within an established container of trust and respect and with mutually shared and explicitly understood values that include an understanding of hierarchical stages is really the ideal.

I'd be very interested in reading a follow up post about some of your times of crisis when you felt/feel your vision of the norms and values of your Integral Life tribe were/are threatening to regress, and how you first recognize such symptoms and what interventions you choose to use to address such moments.

I have no idea how your bottom line currently looks, or if you're comfortable considering the question in this way, but an obvious potential stressor would be your financial statements at any moment in your tribe's still very young life span.

Cheers,

Mark

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Great question

Posted May 21st, 2010 by Robb Smith in response to thanks...

This is a good one. There are a bunch of moving parts and this may not be elegant, but here goes...

First, due to my background, I'm pretty facile at handling financially challenged companies. You may not know that when I got involved at the Institute we were losing $40K a month and were almost out of cash. So this whole enterprise started bankrupt and insolvent. I started Integral Life with no money and have grown it with no outside investment. So that has definitely put stress on the group as I translate the financial reality into pretty severe rescue measures. I'm sure my team's hated it as much as I have.

Compounding this set of conditions of course was the global recession, and on top of that is my style under stress: I revert under stress to an unhealthy enneagram 1: I become very detail-oriented and can be exacting, critical and demanding. It's not so much that it's unwarranted in hard times as it is just not a fun place for me to operate from. No fun for me and not for those around me. Again, there are times when a team needs someone who's pushing them hard to step up, but style counts for a lot. I definitely did not handle all of my interactions the way I should have.

That said, there has been an interesting interplay amongst the team: our overall strategy, identity, culture, performance and cohesion have co-evolved, deepened and strengthened. We're still not even close to satisfied with our results, which is why we're rebuilding our entire web platform this year, but there definitely has been a deeper sense of commitment to each other at every level. So on the one hand the financial pressure is real, on the other I have tried to take most of it on myself by telling the team that the team comes first: "if this doesn't work quite as we planned, we'll start it again in some new form, but we'll do it together." This is a big signal that the people come first. And I mean it.

Now this doesn't mean that everyone on the team is guaranteed a job for life: everyone still has to perform, but it's pretty obvious if someone is not getting the job done or is just in over their head (which we are all at times, me more than most). Which is why Integral Life has no vacation policy. Or rather, it's a take as much time as you want off vacation policy. Just get the job done. When people take every Core Value to heart it's not a big risk to try to control people through policies. (I don't know if this scales to 1,000 team members, but it works for less than 30.)

But the main thing I'd emphasize is that despite the usual tensions, interpersonal struggles, strategic challenges (which, BTW, I could write a book on: for being so small, this is the most complex enterprise I've ever been involved in) etc., what held it all together, whether stated or not, was many of the elements I post above. We are people who are seriously committed to living integrally. It either starts with us or we're full of shit.

Some tactical things we do to reinforce the values is this quarter the team is giving an iPad to whomever gets the most votes for living the Core Values, and every team member gets 3 votes. Believe me, this is $700 well spent, it's fun, competitive, and makes the Core Values stay front and center. Also our performance reviews will incorporate Core Values.

Finally, there is always the chance of regression. Our technology platform is a dog and were constantly fighting some stupid fire we shouldn't be. I think our best defense against that is actually a spiritual one: we're in this as a mission of who we are and how we want our lives to be invested. You might say this job is the death we choose: it's that death that makes this life worth living. We will still fall into petty traps along the way but as long as we insist that every team member practice the responsibility-taking that they are choosing this for their lives, it tends to cut through the haze pretty fast. I remind people all the time that if they have a more compelling calling elsewhere, they owe it to us to pursue it.

Robb Smith

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Love This!

Posted May 21st, 2010 by Jennifer Grove in response to Great question

"Finally, there is always the chance of regression. Our technology platform is a dog and were constantly fighting some stupid fire we shouldn't be. I think our best defense against that is actually a spiritual one: we're in this as a mission of who we are and how we want our lives to be invested. You might say this job is the death we choose: it's that death that makes this life worth living. We will still fall into petty traps along the way but as long as we insist that every team member practice the responsibility-taking that they are choosing this for their lives, it tends to cut through the haze pretty fast."

I just watched the movie, "The 300" the other night with my Son, and it is good at creating that awareness of our capacity for a Beautiful Death. There are not too many productive ways to exercise that capacity in this culture, so it's great to see someone who is willing to go there for people who can. And there are not too many people who want to go there - mainly people who don't have to. If death isn't in your face every day, why chase it down? Yuk! So, many people who are relatively happy and healthy don't develop that awareness and capacity.

I'm glad to read about how you insist on this:

"So on the one hand the financial pressure is real, on the other I have tried to take most of it on myself by telling the team that the team comes first: "if this doesn't work quite as we planned, we'll start it again in some new form, but we'll do it together." This is a big signal that the people come first. And I mean it."

And I totally relate to this:

"Compounding this set of conditions of course was the global recession, and on top of that is my style under stress: I revert under stress to an unhealthy enneagram 1: I become very detail-oriented and can be exacting, critical and demanding. It's not so much that it's unwarranted in hard times as it is just not a fun place for me to operate from. No fun for me and not for those around me. Again, there are times when a team needs someone who's pushing them hard to step up, but style counts for a lot."

It's truly no fun to be there and I've been there too - even in a non-leadership position. Blech.

