This is a short review of the first meeting of the Organizational Change Practitioners Group of LinkedIn. Over the past years this group has been growing to more than 22.000 members, so it was time for us to meet up. The theme of this meeting was ‘Change Management best practices in projects’.

Earlier I announced that we would be starting in 2012 with local informal meetings where we share experiences and lessons learned with short presentations – NOT commercial pitches. So this was it. In the below video you can see how it all went.

What I learned from this session is that Organizational Change Practitioners is a community worth meeting. We all value conversation and we all value each other’s opinion. I will be using this blogpost to share any materials, links and learnings that sprung up from this meeting. So if you would have any additions to make, do not hesitate to send them to me or to directly share them in the comments.

1. Mega conversations: Opening Spaces that give power to the people (Jeffer London)

In this session, Jeffer made us experience the most valuable tool of a change manager: words and conversations. In a few minutes the group could have a taste of the facilitation he brings about for very large groups. Did you make any pictures that are worth including here? I’d be happy to post them here.

2. The age of multi: Change Management has left traditional company borders (Bert Van Bergen)

Bert was kind enough to share his presentation on Slideshare. Let’s hope his luggage will finally make it back home from Peru!

3. Making Change Work – What Managers, Executives and Staff Tell us that Really Matters (Joanne Celens)

In her presentation Joanne shared the findings of a recent Synthetron survey. At first sight the findings are not so shocking for Organizational Change Practitioners. It gets interesting when we look at the weight that is given to certain findings and the phases of a project when they are important.

The research paper can be downloaded on Synthetron’s website.

4. 101 Ideas (Katia Van Belle)

Without making any arrangements upfront, Katia did a similar live survey in the room we were in. Based on the question ‘what is the one idea you came across that really sticks?’ we got to vote and prioritize the most popular lessons we have learned from this evening. The lessons are categorized on a scale from 0 to 21 points and the idea was to share them with all other Organizational Change Practitioners who could not be there. Here they are:

• 21 pt – people are change subjects (creating change), not change objects (undergoing change)
• 18 pt – all change initiatives should start with an authentic story that gives future concrete vision
  18 pt – finally the end of the war language of change. Scientific proof has been presented: people can’t be called “targets” anymore. Halleluia!
  18 pt – conversation = fuel
• 15 pt – change is a combination of hearts, heads and hands
  15 pt – head hart hand. We need to influence the three H’s in balance and monitor them.
  15 pt – change needs to take into account heart, head and hands
• 13 pt – hierarchy of communication: AHA  why > how > what
  13 pt – who is afraid of the big bad change?
• 12 pt – people are subjects of change. They make the change possible, not objects of change
  12 pt – don’t break down change in 1000 mini-projects: it’s too much hand and not enough hearts and heads!
• 11 pt – people are not change objects but they are change subjects
  11 pt – don’t try to change the people. People are the change…
• 10 pt – creating shared vision to deliver authenticity and encourage involvement
• 9 pt – experience is not enough – it must be examined and evaluated
  9 pt – motivate people to WANT to change. LET them change. MAKE them change.
• 8 pt – change is not a gun to the head! It’s not about convincing, it’s about showing added value
  7 pt – key for change: give us tools, give us budget
  7 pt – collaborative strategizing! successfully implementing a strategy requires substantial input from those expected to implement the change
• 6 pt – the evolution of technology may have brought change in transformation and marketing consulting, but bottom-line remains: set them to do what you want or change what you want.
• 5 pt – real life change success starts with a dialogue to get things right and clear
  5 pt – ensuring anonymous conversations to create new peer groups to discuss change
• 4 pt – people are not resistant to change, only to bad change
  4 pt – treat employees with the respect you want them to show your company
  4 pt – change management is a verb
• 3 pt – ask for forgiveness after, rather than permission before -> speed in the mission
  3 pt – change is evolution, it’s not a barrier.
• 2 pt – what is the function of a change manager? I feel that it’s more a market research

Does this list spark any new idea you would like to add? Please let us know in the comments.

Now What?

Like me, you may be wondering what the next step will be. We have made no arrangements for a next meeting, but the feeling was so positive that I will be organizing another one in the coming months. My silent hope is that in the mean time, somewhere else in the world an Organizational Change Practitioner will have done the same.

Keeping You In The Loop

Before starting the seventh part of this series, have a look at the summary of the 6 previous articles below:

Part 1: The situation we are in determines the roles we play and the rules we follow; and we reciprocate every request with a response. We also saw that each situation determines the face-value that we can claim for ourselves. The face-value comes with the situation and it is scripted in our roles.

Part 2: The way human interaction actually works is through the constant exchange of social currency (love, attention, acknowledgement, etc). In the end, human interaction can easily be summarized as a series of “+1″ and “-1″ in order to equilibrate the face-values that have been claimed. We build and deepen relationships through cycles of testing and response. Building a relationship can be compared to making deposits of empathy (the exchange of “+1″) on the emotional bank account of trust.

Part 3: In the same way as our reciprocity-reflex forces us to equilibrate the “+1″ and the “-1″ statuses of a situation, we have another reflex: the chameleon-like tendency to resonate with the influences of a situation.

Part 4: The PDI (Power Distance Index) of the culture you are from determines what the “+1″ and the “-1″ exactly are worth to you. It turns out that formality provides a system of calibration when cultural differences are too big. You can think of formality as the use of a single currency (like the Dollar or the Euro) in order to make the transaction safer between parties from different cultures.

Part 5: In digital communications the same rules and laws of gravity apply, but we lack non-verbal cues of feedback. Therefore the best strategy is to rely on “connection” instead of “control” in order to equilibrate relationships.

Part 6: With the help of Transactional Analysis we can separate transactions that increase the tension in a relationship (and thus decrease the level of trust) from those that equilibrate it (the adult response). A second learning from Transactional Analysis is that ‘games people play’ are a powerful dynamics causing people to behave very chameleon-like in certain situations.

The Helping Relationship

Since the beginning of the series I have been referring to Edgar Schein’s book Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help. By now you will have noted that I consider this book an absolute must-read for any organizational change practitioner. Consider the following thought every time you are in a meeting with a customer:

Emotionally and socially, when you are asking for help you are putting yourself “one down”. It is a temporary loss of status and self-esteem not to know what to do next or to be unable to do it. It is a loss of independence to have someone else advise you, heal you, minister you, help you up, support you, even serve you.

Chances are that you will start to develop a different opinion on what resistance is. According to Shein, every helping relationship is in a state of imbalance. The person being helped is “one down” and therefore vulnerable. The helper is “one up” and therefore powerful. Much of what goes wrong in the helping process is the failure to acknowledge this initial imbalance and deal with it:

The reason the helping relationship has to be built rather than just being assumed is that , although the imbalance is clear, the social economics of how to fix it are not.

It is when a relationship or team hits a bump, we need a conversation about the conversation. But most of the times we short-cut to the content. In the end we wonder what on earth went wrong… The answer:  we failed to focus on the relationship. Worse: we did not make use of our personal toolkit.

Becoming Aware of Your Personal Toolkit

Taking care of the relationship is too simple to be true, because the tools at your disposal are as straightforward as a Swiss Armyknife. The knife below displays the tools that are available to all of us – all the time. I repeat: ALL-OF-US and ALL-THE-TIME. The knife is the ultimate relationship equilibration tool.

Asking for help: Peter Drucker once said:

The leader of the past may have been a person who knows how to tell, but the leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.

Asking for help opens doors with honesty and is difficult to resist. It allows your counterpart to have a stake in the solution – to ‘win’ – while you are the cause for this situation to occur.

Listening – or rather, the act of acknowledging: listening is a two-way act, as it involves listening AND acknowledging what you have understood. You need to demonstrate that you are totally engaged. Acknowledging is the part that makes people feel understood and connected.

Thanking: Gratitude is a skill we can never display too often. And yet for most people it seems like they need to wait for the perfect moment … but it never comes. It is always the right time to say ‘thank you’. Gratitude is not a limited resource and an overdose never harms.

Apologizing: Marshall Goldsmith calls this ‘the magic move‘, because an apology is a recognition that mistakes have been made and it contains an intention to change for the better. But most of all, an apology is an emotional contact with the people you care about. It is a disclosure which lets you move forward.

You will note that these four ways have one thing in common: they require you to be humble and to position yourself ‘one down’ with regards to the person you are talking to. As Goldsmith concludes:

When you declare your dependence on others, they usually agree to help.

It’s a very awkward feeling when you start to use this toolbox for the first time, because the one downness makes you more vulnerable. You are deliberately giving away control over the situation. However, by doing so it is clear that you are managing the balance and the reciprocation of the relationship.

In the end, there is nothing more powerful than that. And nothing is more difficult than that, because it requires us to let go of something that is so deeply wired into our reptile brains, i.e.: the need to be in control of a situation.

Did you know that there is a specific field of psychology that specializes in what we have previously called ‘social theatre’ and ‘social economics’? This field is called Transactional Analysis (TA).

