Your truth may not be mine

Last week marked the third and last module of my OD practitioners programme and I can safely say it's been a huge joy and privilege to go on that learning journey with the people I did. The last module looked at the organisation and as before gave so many insights into what we experience every day in our work and personal life. As before the reflections are only just sinking in and I've made a long list of posts to write about. This blog came about from the first module and I've found that writing helps me to embed and explore what I'm trying to make sense of. It's been hugely useful for me.

I thought I'd start with an obvious one. On day one we got into a discussion of ourselves as part of a system, in this case the organisations that we work for. By simply being there, through your action or inaction, you affect the system and its outcomes. I saw this first hand in module 2 when we explored the impact of  individuals in a group - by saying nothing it can have a huge impact on others - both positive and negative.

Part of recognising and understanding the dynamics of a system is to recognise each person arrives with their own set of truths. Our previous experiences, bias, beliefs and relationships will all affect how we view a system and what's going on in it. This perception we bring affects how we try and influence an situation, and who we try and influence. It can dictate who we naturally side with and the stances we take. Not only does your perception of the past change the way you might act, but also your perception of future opportunity. If you believe the future is bright, you're more likely to be positive about the here and now, even if it's not all going your way. The opposite can be true also of course.

Given you can never hope to know all of what has gone before, all of the individual nuances of each person in a system, the question is how to know enough to be effective and to make interventions that have positive outcomes?

One of my key learnings is to take the time to talk to people and understand their truth. We are all different and how I see a situation is likely to be different to how you see it. Where you sit in a system affects your truth - at the bottom of the organisation when you have less control, actions can feel like they are being done to you. At the top it's hard to understand the impact of this, even if you came up through a system and know it well. It evolves constantly, times and truths change. By understanding what you see I can understand the impact of the system on you. The challenge of course is we never have enough time and so this seems like a luxury. But is it? Given every system is the product of its people, only people and their actions can change a system. As a leader you must therefore make the time to understand the different versions of the truth in your system and reconcile these sufficiently to appreciate which levers you can pull in order to progress. This is why all good leaders need time and space to reflect, and a management team to put into action the leadership decisions (you'd need to be superhuman to do both). The best leaders will also have taken the time to see a set of decisions through a variety of eyes, from the shop floor up, learning and course correcting as they go. Not an easy skill to acquire.