Publications
DANCING WITH RESISTANCE: LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES IN FOSTERING A CULTURE OF INCLUSION
An e-mail message using a racial epithet to refer to another employee is exchanged by coworkers. The e-mail is brought to the attention of the HR director, who follows up with a preliminary investigation. The person who sent the e-mail defends himself by saying that he had no idea that the depiction he used carried any racial overtones; he was merely describing the characteristics of the individual. HR informs the leader, who has been explicitly and particularly committed to increasing diversity and fostering inclusion in the organization. As word leaks out, coworkers line up on both sides of the issue—each creating their own version of what happened.
This incident could have occurred in any contemporary organization. One person sends another a comment, a note, or an e-mail, intending to discharge some annoyance or frustration. Each of the people involved—whether directly or peripherally—formulates a narrative to make sense of the incident. For some the incident appears to be simply an interpersonal issue. Others see it as a misunderstanding produced by patterns of behavior rooted in historical relationships among different identity groups, groups to which we have different connections such that some are “my group” and others are “your group” or “their group.” In short, everyone has a story not only about what happened and what it means, but also stories about their own and others’ stories (Wasserman, 2005b). The confiicting narratives that live in organizations in the conversations that people have in the hallways, in the bathrooms, and in “personal” e-mail messages often echo unresolved tension that
ENACTING THE SCHOLAR PRACTITIONER ROLE: AN EXPLORATION OF NARRATIVES
An essential part of Edgar Schein’s legacy is his modeling of the role of scholar—practitioner. To better understand this legacy, the authors explored how being a scholar—practitioner is defined by those who ascribe to this role and the challenges and opportunities these individuals face as they go about their work. Their inquiry consisted of 25 interviews, a systematic reflection on their own professional journeys as scholar—practitioners, and a review of others’ related work. The authors confirmed that scholar—practitioners identify with the primary tasks of generating new knowledge and improving practice, yet how they prioritize and go about their work varies with where they are on the scholar—practitioner continuum. The authors highlight five themes to clarify the complexities of the role, stimulate further inquiry, continue dialogue, and ultimately lead to the creation of new venues in which scholar—practitioners can thrive and enhance their contribution to the world.
METAPHORS OF IDENTITY AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: LEARNING FROM THE SCHOLAR-PRACTITIONER
Historically, professional identity was viewed as a singular construct, and the boundary-spanning dynamics of subidentities remained unexamined. More recently, identity scholars have paved the way to consider the multiple personal and social identities that comprise an individual’s professional identity. These dynamics are exemplified by the unique challenges that scholar–practitioners regularly encounter. To deepen understanding of variations in how scholar–practitioners enact their professional identity, we interviewed young scholar–practitioners who completed their doctorates in the past 7 years, as well as seasoned scholar–practitioners with at least 20 years of experience. We elicited metaphors from the interviewees to explore the complexities of their professional identity and subidentities and the challenges that scholar–practitioners face at different stages of career development. We offer implications for the future socialization of scholar–practitioners and others in boundary-spanning roles
A RELATIONAL COMMUNICATION APPROACH TO PEER COACHING
In this article, we discuss peer coaching as a relatively new form of coaching practice that expands the relational resources available to individuals focused on change. Peer coaching is a helping relationship that facilitates mutual learning and development to accomplish specific tasks or goals. It is most effective when participants establish high-quality relationships and connections by focusing on both content and process. To enhance such capability we integrate the theory of coordinated management of meaning, a relational communication approach that emphasizes how meaning and learning are created through interpersonal interactions. Coordinated management of meaning models applied in our three-step model of peer coaching demonstrate the value of their application. We then assume a balcony perspective to deepen understanding by incorporating conceptual and empirical work. We conclude by inviting scholars and practitioners to adopt our integrated model to enhance positive outcomes for both individuals and organizations.