Flashback: What We Learned So Far

One of the models of TA describes very well what happens when we throw our emotions into the power-play of status and face-value. This is the sixth article on Unraveling Human Interaction, therefore a small flashback of what we observed so far:

1. The situation we are in determines the roles we play and the rules we follow; and we reciprocate every request with a response.

2. We also saw that each situation determines the face-value that we can claim for ourselves. The face-value comes with the situation and it is scripted in our roles.

3. The way human interaction actually works is through the constant exchange of social currency (love, attention, acknowledgement, etc).

4. In the end, human interaction can easily be summarized as a series of “+1″ and “-1″ in order to equilibrate the face-values that have been claimed.

5. We build and deepen relationships through cycles of testing and response. Building a relationship can be compared to making deposits of empathy (the exchange of “+1″) on the emotional bank account of trust.

6. In the same way as our reciprocity-reflex forces us to equilibrate the “+1″ and the “-1″ statuses of a situation, we have another reflex: the chameleon-like tendency to resonate with the influences of a situation.

7. The PDI (Power Distance Index) of the culture you are from determines what the “+1″ and the “-1″ exactly are worth to you. It turns out that formality provides a system of calibration when cultural differences are too big. You can think of formality as the use of a single currency (like the Dollar or the Euro) in order to make the transaction safer between parties from different cultures.

8. In digital communications the same rules and laws of gravity apply, but we lack non-verbal cues of feedback. Therefore the best strategy is to rely on “connection” instead of “control” in order to equilibrate relationships.

The Problem With Emotions

The problem with emotions is not their intensity, but the fact that they always come in disguise. You will almost never hear people say that they are scared, angry, or sad because of a certain situation.

In 99% of the cases people (and yes – this includes me and you) communicate their emotions through “playing games.” The classic result is an emotional competition between people which – regardless of who is the winner –represents a loss for the relationship. Transactional Analysis expert Steven Karpman created a simple decoder for games like these: it is called the Drama Triangle.

Basically, there are three roles on the drama-triangle and they all have the same purpose: to create drama and to stay miserable. For example: when I behave helpless because of the train-delays today, this may trigger you to respond with resentment (‘You could have taken the car to get here’).  This is how a victim creates a persecutor. Without any doubt this interaction will also create a rescuer, i.e.: a person taking a stand for me either by offering help or by justifying your situation. The interaction between a victim and a persecutor has made it very tempting for a third person to step into the role of a rescuer.

How The Roles Play Out

This is a very brief summary of how the roles play out:

1. Persecutor (prefers Anger)

I am OK – You are not OK (REVENGE)

• Only sees errors, is critical, often in a bad mood.
• Often feels incapable and is not self-confident.
• Leadership through threats, orders; disallows flexibility.
• Can be loud but also calm.
• A persecutor does not accept ‘no’ for an answer.

2. Rescuer (prefers Fear)

I am OK – You are not OK (RESCUE)

• Always goes that extra mile to ‘help’ others.
• Is always very busy, tired, sometimes lonely, does not have 5 minutes to himself.
• Can be loud but also a silent martyr.
• Deals with feelings of guilt or shame in a very subtle manner.
• Often a hand of steel in a velvet glove.
• Helps unasked.
• A rescuer does not accept ‘no’ for an answer

3. Victim (prefers Sadness)

I am not OK – You are OK (REGRET)

• Doesn’t answer, doesn’t help, never holds a point of view.
• I don’t know / I can’t / it’s all the same to me.
• A master at using feelings of guilt.
• ‘Super-sensitive’.
• Pretends to be incompetent, but is not.
• Irresponsible regarding details that can be important to others.
• I give up! This provides me with the ultimate power.
• A victim does not accept ‘no’ for an answer.

As the drama plays out, people may suddenly switch roles, or change tactics, and others will often switch unconsciously to match this. In transactional analysis, the drama triangle is recognized in situations or ‘games’ such as:

• Why Don’t You;
• Yes But;
• If It Weren’t For You;
• Why does this Always Happen to Me?;
• See What You Made Me Do;
• You Got Me Into This;
• Look How Hard I’ve Tried; and:
• I’m Only Trying to Help You.

The purpose for each ‘player’ is to get their unspoken – and often: unconscious – needs met in a justified way, without having to acknowledge the real situation. As such, each player justifies their own position, rather than acting in a responsible way.

Getting Somewhere: A Definition of Maturity

The drama-triangle is one of the biggest dynamics causing people to behave very chameleon-like in certain situations. The waves of emotion can be so strong that one needs to be extremely strong to resist falling into one of these roles.

