Identities!

Who/What do you associate/identify with? 

How many groups/entities s can we simultaneously associate/identify strongly with? 

Well, to answer this question we first need to draw a distinction between association and identification.  We can associate with lots of groups/entities but needn´t necessarily identify with, and advocate everyone of them.  

Does this mean that ´association´ is characterized by emotional detachment? I don´t think so!

I feel  both association and identification are value words- they have an element of emotional attachment involved, though in different degrees.

I identify with myself and my family. I am shaped by them!

I associate with some individuals/teams who I am with, or have come across-  I somehow get intertwined with them and their mark stays on with me But I can´t turn around and say ´I identify with them´.

Sometimes  I find an expectation that if you are associated with something, you must also identify with it and even advocate it.  I´ve seen such expectations manifest across institutions, colleges, teams, functions, and groups I have been a part of. Such an expectation doesn´t necessarily resonate with me.

We supposedly at any time can identify strongly with maximum 2 entities. That´s what probably defines some of anomalies/confusion at work place/in life e.g. – we identify with our team and function (but probably not with company), we identify with our family and country (but probably not with state/region we come from).

So at any point of time I can be associated with lots of people/groups, but I will probably identify strongly with 2-3 groups only!

Which identity do we seem to choose when there are conflicts amongst our different identities?

I´m not sure. Probably the answer is case specific.

How might a relationship characterized by identification sound/feel like?

I recently met an old buddy after 3 years.  We spent a couple of hours with each other, immersed and seeped in conversation. Time flew by and soon we bid each other adieu. Our conversation stands etched in my memory.  

And so do conversations we had the second last time we had me ( back in 2008) and first time we had met (back in 1999).

Sometimes it is not number of hours you spend with someone that determines identification;  rather  it´s quality of time spent.

-

Sourav

Focussed Group Discussions

The week gone by was a week full of FGD’s J.  I have already written a few posts about these FGD’s. Here’s another one! In this post I have penned some of my thoughts, observations, and reflections on the week gone by.

I love the word ‘we’. Someone stands up and says ‘We feel this way!’. I am left wondering ‘Who is the we out here? I saw no-one even nodding his/her head in acknowledgement of what you were saying?’. So finally I had to tell someone ‘I acknowledge the concern you have but would you please use the word ‘I’. Let others speak for themselves.’

How does one hijack a conversation from someone else - make someone else stop dead in his/her tracks and veer the conversation towards what one wants to discuss? In Group Discussions at college, it is common to hear ‘conversation hijackers’ like ‘Taking forward your point….. ‘, ‘I agree with you… ‘, ‘Let me flesh that out a bit more…’.  In the week gone by, I heard another version of a conversation hijacker.  ‘He is right. Let me illustrate through an example……..’ ; by the time the hijacker finished enumerating the example I was left wondering ‘Where was the linkage between the example given (which in some cases was not an example) and what the first person was trying to say?’

‘Let me tell you what happened to me once…’ statement is a conversation diverter. Well if I really had to know what happened to you once, I would ask you so.  We are attempting to look at what is our current state and how can that be improved. Events in the past that have no or little bearing on the present don’t help us improve the present.

‘Let me tell you what happened to someone …’ statements is another conversion diverter.   We are here in FGDs to explore your experiences. Let everyone take responsibility for sharing their experiences.

Whenever I talked about concepts to participants, I found them discussing issues.  But whenever I started asking them specifics, they could easily latch on to the same and discuss. Maybe when one works with an hourly focus, one’s mindset becomes very ‘event specific’ and ‘here and now’.

I managed to put together a HR toolkit for these discussions. I went in and said ‘We can discuss processes or we can discuss networks. Specifically, we can choose 1/2 processes and discuss how we can improve them; or we can choose 1/2 stakeholders and discuss how do we improve the ‘conversations’ between you and these significant stakeholders.’ The toolkit did provide a structure/framework for the discussion.

There was one particular conversation that has stood out in my mind.  During one of FGD’s, the group was insistent on understanding what my role would be when it came to process escalations.  Every few minutes the conversation would veer towards this point. After some time I realized that this was becoming a stumbling block – if I didn’t address this the discussion would just not move forward. I was not sure if I could make a commitment. I myself am learning the ropes - the way things ‘currently’ get done here. But I also realized the group was looking for answers. I told them ‘I don’t think I can make a commitment at this point of time on what my role in process escalations’ would be. But I am committing that I would come back to you with an answer. Would this commitment do?’. The group accepted the commitment and we could make progress on a number of other things we wanted to discuss.  I realized ‘Sometimes a group is not necessarily looking for an immediate resolution. What they are looking for is a commitment that a resolution would be reached.’

I was told, People Manager for the group should not be present in FGD’s. I am not sure why – somewhere you would need to get both the parties face to face and make them talk. So I did do the FGDs without the people manager being there in the room, but I also am aware that in some form or the other the people manager would need to be, and s/he would need to feel, involved in the process.

-

Sourav

Inter-Dependent Groups and Conflict

So here I was in a group of about 45 people. It was the 1^st day of a workshop that was to span across 2 days. The seating arrangement was different. We were to sit on mattresses placed on the floor in U shaped arrangement. There strangely seemed to be no PPT.

Most of us knew each other but still there was this anxiety and excitement on what lay ahead. I was aware that there was this group of some 10 participants who had participated in a planning workshop before. I had heard, through informal networks, good reviews of the planning workshop. I, and the other first time participants, were curious to know what had transpired there.

The facilitators found a unique way of transferring context from one group to the other. They 1^st called in the “experienced” group to sit in a circle, within the U, and share their experiences of their experience of the first workshop and Appreciate Inquiry discussion they would have had with their subordinates (a planned post workshop event). The first time participants sat in the outside U and could comment/ pitch in anytime we felt like.

After those in the inner circle were done sharing their experiences, we were called in to the inner circle to share what we had felt while we had heard the 1^st group sharing their stories.

At the end of these 2 sharing sessions, all of us were on almost common ground.

At the start of the 1^st day, there were 2 specific groups in the room. There was a need to bring them to common ground. The facilitators acknowledged this need and found a creative, experiential way to bring the groups together.

What might have happened had this initial exercise not being done? The presence of the 2 groups within the same room might have been a White Elephant- something no one speaks about but is present and influences all interactions within the room.

What are the other situations where different groups need to be brought to common ground? I can think of inter-dependent departments (e.g.- production and maintenance, sales and commercial, research and marketing). Even mergers and acquisitions would come under this realm. What seems to go wrong in these situations? Why do we frequently see friction and heartburn in these integrations/inter-dependent relationships? What can be done about them?

I think the answer lies in ‘speed’ and ‘norms’ of the different teams.

Different teams have different ‘speeds/flows’ in which they work. A simple manifestation of this would be the turnaround time for any query which flows into the team-some teams may respond in 24 hours; others may take 48 hours. Another manifestation would be what is meant by a project timeline- an IT team might be used to working on year long projects while a sales team would talk in terms of quarters.

Different teams also have different ‘norms’ – these would be in terms of decision making, communication, rituals, etc. Sales might prefer things to be done over phone, while accounts might need everything written down and documented.

Many a times these differences in ‘speed’ and ‘norms’ are not acknowledged leading to continuous and, at times, caustic friction between inter-dependent teams. Acknowledging these differences and making the teams take conscious steps towards reaching common ground on ‘speed’ and ‘norms’ would be the first step in ensuring effective collaboration.

-

Sourav