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coherence ::
1. the quality or state of cohering: as
a : a systematic or logical connection or consistencyb : integration of diverse elements, relationships, or values2. the property of being coherent <a plan that lacks coherence>
How can we best surface our gifts and strengths?
How can we engage in meaningful work that motivates us through the elements of autonomy, mastery and purpose?
How do we amplify the strengths of our peers and cocreators?
How do we appreciate those strengths and align with them in order to build dynamic, high-performance, and highly coherent work teams?
As I’m participating in projects more and more with people across disciplines and boundaries, we’re experimenting with new ways to ask and answer these questions.
In December I ran a Fusion event in California with David Hodgson, Kirstin Ohm, and Adam Scislowicz. When the even was done, David suggested an exercise for us to show our gratitude and appreciate for the things we noticed as the inherent talents of the others.
We distributed 5 points per person in any combination to rank the person’s “superpowers” (performance, attitude, awareness, etc). We logged these responses into a google spreadsheet with the following columns:
[person giving] / [personal receiving] / [experience points] / [gifts acknowledged] / [assessment]
Then we hopped on a google hangout and shared our thoughts with each other and gave specific examples about when we saw each person’s gifts shine.
A few great things came of this process.
For one, it was fun. I’d never been challenged before to identify people’s natural gifts in this way — usually it’s just the opposite – you’re asked to examine the “failures” and figure out “what went wrong.” There were things that didn’t go as planned during the event, but starting our session with appreciation for each others’ efforts created a safe environment for being open and honest. We were then able to honestly discuss the things that played out suboptimally, and then described scenarios for how we could handle that type of situation more effectively in the future.
Secondly, it helped me to better understand our ‘tribe dynamics’ – how our personalities and styles can actually amplify the overall performance of the team, if acknowledged and understood coherently.
And lastly, it taught me more about myself. I’m finding it very interesting to learn that the way I see myself, or the things I think I bring to the table, are not always the things that others acknowledge or appreciate in me. Some of the acknowledgements i was given in this exercise were “story weaving,” “emergent facilitation,” and “completion,” all of which I would probably rate myself as a novice or apprentice. And yet these were the hidden gems that they could see were waiting to be polished up and brought forth.
I plan to continue participating in this type of process, not just on co-facilitated events or projects, but on a regular basis as I’m interacting with the people in my learning community. Participating in these feedback loops and productive discussions accelerates all of our learning. We get clarity on who we really are and where we excel, receive continuous feedback from trusted peers and mentors, and generally get a better understanding of ourselves, each other, and the dynamics between them.
In the larger context of the creative economy that we’re bootstrapping, these kinds of practices seem to be part of the foundational structure that will build trust and cultivate the kind of culture that is favorable for the kinds of change we want to see in the world.
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further exploring:
The Gabriel Institute – role-based assessments / organizational dynamics / technology of teaming
Drive – Daniel Pink
emergent by design 
Fantastic – sounds brilliant for creative teams. Acknowledgement can empower already present gifts, or reveal unknown ones. Love it.
I’ve heard a similar technique work brilliantly in community workshops where kids from broken neighbourhoods were given a card each and asked to list both their faults and their plus points. The usual trend was for loads of negatives, hardly any positives. Then the card went round the circle and kids asked to list negative and positives of another’s card.
It turned out that when handed round the circle the card would come back to each individual with only positives added, in rare cases a negative. It was such a transformation of each child’s self-image that they could feel appreciated and KNOWN in their home communities.
This diversity of application suggests a strong core principle. Creatives and teenagers need recognition alike.
your comment sparked a memory of this personal development course i did several years ago, where we did 2 different exercises.
one was a “what i see in you that i see in me……..” that we had to do with each person in the course (less than 15 people total. intimate.) it was both strengths and vulnerabilities that we identified in each other, and was very powerful in realizing we are not alone in our emotions.
the other was love letters that we wrote to each other and put in an envelope that we got to open after the course was done. i think the prompt was just something like “what i love about you…..”
both were just really great ways to feel empowered by those common threads and themes that are woven through all of us.
Venessa,
That is a great approach. As you mention, sometimes others see in us qualities that we ourselves don’t see it or see it but don’t give enough credit for.
To me the other beauty of this approach is that in time we have a ‘model database’ of personalities & qualities – people who excel at certain attributes. This can be a powerful source for your own personal growth as you can draw insights from these folks on how they approach certain situations, events, or context.
And of course, understanding the strengths or what someone is strong at is as you mention a key in understanding the tribe dynamics and also in understanding why some of the things did not work as well.
Would definitely favor adopting this practice in our own community to get to know each other better and deliver better value to the world outside.
Best,
Ned
Vanessa and Ned,
Sounds great. You might also want to take a look at Vicky Grey’s work. Her twitter handle is @AdaptiveCoach and has a very neat book called Making Time. She has a long practice training high performance teams in the IT space.
You might also be interested in a pretty neat visualization tool at http://ilnk.me/d624 It seems to work very well in a nemetics framework . We’ve been using it for a day or so to play with 7 dimensions to see how complex adaptive systems can evolve over time.
In case anyone is interested it”s the subject of ongoing conversation on Twitter between myself and @TheDesignKata
hey, i checked out the visualization tool. i don’t get it. how are you applying it?
Venessa,
I think the easiest way to check out is to select “Oscillate” at the bottom. This will start the waves. Then you can play around with the variables – amplitude, frequency, damping, tension etc. to see how things change.
Michael – correct me if I am interpreting this wrong.
Best,
Ned
Ned, Vanessa,
That’s about right. You can view in oscillate or pulse. Both are pretty interesting and analogous to the paradox of “light is a wave v light is particular.” Setting it on Pulse allows one to see how the math governing string vibration generate a district point at which a pulse is generated and propagated.
the more interesting to me is the Wave Oscillation. The interface you gives 7 parameters to control . Amplitude and Frequency can have 100 different values.. Damping has 100 values. Tension has 11 values. Endpoint has 3 options. Fixed. Loose. None.
The neatest thing is the timer and the ability to set parameters, watch the progress of the wave form let it iterate x amount of times and see what it does to the patterns of the wave…
By playing with values at the extremes, you get fascinating chaos type distributions…
Nemetics uses a fractal naming convention. Neme, nemistring, nemitangled nStrings and nemisphere all point to precisely the same phenom. The different words are used to highlight different properties depending on the angle and scale of the view.
So, the entire wave form can be seen as a neme, a nemiString, nemitangled NemiStrings or nemispheres.
“Learning” is said to be optimized when the wave form has a regular smooth and stable shape.
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Provisional definitions for filters are:
Amplitude maps2 reach of communication event.
Frequency is frequency of communication event.
Damping maps2 to Friction or Resistance.
Tension maps2 to Intention.
Endpoint maps2 to boundary condition of the nemiSphere.
After playing with it a couple of days, some folks are seeing patterns that seem isomorphic to real world phenomenon. One of my proximate interests is managing my IRA so I tend to play with to emulate patterns in global capital markets. Seems pretty good so far.
On twitter some convos today with @CounterPane and @rpickett77 about using nemetics and the visualization tool in the service of Action Research. As of tonight it seems they feel it helps.
oops..Not 7 variables to control. 5 variables to control