Hi Lisa, It’s so good to be back. Internet interruption, following a move to another apartment, has afforded me ample opportunity to consider your question: “What steps can leaders take to create an environment of trust and safety to support open and constructive communication?”
I consider your question to be “pragmatic” in that it concerns practical matters. However, what if the question were re-worded thus: “What steps can “workers” take to create an environment of trust and safety…” Your question, I suggest, insightfully acknowledges that in many modern organizations “all the thinking is done by the managers and designers [leaders], leaving all the “doing” to the employees.” Images of Organization, p.23. Parenthesis mine.
In the next few days I would like to proffer an “ontological” framework-wherein we question what exists and how it is defined and grouped within a hierarchy of meaning. Let’s call it a heuristic device because it will elaborate a conceptual framework for inquiry. I believe leaders and led might benefit by observing the shoreline of social fact when the tide of traditional thinking is out.
While not side-stepping your excellent question Lisa, I would like to propose some of my own: How many learning programs are devoted to the behavior of leaders and managers-i.e., introspection, development, character, dialogue, and ethics? Rather, are not most books and programs instrumental in that they focus on the ‘management’ of employee behavior?
Over the last few weeks I have been researching a social phenomenon that I hope will integrate everything you and I have discussed, while avoiding the metaphor trap. The trees that dominate Stanley Park furnish an excellent metaphor for my proposed radical approach to “leadership.”
Let’s examine leadership’s:
Root System: ideology, tradition, forgotten history, and human propensity to dominate.
Trunk: the reality that integrates all organizations.
Branches: interpersonal and organizational expressions of the social reality.
Leaves: labels, teaching systems, ideologies, sense of honor and decorum, which obscure and color the reality.
How does that sound?
Bye for now,
Carman
The leaves are performing their autumnal pirouette of death as the plummet to the ground. A beautiful ballet!
Carman, Welcome back!
Yes, with great insight, you have pointed out the assumptions which underlie our questions and statements and usually go unchallenged. And, yes, I do intend the question pragmatically as you correctly assumed.
Your proposal sounds brilliant. I look forward to reading how you continue to develop your train of thought!
Best wishes,
Lisa
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
While the following may shock the sensibilities of some, I want to emphasize that I am doing sociology, not ideology. That is, I am not exalting one political system above another or indicting either management or labor. Rather, I am attempting to understand the themes of domination, exploitation, and dehumanization—recurring issues on this site. Hopefully, with your help as intellectual mid-wife, we can attempt to surface entrenched assumptions which I believe catalyze most human-to-human interaction.
I learned something about the word “leadership”: “laeden” is to go upward and “schaeppen” is to create a thing of value. Evidently, the word “shop” derives from the suffix. We buy things of value in shops. However, like the Dutch word “boss,” “leader” essentially means “master.” You allude to leadership as a creative act in your question, “What steps can leaders take to create an environment of trust and safety to support open and constructive communication?” Both words connote the right to command and the duty to exact obedience.
For the past few weeks I’ve been attempting to give my vague notions about leadership more concretion—to surface and challenge my assumptions about leadership. The exercise is both fatiguing and exhilarating. I’ve also taken a deep mental plunge into Orlando Patterson’s book “Slavery and Social Death, A Comparative Study.” I am attempting to integrate Patterson’s insights into my own experience. The fruit of this synthesis is what I term
THEORY OF THRALLDOM
(Bondage, Slavery)
I DISTINGUISH:
-PRINCIPAL OF THRALLDOM
-PRACTICE OF THRALLDOM
As a principle, thralldom is the condition of being entirely subject to another’s will.
As a practice, thralldom is a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be, or treated as, the property of others.
I submit that the principle of thralldom is the active force underlying virtually all relationships. It is the bedrock of all social interaction. Thralldom is complete control over someone who is subject to that one’s will. The controller is subject, the controlled is object. The controller is a person; the controlled is a non-person—a thing.
Thralldom has two dimensions about which you have spoken at length Lisa: 1) domination 2) dehumanization.
The Tree will illustrate how I see thralldom as a ubiquitous phenomenon:
Leaves and Fruit: labels, language, media, scholastic systems, products and services, which simultaneously obscure and express the reality of thralldom.
Branches: interpersonal and organizational expressions of thralldom (e.g., organization as machine, organism, instrument of domination, political system, psychic prison).
Trunk: thralldom [slavery] as social fact [reality]
Root System: propensity to dominate, legitimacy of the State and its military apparatus, ideology, tradition, forgotten history.
Thralldom is:
Mediated: by money
Modified: by the character of the organization
Mitigated: by labor relations and human rights legislation.
Based on the above, “freedom” would be the degree of “protection” within an experience of exploitation.
While the conditions of slavery vary from relationship to relationship the dimensions of domination and dehumanization remain constant.
For example:
• discipline: punishments and rewards
• subjection and submission: (inferior) status
• performance: duties performed under duress
• treatment: as objects, human tools, instruments
• perception: as commodities
If you like, I will expand on my research, which we can discuss and debate to our hearts content—time permitting of course.
Bye for now,
Carman (My new e-mail address is not yet established–please bear with)
Reference:
Leadership: http://www.learning org.com/98.04/0257.html