And that is unhealthy, because here is the thing: when we have a closer look at how drama plays out we see that drama is created and sustained though a constant exchange of ANTI-reciprocal “+1″ and “-1″! The persecutor asking “Why are you late again?” will be throwing out a status difference of one-upmanship, thereby lowering the other person in the relationship (like a parent to a child). This makes it very easy for the other person to just confirm that position in a passive-agressive way with absolute silence (childish and victim-like). The gap of status differences has widened even more with that response.

What we see here is that status differences resemble the difference between parents and children. Transactional Analysis makes it clear that there is a way out of this drama. They call it  the ‘adult’ position. In terms of social theatre and social economics this is BAD NEWS, because the adult position will equilibrate situations by:

• Redefining the roles from drama-roles to adult positions;
• Reciprocate with the correct – instead of negative – currency

So there you go: the most boring theatre you have ever seen. No fireworks anymore and no juicy details. The GOOD NEWS? You can still watch drama on TV – no need to play it out in your own relationships once you know how to decode the dynamics of it.

Finally – as a good old disclaimer – I add the warning that Daryl Conner once gave me: “Understanding human behavior does not make you immune to it.”

In their book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust Chris Brogan and Julien Smith hand out practical advice for social media etiquette. They make it all very tangible through the analogy of a cocktail party.

In this fifth article on human interaction we will be reviewing insights we gathered so far and put them through the digital test. The book of Brogan & Smith turns out to be a great source for this test. [Disclaimer: this article requires that you have read the previous 4 articles]

Social Theatre

When using the metaphor of social theatre, we discovered that the situation determines the roles we play and the rules we follow. This tends to be true in the digital world as well. Each digital platform determines the roles we play and the tone-of voice we use. For example when you are the author of a blog article versus the reader or commenter. Another example is your employment status: who are you representing when you are interacting on Linkedin versus your interactions on Facebook or Twitter?

Your avatar (profile picture) and your tagline are important elements to clarify the role you are playing in these types of situations. Every social media platform seems to be a different stage where we can play a different role.

Social Economics

Social economics is about the reciprocity of social interaction: the give-and-take that constantly equilibrates everything in a relationship. In online interaction we completely lack the non-verbal cues that are used to acknowledge or respond to a request (for example: nodding in agreement). However, this doesn’t mean that there is no need for acknowledgement by means of a ‘thank you’ or simply responding to an email. Brogan & Smith state in this respect that you would equally respond to someone asking you a question at a cocktail party.

Not responding to an email that contains a question is like staring with a blank face when someone asks you something at that cocktail party. A request creates the expectation of a response or an excuse – this is no different in digital communication. Reciprocation means that we exchange a social currency of +1 and -1 in order to equilibrate the face value that is claimed.

Conflicts of Context

So what happens when contexts mix? For offline people this is something relatively new that happens very often in online contexts: the blurring of boundaries between different contexts. For example: in real life it may be very easy to separate professional relationships from personal and family bonds, simply because they happen in a different time and place.

However on online platforms it requires a serious balancing act if you want to make sure that none of the contexts interfere. Applications like Facebook and Google+ help their users to create categories or ‘circles’. You may even have developed a rigid policy for yourself in order to balance out the role and face-value you claim on a certain platform.

But when you try to categorize people you will always end up with a handful of persons who belong to all of the categories and to none at the same time. Strange enough, for this handful of people we never experience a problem of face-value in any of the contexts we interact with them. That is because we are human and authentic in their presence. Connecting contexts does not create an inflation or devaluation of face-value in these relationships.

Conflicts of Generation?

What do we learn when generations mix? The difficulties we encounter with blurring boundaries between different contexts are caused by the differences in face-value we claim in one context versus another. A water-tight separation between these  contexts makes us feel more comfortable.

On the other hand, when contexts mix, it may cause a devaluation or an inflation of our face value. This increases uncertainty and whenever the uncertainty in a relationship goes up the level of trust goes down. In face-to-face human interaction we can fall back on formality or uniform language as it is the case for aviation communication. What is granted and claimed gets calibrated through formality.

However, on the web we see that the opposite is true – or so it seems… At first sight there seems to be less formality in digital conversations because in succesful conversations another dynamic applies: that of public disclosure and honest interaction.

The Emotional Bank Account of Trust

We tend to look for indicators of trust in every human interaction and we build relationships through cycles of testing and response. The same is true for online conversations. In their book Brogan & Smith report that we tend to use the following signals of trust for bloggers online:

• design of a site,
• longevity (for how long am I following this blogger?),
• volume of productivity  (How long has someone been around?),
• number and quality of comments,
• number and quality of links,
• the domain name and the background of a blogger.

