Across the next two episodes, Katie talks with ORSC coach and legally trained consultant Jennifer Pernfuss and CRR Global co-founder Marita Fridjhon about conflict. Conflict is a signal that something is trying to happen and when the signal of conflict isn't addressed, matters can escalate to other, and often more destructive forms of conflict. Conflict falls on a spectrum, and if we can become aware of the early warning signals we can produce better, more well-considered, outcomes. However, if conflict takes root and is left unaddressed it can escalate and, in more serious cases, become harassment or bullying, or at least be experienced that way, which causes all kinds of damage. This damage can rise to the level of a crisis within the team or organization. If, you haven't listened to it already we would highly recommending listening to part 1 first. In part 2 they discuss:
Jennifer Pernfuss is an ORSC coach and legally trained consultant, helping organizations effectively address and resolve workplace harassment complaints and transform conflict. She was one of the first legally trained consultants to conduct external investigations in Ontario. She left that work to study different ways of resolving employee complaints that encourage low-level resolution and regard for all the stakeholders in a dispute. In addition to a law degree, she has a degree in Psychology and is a trained mediator. As well as being a certified Organization and Relationship Systems Coach she is also a Trauma Informed Professional Coach. In addition, she has also had the pleasure of being trained by Brene Brown in the area of shame. All her education, training, personal and field experience has culminated in a unique and highly effective approach to addressing and resolving harassment and other forms of conflict in the workplace.
Marita Fridjhon is a co-founder and CEO of CRR Global and mentor to an ever-growing community of practitioners in the field of Relationship Systems work. She designs curriculum and operates training programs in Relationship Systems Work for coaches, executives and teams. She came to this work from an extensive background in Clinical Social Work, Community Development, Process Work, Family Systems Therapy, Business Consulting and Alternative Dispute Resolution. She has an international mentor coaching practice of individuals, partnerships and teams. Her primary focus in coaching is on systemic change, leveraging diversity, creative communication, deep democracy in conflict management and the development of Learning Organizations.
For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
Across the next two episodes, Katie talks with ORSC coach and legally trained consultant Jennifer Pernfuss and CRR Global co-founder Marita Fridjhon about conflict. Conflict is a signal that something is trying to happen and when the signal of conflict isn't addressed, matters can escalate to other, and often more destructive forms of conflict. Conflict falls on a spectrum, and if we can become aware of the early warning signals we can produce better, more well-considered, outcomes. However, if conflict takes root and is left unaddressed it can escalate and, in more serious cases, become harassment or bullying, or at least be experienced that way, which causes all kinds of damage. This damage can rise to the level of a crisis within the team or organization. If, you haven't listened to it already we would highly recommending listening to part 1 first. In part 2 they discuss:
Jennifer Pernfuss is an ORSC coach and legally trained consultant, helping organizations effectively address and resolve workplace harassment complaints and transform conflict. She was one of the first legally trained consultants to conduct external investigations in Ontario. She left that work to study different ways of resolving employee complaints that encourage low-level resolution and regard for all the stakeholders in a dispute. In addition to a law degree, she has a degree in Psychology and is a trained mediator. As well as being a certified Organization and Relationship Systems Coach she is also a Trauma Informed Professional Coach. In addition, she has also had the pleasure of being trained by Brene Brown in the area of shame. All her education, training, personal and field experience has culminated in a unique and highly effective approach to addressing and resolving harassment and other forms of conflict in the workplace.
Marita Fridjhon is a co-founder and CEO of CRR Global and mentor to an ever-growing community of practitioners in the field of Relationship Systems work. She designs curriculum and operates training programs in Relationship Systems Work for coaches, executives and teams. She came to this work from an extensive background in Clinical Social Work, Community Development, Process Work, Family Systems Therapy, Business Consulting and Alternative Dispute Resolution. She has an international mentor coaching practice of individuals, partnerships and teams. Her primary focus in coaching is on systemic change, leveraging diversity, creative communication, deep democracy in conflict management and the development of Learning Organizations.
