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Truth in the Workplace

 

Excerpt from Leadership BALM™ : Being a Healing Presence at Work

© 2006 Michele Okposo and JoAnne Scalise

 

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.
Ludwig Borne

 

Have you ever been in a meeting where a leader stands up and states:

 

“We have all the brightest minds in our company here and I want to hear your ideas for taking our business to the next level.  What are our challenges?  What are your ideas for improvement?  What are our opportunities for growth?”

 

With this type of invitation, do you tell the truth?  Do you radiate your presence, share your wisdom and insights?  Or are you guarded, fearing possible back lash if you share too much information, expressing only partial truths?  Do leaders and staff in your business know and tell the truth? How much honest communication is demanded in relationships between employees, leaders and customers?  Does the culture support continuous investigation into the deeper truth?  Levels of truth continuously open up in a safe, inviting workplace; revealing areas of constriction, problems, and issues, as well as inspiration, revelation, creativity, ease and flow.

 

Highly functioning work groups are created based on the skills of the individuals.  In organizations, as in life, people often have a limited capacity for knowing, speaking, and listening to their own current understanding of their truth.  Even when expressed, it often causes triggers and reactivity in another and confrontation or differences occur.  The ability to continue to maintain your own integrity and not allow your behavior to be determined by another’s reaction is a valuable skill in the workplace.  A powerful skill is to realize the impact of your beliefs on your level of truth.    Another is to be fully present in the moment with all of your attention, in your mind/body/emotions and spirit.  Still another is to remain in the realization that your truth may not be THE truth.  How do you live in and as Truth at work? 

 

Here are a few suggestions to improve this capacity in yourself and your organization.

 

To develop your capacity to see and express deep levels of truth, as with all skill development, begin with awareness.  Sit quietly for a few minutes, imagine your workplace.  How do you feel in your body?  Do you notice any tightness in particular areas of your body?  Are there places in your body that feel energized and open?  Notice your breath.  Take a deep breath in, energizing and relaxing those areas of your body that feel contracted.  What thoughts come up?  Is there wisdom and insight your body is telling you about your experience of truth telling at work?

 

To develop your capacity for truthful and authentic speech and listening, please refer to the previous post on authentic communication.  In summary:

Components of Authentic Speaking

        This is what I experienced.

        This is how it made me feel.

        This is what I want.

Components of Authentic Listening

•Mirror: What I’m hearing you say is

…Is this right?  Is there more?

•Summarize the essences.

•Validation:  I can understand…It makes sense because…

•Empathy: I can imagine you must be feeling...

 

To develop your capacity to know continuously deepening levels of truth, begin to recognize your belief systems.  Beliefs and ideas have a profound influence on our efficiency and effectiveness at work and in the world. Beliefs are accumulated and used  in our awareness and it is important to be very clear of beliefs and their influence on our perception.

I am reminded of a story of a white egg that was placed on the center of a board room table during a meeting.  Each participant of the meeting was given a pair of glasses, each containing a different color of lens.  After putting on the glasses, the participant was asked to observe the egg and to convince everyone else around the table of its color.  What would the experience be if the participants were unaware they were wearing glasses or what color they were?  People at the table in business spend much of their time trying to convince one another that “the egg” is the color that they perceive it to be.

We invite you during the discussion about an exploration and examination of beliefs and ideas to become aware of the color of your glasses. Everyone has beliefs about what and how we perceive, and the meaning and value we attach to all experience as it is filtered through their belief systems. So you have this pure white egg which is just exactly what it is – it is completely ordinary, it is no more and no less than it is and we take it in and we move it through and filter it through our colored lens, our beliefs and ideas, and the true nature of the perceived issue or circumstance becomes…changed. It becomes something else in our perception and our perception is not clear. 

Damage and suffering in relationship and on teams are caused when we are unaware of beliefs and experience our perceptions as truth.

Once aware, you have the ability to set your beliefs aside and experience the world, your organization, yourself, and the people in it as exactly what they are without your infused meaning and beliefs and ideas.

That said, there is a notion about belief, that the world will reinforce our beliefs no matter what they are. So if you believe for instance, as we already discussed, that people are ‘disposable’, i.e., not very valuable, not worth anything, what happens is that people behave badly. And in case you haven’t noticed, lots of people behave badly as their occasional condition all across the planet. So if you carry the belief that people are disposable, eventually people that work for you will behave badly in some way – make a poor decision, lose their temper, and therefore that behavior reinforces your belief that they are disposable and consequently in some cases are disposed of.

 

On the flip side you could carry the belief that people are an inherently valuable resource to your organization or institution. You will notice them repeatedly come up with amazing ideas and ways to save money and ways to be more efficient, with ways to increase your sales, and all kinds of amazing surprising things, that once again will reinforce our truths and belief about people being valuable. This is just an example of how the world will reinforce our beliefs and truths no matter what they are. And if again you can move into the perspective where you are looking at the egg without any colored glasses, or you can set your beliefs, ideas and filters down, and see in this case people exactly as they are, you now have a very valuable skill as a leader.

As you see clearly the baggage that comes with your team members, you see their wounds, you see their reactivity and their underdeveloped skills, and you are able to meet them exactly where they are, and take them one step further into development, into maturity. You can also meet them and their highly developed skills which require an entirely different kind of mentoring and encourage them to be even more creative or more ingenious with their ideas.  If you can recognize the inherent value of people, not through beliefs that they are good or bad, and meet them exactly where they are in every aspect, you can ideally encourage, mentor, lead and develop them.

One thing that comes through very clearly in thinking and talking about beliefs is the fact that beliefs in and of themselves are not Truth, and yet acting upon those beliefs do create what can be a shared reality. This is another way of framing what Michele has just said. So it’s important to recognize that even though we think “I am always…whatever; he has always been a loser, she has always been a star”, those beliefs aren’t necessarily truth. We need to be certain that we bring awareness to our beliefs, because they are flexible and they should be flexible and they can change what is reality. Notice we’re not saying we can change what is truth, because that is all about perception, and everyone has a different truth. What we would like you to do is to examine those beliefs that you have set for yourself which have created a construct for you, which may have supported your development in many ways, and may also have held you back in many ways. And when you are able to recognize this and place awareness on it and really become conscious of how your beliefs have shaped your current reality, then you have a great opportunity and a wonderful opening in which you can change the course of your leadership and even your life.

What is the impact when there is a culture of continuously revealing deeper levels of truth?  What impact does it have on you personally? What impact does it have on the relatedness of the people? What influence and impact does it have on the organization, the people, and the business? And what impact does it have on being whole, on the whole being?

 

One impact on you personally is your thoughts are clear. You are able to clearly articulate and communicate what you need and want. You are able to listen clearly and with your full attention. You are organized, it is easy to prioritize. You are more flexible, you are comfortable with change, knowing that change occurs naturally. Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely, as Karen Kaiser Clark reminds us.

 

Creativity and inspiration flows, ideas come from this ground of being.  You’re patient because you can recognize the immaturity and underdevelopment of skills and people and process. You can see the next step clearly and implement it. You are productive. You have plenty of energy. You don’t go home from the office drained. You don’t wake up drained. There’s enough.

 

In your interaction with people, in the interaction with people within the organization, there’s a flow, there’s an ease; there’s a safety and a trust. Problems are brought to the table immediately. They are discussed openly. Solutions come, not just complaining. Solutions are creative, they work and are easy to implement.  The key people from all departments who need to participate in the brainstorming and the development of the solutions are present.  There is buy in, there is commitment through out the organization to servicing customers, clients, or patients.  All employees are behind the mission statement which is clearly articulated throughout the organization. They understand it; they understand their role and their function in contributing to the success of the mission and the company.

 

People are careful with resources. They ask for what they need, and when it’s necessary, it’s given. People are asked to defend their requests. People are held accountable for their behavior; if there’s a mistake they are called on it immediately, kindly, clearly, not from reaction. They’re able to listen and hear what is being said, they can receive the openheartedness of the concise clear direct ideas for performance improvement, for changing their behavior.

 

There is clear dialogue when mistakes are made, and commitment to corrective action assuring the mistake doesn’t happen again.  Leaders hold their team accountable, and the team reporting to them expects consistency.  There’s a culture of high personal and mutual accountability within oneself as well as between each other. Therefore the organization, the business, functions smoothly.

 

There is very little waste. It is efficient, it is effective. It is timely. Labor costs are in line because everybody’s duties and functions are well defined and trained. The systems are worked and reworked and honed, and polished and perfected, so the outcomes can be achieved in the least amount of effort, with the least amount of resources, and produce the greatest outcome. The organization flourishes because new ideas are continuously being generated in this culture of creativity, encouraging new thinking.

 

There is a culture in the organization of delight, in producing product or service that is well thought of in the community, the sales force is delighted and confident and trusts that your company can deliver what it promises. You get paid by your customers because the billing is timely, it is accurate, and all information that’s needed up front when creating an order or taking care of a patient is documented correctly. Bills go out the door, payment is made.  We do things right the first time. We invest as a company in new technology. We stay on the cutting edge. We stay efficient; we have resources set aside for continual improvement. The whole being, the whole being of this living functioning team, is touched by the ease and grace and flow of the individual, of the relationships, of the organization. Everyone who comes into contact with anyone related to this organization can feel the genuineness, can feel the commitment, and can feel the expertise. They want to have relationship with you, be around you, learn and understand how it is you can function in the world in your competitive business, with this ease and grace. People want to come work for you; they want to experience what it’s like to be in a workplace filled with this kind of mutual respect.

 

This shifting on all levels within your organization deeply influences and impacts all that it touches. The rewards are great; work to embody these skills, identify where you are, and assess your condition – overall and in the moment. Understand and learn the practices and principles taught here. Practice them until they become a habit and until you embody them. When you’re ready, pick another one or two, and work with them, embody them. Let this way of being, this awareness, become the foundation of your organization.

 

The top and bottom line then take care of themselves; falling in line with the rhythm of this ease and flow and grace that now your organization embodies.