Bowen theory (the short version)
In a nutshell, Bowen believes that all groups – families, teams, organizations – form systems based on the anxiety that arises when choosing between our ‘self’ and belonging to the group. We pass this anxiety around like a cold: Someone is always infected. In Bowen’s view, our role in this system determines our behavior more than our personal characteristics. Unless and until I’m willing to stop reacting to that underlying anxiety and choose a response that takes everybody’s needs into account – mine included. In this view, autocratic behavior is just another word for anxiety. Always being the one to stay late and do something for a client or the team is too.

What to do about it (in general)
In his approach, you stay connected with everyone in the system and maintain your own integrity. It’s not either-or, it’s both-and. You don’t join others at your expense and you don’t take your marbles and go home. This is not the comfortable choice. It’s more like a crucible out of which comes maturity and growth, not just for you, but for the whole system. But it’s not you righteously modeling a behavior you want others to adopt – it’s you choosing your path and sticking with it while staying connected and available to others, despite the flack they are giving you. You listen, and you connect, and you decide what to do about what others are telling you. This requires thoughtfulness and commitment without shutting others out. Bowen calls this differentiation.

An Example
The best example I can think of is having someone edit your writing. It’s your writing – you are the author. It’s your voice, your point of view, your self-expression. You are the final decision-maker. The editor gives you her opinion, often quite forcefully. As you take it in, you are beset with many thoughts: This editor is an idiot, she doesn’t get me at all. Or: This editor is an expert, I’d better do exactly what she says or my piece won’t be any good. With experience, you know that a good night’s sleep will allow a third voice to enter the conversation in your head: Some of these suggestions are great, even though they’ll require re-working entire sections. Some of them seem picayune, so I’ll ignore them, and other seem over-zealous, and appear to miss my point. I’ve got to talk those over with her.

Bowen’s theory explains so much of what I see in myself and in my clients. And it explains it in a way that doesn’t fence anyone in, which is why I love it. Trouble is, I don’t yet know how to apply it. That’s the tricky thing about theory: No user manual. So, into the lab we go. Let the experiments begin.

What to do about it (the specifics)
Decisions are anxiety-laden. Even simple decisions get complicated by the underlying emotional process that glues us together. It goes like this: I think the decision is mine alone to make and you think I should have consulted you. The leaders I coach often find themselves in this dilemma. They want to build a team, and they want to control the decisions for which they are held responsible. It looks unsolvable, and to some extent it is. By that I mean it’s a dilemma that never goes away. There is no one-size-fits-all approach which means you have to think your way through each decision. Analyze it to see which parts involve others and which are your alone. When we are reactive and wanting primarily to reduce our anxiety, we get this wrong.

Each decision has two aspects: What’s mine alone to decide, and what involves someone else. If I slow my automatic reaction down and go step-by-step, this distinction pops out. When I react automatically, I miss it. They key is to refuse to choose between them and me.

I’ll give you a universal example: A client wants the impossible, and right now. I want to go home on time and have dinner with my friends and play music. On the surface my evening looks doomed. I seem to have been presented with an either or decision: either I do what the client wants, or I have my evening. It’s that self vs. other dilemma. If the client is senior to me, I know what I have to do, at least that’s what our anxious mind says. Or, I may be so angry at these requests and the sacrifices I’ve made to honor them, that I simply say no.

The third way
Virginia Satir, another pioneer in the systems approach to groups, advised her students to never leave their clients with only two choices. She advocated te power of the third way, believing the third option is what took a client out of reactivity and into authentic choice.

The third option in the above situation stands a much better chance of satisfying each of you. Here’s one way it might sound: “I’ve got a dilemma: You want me to stay late tonight to work on this and I have plans I cherish and want to keep. How can we both get what we want?” Your job in the ensuing conversation is to refuse to choose between your needs and their needs. Do not settle for less than meeting both of your needs. This requires you to immunize yourself against their anxiety and increase your tolerance for discomfort – theirs and yours. The pay-off is a stronger relationship with your client, a better solution to the current dilemma, and the delicious surge of energy that comes from standing up to anxiety.

I’m very curious to know what you think about this. What’s your experience with the third way? And, because I’m writing on a topic I’m still digesting, I wonder if I’m making sense. I welcome your feedback.

For those of you who receive this by email, here’s a link to the blog post so you can leave a comment. Scroll down a little to the comment box.

1. Have pairs, trios or some other subgroup create skits depicting the frustrating situation then follow that up with one depicting the situation as they’ like it to be. Ideally, you’d ask them to do something creative with this: act it out as if everyone were animals, do a group sculpture showing the relative position of everyone in the drama, perform a song, limerick or haiku – something that engages a different part of the brain than the part that’s stuck. Watch all the performances, then, in the debrief, use the positive version as a spring board for action planning.