For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
Key
KC – Katie Churchman
JP - Jennifer Pernfuss
MF - Marita Fridjhon
[Intro 00:00 – 00:06]
KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and I’m talking with ORSC coach and legally trained consultant Jennifer Pernfuss and CRR Global co-founder Marita Fridjhon about conflict. Conflict is a signal that something’s trying to happen and when the signal of conflict isn't addressed, matters can escalate to other, and often more destructive forms of conflict. Conflict falls on a spectrum, and if we can become aware of the early warning signals we can produce better, more well-considered, outcomes. However, if conflict takes root and is left unaddressed it can escalate and, in more serious cases, become harassment or bullying, or at least be experienced that way, which causes all kinds of damage. This damage can rise to the level of a crisis within the team or organization. If, you haven't listened to it already we would highly recommend checking out part one first, conflict: a signal that something needs to or wants to change. In part two we discuss the spectrum of conflict; the early warning signs; the complexities of escalated conflict; recognizing the law as a voice of the system and organizational crisis. So without further ado I bring you Jennifer Pernfuss and Marita Fridjhon talking about conflict and how to navigate the complexities of escalated conflict and organizational crisis.
KC – Jennifer, Marita, welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast and today we’re continuing on our conversation around conflict. I wonder if we can start by talking about the spectrum on conflict. In part one we were looking at some of the signals that can show up and perhaps maybe some of the more subtle conflicts that can show up in our lives and I have the sense today that we’re going to deep dive into some of the grittier, harder, heavier conflicts that I know both of you work with.
JP – Firstly, thank you so much for this Katie, it’s wonderful to be with you and Marita again.
MF – Same here. And when we talk about that spectrum of conduct I am going to lean into you a little bit Jennifer as well because of your legal background.
JP – Great, thanks Marita, yeah, so we, historically we’ve entered this conversation and we were informed by the law so a lot of it was around anti-happening. And then we shifted to creating a respectful in work environment, but again it was all defined by the law and what is harassment in the workplace and that’s a very narrow lens through which to look at this. If we take the metaview ultimately what we’re aspiring to do, what the high water mark is, is to cultivate psychological safety in the workplace. So some of the things that contribute to psychological safety is if we are, feel like we’re respected, if our voice is being heard, if we can influence, if there’s safety to speak up, take risks, make mistakes. Collaboration, those kinds of positive experiences in the workplace contribute to a psychologically safe environment. Now when we travel down the spectrum we move from respect to civility and civility is kinda like the good enough, I’m going to be polite, I’m gonna do what I’m asked to do but it’s kind of the bare minimum, I’m not that invested but I’m not violating any rules or any policies and hopefully I’m not offending. Then when we continue down the spectrum we get into the realm of incivilities, accident civilities and they can be micro moments. Somebody rolling their eyes in a meeting, somebody picking the wrong time to respond to an email, it could somebody always looking at their phone when they’re in conversation with somebody else, and these are these micro, sometimes people call them these microaggressions and they can be based on gender, they can be based on race, they start to tear at the relationship system and I would suggest, based on my work, that that’s the place where we need to focus and certainly we wanna be cultivating and encouraging positive behavior, but where some of those incivilities show up, that’s where we need the intervention to cause correct because left unattended we know from the research that it often can escalate and then when there’s a pattern in behavior, now we’re over on the realm of harassment and we cross the legal line. And at that point there’s so much distrust and so much animosity and hurt feelings it’s very difficult to intervene at that time in the relationship and repair it because there’s been so much, it quite often can be broken. And then we know if harassment’s left unattended that also can escalate to the point of violence which is obviously the most extreme form of conduct in the workplace.
KC – I think I, I thought this was the spectrum of conflict and I realize it’s the spectrum of conduct but I think that speaks to the fact that we can have respectful conflict. Conflict can show up in lots of different ways and I think in part one we were holding more of that space of when you can be conscious and aware, and this is now what happens when we spiral down. And so what happens because inevitably systems do, systems don’t stay at that respect level or even at that civility level, particularly when they’re stressed and stretched because we’re feeling with our client, so what happens then when they are in that incivility or worse.
MF – Just before we go there, I think one of the things that’s really important, because we do want to spend probably the rest of the call on once it’s gone too far, but I think I just want to underscore again how few people realize, the three of us included, what might be an act of incivility that we do, experienced by somebody else. And if you google any of the research around microaggressions or even incivility there are amazing research videos in terms of what happens if somebody consistently opens the door for somebody to walk in front of them. That ties into the five to one positivity rate that Gottman talks about. What happens if I knock something off my desk and I call my assistant to come and help pick it up and I don’t help. Over time in research what they are seeing is my assistant will then over time pick up fewer and fewer because I created the mess, called somebody else in to handle it and then I did nothing about it, that is a microaggression or an act of incivility that then reduces the commitment or connection to collaborate with me because that is not what’s experienced across from me, so there is so much of that that I think every single one of us need to get a much better view on because that’s what Jennifer has so much skill and knowledge in and some of the work that we’ve done because once we pass all of those and it becomes that harassment or the whatever, by then the ratio of negativity to positivity is so high and with the legal intervention that comes with it is very difficult to quote/unquote “make right” and I think that’s the complexity that we probably are sitting in today but I just want to do the checkmark again for all of us to do our work around what might be seen as an act of incivility on my part. No intention. And how do I create the psychological safety on my team for people to be able to say that.