DIALOGIC OD, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION: ALIGNING MINDSETS, VALUES, AND PRACTICES
This chapter explores recent shifts from diagnostic to more dialogic, relational and emergent OD practices and poses the question: How is diversity and inclusion integral to Dialogic and how do Dialogic OD practices support the goals of diversity and inclusion? Dialogic OD practices turn our attention to the deeply embedded patterns that we may otherwise take for granted, foster a readiness to disrupt these patterns, and enable a shift to alternative and perhaps more inclusive narratives. My focus is on how the dialogic and communication perspectives address systemic forces that maintain undesirable prevailing narratives and build the capacity to create more inclusive communities.
ENGAGING DIVERSITY: DISORIENTING DILEMMAS THAT TRANSFORM RELATIONSHIPS
The diverse workforce offers opportunities for us to challenge our everyday assumptions and reflexive responses to our social worlds. New skills and tools for making sense of our experiences are critically important. The REAL Model helps organizations leverage differences in their workforce and the marketplace.
Our paper introduces the REAL Model that helps organizations manage and leverage differences in their workforce and the marketplace. The process of reflection is a critical component to taking the perspective of another and, in so doing, see one’s own meaning making processes in a new way [Cranton, Marsick, Mezirow, 1993, 2001]. Critical reflection and engaging with those whose social world, values, or historical narratives are significantly different from our own expands our ways of construing meaning and making sense in relationships [Wasserman, 2004]. Transformational learning practices thus provide organizations with new and constructive ways of addressing challenges and issues previously found to be at best inhibiting and at their worst, intractable.
In a recent edition of Advances in Developing Human Resources, (Brooks, 2004), Brooks purports that transformative learning is a viable theory and research approach for developing human resources. She asserts that transformative learning provides a basis for developing people, so that a change in level of conscious awareness occurs and is appropriate in a variety of contexts, such as managing across national boundaries and learning to be part of a diverse workforce, dealing with complexity, motivating others, and changes in the psychological work contract. Those who challenge Brooks’s assertion question whether one can structure experiences to be transformative. Marsick et al, (2003) in making points about transformative action learning as it affects both organizational and personal transformation, recognizes that there are constraints in place that work against these transformations, such as a strong organizational desire to maintain the status quo and on an individual level, resistance to change (p. 218). This panel will describe specific case examples that support Brooks’s assertion, while taking into consideration restrictions highlighted by others. The case examples are based on the work of three scholar practitioners who applied what they learned in their research on transformative learning to interventions with managers and leaders. This paper provides an overview of the research and application of transformative learning theory to human resource development.
We begin by identifying six dynamics that serve to operationalize transformative learning theory. These six dynamics provide a context for the design of specific interventions and are considered at all stages of the design, both at a higher meta-level and at the detail level. What makes our experiences unique is that we have applied transformative learning in both North American and global (Asian, African and Middle Eastern) contexts. Human resource development programs designed intentionally to incorporate the transformative learning process positively impact both individual and organizational transformations. Our experience informs us of the utility of transformative learning practices across cultures, despite being an area that is under developed in the research literature (Taylor, 2003).
MORAL CONFLICT AND ENGAGING ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES
A young woman lies in a nursing home kept alive solely by a feeding tube. Her husband advocates for the removal of the feeding tube. It would have been her wish, he argues. Her parents are engaging the courts and the media to prevent such an intervention. They claim such an act is tantamount to murder. We each face moral dilemmas in our lives. When we confront a moral dilemma, we find ourselves wrestling with seemingly incommensurate values. The intensity of a moral dilemma increases when it moves from a personal, private decision into the public discourse. A moral dilemma becomes a moral conflict when, in the public arena, groups of people represent opposing moral values. Thus, the public debate over the decision to remove Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was one example of this process. The story dominated the media for weeks and was the impetus for Terri’s Law, giving the governor of Florida the authority to override the personal decision of a patient or family member to withdraw a feeding tube. In another case, the public debate over stem cell research took a personal turn when a senator, a proponent of the legislation, was diagnosed with a condition, the treatment for which was enhanced by stem cell research. The decision to teach intelligent design, essentially a religious view of creation, along with the theory of evolution, brought a private religious issue into the public arena. When a person’s moral dilemma is made into a public issue, one’s personal authority or choice of how to act is threatened.
