The Globe and Mail published an obituary today for my father in law, Peter Frost. The obit focuses on his work with emtional toxicity in organizations, work of which he was so proud.

He was the co-author and editor of dozens of books, but Toxic Emotions At Work was his first solo effort and I think it was the one of which he was the most proud. It followed on the heels of his first articles in the Harvard Business Review, starting in 1999. After a career of plowing away on the margins of organizational theory, he had finally cracked the mainstream, and his work was being read widely and used in organizations by people who were really suffering.

In the obit he is quoted this way: “I will continue to promote attention to the need for humane workplaces and for dignity and compassion toward all members of all organizations, wherever they are.” Even in his dying he practiced that dignity and compassion.

If there was one thing I learned from being with him while he was dying, it was the power of telling stories to heal, connect and hold one another. Stories were so central to his work, but until then I had never thought of storytelling as an act of compassion.

We miss him terribly at this cold time of year, but it’s nice to remember him warmly.

Received my invitation today for the 23rd International Symposium on Organizational Transformation (OT23). This year, friends Susan Kerr and Sheila Isakson among other are hosting the gathering in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. This year’s theme is “Welcoming Spirit”:

If you want to go, email Sheila at isakson@juno.com.

Ten items of linkage focusing on conversation, transformative leadership, presencing and creativity:

In Presence, one of the core pieces of clarifying purpose and moving to action is basing your work in deep seeing and sensing skills. I have been experimenting with various strategies to deepen seeing and find the core truths that form powerful purposes and visions. This is the first of a few posts on this topic. It recapitulates a story I posted last week to the OSLIST about working in Open Space with a client and friend of mine, and sometime commenter on this blog.

Last week Dave facilitated his first open space (he did great) and this gave us an opportunity to talk deeply about what it was like to manage from a position of “holding space.” We did a little exercise together once the groups were meeting. I asked him to look very hard at what he was seeing in the room and tell me what he saw. I wrote down the list as he noticed things: the groups are all engaged, there is lots of space in the room and only some of it is being used, there is activity at the edges and emptiness in the middle, people are using technology that is appropriate to the task and so on.

I asked him to step outside the room and tell me what he saw. From outside he said that it was hard to tell what was going on. When he got right inside, sitting in with a group, he was interested in how engaged they were and how there didn’t seem to be a world outside of the conversation.

I asked him how he felt and he talked about the struggle with control he was having as a facilitator, identifying where it hurt, where his buttons were being pushed. He noticed that his role was very different from the one he occupies at work where he is supposed to be in charge of the process. Most profoundly he noticed that, although
his organization back home was known as “an authority” the actual authority in the room lay with the participants.

At the end of this 30 minute exercise in seeing and sensing, I gave him the list of the 40 or so things he had noticed and wrote at the top “A vision for my organization in ten years.” He immediately recognized that what we were seeing in this small 3 hour OST event was exactly the kind of organization he wanted to being working towards. He recognized his role in the vision too, and realized that the emotions he was feeling holding space were those he was blocking by exerting a little more control at work. We talked about the list a little more and discovered some questions that we could ask his stakeholders back home, questions that would propel the system forward to an evolving, emergent Open Space.

I’m beginning to use this technique to coach sponsors and clients into noticing what is truly working in the system around them. By helping to guide their experience of really seeing an OST event, questions arise that propel thinking towards manifesting the feel and spirit of the event in the institutional setting later on.

I honour these women every year:

I remember that night like it was yesterday. I was in Peterborough, Ontario. It was snowing and Loreena McKennit was playing a concert. The news trickled in all afternoon and evening, and what we were hearing was sickening. When Loreena McKennit took the stage, she played solo surrounded by candles, and we kept vigil with her for a while and then later at the war memorial, because there was no other place in town to greive women who had been killed by men.

That was 15 years ago, and I’ll continue to remember that day as long as the women of our families, communities and nations continue to suffer violence at the hands of men.