JP – And to add to the complexity Marita, everyone is always scanning and assessing whether they are safe or not and when a microaggression occurs and it’s experienced in the nervous system and what’s baked into the nervous system can be someone’s own historical trauma of the time spirit of trauma and so they are experiencing it through their own unique lens and because we’re meaning making machines we’ll start to put a story around what happens and unless we check out the story we’re going to look for data to support the story because of confirmation bias and that, again, continues to compromise the strengths of the relationship in action.
KC – I’m making up that I-centric cultures or me-centric cultures might breed more of this incivility because there’s less of a sense of a system, is that what you see in the work that you’re doing?
MF – I think so. One of the examples from my own experience and there we can take it to the workplace as well, when I first moved to the US coming from a culture in South Africa, despite all its atrocities around apartheid, was a culture where it’s a we-centered culture so they make sure that everybody else is ok and then you sit down, make sure everybody else is here, it’s just thank kind of stuff. So in the beginning when I moved here, it was interesting because I did a spiritual journey with somebody and we were a lot of emails, all of us, and I was seen as co-dependent because I wanted, I’m always making sure does everybody have a seat. That’s part of my culture but in the American culture it was seen as co-dependance. Is that intended as a microaggression against me or an act of incivility? Probably not. Do I experience it as a rejection? Absolutely. Those are the things where I think we do, so if we look at harassment cases as well and so much of it involves different races and Black people and who’s the aggressor and is it white or is the other way around and we have a tendency to focus on whether the aggression is from the Black side and have more resistance to when the aggression is on the white side, at least that’s the story and that is much of the reality that we often see in the US, there are different pieces in different cultures and again, that’s the complexity.
JP – And as we’re asking people to think about this, again, they can only lean into their own experience and their place of rank that they hold in society, in a workplace, in their families. And when we start to get curios about the rank distribution and the marginalization of voices it’s a game changer. Something that might land on me as benign, you know, water on a duck, the same thing can happen to somebody else who doesn’t have the privilege that I possess and it’s very hurtful to them.
KC – Yeah, I think that’s an important point, that actually we all come with our own set of privileges and they’re gonna impact how we take certain things but from what I’ve heard from clients that have had, say, past traumas in the workplace, the more they’re made to feel silly or small because of the way they feel, the worse it gets. It’s almost like a second arrow to use the Buddhism concept of the second arrow, that actually they feel so silly that other people thought the pain was too big.
JP – Yeah, and what can happen Katie, what you’re pointing to is there’s the experience between that person and their colleague, for example, and then there’s the intuitional response. That’s the secondary because that can be experienced as institutional betrayal so now it’s a double whammy and we can also consider that our system is set up so that its complaint driven. So the obligation to raise the issue is what the person who’s experiencing the horror of the oppression, the expectation is that they’ll bring it to somebody’s attention which is a curiosity to me, and only people will hear it if it’s characterized as harassment so that it can then fall within the scope of the policies that will then trigger procedure and the organizational response. Our systems haven’t built in those earlier detective systems and resources to support meaningful intervention when there’s smoke, before there’s this raging fire.
KC – Right. That’s really interesting, so you don’t tend to see cultures of respect suddenly go to harassment, we just don’t catch the signs along the way.
JP – Exactly.
KC – And so what are we missing? What is the smoke that we need to start seeing in our teams and our organizations that’s gonna stop things from blowing up?