2. Rework the board game CLUE! This is riskier, faster, high-energy fun. Have the group generate new CLUE! solutions based on the frustrating situation. You can prime the pump by making the following three lists:
Places (can include virtual places)
Categories of people (probably job titles)
Murder weapons (these can be objects or behaviors)

After you’ve had the group list all three, have them generate new solutions in this format:
It was (category of person) in the (place) with a (murder weapon).

Examples:
It was the executive in the boardroom with a powerpoint
It was HR in the computer with an email

After they’ve had their fun with others, have them generate some more, this time using this format:

It was the team member in the (place) with the (murder weapon).

This gives the group a fun and easy way to make the shift from blaming others to seeing their own culpability and returning them to a sense of personal power. Productive action planning follows naturally.

It sometimes seems that making a goal achievable is itself unachievable.

Which is why it’s so lucky that you can just ask. Oh sure – you can lock yourself up in your office and slave over your keyboard looking the the magic wording, the right balance between stretch goal and boredom, then present your perfect goal to your employee, team, partner, colleague.

Or, you can ask:

“How should we set the goal so it triggers your best performance?”

That’s it. Simple, easier than slaving alone in your office, engaging, fun. Remember: if you’re working harder than they are, stop it!

Don’t forget to set a follow-up date so you can stay in touch and make corrections as needed.

WHAT TO MEASURE: Some Guidelines

Relax. If it’s worth doing – and it is – it’s worth doing badly. Just pick something, track it for a bit and see if it gets you the behavior and results you want. If it doesn’t, notice that and choose something else. If this is explicitly collaborative process – that is, you do it out loud – that’s even better. Then everyone sees that paying attention and making adjustments is normal, natural and everybody’s business.

Expect it to be awkward at first. Measuring makes performance public. This makes some of us squirm. We’ll adjust as long as the attention is fair, kind and has some connection with what matters, both to us and for the business. In fact, when you get this right, it’s like having the wind under your wings.

Some of what you pay attention to can shift over time. For a new business, a focus on cash flow is the right thing. Most new businesses find that their attention naturally goes here, because if cash flow isn’t primary, the business won’t make it to the next stage. For a more mature business, a focus on cash flow stunts growth rather than supports it. On a team, an exclusive focus on goals can lead to a lack of team behaviors. When you see team members undercutting each other, look at what you’re measuring and adjust it.

Some of what you measure will not shift over time. Your company values are on this list, as are the goals and performance measures that define your business. These two components make up your company’s identity. Measuring these is like checking your route you’re driving against the directions you got form mapquest: Are you still on track for your original destination? Are you still behaving according to the values you established for yourself? These two things can beat each other up – if you stop attending to one of them, that one will fall by the wayside.

HOW TO MEASURE

You can count anything if you can see it and name it, the more specifically, the better. Most of us count money, and count how many activities we complete. That’s a good start. Even better is finding a way to count results, rather than just activities. Is your 90% on-time delivery rate (an easy to count activity) pleasing your customers (the trickier to count result). They key here is to look for the observable behavior and count that. What do customers do when they aren’t pleased? Two things: They complain and they use someone else. So, count customer compliments vs. complaints and count customers retained and customers lost. Make sure to ask them why they stay or go.

What about so-called “soft skills:” How do you count those? Remember: If you can see it and specify it, you can count it. Let’s take the example of “teamwork.” Everybody wants good teamwork. Trouble is, we often don’t specify what we mean by that. This is like saying “I want to business growth” without specifying what you mean (more business in the stores you have, or more stores; more students in the classes you offer, or more classes, and so on). If we do specify what we mean, we don’t get down to the level of observable behavior – what do people who are team players do? How often, and with what sort of result? If you’re stymied at this point, ask yourself how you know you lack teamwork? Chances are, it’s because of something you see or hear. Behaviors are what you see or hear, like a lack of asking for help or receiving it. Turn these around – state them in the positive – set a target, and start counting.

You may also see a lack of teamwork show up in your business results, often in poor customer service, as when one team member throws a customer concern over the wall and hopes that someone else will attend to it, but without making sure this happens. “Throwing it over the wall” and “dropping balls” are two ways lack of teamwork makes itself visible. Turn these around, set a target, and count start counting.

Make it easy and if at all possible, fun. If it’s too complicated, you won’t do it. Keep it simple, easy to do and small. If it’s handled lightly and with humor, you’ll increase willingness a hundred-fold.

Change it up. If you don’t, everyone will start phoning it in or gaming the measurements you’ve chosen.

What’s your experience with this? Your wisdom is welcome in the comments below.

