September 9, 2003, ISPI Vancouver Event
A Review of
"The Invisible
Side of Performance"
with John Baker
By Carol Sutton
At the September meeting of ISPI Vancouver, John led a group of 37 ISPI members and guests through a highly instructive exercise, exploring inner and outer truths. In small groups we tried to replicate a recent experience of his, working with a client to facilitate management and union to greater understanding.
He began by giving each team of participants a series of actual comments made by people on each side of the client equation. We sorted them into topics, or themes, in an effort to answer John's key question: "What's going on here?". From that, the assignment was to deduce the best advice for the client.
After about 45 minutes the participants reported back to the entire group and, to our great surprise, John said we'd come pretty close to determining what these people were thinking and feeling, based on their expressions, voiced in the reported comments. The point was to look beyond the events and peer into the interior world of each "side", to bring commonalities to light on which the client groups could find an initial perch in their effort to begin mutual understanding and cooperation.
Bottom line? Measuring behaviours (performance) - without acknowledging the depth and breath of the individual, personal reality - is a "flatland". And inner wealth is revealed only through interaction, such as conversation, among people. Although cultural work is a slippery place, that's where we have to go if we intend this work to have richness.
If you want
to explore John's underlying philosophy further, in addition to Dr. Ken
Wilber, he recommends reading the work of psychologist Dr. Chris Argyris
and Dr. Peter M. Senge (Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The
Learning Organization). (Visit the John's
Top Book Picks page for more details).
John Baker, Shift Consulting, is celebrating 20 years of developing people, teams and organizations, focused on a communications-based methodology.
Carol J. Sutton, APR, is Communication Strategist with CJS Communications and an ISPI Vancouver member.
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