Have Hierarchy Issues?
January 22, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
I took part in an meditation/meetup last night with the Boston Integral Commons (Ken Wilber group) that included an interesting reading of a dialogue between Andrew Cohen & Ken Wilber: Creative Friction – Community and the Utopian Impulse in a Post-postmodern World.
A lively and challenging discussion followed about how we can use the theories and frameworks in practical ways to continually raise our group’s evolutionary consciousness. For me, the biggest challenge was how to not get caught in resistance to hierarchy, inherent to this evolutionary process theory. I wasn’t concerned, though, and left the meeting in high spirits to go along my entrepreneurial, hierarchy-free way.
That lasted exactly 20 minutes.
I checked my email and saw that I was in the midst of a messy conflict triggered by a communication from me to others in a community very important to me. I suddenly realized that most of my conflicts of the past 2 years were tied to my lack of hierarchy sense. Earlier, one of the Integral Group members piqued my interest when he talked to me about how some people excel in hierarchical spaces, and others (like me) don’t because they’ve not lived enough in that space to develop the requisite competencies. It all made perfect sense to me and I enthusiastically agreed with him totally unaware that I was simultaneously protecting my “hierarchy sucks” belief.
No way was this series of events last night a coincidence; it was a test.
So I want to share this learning. If you do something in integrity that results in conflict and you sense a repeating pattern, you may want to examine your beliefs about hierarchy as unnatural, judgmental or even threatening. If so, that’s the ego in you but also an opportunity to build your vigilance (“V”) discipline and to be more mindful of its practical application to inter-personal conflict and most importantly, to internal contradiction blocking the evolution of your own consciousness.
The instant you believe in the evolution of consciousness, you have to accept hierarchy at the level of the self, at the level of the soul, and that backs narcissism right into a corner. – Andrew Cohen
By mid-morning, my conflict resolved. There was no effort or push-back or sacrifice or guilt or doing much of anything at all. In fact, it was almost as it it never happened – but better.
Communications Leadership in Challenging Situations
January 15, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
Times of increased stress and anxiety provide a great staging area for self-aware communication. Although Its increasingly important to nurture relationships, create natural influence and expand social capital, anxiety and stress means more conflicts, misunderstandings and more chances to turn people off.
Its not always the result of a big argument or conflict. Turn-off can be the cumulative result of, subtle, one-word put-downs (“whatever” and “obviously” come to mind), or interrupting and cutting off others.
The effect is to verbally slam the door on people who quickly back off from, or avoid you. The consequent feelings of rejection and insecurity increase fear and accelerate the cycle through which what is expressed constantly contradicts what is desired: that is, connection, acknowledgment, appreciation and understanding.
When mindfulness is neglected in personal and professional conversations and interactions, social equity can quickly slide into a negative balance state. The overdraft, and the unconscious communication habit, can be cured.
There’s a lot of emphasis placed on increasing social IQ in order to better pick up on the subtle cues people exhibit when they negatively respond to you. These are good intuitive skills to learn, but paradoxically, the negative response is often exactly the thing that’s unconsciously desired.
There’s a hidden payoff when words result in the other person feeling threatened, unfairly accused, rejected, discounted, marginalized or drained. The jolt of satisfaction gotten from lashing out or sniping is powerful, and feeds the ego’s need to be right, and superior. But it doesn’t last. What lasts, is Klesha, described in Sanskrit as trap of suffering that can be eradicated only through awareness.
Conscious communication results from practicing a different response in challenging situations. This is done by noticing how the mind races to assumptions and judgments, and how strong negative feelings follow those thoughts. Stopping the mind, and giving the fearful or angry emotion some space, can be done in a matter of seconds. The technique’s effectiveness is increased with slow deep breathing.
Gradually, a shift occurs in which you realize that what you thought you so desperately needed from others, was within your power to give yourself, all along. Interactions and conversations will then initiate from a point of power, not need, and a place of giving, not getting.
Making this shift means fully living up to, and modeling, communication and service leadership.