I’m reminded of it again everytime a group gets off the agenda and starts arguing about something, passionately, and with fire. I can either wrest them back on to the walkway, I’ve planned, or find a way to put a sidewalk right under their feet which will legitimize their passion and their disagreement. When I have the wit to choose the latter, I’ve got 2 ways to go: The first is to invite everyone to structure their dissent, which I’ll address here; the second involves the skill of resolving impasses, which I’ll cover next week.

Structure the Dissent
This is best used when the whole group is bubbling with dissenting points of view. Your group is ripe for this when several people are straining to speak, and are not building on each other ideas. In fact, they may not be hearing each other at all. Tension is beginning to build and some people are openly frustrated. Here’s what you do:

1. Stop the conversation and say: “Several of you have strong opinions about (your group’s issue goes here). So we can hear what each of you has to say, let’s structure our dissent. Take 60 seconds to gather your thoughts, then we’ll go around the room and hear from each of you in turn. You’ll each have 2 minutes to make the strongest possible case for your point of view, without holding back. The rest of you will be listening. Responding to someone else’s point of view during your 2 minutes is out of bounds. There is no interrupting and no arguing – either advocate your point of view or listen. What questions do you have about this?”

2. Time the preparation period and each of the speakers. Do not allow speakers to go over. Only one person speaks at a time. There is no cross-talk. Do not allow speakers to attack another’s point of view. This is a time for them to advocate their position on it’s merits.

3. At the end of this first round, summarize the areas of agreement. Ask if anyone has been swayed by anything they’ve heard. If not, restate the issue and ask participants to do another round of structured discussion. Time and manage it as before.

4. Again summarize the agreements you heard and ask if anyone has changed their mind as a result of what they’ve heard. Restate the issue/problem and conduct another round.

5. Summarize the points of agreement. By this time, one of two things will have happened. Either they’ll have come to an agreement or a very thoughtful open discussion will erupt and lead naturally to an agreement.

Why does it work?
Open discussion is the default process for most meetings. Unfortunately, in open discussion, the discussion happens before all the information has been revealed, and usually involves the extroverts in the room and those higher on the org. chart. Conflicts become ritualized and stay unexplored and unresolved as everyone seeks to not offend. This is the kind of process that leads to the the deja vu meeting syndrome: because the issues are not surfaced, explored and resolved, you will get to have this meeting again. And again. And again…

A better practice is to get all points of view heard and clearly delineated before discussing them. It’s a lot like eating the peanuts before you chew the gum rather than chewing both at the same time. Structured discussion separates the peanuts from the gum. It encourages listening, rather than simply waiting to talk. It legitimizes and makes welcome stridently different points of view. And, nothing sparks creativity like sharply divergent points of view.

Because of this, structured discussion much more efficient than open discussion, and will get your group to agreement quickly and cleanly, like a hot knife through butter. Even better, the agreement will be solid, well-informed and owned by everyone. Why doesn’t everyone use this, you ask?

I have no idea.

You’re not alone. Most of the time, brainstorming devolves into exactly this: The extroverts talk to each other, everyone defers (sometimes resentfully) to those with the most status, and the conversation veers off course.

Which is why I almost never use brainstorming with groups. It’s too easily overtaken by group dynamics. The first time it happens, it’s not so bad. By the 5th time, no one in your group really believes that brainstorming will include them and some of them will sit it out. Not what you’d hoped for.

There’s another reason it’s not my first choice: Brainstorming is best used when a creativity is what’s wanted. Most of the time, in most corporations, creativity is the opposite of what’s wanted. What’s wanted is an action that will represent progress without rocking the boat. You can’t trust creativity not the rock the boat. Sometimes it seems as though creativity’s job is to rock the boat.

So what to do? How do you get what’s inside people’s heads out into the room without totally losing control. How do you get them thinking together, hearing the same information the same way, and not simply vying for air time?

Round Robin Does All This

Round robin is the process of choice when you need to hear from everyone and they need to hear from each other. No other process will erase the difference between introverts and extroverts or between levels of status and seniority. No other process enables – insists – that people listen to each other.

It’s simple, it’s easy and, once your group has experienced it, they’ll immediately grasp it’s utility and fairness. Here are the steps, all of which must be adhered to:

1. Pose a specific open-ended question (“what do you think is causing sales to drop off?) rather than a general topic (sales)
2. Set a time limit for the round robin. (10 seconds is a good minimum, 30 seconds is a good maximum. More than 30 seconds each will lead to open discussion.)
3. Give everyone a minute or 2 (time it) to come up with a response or list of responses. This greatly increases the quality of the responses.
4. When you are ready to start, establish a clear, simple order for people to speak in.
5. Ask people to give only one of their answers for each round.
6. Time everyone and cut them off if they go over. They’ll have another chance to speak in the next round. Do this with a sense of play. If everyone goes over, it’s your bad: Extend the time limit and try again.