MF – I would say education, personal growth and psychological safety, because without psychological safety we, people can’t give the smoke alarm. When you talked about fire I was just thinking about, you know, living in an area where in summer we have high fire risk there is the evacuation orders that starts with ready, ready means you need to be ready, you might be evacuated so get your stuff together but it’s, you’re just ready. Set is now everything is packed, you are, you’re ready to leave within 10 seconds. Go is go. And I’m just wondering whether there’s a version of that, what is the version of that that we can bring to create psychological safety in our team meetings, that when things begin to go a little bit downhill we can say ready, it just creates the awareness that there might be a fire or smoke coming from this and if we can then have the signal that says set and really pause because we don’t want to get to the signal that is go which then is it’s too late, you’ve gotta move. And also the piece that I really would be interested in for us to talk more about is the challenges that we see when this, the lawsuit has occurred and which your experience and some of the work that we’ve done together is how do we bring relationship systems coaching, how do we bring the approach that we are training from a systems inspired change perspective, what are the challenges and what are the opportunities for us when it’s too late.
JP – You know, let’s stay with that. You know this idea of there’s wisdom in knowing when a relationship is over. So oftentimes I’m brought in and Marita I’ll call you to assist me is post-investigation, when there’s almost zero trust and the expectation is that somehow this is gonna be patched back together. And it’s very difficult to do that because often the people who are invited into a process which is voluntary, they’re coming in traumatized by the events that led up to not just the complaints but then the adversarial process of investigation that naturally attributes blame and, you know, there’s gonna be a winner and a loser or a perceived winner and a loser although stakeholders, everybody usually feels like the loser. So you’ve got this situation with strife between employees and then you have this breach of trust between the employees and the employer, it’s a big mess!
MF – If I can jump in there Jennifer because the other piece that I didn’t realize until we started working together is the challenge that once the lawsuit is there and it’s legal there is, within the bounds of the organizations, there is a demand for no information gets passed out. You’ve gotta be very careful within that organization what it is that can be published or said to the employees or anything. In the mean time social media and the newspapers go ahead with interviews and get stories so information about it proliferates the community and the environment but there is no response that the organization or we can make because we are bound by legal confidentiality that no information can go out. That in any intervention we try to make, pitches us against an even bigger wall.
JP – Exactly. That’s exactly right. So this requirement, this legal requirement of being silent, that alone can be traumatizing for people. If they can’t speak to their pain, if they can’t share, if they can’t kinda work it out, it’s injurious.
KC – So can I check in, are you both suggesting then that our conflict protocols are not supporting us.
JP – That’s a very good conclusion Katie. They are not supporting us. And so, you know, with this question like why? Because it seems so obvious. And I’ve really sat with that question a long time and I know that we are as a society generally speaking, conflict adverse, so this idea of leaning into the heat, working again with this smoke/fire metaphor, we don’t wanna lean in. We wanna lean out, we wanna run for the hills because it feels confronting and scary and we might get hurt. And also I’m with the curiosity around we get injured in relationship, that’s where a lot of our injuries happen, and so this idea of working in relationship to heal somehow I think can feel daunting.
MF – And again, when you think about, if we talk about, you know, from CRR Global’s perspective with the vision of systemic equity, the moment it goes to a lawsuit there is systemic inequity because law then trumps and when we come in as coaches in an attempt to create whatever, whether we call it restoration or trauma-based coachy work or whatever we try to do, we are called in by a sponsor of the organization so we need to first overcome that we are on their side, and we can sit with them. And how to do that while engaged by the organization as a sponsor is not always easy and to some extent we need to work hard in the beginning to not become another stressor for the people that experience systemic inequity, whether it’s through harassment or whatever it is. But just underscoring it is a challenging path and I think that in our organization and relationship systems coaching we need a lot more people with the legal background that Jennifer has, we have some other people as well, but it’s very difficult for a coach, even a therapist, to engage with this without somebody who can, alongside them, that can help navigate the legal consequences.
KC – I’m wondering, you know, in some ways is the law another voice of the system then? A very dominant voice?
JP – Absolutely. It’s always present, always at play and always has something to say. And we have to adhere to it. Until we change the legislation we have to comply with legislation so there’s always that rub. So Marita, to your point around confidentiality, one of the ways that we do work with these teams where there’s very little trust and there’s been a lot of injury, that’s where alignment coaching is so powerful because it gives safer space or brave space we like to say to ventilate the system. To be able to be in a container with rules of engagement where people can share what this has all been like for them. And then if we rub up against the need for confidentiality, so it does take, it’s nuanced. I think there’s space for both and one has to be very mindful of legislative requirements.
MF – I think the other thing that is a challenge that we constantly navigate is design team alliances that creates confidentiality, because if we are working with the system, the system that is bringing the harassment suit, if we’re working with them we need to be able to create an agreement of confidentiality with them, some of which they might want us to not share with the sponsor. We need to create a DTA with the sponsor in terms of can we do that, how can we create safety for this group that we’re working with so that they can ventilate, they can express and we will not take everything to you, the sponsor. You can see the complexity of that, and when we then work with the other system, that is the system that is the accused, how do we navigate, it’s sometimes easier to have different coaches working with different systems in order to really secure that.
JP – Yeah, it’s very important.
MF – Because you can see how the nest of systems within which you are working, through the lawsuit, one way or the other, have guns pointed at each other. Now how do we navigate that while remaining in an interdependence overall communication that has an upward spiral rather than downward. And again, that’s why my, it’s, I have, I’ve always appreciated my relationship with Jennifer and other people in her role that has the legal expertise that have stepped away from the legal profession in this kind of work because that creates a different safety. This is not a lawyer that’s defending the law. This is a lawyer that is working with it in a very different way. So, having people like that alongside then creates a situation where, well Jennifer’s also an ORSC coach because I have to lean so much into her in holding the legal guardrails for us, it frees her up to lean more into me to hold some of the relationship coaching. So there’s just this a, this, in my experience has been some of the strongest and best third entity work I’ve ever done because we absolutely have to rely that we will come across as a third entity and that we are holding the all to whatever extent that we can. And owning the places where oh, we’ve lost that one.
JP – And as you were describing that Marita what I saw you doing is you’re constellating the system. Like you were populating the circle, the constellation, with these various stakeholders and Katie, as you mentioned, one of them being the law and the voice, and really demonstrating the need to spend a lot of time upfront developing the strategy and then I would say getting alignment with the leaders to enter the system with which you’ve just described midway through without the support of the leaders is risky business, it can easily collapse.
KC – I think what I’m struck by is how, I think we often focus on the people and the deep democracy with the people in the process and actually this is very much deep democracy with so many different parts of the law, how it’s essential that we have systems workers out there who have these different lenses on issues like this. I was thinking also about having someone who knows the economy in a different way and how that probably is a voice of different systems and it just feels like such a valuable tool, when you are holding the balcony view and you understand the language of that voice because that’s holding the process in such a different way.
MF – Yep. What I like about what you’re saying to us Katie is I think maybe, I hope and envision that we will have more and more people interested in this particular aspect of bringing systems inspired change because it is a more specialized form and I think it is a place where, for somebody that can represent, that can hold the legal place in the way that this is a role that Jennifer is holding in the work that we’ve done. But you might also need somebody on the organizational side that is content expertise and that, like you just said, so in educational institutions I’m a good resource because I have been in academia, I am running and owning a training company so that’s a place where I have a better access point and credibility. If this were to be happening in, I don’t know, an advertising or a software company, we may need somebody together with the legal person who knows the structure, so you can see that it’s a very complex application of what I think systems inspired changemakers, we can make a massive contribution but we’re still very low on the number of people that can actually take this on. The only other thing that I want to add to that is in my experience I’ve been in these situations and working with situations where I, and I think one of the things we did Jennifer is an example of that, I, we could trust the sponsor. The sponsor was somebody who absolutely could hold all sides. It wasn't making, really a very, very evolved, totally recognize the work that we’d been doing and could do that, that provides an organization that has the possibility of being an elephant that;s trying to get up. If you have a sponsor that already made up his or her mind who needs to win, you’re more likely to be working with an elephant that’s trying to fall down and that is fatiguing and I think sometimes needs to be outcalled and said I’m sorry, I can’t take this place, you might need to get somebody else.
JP – Yes it’s so true and that evolved leader that you’re speaking of, it’s rare to find that kind of leader and that’s not a criticism of other leaders, every leader is on a different base in their evolution, and that particular leader might have had a lot of support institutionally so there’s lots of factors that allow a leader to step into that space.
MF – That’s right.
JP – You know one thing that you’ve said to me that I’ve thought about so many times, Marita, is when things aren’t going well, when things are challenging with the client, how the client is with me is how they are with each other, it’s that parallel process and I have to lean into that a lot and to remember that this, it makes sense that this is happening and for me to then anchor it in my role and be weary or be cognizant of not getting sucked into the system because often the system wants to suck us in and then we can’t be affective from that place.
MF – I love that Jennifer, I really do, because parallel process is such a powerful tool in that one. I may need to be silent for a moment in order to find my best self to do this but if I can ask, if we, let’s say we work with one of the nest systems that has some of the people that brought the suit. There’s a struggle between either one of us or both of us with one or two people. If we can sit in what Jennifer just said, that this is a systemic projection onto us which in effect means they’re trying to figure it out and we may be a safer bet than the people that they’re actually having the fight with.
KC – Right.
MF – If we can access that and then ask the question, just like I really hear and feel like we’re just not getting one another at the moment, and I feel like we are failing whatever it is, depends on style, some of us could fall down on our own swords and say I failed you here, where else does it happen in your system? Because then we address that parallel process, it’s not only happening between us. Once they can lift the gaze outside of this relationship to that, begin to talk about that, it gives us the opportunity to come back with the question well, how can we here do it better? What and how could we change it between us, because I really, I don’t wanna do this. I’m really committed to having something feel and look differently, not only for you but for us as well. And you can feel how, and then, you know, if we can leverage that parallel process because that’s such a valuable observation.
KC – I wanna say hats off to you both as well though, for being able to hold that in these intense times and not be triggered yourselves when you’re having that at you. Not easy to take the balcony view, it’s what I’m feeling from this conversation. So how do you hold the balcony view in those moments?
MF – I’m gonna expose here Jennifer that it is, please join me however you want to. We do need to have the agreement that we, because we need the in-between sessions, to have the agreement that we may need 10 minutes of ventilation in that we will hold it as ventilation. That we need to be able to just be with our own failure, our own frustration, our own whatever it is and then we can go bck to begin to talk about what is it that we learnt from this, what do we need to do differently, I can’t tell you how many times we try to have some agreement between us in terms of what it is that we think might be the next thing to do. In this one situation we knew that we would need to do lands work. We couldn’t even get a good DTA handled, forget about lands work. And when you get to those things I think it really is important to have a co-coach, to have somebody that you can process it with because unless you can count the minimal viable edges, that not just see the places where we just couldn’t do it, it’s tough.
JP – Well, and it causes forth to walk the talk. So if something’s happening in our third entity and I’m activated, it’s back to that reflection piece Marita that you mentioned in the last episode, I have to be aware on a sensory level what’s happening in my body, it’s signalling something, what am I making it mean? Taking ownership for all of that and then really leaning into that there’s a signal, something’s wanting to happen so it might be me saying to you Marita, I’m feeling like my voice isn’t being heard around this topic and I don’t know if that’s true or not, I just know that’s what I’m feeling in my body, can we talk about it. But we have enough foundation and connection that I’m able to do that. But, I guess it’s back to the alchemy.
MF – Yeah, well it’s interesting because I’ve not been in this conversation with anybody else so here we go. Just my awareness of even in our work together, and I’ve seen it with other people as well, how there can be a projection on Jennifer as the legal person that is the carry-over from the fact that they made a law suit and they feel like the law’s not gonna side with them, the law’s gonna go against them. It might be projected on the legal personality that is Jennifer. The opposite also happens where sometimes I’ve felt totally marginalized because I wasn’t the legal person. I was doing the relationship thing, it was like no wait, I need to do… so it’s so interesting how unless, you know, I just get more and more aware of the complexity of this and how much we were gifted with in the universe’s choice for us to work together that we took for granted, that we can now unpack a little bit and go what do you need to be aware of when you want to take on this kind of work? In terms of who the sponsor is, who it is that’s next to you, who it is that you want to be your supervisor or the person who appears as supervisor, whatever, really us has to do the walk the talk of our work.
JP – You know I have to admit, I’m so moved by the authenticity of this and I really, I feel it in my bones that it’s so necessary and so needed. This is world work and this, there’s a desperate need for this level of commitment and passion and awareness around the complexities, like what’s our work that we need to do so that we can be of service?
KC – It really goes beyond the realm of coaching and that makes me incredibly hopeful. Not that coaching isn’t a force for change in itself, and I think that lens that you bring with the law, Jennifer, it makes me think about all the different languages that perhaps as coaches we’re not speaking in, it would be like being in a session and not understanding your clients because they speak a completely different language. And actually maybe we’re not even listening for these other voices like the law, the economy or whatever else. They are players, whether we want to acknowledge them or not, they are big players in that systemic event or moment that you’re in together.
JP – Yeah, they’re always lurking.
KC – They are!
JP - Like the law’s lurking, yeah.