Social Networks Part 1: Community Segmentation
September 19, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
I developed a knowledge zone framework for providing qualitative research products to high growth technology and media companies. It was a valuable approach because it helped clients identify change before it happened. The content they got helped them respond to sudden shifts and threats as well as to imagine future scenarios.
RedShift: Social Network Community Segmentation
I’m building upon that framework to help businesses interested in how they’ll integrate social networks into their existing business and marketing strategies and initiatives. These firms are also trying to understand exactly how they will create natural influence with their social network communities through conversation, dialog and collaboration.
In the past it was clear-cut:
- Get an offer in front of buyers who know what they want and who are ready to buy.
- Push special offers to buyers who are unsure.
- Push ads on everyone else, measure response rates, refine.
The temptation of course is to carry over some form of that old approach to social networking. But that will not only fail, it will alienate the community, which can include internal customers (employees) as well as channel partners. As markets move to absolute buyer power, sellers must be attuned to what underlies “latent” need or desire and find ways to communicate and “meet” these different community segments where they are.
Natural influence isn’t selling or advertising. Its exchanging yourself (the seller) with community members at different stages of knowledge, need and desire. Its subtle, indirect and 100% honest and authentic. Since it requires a shift in mindset, an online communication learning curve, and possibly new business models and back-end systems, many will find the change too daunting. If that’s the case, think about the opportunity cost of doing nothing and experiment on a small scale. But do so with commitment and immediacy.
Natural Influence
June 5, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
People expect results from personal, professional and organizational change programs.
Individuals, executives and business owners make the connection that shifting beliefs, relying on presence and not just strategy, and responding to problems from a higher emotional and social IQ aligns with their personal and organizational bigger games.
But I often hear some version of the question “to what end?”. There’s a need to experience some positive result that reinforces the work of change.
I suggest noticing your natural influence and realizing it as a wonderful, and often unexpected benefit of increased self-awareness.
I call it natural influence as derived from the root meaning “flow into” and contrast it to the more widely used meaning that I label “artificial influence”.
Relating to others with natural influence may feel soft and vulnerable and “too easy” at first, but its an authentic point of power for communications leadership, building trust, gaining support and developing and deepening relationships.
Stories about the positive impact of natural influence that I’ve recently heard, or personally experienced include:
- job interviewing
- giving a business presentation
- submitting a thesis proposal
- attending couples counseling
- expanding social network
- negotiating personal finance
- sales and marketing
- gaining project and program support
- providing feedback and review
- a new blog
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May 22, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
I recently posted about how changing beliefs is an easier response than trying to change external conditions over which we have little or no control. There’s a lot of mass-marketed self-help, new-age type advice and even coaching schools of thought that make light of unwanted beliefs that drive our experience in the wrong way, and that tell us to simply will and affirm these pesky “gremlins” away.
But anyone wanting a greater life experience through awareness has been challenged to change what I call the default response to change triggers. You can be in the midst of performing a mundane activity and suddenly realize that you’ve been mentally dress-rehearsing an unwanted scenario for the past 10 minutes and you wonder “where did that come from?”. Or you immediately regret something you said or did and can’t even imagine what possessed you, although it has a kernel of familiarity.
But just like we can re-boot, re-program and de-bug our computer operating systems, we can do the same with our infinitely complex neurology and neurochemistry by identifying the old instructions and replacing them. And we have the advantage of having feelings that will point us to these operating system beliefs, or “code” because they’re well hidden and were chosen by us, either consciously or unconsciously, as fail-safes.
There’s no one-size fits all formula for how feelings, default responses and beliefs track together and keep us stuck in a cycle. But I do often get asked to provide examples; so I’ve charted some that I’ve seen come up in myself and in others and that I know, once identified, can be cleared and followed by transformation and surprising positive results for both individuals and organizations. Its not a matter of will, but of choice.
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The RedShift Web Site Pages and the corresponding Blog: Creating Natural Influence, do not enable comments. I'm more comfortable getting feedback on social sites than here, where the work is so close to who I am, where I've been and where I'm going. If you have a comment or question, or would like to suggest a topic for an upcoming blog article, please contact me. Thank you.