Transformative learning has developed over the last 25 years into a leading theory of adult learning. This paper describes what we learned from an appreciative cooperative inquiry of people’s experience in groups exploring faith, race and gender diversity. The inquiry itself created transformative dialogic moments. Transformational learning is framed from a relational perspective.
The capacity to engage the story of another whose social group identity (including race, faith, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality) is different and perhaps less dominant than one’s own, commands a level of coordinating meaning that is quite complex. Coordinating such complex layers of meaning requires one to suspend judgment and to suspend a commitment to one’s essential truth to consider different, and potentially contradicting narratives. Such a process is challenging enough between two individuals. The process becomes even more challenging at increasing levels of complexity of relationship, where social identity group stories based on deeply embedded histories are still present. Working with adult learners calls on us to foster environments that invite people to learn in relationships, to co-create meaning with others, with particular regard to opportunities that engaging tensions that diverse narratives create.
LEARNING AND LEVERAGING GENERATIVE APPROACHES TO INTERCULTURAL, DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION
The commitment to meaningfully and transformatively address intercultural, diversity, equity and inclusion issues in organizations has grown exponentially. In this issue we invited a diverse group of people to tell the stories of what they were discovering and learning from this work. The articles also reflect the diversity of journeys and hard work within organizations.
THE WHOLENESS PRINCIPLE AND STORIES OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
Every day, we encounter others informed by our narratives of the past and the future we anticipate. The complexity of these encounters is not always clear. My invitation is to greet each encounter with the humility of a limited view, poised with a curious presence, and the capacity to engage what is most unsettling, in pursuit of wholeness.
Twenty students traveled from a suburb of Spokane to meet students from a suburb of Philadelphia with whom they had an online relationship on a forum created by their US history teachers. Together they explored the impact their encounter had on how they view themselves and their social world.
In the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, the force of the us and them language in the public discourse accelerated at a rapid pace. The polarity of views and perspectives only exacerbated in the days leading up to the 2004 Presidential Election. Despite indications of shades of purple, the force of our public discourse continues to perpetuate an illusion of competing voices and polarized values. In the fall of 2004, two high school history teachers, one from a suburb of Spokane Washington and the other from a suburb of Philadelphia Pennsylvania decided to build a bridge using the internet with their high school advanced placement U.S. History (APUSH) classes. With the help of technically savvy students at each end, the APUSH Forum was launched in early October 2004. Participation on the forum was voluntary. Initially, students addressed issues of historic significance posed by their teachers. Before long, students generated threads of conversations ranging from controversial current events, (i.e., legalized abortion and gay marriage) to music preferences. In collaborative inquiry, we explored the impact of their participation on their meaning making perspectives and the implications for transformative learning in an online environment. We also inquired into the impact of the inquiry itself in noticing, and thereby acting on, meaning making shifts.
Today’s complex global environment calls for leaders to be agile decision makers, to engage in critical selfreflection, integrating reflection with action, and to partner with those who are different in significant ways. These capabilities and skills are the core qualities of transformative learning. This session weaves together research findings that explores transformative learning in the context of managing conflict, leveraging diversity and relational leadership. The interactive design of this session will demonstrate how three practitioners have designed structured processes to foster transformative learning.
EXPLORING ED SCHEIN’S LEGACY AND ENDURING INFLUENCE TO INFORM THE FUTURE
For over 70 years, Edgar H. Schein creatively and systematically shaped and advanced theory and practice in areas such as organization development and change, career dynamics, the cultural dynamics of complex systems, leadership, process consultation (PC), and the clinical inquiry/research paradigm. This reflective chapter is built around Schein’s foundational theme of the scholar–practitioner. As such, it explores the impact of his work on the scholar–practitioner as artist, PC and Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, the role of context and collaborative design dimensions (CDD) in relationships, psychological safety and organizational culture, humble inquiry, and the role that social scientists play in confronting global crises. Trajectories of broad areas for future explorations are discussed.
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