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The One-Off Training Trap

Two small stones balanced on a flat stone like a teeter totter balanced on the point of a pyramid shaped stone on a beach with the ocean and blue sky behind it

Have you had the experience of doing a one-off intervention for a complex culture challenge? Maybe for a while, everyone is energized. There’s a palpable sense of progress. And sometimes it sticks. But sometimes people slip back into old patterns. You’re trying to cure a chronic condition with a one-time prescription. Meaningful culture change isn’t a project; it’s a practice. 

Building Caring Culture out of Conflict

People at a kite festival flying kites in a field

A few years ago, a small company had a major workplace conflict that escalated to the point of someone being fired. For the people who were left, the whole thing felt horrible and confusing. They decided as a team that they needed to approach conflict differently going forward: not avoiding difficult conversations, nor jumping straight to escalation, but instead building the structures, skills, and culture to work through it generatively. Find out what they did.

Surfacing the Wisdom in “No”

Questions and doubts about a decision floating under the surface of the water

You can probably think of a time when you were in a group that was making a decision, and you got the sense that things were heading rapidly in the wrong direction. Whatever the reason, you might have ended up in groupthink: when everyone gets swept along with an idea, and careful questioning and thinking about implications doesn’t happen. In these moments, it can help to spend some time looking for the wisdom in divergent perspectives.

We care so much it’s hurting us

Swallows sit on a row of metal beams guarding their nests

Mission driven organizations have this very difficult dilemma. People feel like they need to do it all, because there is so much need, and they care so much, but then they are facing high burnout and losing people,  which makes it impossible to do the work. As much as we wish we could do it all, when we set boundaries (taking care of ourselves) we become better able to take care of the people and communities we are trying to serve. 

When the threat (is not really) coming from inside the house

Watercolour image of a hose spraying red, blue and purple water

Fight energy in our nervous system can be a very powerful support to help us deal with crisis or ongoing threat. But fight energy has a strong pull. It takes some careful balancing and strategy to direct the fight energy in the right direction, so that we can fight the threat in community, not against community.

The Monsters in the Curtain

Four silhouettes of people sitting on a lake looking at multicoloured planets in the sky

Systems came out of the imaginations of people and are created through millions of everyday actions of people (including everyone reading this blog), and that means it is possible to imagine other realities into being. This is not the way things have to be. Humans have imagined and then created all sorts of different systems, and that can continue, but only if we don’t fall into the trap of thinking the way things are is the only way.

Dialogue for Equity: Orienting to a Distant Star

We can build the skills to have the kinds of uncomfortable conversations that allow us to bring principles of equity and justice into practice. It is about being open to learning, and building the capacity and necessary container for honesty. We can stretch ourselves to beaAble to sit with discomfort, set boundaries, and hold each other accountable. 

Leadership Behaviours For Regenerative Power

Picture of two metal torches. The one on the left has an open flame. The one on the right has smoke coming out of it.

Power is not in and of itself a bad thing. However, in social change spheres we tend to notice how power causes harm and reinforces injustice and inequality. 
Check out this framework for shifting leadership power away from the dominant ways that power shows up in the workplace, to a set of behaviours and mindsets that are more regenerative and restorative.

Psychological Safety, Two Ways

Psychological safety is very important but figuring out how to create it can feel like a big and confusing topic. This blog post offers an explanation and comparison of two frameworks for assessing and measuring psychological safety in the workplace to help you figure out the best approach for your context.