Action Follows Attention Part 5: An Integrated Approach

Julie Engel Manga
Executive Coach

 

 

The Issue: 

Paying attention in at least several ways can lead to wiser and more effective action.

Claire, a client of mine, was a powerhouse – creative, innovative, and masterful at opening relationships and possibilities. But, she’d begun to feel that her team relied on her to always be the one to come up with new ideas and solutions to problems. She shared that she was beginning to experience a slight, but growing sense of resentment and feeling of being burdened. And, she felt her team’s reliance on her hindered the department’s performance, both in scoping out and implementing new opportunities and resolving issues that would arise. When I asked her for examples, she talked about more than a few team meetings over the past months in which she felt compelled to offer solutions when none were forthcoming from the group and their energy seemed sluggish. She wanted toPieces see a shift in this behavior within the team. Claire sensed that somehow she was part of the problem’s persisting, but this was more vague feeling than clear insight. Claire asked me to work with her to shift the current state of affairs toward a team that was energized, ran with ideas, was more entrepreneurial and risk-taking – her collaborators in innovation and problem-solving.

 

Paying attention in different ways: Different observers take different action:

In the past four posts I’ve focused on the theme of “action follows attention.” I’ve focused on four different ways of paying attention, which entail focusing attention on four distinctive, but interconnected “domains”.

  • paying attention to the body and individual behaviors (individual)

  • paying attention to your own interior (individual)

  • paying attention to relationships (collective)

  • paying attention to external, observable conditions (collective)

     

The approach I describe here draws directly on the “Four Quadrant” model of Wilber (1997) and a variant by Flaherty (2005). Rather than getting deep into their models with focus on philosophical or analytic rigor, I interpret and use the principles of the framework here in a practical way, for practical purposes. I have offered these as four domains for paying attention, as a framework for considering your situation (both opportunities and challenges) from distinctively different orientations.

 

The useful question to ask is: When I consider my situation from each orientation, what do I see? What gets revealed? What don’t I see? This is important because what we see, the kind of observer we are, shapes our possibilities for taking action - the actions it occurs to us to take!  And, we all tend to default to certain ways of seeing a situation. This framework will help you move beyond your habitual ways of observing, becoming a more robust observer, opening new possibilities for your taking action.

 

Integrated Problem Solving, Step #1: Observing in an integrated way
Here’s how it worked in Claire’s case, as we considered how her situation was showing up  when she paid attention to the different domains:

 

Paying attention to her interior/paying attention to her body and behaviors:

As Claire reflected on her situation, she noticed a pattern in her own experience and ways of responding. At team meetings, Claire would present an issue or opportunity, looking to have the team generate a response. As the team talked and the meeting time drew near to closing, Claire could recall that she’d typically begin to experience anxiety and frustration that the team wasn’t being as creative, enthusiastic or “out-of-the-box” as she’d hoped. 

(Paying attention to a pattern in her internal experience)  Claire could see that she had difficulty tolerating both these emotions in herself and the actual physical sensation that accompanied them. (Paying attention to her body)   Not being able to tolerate this internal experience (she shared that she felt like she was going to burst), Claire typically found herself supplying the solution to the opportunity or issue at hand. (Paying attention to her behavior) This pattern of behavior certainly relieved Claire’s immediate experience of anxiety and frustration, but did nothing to address her concerns about the team.

 

Paying attention to relationship:

Claire could see that her habitual behavior of supplying the solution before a meeting ended, (driven by her own discomfort with her internal experience), initiated and sustained a dynamic that was counter to what she said she wanted with her team. She and the team were caught in a self-reinforcing, relational dynamic.  Team members began to come into meetings expecting this dynamic. Indeed, there were those on the team who thought, “When push comes to shove, Claire isn’t really interested in what we think. She’s just interested in how creative and “out-of-the-box” she is! It’s really all about her. She doesn’t leave any space for us to step in.” Some stopped trying.

 

In addition, Claire saw that she hadn’t really gotten to know her staff very well beyond their work roles. She didn’t have a sense of their aspirations, what was important to them outside of their work role, their immediate concerns in life, who they were as people more fully. While Claire was a very relational person outside of work, in her work setting, she tended to be pretty transactional with her staff. So, she realized that she didn’t really know who was at the table and what they brought with them. The relationship between Claire and her team members lack a sense of fullness and depth.

 

A third, broader, relational issue contributed to the situation’s persisting. In Claire’s organization, certain people were identified as the “creative” or “innovative” ones and others were consider the “implementers” – those who executed ideas and handled operations. Those identified as “creative/innovative” types were largely those on the leadership team, those with the “implementer” identity, largely those who reported to leadership. There was an undercurrent of resentment in the organization about this, with many with the “implementer” identity feeling unrecognized, undervalued and stuck in their ability to contribute more fully.

 

Paying attention to organizational conditions:

Claire noticed several other distinctive factors she felt contributed to the situation. Her team was physically scattered through the organization’s office space. Team members had to make an effort to get up and go to their co-workers space, so that not much spontaneous, informal conversation happened. The environment didn’t support it. And the organization didn’t have a space where people could easily gather for lunch or breaks during the day. Claire worked in an office with a door that was often closed. (Claire did this so that she could talk on the phone without disturbing those around her, as she was quite expressive and loud. Trouble was, she had a habit of not opening her office door when she was done.) Team members weren’t used to being able to freely pop in to talk with her informally.

 

In addition to the organization’s physical space, Claire also acknowledged that there were not really opportunities (lunches or other non-formal meeting activities) for her team members to be in conversation in an relaxed, casual and less role-bound way.

 

And, while they were on the same team, team members were pretty much focused on their own projects, siloed within their own department. Their work was not structured to support formal or informal collaboration. Claire’s attention was often geared toward generating possibilities for the future. Mostly, team members didn’t have a good sense of their department’s or the organization’s general strategy. They worked with a more narrowly-bounded view of the work.

