Power, Ritual and Wayfinding

Jul 16, 2019

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Hey there, conversation designers!

Today I'm sharing a conversation with Larissa Conte, who I connected with last year at the Responsive Conference in New York.

Larissa is a transformation designer, systems coach, and executive rites of passage guide through her business, Wayfinding. Larissa specializes in facilitating aliveness and alignment across organizational scales to cultivate power that serves.

In her talk, she did a physical demonstration with the conference host Robin Zander that really inspired me to connect with her and have her on the show. (Also, you can check out my conversation with Robin on asking better questions here).

She and Robin did a sort of "push hands" play to show how you can push back against a force coming at you, or let it flow past you while holding your center of gravity. It was a powerful physical metaphor for dynamics we have all experienced in our relationships and work and illustrates different choices we can take in these tense situations.

Larissa and I have a far-ranging conversation about power, structure and ritual in our work as consultants in team and organizational transformation. I want to draw your attention to a few interesting ideas:

Rituals can be designed. Teams run on rituals, day in and day out. Week by week, patterns are followed, usually without question. Re-designing those rituals takes time and consideration, but it's worth doing.

Facilitators can use ritual to create comfort for themselves and others. There are lots of patterns and exercises I use to build safety or energy for myself and others. You can create your own safe space and the more often you do, the easier it becomes.

Power can be taken, given or used. You can also choose your own response to power sent your way. I like to say you can fight the power or dance with the power.

Larissa makes an essential point though: there is power that is socially or culturally conferred or inferred based on stories we tell ourselves and each other. These stories are based on nothing more than what we see: skin color, gender or other body characteristics. Power that is given through these cultural stories is privilege. Power taken through these stories is oppression.

One of the most powerful things we can do as change-makers is to notice and question these stories.

Seeing is the first step. Larissa points out that if you can't feel the energy in the room, it's hard to do anything to shift it. If you don't see the effect these stories have on our day-to-day lives, it can be very hard to change them.

Wayfinding is seeing signs and finding our way on poorly marked paths. Wayfinding has it's roots in traditional cultures: The Polynesisans could use the stars, wind and waves to find their way across tremendous ocean distances. Similarly, Native Americans used signals of all sorts to find food, shelter and sacred spaces. In her Wayfinding work, Larissa is calling our attention to these old ways of seeing and asking us to use our own senses to see the signposts in our lives and work.

Inner sensing is valid. One thing I always try to convey in my facilitation masterclasses is that you are in the room and you experience what is in the room. It can be hard to know if we, ourselves, are anxious about our role as facilitators or if the room is experiencing anxiety. It's only by getting in touch with our inner sensations that we can ever tell the difference between our own experience and our experience of what's happening in the room. Larissa points out that there can be a stigma to that which is felt and that which exists "only" in our interior, beyond the reach of measuring tools.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Larissa Conte on the web:

http://www.wayfinding.io/

Larissa's talk at Responsive 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Lf2uOzr78

The Future of Work

https://www.oecd.org/employment/future-of-work/

The Teal Movement:

http://www.reinventingorganizationswiki.com/Teal_Organizations

for more on Self Management check out my episode with Sally Sally McCutchion on Holacracy and Self Management at all levels of organization

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/6/6/sally-mccutchion-on-holacracy-and-self-management-at-all-levels-of-organization

Othering and Belonging: