Allow me to share a short story about how we have been entrapped in our words.
A few weeks ago, Nihaal (our 10 years old) was crying in the car as we were returning home after a long day in Edinburgh.
‘Nihaal, stop crying’, mum said.
And we all know how kids react to that.
In a moment, I added to his agony by saying, ‘Poor Nihaal, he’s tired, it’s been a long day for him’.
That didn’t go well at all.
Then mum tried something different. She said, ‘Nihaal, I think you’re hungry’ and she handed him a snack. That was it.
This is a little story of what is called enactment. Through the choice of our words we create a reality and then we are entrapped forever in that reality. Nihaal wasn’t angry. He was hungry and mum helped him out of his enactment.
There are many examples of ‘enactment’ in our daily lives.
’The industry doesn’t want to change’. ‘This organisation is toxic’. ‘The office doesn’t care about people.’ ‘People don’t speak up.’
Who is the industry, the organisation, the office, 10 Downing Street or Whitehouse?
Where did we get this term ‘speak up’?
Words create worlds. Before we realise, we become victims of our own words. From experience to words and back to experiencing those words. Life becomes hopeless. Poor me!
In many cultures, there is even an expression. All problems are self-created. Others would say, ’it’s all in your mind.’This is not to say there is no reality only words. It is to acknowledge how words can shape our relationship with the reality.
Enactment becomes entrapment.
Is ‘speak-up’ the entrapment of an entire industry
Last week I had a group of seafarers from Philippines gathered online for a workshop on Enclosed Space Risks.
If you were present for the first 10 minutes, you would fall back to what everyone believes in the maritime industry. Seafarers don’t speak up, they are shy, they are hesitant to share their concerns, they are afraid to talk.
Once you have created this reality, it is easy to fall into the trap of psychological safety, just culture, stop the job authority, courage, bravery, autonomy, and the never ending lexicon of the Hollywood myth. That is both entrapment and enactment of an entire industry.
But sometimes, stepping back and reflecting on our words can be helpful to liberate ourselves from this circle.
In a 90 minutes online session comprising of 15 people, we started off by slowing down and knowing each other. Not as workers, not as ranks onboard but as persons.
I’ve always noticed one thing. If you give an opportunity to people in power to introduce themselves, many (and specifically the extroverts) won’t stop. But when we repeat this exercise with people at the lower level of the hierarchy, their first reaction is disbelief. They don’t know what to say. They are shocked. No one has ever asked them this question.
15 people introduced themselves in less than 10 minutes. The married ones spoke about their children and the singles shared their hobbies. Those were the 10 most beautiful minutes of the workshop. We were connected even 5000 miles away in an online session. What a paradox that slowing down and connecting is met with disbelief in a world that desperately wants people to speak up?
What followed next was the most amazing 80 minutes together. Trust within the group was at another level. I asked for their permission to record the session and they had no objections. So the next day’s session became even more fruitful.
What did we do in these two days? I simply mapped their words about enclosed space risks as they spoke. And when I made their words visible to them on the whiteboard, they realised their enactment and spoke with even more passion. The words in black were their first reactions followed by words in red that they chose to sideline during group discussions. The words in orange came to surface after we slowed down and shared our experiences.
In other words, we did not focus on speaking up or listening, instead we met and we sharedour experiences. A new enactment brought us out from our entrapment.
I guess one danger in this exercise is to leave you with a technique. Make introductions more personalised followed by some whiteboard exercises and there you have cracked the code for SPEAKUP.
That is not true. For people to speak up, we must learn to shift our orientation towards the person as a whole person (not a worker whose words are to be extracted to produce data and predict what lies ahead).
Shift your orientation from I-It to I-thou.
Let me share another story. Many years ago, I used to work as a seafarer. Seafarers know what technologists and scientists still struggle with. How is it possible that the news from the galley (ship’s kitchen) travels faster than internet?
If you treat one person in your organisation with disrespect, their stories travels at light speed regardless of the medium. That’s I-It.
It’s the same when you give people respect and a listening ear. Ask and listen so others will listen and ask. And that is I-thou.
That this is not efficient is a myth we have created so that we remain convinced that ‘people don’t speak up’. It’s our enactment.