 

Integrated Problem Solving Step #2: Responding in an integrated way

Based on what see saw when she observed her situation in these different ways,  Claire realized that she could intervene in several different domains to support her goal of a more generative team.

 

Paying attention to her interior/paying attention to her body and behaviors:

Claire recognized that she could work on expanding her capacity to stay present to the intensity of her anxiety and frustration when it arose, including the physical sensations those emotions triggered in her. If she could “hang out” with the uncomfortable feelings and sensations, sit with them vs. have to get rid of them, she wouldn’t be so compelled to step in and just about always supply solutions and ideas, undermining what she wanted for her team. That’s not to say she never would intervene. But she could do so more deliberately and thoughtfully.  We came up with several practices Claire could take on to develop herself in this direction.

 

Paying attention to relationship:

Claire saw that her not having a full sense of her team members outside of their work roles contributed to her anxiety about their capability to be innovative, creative and generative. She began a practice of going out to lunch with one of her team members once a week with the express intention of getting to know each one as a person, cultivating better understanding and appreciation for their distinctive qualities, accomplishments, what was important to them, what they enjoyed, and the circumstances of their life outside of their job performance. Claire found that having this better sense of and feel for each person helped her experience more depth of relationship, and contributed to her being able be more relaxed engaging with them. And, she had a better sense of how to encourage and support each person in stepping into team conversations. Claire actually felt a sense of relief at not having to “turn off” her normally relational way of being while at work. She experienced being more integrated across the different parts of her life!

 

In addition, through their informal conversations with Claire over lunch, team members began to experience that Claire was interested in them, that they were being listened to and valued as people, not just as workers. This supported their feeling more connected to Claire, which supported their being more comfortable stepping into conversations in a new way. This went a long way to undoing the experience of team members feeling stuck in an “implementer” identity. Even if their particular job was operationally focused, they experienced more room to show up more multidimensionally, as innovative and creative.

 

Paying attention to organizational conditions:

While office space was what it was, Claire engaged her team in thinking about ways to organize their work space within their present constraints to facilitate more opportunities for informal cross-talk and "bumping into" each other during the day.

 

Claire invited the team to experiment with a different team meeting structure. Rather than having people simply report on their projects, she asked team members to bring in challenges they wanted support with. This accomplished several things: It supported team members in hearing in more depth about each others projects, gave them an opportunity to practice sharing insights and ideas to support one another’s work, provided more opportunity for team conversation vs. passively listening, provided opening for team members collaborating together as they began to see places where their projects intersected or could produce synergies. The new meeting structure supported the team’s seeing new ways of working together, which in turn, fostered a climate of collaboration and greater generativity among team members. As team members began to find themselves doing this more with each other, it began to show up more in their meetings with Claire as well.

 

Claire also began a practice of including team members more as she was formulating strategy for her department. As team members experienced being included in strategy development, they felt a greater connection to the bigger picture of the department’s work and it’s contribution to the organization overall – a more integrated, less fragmented sense of their specific work.

 

 

What you can do: Putting it all together

I encourage you to experiment with this approach. Pick a challenge you face with your venture. It can be an opportunity or a persistent problem you and your venture face:

 

Part 1: Reflect on the current situation:

  • Individual interior: How does this situation show up for me? How am I relating to the situation? What assumptions, beliefs, emotions are present for me? How, specifically, do these affect me and how I see and relate to the situation? How do they open or close me to the situation?

  • Individual behavior/body: What are my behaviors related to this situation? Are there any habitual actions I find myself taking? How do they affect the situation positively or negatively? How relaxed or tense am I about the situation? How does this affect my way of relating to the situation. How does the state of my well-being affect my way of relating to the situation?

 

  • Relationships: What’s happening/not happening in relationships (mine with others, others with me, others with others) that is supporting or constraining the situation? For example:

    • What kinds of conversations are happening relative to this situation? (My conversations with others? others conversations? ) How do they affect the situation positively and/or negatively?

    • What collective habits of action do I observe in others relative to the situation? How do they affect the situation positively and/or negatively?

    • What collective habits of thought do I observe in others relative to the situation? How do they affect the situation positively and/or negatively?

    • What collective emotions do I sense/observe in others relative to the situation? How do they affect the situation positively and/or negatively?

 

Organizational conditions: What’s happening/not happening in the organization’s external and internal environment? How are these factors supporting or constraining the situation?

      •  In what ways and to what extent does the physical environment support or constrain the situation/issue?

      • In what ways and to what extent do organizational structures support or constrain the situation/issue?

      • In what ways and to what extent do organizational systems and processes support or constrain the situation/issue? 

 

 

Part 2: Now begin to design an integrated way of intervening in support of resolving the issue or moving into the opportunity:

  • Who should be involved in designing the intervention? What makes it important to involve them?

  • What can I be working on in respect to my own capacity and/or behaviors that would contribute?  For example: What specific behaviors can I work on developing or inhibiting? What mood can I cultivate in myself? What mood can I shift? What difference do I anticipate this would make?

  • What conversations can be initiated? What conversations can be shifted or stopped? What difference do I anticipate this would make?

  • What might be done to shift particular relationships? (This can include roles, responsibilities, ways of relating.)  What difference do I anticipate this would make?

  • What structures, systems, process would support resolving the issue/moving into opportunity?

  • Is there any way of working with/adjusting the physical environment that would support resolving the issue/moving into the opportunity? What difference do I anticipate this would make?

  • Is there anything in the external environment that needs to be addressed? What difference do I anticipate this would make toward resolving the issue/moving into the opportunity?

 

Resources:

If you are interested in exploring the multi-quadrant approach further: