Employing Differences, Episode 96: What's our culture now?

Karen: 0:08

Welcome to Employing differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Paul: 0:15

I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:17

And I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 0:19

Each episode, we start with a question and we see where it takes us. This week's question is, "What's our culture now?"

Karen: 0:29

So today, we really want to talk about what happens in groups when a lot of population change is happening. And so this seems like a really specific thing, but it happens a lot, which is, you've got some number of folks – the minority – who've been there five years, 10 years, they've been working on this thing, they're often really invested in it, because they've put all this time into it, they've been there a long time. And they've kind of figured out how to get things done. They may have been there when it was early days and scrappy, and there were only a few people in some startup, and so they kind of took shortcuts with each other. They know each other really well. And a huge part of what they've been trying to do is grow the thing and bring new people in. And so they get some success with that. And we're looking now at the moment where you got a few of these folks who've been there through the scrappy time with a ton of heart and passion, and they're in this, and a lot of folks that have gotten really excited about that idea, and joined the team. And you've got sort of – I think of this as riptide where you've got this force of motion of the tide going in one direction – of the people who've been carrying it for a really long time, and there's a lot of force behind that, because of the momentum of that. And then you've got new people, new ideas, new energy, you know, coming in. And so those are kind of crossing against each other. And then you add more new people right in the middle of that. And they're getting pulled in the direction of the original vision, which is still there, in the direction of whatever mess has gotten built over that vision, which is definitely there, the new ideas and energy that are coming in and beginning to be established, and whatever they brought for themselves. And there is this thing that happens to culture, which is always changing. But there's this sort of riptide moment, where we don't know what the culture is. Some of us do, some of us are really sure. Those long term folks, they know exactly what the culture is, and how everything works and how decisions are made, and can get kind of defensive about it. And the new folks are both trying to learn in an ever-changing system, and wanting to have some influence on it, because they're getting ownership of it and caring about it as well. And it just gets really chaotic. And it's really easy for feelings to get hurt and things to break down. Not because anybody's doing a bad thing, or trying to be hurtful, but just because there's so much chaos in the

Paul: 3:16

It is often very confusing to figure out how things are system, supposed to work – what you're supposed to be doing, what's expected of you, and sort of what's happening there. And I think the dirty secret is that everybody else also feels the same way. That's often the thing, where we we land in a situation like that, and it feels super weird to us. If we're a new person in a growing company, or a growing community that's at one of these sort of inflection points in its growth, when we come in, it's very natural to feel disoriented, Because it is a new thing to us. But oftentimes it feels super disorienting because things are in flux. Because the the old ways of working are actually in the process of changing. There are new norms that are being created. The processes and the ways of doing things that worked great when this group was ten people won't work when that group is 500 people in quite the same way. And so those are needing to change. They're straining under the weight of the changing situation. But as a new person coming in, we're sort of expecting that there is some level of disorientation that we will have as we learn new stuff, but we get hit by this extra level, and we think it's us. We think it's our fault. I do a lot of work with with startups that are going through this where they've been successful up to a certain point. They've gotten another round of funding. They're growing really rapidly and so tons of new people come in. And they're all really worried about fitting into this great culture that they've heard about, and wondering why they aren't, why they can't figure out what's going on. And they each think that it's them individually, not realizing that everybody else who's coming in at that moment is experiencing the same thing, because it's actually a manifestation of what's going on in the system.

Karen: 5:20

And I see a different version as well. I think that what you're saying is absolutely true. And I think the other version is, we think it's somebody else's fault. We blame the strong personality. For the newcomer, we blame the old folks for not welcoming us and caring what we think and just still trying to do it the old way – or even better for telling us it's going to be one way, but doing it a different way, which is absolutely the experience, because there's so much chaos. And if we're the old-timer in the group, then we're blaming the new people for not respecting our norms, and not appreciating all the work that we've already put in, and they just want to come in and change everything. But the whole point was to do the original vision... So that blame game get spinning. And in the same way that it's not just me when I'm thinking it's just me, it's also not just them when I'm thinking it's just them. It's actually the state of being at that moment.

Paul: 6:24

And as we talk about at the beginning of the show, this is one of those things that lives in the space between individuals. This is a systemic thing that happens when these forces sort of all swirl and collide. Blame is generally not a useful concept, but it's particularly not useful in systems work. So given that there's this swirl that happens, and given that it leads to confusion, it leads too often to blaming, to a sense of often loss. People who have been part of this group or this culture for a long time will often feel like it's no longer the group that they joined. It's no longer the group they're part of, and they're often going through some sort of grief and mourning around that – consciously or unconsciously – and so that leads to all sorts of other interesting behaviors. Given all of that that's going on, what can we usefully do to help figure out what is our culture now?

Karen: 7:32

I think the first thing is to name the flux, name the chaos, name the riptide that's in the mix. And get comfortable with we're not gonna have clear processes, clear procedures. We're not going to all have the same understanding of our processes and procedures. That's going to take a while. And so I think the first thing is just to be patient with the situation that we're in. There's a certain amount of chaos. Because one thing I think groups do that gets them in trouble is to say,"Okay, we've got all this chaos, so we need to pass all our policies and make all our rules and put all our procedures in place." And I see this a lot in co-housing communities, and they're experiencing this before they actually have their property and have moved in together. So they start making all kinds of rules about a living situation they've never even experienced – in the midst of all this chaos – because the chaos is driving them crazy."And it's only going to get worse when we move in, right?" Probably not actually. The chaos is not so much driven by the project, or the state of the project, or the stresses of the project. The chaos is actually driven by the growth, by the new people coming in with that older energy. And so if you can just sort of say, "Okay, we're going to live in that chaos for a little while. How do we tolerate the chaos?" And I want to say there are a few things there, most of which we aren't good at, and many of which are really, really hard in a new group. So one thing is empathy. If I'm an old-timer, I need to spend a lot of time thinking about what must it feel like to be someone on the other side. I'm in a process right now of training someone who's about to start doing the thing I've been doing. And she's asking me questions, and I'm like, "Oh, right, she wouldn't know that." It wouldn't have even occurred to me that she didn't know that thing. If we can be in that space of having empathy for, "They probably don't even know what they don't know." And they probably are constantly feeling like, "I don't know what's going on here." I'm being surprised by things. People are saying,"Well, that's just the way it is." And I'm like, "How? How did that get to be the way that it is?" It's very disorienting and uncomfortable. And if rather than getting into a fight about did we or didn't we make the decision or is it or is it not okay for that to be the the way we're going to do it, if we can get into the space together,"Oh, we didn't have a shared understanding about that. We're gonna have not shared understandings about a lot of things for a while." And then, of course, for the newcomer, the same thing of, "What must it feel like to have been working in this project and in this way, and feel like you knew how things were and now it's all changing?" And how disorienting is that? You're in the same pool, but the water's all going different directions than it ever has before. Like, wait a minute, what happened here? And so if we can get a whole lot of empathy for what's on the other side, I think that helps a lot. The one that's harder, that's just as essential is trust. And we're talking now about new spaces, new people, chaos all around, nothing feel safe enough to trust. But somewhere in there, it's really important to find that little grain of shared purpose, shared goal, shared vision that got you all into the same room to begin with. And trust in the general goodwill, that we're all trying to make that thing happen. We may be going about it fifteen different ways, and there may be nuances all over the place that are sending us different directions, but grab on to every bit of trust you have in the goodwill and the shared vision. That is the only life preserver I know in the midst of that chaos.

Paul: 11:34

It really points to the importance of strengthening the relational container in the group at that point. So the concrete ways of working together – our processes and the expectations we have of people in certain roles – those are all going to be in flux in moments like this, because they probably all need to change because of the growth. The concrete things that you could latch on to are in flux, which means that if that was all that was holding the group together before it's gonna fly apart. But it probably wasn't. There probably was strong relational space between the people who were there. And so what's really important in those in those moments is to expand that relational container. It's a leap of faith, but if I'm somebody who's been in this organization for a while and new people are coming in, I can't wait for them to earn my trust. I have to be vulnerable and extend trust to them in order to help both them and myself through this period of chaos. It's the opposite of what you think you need to do. It doesn't feel safe at all. But that's all you've got to go on that point.

Karen: 13:04

Yeah, yeah. And I think you're really hitting the nail on the head of our mainstream culture says, "You have to earn my trust, and then I'll give it to you. Because I'm only going to trust when I know it's safe to trust." And if we want teams to work well, especially in chaotic times, and we want community to come together, you don't trust because it's safe to trust, because that that takes too long. Unless you've got ten years to settle in, you just can't get there. You trust because you want to be in a trusting environment. Because the value of the trust, the value of having trust in the space is higher than the cost of whatever harm might come. Because in fact, you're not crazy. It isn't safe to trust. That trust will get broken. But the only way for it not to get broken is for it never to have been there in the first place. And to my mind, that's worse.

Paul: 14:05

Yeah. Because the things that you would replace trust with don't exist in those moments. And that's hard. And there's another piece of the trust that I think is important. One of the things I hear all the time in situations like this, particularly from the people who have been part of this organization or community for a while, is, "How do we maintain our culture?" And you can't. I mean, as you said earlier, culture is always in flux to some degree or another the manifestations of it – and by culture, what I really mean are a couple of things, but mostly it's around the unconscious drivers of our actions. They're based in lessons that we have learned about what works. What works to solve the external problem – to achieve our purpose– but also what works to keep us cohesive as a group, to help stay together. And so we've learned these things unconsciously. We develop norms of behavior that reinforce them. We say things about them that may or may not align with what we actually do. But that is always changing, because we're always learning new things about what works. About what works to achieve our purpose, about what works to hold ourselves together as a coherent group to maintain that relational space. So culture is always in flux. What we have to trust in moments like this is that while our culture will be changed as a result of this process – because it will – we have to trust that what we will come out with the other side of with is something that includes important elements of what our culture was and the lessons we've learned from this process, so that it becomes a new, different, even stronger thing. And trusting that that will happen? That's a leap of faith.

Karen: 16:10

Absolutely, yeah. And I think that is what we have to lean into is, everybody got here for a reason. People who've been here a long time have stayed for a long time related to whatever the vision or the culture or the intention or... There's something that got us all here. And those folks attracted the new folks. Somehow, we all got in the same room together. Trusting that thing, whatever that is, when we can't yet trust what we know of the individuals, because we don't, and we can't trust the processes because they're in flux, and we can't trust the culture because we don't know what it is and it's shifting more radically even than it normally would. What we've got to do is find the lifelines of what are the things we can hold on to. And most of the time, I think it's the belief in the thing that we came here to do together and a general belief in the goodness of humans. That we don't show up in a place just to knock each other down. We show up in a place to work together, to be in a team together, to be collaborative together. And to recognize that when things are going badly, that's not a reflection of the goodness or the badness of another person. It's probably not even a reflection of their intentions. When things are going badly, it's almost always a reflection of the broader environment that we're in and the fact that we're not used to each other yet. We don't know each other, and so miscues all over the place are going to be the norm for a while.

Paul: 17:45

Yeah. The last thing I'll say about that cultural adaptation piece, though, and the trust part is, I think what we really have to trust in is that the culture that emerges from this will be stronger in the sense that it will be better adapted to the current situation. That may mean that it is substantially different from the culture that we joined. Because it was a different situation, that was a different problem. And so we can't trust, that it will necessarily be a culture that we will want to be a part of. We might find ourselves going, "Actually this new thing is the inheritor of the legacy of the organization,or the community or the company that I joined. And I may need to wish it well." We can't trust that it will be where we want to be. But what we can trust in is that what emerges will be an outgrowth of all of the work that we have done to that point, and it will be better adapted to the current situation. I think that's the thing that people are actually afraid of. And I don't know that there's actually a good antidote for that, because that's a legitimate fear.

Karen: 19:03

Yeah, and it happens. Founders very often don't fit by the time things have settled – in fact, because founder energy may not be a fit for maintaining a long term thing. But also because the very nature of if you're really committed to collaborative space, in community, on teams, wherever it is, what you're saying is that you want a space where people come in and show up with their energy, their ideas, their gifts, their skills, and are welcome there. We're not trying to talk about some hierarchy where everybody comes in to do it my way. If we want to create a space where everybody can bring their gifts and their energy, the very nature of the thing we're trying to create is that it can't belong to me. It can't be controlled by me. It can't even be predicted by me. And the only way it can be the thing that I'm wanting it to be, is if it may turn out to be not the right thing for me. And so can I commit to supporting the group becoming what this group of people has in them to become? What this face is? And potentially – probably not, but in some cases – deal with the loss that comes with, "Wow, this fabulous thing that got built, and that I had an awful lot to do with building turned out not to be mine."

Paul: 20:41

None of these things are easy. You talked about the difficulty of empathy, the difficulty of trust, and this sort of last piece of really just having the emotional stamina, to be in that space, in that uncertainty. It really asks a lot of us, but I think if we can face it, clear-eyed, seeing that that is a possibility. But also that we are committed to that process, to the ways of being together, to collaboration, to building something together, to crafting this thing together – I think for me, that's the thing. When you can't have certainty about outcome, if you can believe in the process, and work in the process, and know that anything that results from that process, you're okay with, I think that's the one place that we can stand.

Karen: 21:34

Yeah, so to follow where we where we are, we're really looking at the case where there's a lot of change. Lots and lots of new people in a fairly short amount of time, along with some number of folks who've been there actually a really long time being very invested. And then meanwhile, you're continuing to drop new people into the system. So you've got ongoing change, on top of layers of change, and just the chaos of that space. And what happens in the space between people. Recognizing that the challenges and the pain and the struggle is coming from the environment, the situation, the space between, not from just me– this isn't just me stepping in and causing it, and also not from just you – it's not all just your fault and blame or some other person – but that actually it's it's an experience that we're all having together from various perspectives. And how can we have empathy for each other in that? How can we acknowledge that we aren't going to be able to pin down and get the predictability and the certainty and the consistency that we would like, that would genuinely make us all more comfortable, that that it's gonna be a while before that arrives? And have empathy for each other in our various ways of arriving in that discomfort and the various struggles that we have from different perspectives? And then have the courage and vulnerability to trust, not because we know people well enough to know that they're trustworthy, but because we know that we all landed here with some amount of shared purpose and some amount of shared intention. And believing that as this culture shifts and changes, which it's doing a lot right now, that the product of that is worth working toward, worth investing in, worth engaging in, worth being vulnerable for, even to the point of the vulnerability of,"It may turn out not to be the right place for me." But knowing that it will be the thing it needs to be. It will be a good thing. It will have done good things in the world, because we let it grow in that way. And it gave it the potential to be the collaborative space that we dreamed of. With the knowledge that letting that happen could come at personal cost to me. And so if we can bring ourselves to do that, pretty amazing things happen. And they happen despite being hard and often painful, and sometimes even with pretty significant loss.

Paul: 24:08

Well, that's gonna do it for us for today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 24:13

And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.