Still, these are only formal criteria on which we base ourselves in order to estimate the online deference we grant to a person and subsequently the face-value and role we claim for ourselves.  Therefore they also refer to the “trust equation” of David Meister:

T = C + R + I / S
(where T = Trust, C = Credibility, R = Reliability, I = Intimacy, S = Self-orientation)

It turns out that self-orientation (giving yourself a “+1″) works out very negatively on the web. It’s a sign of uncertainty.

Digital Formality

On the web formality gets replaced with etiquette. Let’s be honest here: in the digital world there may be no procedural guide or dictionary telling you how to behave, but nothing is more regulated than digital conversations.  Brogan & Smith underscore the use of etiquette at the digital level is because all of the interactions on social media are human by definition.

They recommend lurking as a starting strategy, instead of rushing in and stumbling over all the social norms. One thing is true: even though they are invisible, the dynamics of politeness and honesty are far more important in the binary world than in the real world.

Honesty As the Best Strategy

If all of the above is true, then what is the best way to approach digital communication? I would suggest to place all bets on honesty. Honesty on the web characterizes maturity in a relationship: maturity in this sense would mean that one is relaxed with the mixing of contexts because one can rely on human and authentic interaction to equilibrate any level of inflation or devaluation that a mixing of contexts may cause.

One relies on connection instead of control in order to equilibrate relationships. By the way, this is why I am convinced that the categorizing of people in different groups or circles will only be a temporary solution. Its use will be restricted to the categorizing of mailing lists etc. for communication purposes in the long run. Not for separation purposes.

The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success Malcolm Gladwell included a chapter on ‘The Ethnic theory of Plane Crashes’. Gladwell dives deep into the investigations of plane crashes of Korean Air, Avianca and Florida Air and zeroes in on the cockpit transcripts.  Some time ago I had the chance to interview him on the importance of culture and communication inside cockpits.

Gladwell analysed the dialogues between the crew and traffic controllers and found that when we ignore culture, airplanes crash.

Deference and Demeanor

Let’s have a closer look at the dynamics of human interaction between a captain a first officer in a cockpit. Their relationship will follow the laws of deference and demeanor. Deference and demeanor are widespread sociological theories, developed by Erving Goffman in his essay ‘The Nature of Deference and Demeanor’. He defines demeanor as the way a person acts, and deference as the respect and/or reaction another person has to that behavior. In other words: deference and demeanor determine the face value that should be acknowledged in a certain situation.

Knowing that each situation determines the face-value that we can claim for ourselves, the relationship between a captain and a first officer should not contain any ambiguity, right? Yet, once they are up in the air the situation may change in such a way that they are confused about what they should acknowledge or claim.

Mitigated Speech

In their 1999 study Cultural Diversity and Crew Communication Fischer and Orasanu tried to identify effective communication strategies for calling attention to problems and getting action on them from other crew members who differ in rank, culture, and gender. One of the methods they used was to measure how they would correct different pilot errors in a particular situation. Both, pilots and first officers were given 6 classes of requests to choose from:

• Commands: “Turn 30° right”.
• Crew Obligation Statements: “I think we need to deviate right about now”.
• Crew Suggestions: “Let’s go around the weather”.
• Queries: “Which direction would you like to deviate?”
• Preferences: “I think it would be wise to turn left or right”.
• Hints: “That return at 25 miles looks mean”.

In Outliers, Gladwell refers to these categories as the 6 degrees of mitigation with which we make suggestions to authority. Mitigated speech is a linguistic term describing deferential or indirect speech inherent in communication between individuals of perceived High Power Distance. Gladwell describes the term as:

Any attempt to downplay or sugarcoat the meaning of what is being said.

Fischer and Orasanu discovered that lower-ranking crew members are frequently unsuccessful in getting the attention of a higher status crew member or in getting senior crew members to change their decisions or actions in safety-critical situations. It’s no surprise that captains generally preferred commands while first officers predominantly used hints.

Their study underscores how difficult it is to overcome ingrained norms for interacting with superiors and subordinates.

PDI – Power Distance Index

To make things worse, the influence of national culture reinforces the dynamics of deference and demeanor in aviation communication. In this respect Gladwell refers to Geert Hofstede who built his cultural dimensions theory between 1967 and 1973. Hofstede gathered and analyzed extensive data on the world’s values and cultures and mapped them on six dimensions:

• Power (equality versus inequality),
• Collectivism (versus individualism),
• Uncertainty avoidance (versus tolerance),
• Masculinity (versus femininity),
• Temporal orientation, and
• Indulgence (versus restraint).