That’s it. Try it and let me know what you think.

For one thing, I never could make sense of the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement. I remember precious life minutes spent trying to grok the difference as a meeting participant. I remember hours spent coming up with limp pieces of horrifying corpo-prose that – best case – we promptly forgot, or – worst case – got printed on our business cards.

Just say no to vision/mission statements. I’m not saying don’t have a way to describe, bound and focus what you’re doing that lights you up – not saying that at all. I’m saying keep it short, sweet and punchy. More like a mantra. “Make money and have fun” is Ben and Jerry’s. “The lowest-cost airline” is Southwest Airlines’s. See? Provides on-the-ground, practical guidance, and puts wind under my wings. Short, pithy, easy to remember and use in daily decision-making.

I advocate the mantra on the organizational, departmental team and individual levels. Not that I need to advocate them. Mantras are. I bet you’re using one right now. I once worked at an ad agency where our spoken mantra was : “It’s not brain surgery.” This helped us remember both to lighten up and to take risks.

A client’s current mantra is: “Get home on time.” It guides his every move, and it’s changing his life.

My mantra is: Let’s make it easier. I want to make things easier for my clients. I want to do what works and toss what doesn’t. I live for the hot-knife-through-butter moment, when what looked impossible becomes actual. It’s a visible, visceral thing: people light up and the world gets brighter when we get to easy. That mantra is what keeps my work endlessly fascinating. challenging and fun. That mantra is why I had to come clean about vision/mission statements.

Next week: My allergic reaction to the problem-solving model and what I do instead.

Overly-complicated, convoluted ideas and plans get shelved and forgotten; simple mantras focus and re-energize. Mantras are self-renewing. I’ll bet you have a mantra where you work. What is it?

Why then do I have so much trouble concentrating on my work after the last note of Taps dies away? Why do I feel compelled to pack up and go home, like I’m late for an appointment? My sense of urgency surprises me.

I remember the sound of the bugle at girl scouts, summer camp, the race track I worked at one summer. When I hear a bugle, I know I’m supposed to be somewhere. With my whole group. Now.

The ritual signals commitment. The commitment of a group to a single activity.

A manager I work with recently started meeting with his leadership group every morning. He also printed out the entire department’s daily focus and distributed it to each worker. There was no other way to show his commitment to improving attendance, customer care and accountability. When someone failed to show up, they heard about it immediately. Within a week, his meeting went from being barely to fully attended. The department production stats got better as people focused on the right work each day. People looked and sounded more interested in their work. The team started taking ownership for the department. And that was only a week’s worth of ritualized commitment.

It seems the 3-step process that leads to this is fail-proof:1. Commit to a goal (play the guitar, for example). 2. Commit to an achievable process, or ritual, for achieving that goal (practice 5 minutes a day).3. Follow up and persist (missed today, will practice earlier in the day tomorrow).

What experience have you had with committing to a ritual?

And, it’s simple and quick to do: Write 1-3 questions on a flipchart pad and give participants a 5-10 seconds of silence to come up with answers. Reiterate the rules for round robin (no discussion, time limit of 20 seconds for your answer), and let the fun begin. This is the best way for groups up to 16 or so. For larger groups, consider taking 24 questions and making a bingo game out of it. If you’d like my standard version of this, I’d be happy to email it – either email me or leave a comment.

The Master List of Questions
Here’s a list of questions to get you started:

1. What CD is in your car?
2. What’s the last book you read?
3. Do you prefer to dance alone or with someone else?
4. What’s your favorite color?
5. What’s your favorite food
6. What’s your favorite dessert?
7. What’s your favorite vacation spot?
8. When you were a kid, what did you want to grow up to be?
9. What is the title of the novel you want to write?
10. What is your favorite song?
11. Who is your favorite singer?
12. Who is your favorite band?
13. Who is your favorite actor?
14. What is your all-time favorite movie?
15. What was the last movie you saw in a theatre?
16. If you could do/be anything, what would you do/be?
17. If you could live anywhere, where would you live?
18. What are the names of your pets?
19. Have you changed your name?
20. Where were you born?
21. Where did you go to school?
22. Do you have brothers or sisters? Their names?
23. Where are you in your family’s birth order? (oldest, middle, youngest, 4th, 5th, etc.)
24. Who is your favorite superhero?

There – that’s enough for a 5×5 bingo card, or for several meetings. I’ve got scads more. You can generate your own of course, or ask your team for ideas. Let me know how it goes.