Bailey WorkPlay

Okay, while I dig deeper in Working Wounded, I just found another of Bob Rosner’s pieces called The Only Thing Worse Than Lawyers… that strongly resonated with me because a set of workplace issues that I’m currently involved in.

In particular, this is the part that spoke most clearly to me:

The adversarial system thrives because we allow it to thrive. We hire lawyers, we encourage them to go off on the “other side” and we look for opportunities to avoid real dialogue with the very people whom we’re struggling with. We have become an entire culture that looks to HR, our bosses and yes, the lawyers to be our “heavy,” to stand up for our rights. Is it any wonder then, why things have gone so horribly wrong?

These issues have actually been a rather long-standing problem for my organization. And here’s the problem: members and staff don’t get along well. Until I read Bob’s post, I hadn’t considered it an adversarial relationship, but that’s pretty much what it is. And it’s a relationship that is crippling what could be a very dynamic and successful association.

For those of you not involved in professional societies or trade associations, this problem might seem a bit foreign. I’ll try to quickly explain. In my association, we not only have to work closely with fellow employees, but volunteer members, as well. Since we are a small association, the staff relies on members to do some of the organization’s work. It is often a very different dynamic working with members than it is working with customers.

Tomorrow, I’m to be on a conference call with member-leaders and I’ve been dreading this call like nobody’s business. I have been anticipating something ugly because of this adversarial relationship. It will be like stepping into a maelstrom of long-brewing conflict and trying to find a different way out…not just for me but all the other participants. It will require me to be both engaged both inside (as a staff employee) and outside (as an objective observer) to the conflict. Scary as hell. It is perhaps the greatest challenge to my own sense of hope that I discussed in my previous entry (it might also seem somewhat contradictory, but then that’s the paradox of our own existence). When is organizational conflict too massive and intertwined in the overall culture for one or even a small group of people to effectively resolve? When is it time to just acknowledge that it’s time to move on to a different workplace where we have a better opportunity to create more soulful work?

I’m not sure why the need to share this story here. I’ve been trying to determine whether I should or not for weeks. My own hope is that it resonates with someone who is experiencing problems with interoffice or intraoffice conflict. If you’re feeling alone, you might wonder if it’s just you and that you’re possibly crazy (as in, this conflict actually doesn’t exist) or naive (as in, this conflict exists and it’s like this everywhere). Let’s see how this goes…

Bob Rosner at ABCNews’s Working Wounded quasi-blog has some thoughts on the question of How Can We Create a Better Work Place?

He quickly addresses topics like technology (he makes some very good points here), greed, and developing a “not-to-do list” before finishing with hope.

The biggest thing that we need at work today is hope. Yes, we need to believe that it is worth the time and trouble to create a better workplace. We spend far too much time at work to be so accepting of all work’s shortcomings. Let’s all rededicate ourselves to creating a work experience that justifies all those hours that we put in week after week.

I’ve come to find that hope is that one essential quality for helping us move toward our most desired dreams. It’s what helps us pick ourselves off the mat after taking a roundhouse to the chin. Hope is like a polaris helping us find our way toward a destination. Hope fuels a ferocious determination to not give in to the forceful, smirking ogres who go by names such as You-Can’t-Do-That, You’re-Not-Good-Enough, and Give-Up-Now-For-Resistance-Is-Futile.

So, here’s the challenge: Take a step back and reengage those inherent abilities we all have for awareness. Start to recognize the previously accepted shortcomings of our work. Connect how they violate our own dreams for what we want our work to be. Whenever the ogre called That’s-Just-How-It-Is-Here begins to peek around a corner, take a sword and go hunting. Be a peaceful warrior for our deepest desires of what we hope work can be.

I have great and constantly growing respect for the work of David St Lawrence who writes at Ripples: Post-Corporate Adventures. His writing about our modern workplace is frank and often not pretty. It reminds me of the times I go for hikes and discover a beautiful stone only to pick it up and see all the worms and bugs crawling around beneath it. I’ll admit that there are times when I enter into a state of denial and think his experiences and outlook can’t possibly be accurate…I mean, are workplaces really that bad? The answer, like most everything else in life, is complex: yes and no with plenty of shades of gray between.

David’s recent post, If you are employed, I am writing from your future…, is an uncompromising reminder that each of us who are employed by a company or non-profit must take care of our own career. That even goes for us twenty- and thirtysomethings. I like this particular quote from David:

Once you take charge of your life and stop expecting someone else to look after you or tell you what to do and when, you may just find that you are enjoying life again and are looking forward to the future instead of dreading it.

Regardless of whether we’re ready to take on our own “post-corporate adventure,” this is sage advice for us to consider. It’s a message of hope for today as well as tomorrow. Each morning that we’re blessed to open our eyes to a new day has the possibility of adding to our knowledge and wisdom. Even on those days when it seems like it would be easier to just hit the snooze and sleep, the ideal of soulful work prods us to peer through the apparent drudgery to the greater meaning. Maybe that meaning is connecting the drudgery to something bigger like building the necessary street cred to start our own business. That’s for each of us to define.

And if we wake to discover that we’re in a soul-numbing job within a soulless organization and the drudgery is unbearable…well no one gets to play the victim here. Taking charge of our work and our life means taking risks, for sure. It also means we get to take on a richer, more human existence.