The first dimension, Power Distance Index (PDI) is an important one for captains, first officers and traffic controllers. PDI measures the extent to which the less powerful members of an organization accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. Countries with a low PDI prefer small power distance relationships and in high power distance countries less powerful people accept power relations that are autocratic and paternalistic.

It turns out that every attempt to reduce power-distance in the cockpit is highly influenced by the power-distance that is dictated by our national culture. The investigation of three particular transcripts of air plane crashes illustrate the devastating influence of national culture.

Avianca Flight 052

On January 25, 1990, an Avianca Boeing 707 crashed in Cove Neck, New York, as a result of fuel exhaustion. Avianca Flight 52, a B-707, was bound from Medellin, Colombia to New York, JFK. The flight experienced three extended holding patterns due to bad weather up the Atlantic coast and at JFK. The fuel state was becoming critical by the end of the third hold. The intracockpit conversations indicate a total breakdown in communications by the flight crew in its attempts to relay the situation to ATC (Air Trafic Control).

The captain, the first officer and the traffic controllers were perfectly trained and there was no mechanical failure. However, the Colombian co-pilot is using his own cultural language, i.e. speaking as a subordinate would to a superior. The air traffic controllers are not high PDI Colombian but low PDI New Yorkers. They don’t see any hierarchical gap between the pilots and themselves. When there is no single currency of communication to calibrate the two cultures, disasters can happen.

To a New York traffic controller deferential speech doesn’t mean that the pilot is being appropriately deferential to a superior; it means that the pilot doesn’t have a problem. Gladwell notes:

Our ability to succeed at what we do is powerfully bound up in where we are from. And being a good pilot and coming from a high power-distance culture is a difficult mix.

It turns out that ignoring the cultural differences got eight of the nine crew members and 65 of the 149 passengers on board killed.

Air Florida Flight 90

On January 13, 1982, the Boeing 737-200 flying Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River, killing all but four passengers and one flight attendant. This crash seems to be the result of ineffective mitigated speech of the first officer.

On multiple occasions he tries to hint, prefer, query and suggest to de-ice the wings of the airplane. All to no avail. The captain is not responding to his requests and the first officer is at the limits of appropriate deference for the given situation. The plane crashes at take-off.

Korean Air Flight 801

Korean Air Flight 801 crashed on August 6, 1997, on approach to Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport, Guam (a United States insular area). The aircraft crashed on Nimitz Hill in Asan, Guam while on approach to the airport.

This particular crash illustrates the negative reinforcement of a high PDI culture on cockpit communication. We can only understand what has been going on in that cockpit if we take into account the characteristics of this high PDI culture. Apparently our Western communication has a transmitter orientation, i.e.: it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate the sense of his message unambiguously. If there is confusion it is considered the fault of the speaker.

However the Korean language – like most Asian languages – is receiver-oriented. It is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said. For example, Korean language has six degrees of formal address:

• formal deference,
• informal deference,
• blunt,
• familiar,
• intimate, and
• plain

This leads to very subtle communication and the co-pilots being at the limits of formal deference for the given situation. The high PDI culture of Korea has a multiplication effect compared to the Air Florida cockpit.

Language Is The Key

To solve this problem, Korean Air brought in David Greenberg, a retired Delta Air Lines vice president, to run its operations. Greenberg’s first rule was that English should be the language of aviation. Greenberg started with the airline’s flight crews. He introduced rigorous new training and testing standards, as well as some ”cockpit culture” changes for Korean Air’s 1,700 pilots. On the ground, he began basing promotions and transfers in the company’s ranks on merit rather than connections and friendships.

Declaring English as the formal cockpit language – even among Korean pilots who are sitting side by side – gave the pilots an alternate identity. That way the pilots could escape the roles that were dictated by the heavy weight of their country’s cultural legacy. Gladwell notes:

They needed an opportunity to step outside those roles when they sat in cockpit; and language was the key to that transformation.

In English they would be free of the six gradients of Korean language. This transformed their relationship to their work.

The Lesson for Us?

Galdwell’s study made it clear that deference, demeanor and culture should be addressed in order to make planes safer. But what about less life threatening situations like running a multi-billion project or running a multinational company? The way we address culture is always though stupid surveys and never though effective communication strategies. We’ve got work to do. I guess this is why I am diving to deep into the dynamics of human interaction.

The previous two articles in this series focused on the theatrical and transactional aspects of human interaction. The situation we are in determines the roles we play and the rules we follow; and we reciprocate every request with a response. We also saw that each situation determines the face-value that we can claim for ourselves. The face-value comes with the situation and it is scripted in our roles.