KC – I wonder, as we close, what’s something that you want people to take away from this conversation? Because we’ve spoken about sort of the signals, conflict as a signal that something’s trying to happen and the spectrum of conduct and how, you know, we’re not seeing the smoke until it’s too late, it’s a full-on fire. So what would we want people to walk with after this conversation? And we don’t have to, obviously, solve all of the problems because I think this is a big, big one, not just for us to solve, but what do you want to hold maybe as a question from this?
JP – I want people to hold that the possibility that when you see smoke there are resources available, and to give the practitioners the space and spend the time designing an approach, an initiative, with all the scaffolding that’s needed so that when we do come in and do the intervention it’s really impactful. And we know, Marita, it can be! This can be transformational. You can really go from here, this mess, this chaos, this pain and suffering and transform all of that and land in a much stronger, more aware place.
MF – I think the piece I want to build on is many of you listening will know that this is not your work to do and that’s totally fine because I think it is a specialization. For those of you that feel this is not your journey my request is become more aware, do you work, whether you research microaggressions, whether you go to, you know, spectrum of conduct, wherever you go but begin to educate ourselves on incivilities. On what is it that sets this ball in motion, because that I think is something that all of us as coaches are responsible for. I think the other thing, anybody that’s working in this sector or anybody that’s working with challenging in different sectors, different applications, what I want for all of us to take away is in this work we may not always check the box that says we were successful. I want for all of us in this work to find the minimal viable edge of success that got crossed. So in one of the examples that we’ve had and in other examples that I’ve been busy with, we might not have solved the biggest hurt, injury and trauma of the involved systems. What has happened is the person that was the sponsor made a massive growth and that growth curve for that one person will set a new direction for the entire organization. So out of the, I can’t remember how many nests of systems that we worked with, there’s one that we know a massive change occurred, so don’t just count the places where we can’t quite see. Did we really make a difference? Was that successful? Own the places where some of this is way too complex to solve in the moment, the trajectory was just, it was too far gone. But there’s this one place where we know organizationally there was a massive change and that’s good enough. I want for all of us to find some minimal viable edges where our work was successful and we know it’ll make a difference, because it’s just the beginning of the next part of the journey.
JP – Marita.
KC – Thank you both. You’re making me thing as well that sometimes when things are broken they can also be fixed, you know, that can lead to that maybe wider ripple effect in systemic change and so this spectrum of conduct isn’t really a one way street and I think that’s how I envisioned it initially, I mean it can be more of a cyclical, a systemic occurrence. And thank you for doing this work in the world and for sending this ripple out, and I’m sure other people are going to be inspired by this conversation too and take that ripple further.
MF – Thank you, and thank you Katie for the ripples that you are setting out in the making of this available.
JP – We’re always so grateful to be invited, thank you very much.
MF – Thank you Jennifer for all that you bring. Thanks everybody.
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KC – Thanks again to Jennifer and Marita for that hugely important discussion. Here are my key takeaways. Historically we’ve entered conversations like this and we’re informed by the law – what is harassment in the workplace? And that’s a very narrow lens with which to look at this with. If we take the meta view, what we’re expiring to do is to cultivate psychological safety in the workplace and some of the things that contribute to psychological safety are if we feel respected, if we can influence, if our voice is being heard, collaboration, if there’s space to make mistakes and speak up. When we travel down the spectrum of conduct we move from respect to civility and civility is the good enough – I’m going to be polite but I’m not that invested. When we continue down the spectrum we get to incivilities and these can be micro moments or microaggressions, someone rolling their eyes or looking at their phone within conversation, and these incivilities start to tear at the relationship system. When some of those incivilities show up, that’s where we need the intervention to cause correct because left unattended we know from the research it can often escalate and when there’s a pattern of behavior we might find ourselves in the realm of harassment, and at that point there’s so much distrust it’s very difficult to enter the relationship system and repair it. When you see smoke there are resources available. We can take the space and time, designing the approach and the initiative with all the scaffolding that’s needed so that when we come in and do an intervention it’s as impactful as possible and it can be transformational and help the relationship system to land in a much stronger and more aware place. Thank you for listening to the Relationship Matters podcast. If you enjoyed this episode please share it with your colleagues and friends so that we can continue to spread these ideas across the globe, and if you haven’t already, do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. And for more information on the ORSC courses please visit CRRGlobal.com. For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. We believe Relationship Matters from humanity to nature to the larger whole.
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