What I've learned recently about being embedded helps me to see what people need better and makes it possible for me to give it to them. Pulling apart the "I" from the what the Body-mind is demanding has been infinitely valuable.

Awesome.

For just $14.95 a month, YOU TOO can offset your Karma Footprint by becoming a Member of Integral Life!

[has that already been done?]

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Opening It Up

Posted May 21st, 2010 by Jennifer Grove

Thanks Robb. It's good to hear about what IL is like as a company from the inside. The pov of the CEO is important. And I hope some of the other insiders can contribute their pov's as well on this issue. I guess difficulty would arise around sharing personal stuff, but there must be a way of doing that with integrity.

I'm seeing something in these two quotes that I'm going to attempt to articulate:

...we don’t always substantively communicate a stage 5 “life’s great” message if we have real criticisms, but the manner in which we carry those criticisms can be loving, gentle and self-aware. This makes all the difference in the world to the typical self-contraction of dialogue."

"Now sometimes these are real questions that need real introspection. But I submit that the answer lies at the intersection of a well-selected group of people who share common Core Values, a passion for the mission, and are committed to taking responsibility for their own and the group’s social dynamics in an ethos of self-awareness."

I don't think Dave is really giving us a scale to micro-measure ourselves at every given moment as much as he's giving us a way to see groups and measure their level of being in general. What happens to each of us under stress is going to be a combination of our own individual vMeme issue as well as the natural regression that occurs when a system is experiencing the stress of conflict between parts.

Whatever level the group is at normally will regress when there is stress to the system. Stress would at least be conflict between individuals among other things. When that conflict is non-work related (tho I doubt that's even possible at IL) then it's prolly more of an individual vMeme issue. But if it is work-related, then it will most likely regress first to the first level below the normal operating level, then lower as the conflict becomes ingrained.

Since it's already an operating norm for the IL folks to Objectify the Subject, it would prolly be possible to notice what is going on, speak of it with complete equanimity and simply suggest the lower level's solution strategy - including all of it's inherent flaws. Sometimes this shock would be enough to break the spell. But if not, then there is prolly some kind of personal embeddedness going on and it's time to take care of each other. Cuz that's nothing to fool around with. Time out. Take care of ourselves. Then reconvene with the intent to care for one another.

And then, of course, to get the job done. This shift is not easy. And it is important for the top folks to be able to make the shift authentically and bring the team with them, or else delegate that job to someone who can. It takes more than just shared values and mission and individual commitments to the social dynamics to bring the team back into the work. It's easy for systems people to miss this. People in stress need to feel cared about before they can unclench and take risks, try new things and be creative again.

I may have signed a contract, but if I feel like people don't give a crap about me, its over. And now, for the first time in my life, I don't feel crazy for feeling that way and saying it.

As long as people feel cared about, it's prolly possible to pull apart what the real snags are in the plan that was being argued over. You're right. And this is important. There are such things as real problems that have to be solved by identifying a right (and therefore a wrong) plan and bringing the team to acceptance of it in a timely manner.

---oOo---

When I was working, this was something I learned to do, not with the people I worked with (because I wasn't in any kind of leadership position), but I did it with the people who our organization served. I was a Teacher, and the people in my classes or groups were extremely enthusiastic about my abilities to resolve conflicts within the group. Sometimes this process must take place in 3 minutes or less. And since you're a numbers guy and time is money, I'm sure you can appreciate that.

I wish I had access to this when I was working, then I might have been better equipped to deal with the people I worked with. I did my best using the Holocracy model, but it was too complex and there was no time to sell it to all the leadership and then also to the whole team. This could have been explained in one 10-minute monologue at a normal business meeting. And even the team didn't buy it, it might have been possible to leverage them even if I was the only one using it. And I don't mean this in an exploitative way. There were people on the team that were destroying the culture with their attitudes and the leadership was not equipped to stop them. They needed help.

I want to buy the book on audio. Mostly to benefit my b/f and I both as he is about to launch into a very high position where it will be 100% up to him to design and implement the work culture and business model. We listened to this audio together tonight and talked late about it. Very inspiring and wonderful. Complex enough to contain the Big Variables (within its field, as Dave mentioned) which Integral requires and yet not too sophisticated that Blue Collar guys can't get it.

---oOo---

It feels weird using this part of my brain again. The capability is in there. But it's only one sub-persona and the other ones have gone on strike. In all my efforts to care for everyone else and make the organization win at its game, I didn't see how uncared-for I actually was. It was confusing because people "loved" me. But they all wanted me for themselves and eventually tore me to pieces.

For just $14.95 a month, YOU TOO can offset your Karma Footprint by becoming a Member of Integral Life!

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culture

Posted May 21st, 2010 by stefano

I find it very interesting how, problem solving is understood to require awareness of inner altitudes, which leads the participants to need to use the integral map as a vocabulary in conversations, and thereby the map language becomes the culture, for the culture is the conversations.

Next, how might this culture of AQAL conversations start to change LR systems....

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Ken’s Core Value Examples

Posted May 21st, 2010 by Stanley

I loved the core value examples Ken provided: vision, goodness, truth, beauty, helpfulness, nobility, transparency, freedom, fullness, inclusiveness, in the many the one and in the one the many, love, being, passion, consciousness, playfulness, care, compassion, joy, relationship, justice, mercy, transcendence, immanence, excellence, evolution, embrace, greatest depth for greatest span

http://s3.amazonaws.com/integral-life-mailers/Newsletters/April2010/IntegralLife_CoreValues.pdf

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