The way human interaction actually works is through the constant exchange of social currency (love, attention, acknowledgement, etc). In the end, human interaction can easily be summarized as a series of “+1″ and “-1″ in order to equilibrate the face-values that have been claimed.

Culture Eats Situation For Breakfast

But that’s not the whole story. It’s time to look at culture and its influence on the dynamics of human interaction. With culture I refer to the tendencies, assumptions and reflexes that are handed down to us by the community we grew up in. The best way to describe the influence of culture is through the words of the writer René Daumal, when he coins the term ‘Chameleon Law’, which he describes as the inner resonance to influences nearest at hand (“la résonance aux plus proches affimations” if you happen to speak French). In an earlier article I have zoomed in on what this means in terms of resistance. In the same way as our reciprocity-reflex forces us to equilibrate the “+1″ and the “-1″ statusses of a situation, we have another reflex: the chameleon-like tendency to resonate with the non-tangible (but nevertheless ‘real’) influences of a situation. The below image summarizes that mechanism:

This time I’d like to look at the same topic from a slightly different angle. The influence of culture is extremely difficult to describe in words. Note for example the difficulties you encounter when trying to explain the rationale behind a seemingly ‘irrational’ decision in hindsight. I usually can’t get any further than saying “You can’t understand unless you were there when we took the decision”.

Culture is the magnetic field that creates resonance and dissonance in a certain situation. For example: in most American companies it is common to refer to colleagues and peers by their first name. In most German companies – so I’m told -  you can only do so if the person higher in rank invites you to. This is just a simple example of a similar situation that nevertheless creates different expectations towards the roles and rules. What this means is that the situation does determine the roles we play and the rules we follow, but that we can never predict how the roles will play out until we have an understanding of the culture.

Imagine – in this simple example – what would happen when an American subordinate would communicate with his German superior. Both have the same understanding of the roles they play and the rules that apply. Yet, both will be surprised by the different interpretation of the other party. The next thing you know is that none of them wants to do harm to the face-value of the other person. But they are confused on what they should acknowledge or claim. In mechanical terms: their scales are not calibrated. They need a system of calibration to make the interaction safe again: a common currency they can rely on.

The Importance of Formality

It turns out that formality provides that system of calibration – or that common currency if you will. Here is the thing we are up against: when the value we have claimed for ourselves has not been acknowledged, we feel offended. To avoid this from happening we have to enter new relationships cautiously and this is even more so in intercultural relationships. According to Edgar Schein, the safest approach is often the most formal. Hence the need for extreme formality in international diplomacy. Formality protects both parties from being affronted.

You can think of formality as the use of a single currency (like the Dollar or the Euro) in order to make the transaction safer between parties from different cultures.

In this post I want to have a closer look at the exchange of requests and responses. What exactly is being exchanged in order to maintain or regain the balance? And what is it exactly that needs to be balanced?

Face Value

Let’s start with the second question: what is that thing that we are so desperately balancing all the time? It is called face-value. Face-value is the status that we claim to uphold for ourselves in a given situation. If we are in a hospital where I am a doctor and you are the patient, I can claim a certain status that is higher than yours. But you may be a lawyer and the next day we may be in court where you are defending my case. In that particular situation you can claim a higher status.

In both of the above situations the status differences are clear and both of us will have no problem granting one another the face-value we deserve. The value comes with the situation and it is scripted in our roles. And now over to the interesting part: how this value is exchanged – because the process of reciprocation requires that we confirm the face-value that is being claimed.

Social Transactions

When we look a little closer, we can see that virtually all human interactions can be decoded into +1 and -1, i.e. an increase or a decrease in status. When I ask for help I put myself on a “-1″ level and thereby create a tension that needs to be solved through a transaction of social currency. This can either be an answer or an acknowledgement that puts the situation back into balance.

Another option could be that the other person embarrasses me by laughing at my question. This puts me in a “-2″ position and the tension increases. What was given and received is out of balance. Edgar Schein notes in this respect:

When social exchanges don’t work properly because the two people involved define the situation differently the result is anxiety, tension, anger, discomfort, embarrassment, shame and/or guilt. When this happens, the resolution of this tension can only be solved when one of the parties has discovered the inequity and has rebalanced the situation with an explanation, an apology or a belated thank-you.

In real life – and on television – there is a word for this imbalance. It’s called drama, and it makes the world go round. Drama is what makes movies win Oscars, what keeps us awake at night, and it is also why humans are the only animals who kill their own kind.  The Greeks knew that when they invented theatre: the tension that builds up through the status differences triggers an urge in all human beings to restore the balance.

Social Currency

Now let’s have a closer look at the social currency that is exchanged in order to confirm the face-value that is claimed by someone in a given situation. It is: love, attention, praise, acceptance, acknowledgement and help. Exchanging these currencies when they are claimed puts the situation back into equilibrium because the face-value that is claimed is being paid for.

Looking back at the example of the other person who embarrasses me by laughing at my question, it is clear that this person is pulling me ‘one-down’ by withdrawing instead of granting me the value / justification that I claim with my question. Notice how this works in ordinary conversation:

• if you do not pay attention;
• if you start a side conversation;
• if you look over the person’s shoulder at someone else who is more interesting to you at that moment;
• if you yawn;
• if you interrupt with ‘I already knew that’;
• if you use a disinterested tone of voice

These are all behaviors that disrupt the building of a relationship. This brings us to a next topic: trust and the emotional bank account.

The Emotional Bank Account

Trusting another person means that no matter what we choose to reveal about our thoughts, feelings or intentions, the other person will not belittle us, make us look bad or take advantage of what we said in confidence. According to Edgar Schein this happens as follows:

We build and deepen relationships through cycles of testing and response.

Stephen Covey uses the metaphor of a financial bank account into which you can make deposits and take withdrawals. The currency of this bank account is social currency, so its statements tell us something about the relationship you have with your friends, family, associates, customers, etc. The most important of all deposits into the emotional bank account is empathy. Covey defines empathy as: listening to another person within his or her frame of reference. If you pay attention and show your interest you are building the relationship and making deposits on that account.

So now we know that face-value is important and that if it is not granted in a situation the relationship suffers. We also have a way to think about the value of the relationship in terms of an emotional bank account. The issue at hand is trust and it is related to how well we are measuring and confirming the face-value in a given situation.

“How much do you love me?’ and “Who’s in charge?” ….these two questions of LOVE and CONTROL undo us ALL, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering. (Elisabeth Gilbert)

In his recent book Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help Edgar Schein demonstrates that we learn early in life about two fundamental cultural principles which he summarizes as Social Economics and Social Theatre. The purpose of this article is to dissect the different building blocks of human interaction and both of Schein’s principles turn out to be a perfect starting point for that.

The normal process of daily life is a series of situations that tell us what roles we should play and what to expect of others – this is the theatre part. Next to that, people want to behave according to the status of the participants and the situation – this is where economics comes in, because status differences are paid for with a social currency.

Social Theatre

All relationships are based on scripted roles that we learn to play early in life. We must play our roles appropriately and they must fit the situation we are in.

The degree to which the metaphor of theatre dominates our thinking can be illustrated by the language we use to describe social interactions:

• playing your part of the conversation;
• feeding someone a line;
• ask what someone’s role is;
• presenting a scenario;
• counting on someone to perform;
• claiming we have heard that song before;
• getting the show on the road;
• stealing the show;
• getting your act together;
• acting your age;
• setting the scene for a meeting;
• asking what is going on backstage;
• etc.

The normal process of living can be seen as playing out a set of scenes in which we act out appropriate behavior. According to Schein:

In daily life we have learned thousands of roles and scripts so that we can go smoothly through the process of identifying the various situations that we encounter or create and manage the different relationships in which a typical day will plunge us.

If I signal that I have something important to tell you, this defines situation, the roles and the interaction. You automatically take an attentive attitude.

Social Economics

Schein also notes that it is funny to see how much of the social economics of relationships is embedded in the daily language we use when we refer to human interaction. For example:

• Paying attention
• Paying respect
• Pay a compliment
• Investing in relationships
• Building social capital
• Sell your point of view
• Buy good-will
• Not buying an unlikely story
• Owe the courtesy of a reply
• Lend an ear
• Borrow  strength

It seems like all communication between two parties is a reciprocal process that must be fair and equitable. We say “thank you” when we are given something. Saying ‘thank you’ closes the communication loop and makes the interaction fair and equitable. Another example: if someone asks for assistance we are obligated to respond. We  respond to the request either by granting help or by offering an excuse to explain why we are not helping the other person.

The opposite is also true: if someone offers help, the person to whom it is offered is obligated to accept it or offer some excuse for not accepting it. Not responding is not an option in daily life; it would feel very un-natural.

A request requires a response and an offer requires a ‘thank you’.

When we take a closer look we see that this simple dynamic of reciprocity is the engine that drives human interaction: our self-esteem is based on acknowledgement of the value of the face we claim for ourselves. This is called ‘face-value’.  In this respect, Schein notes:

This process of perpetual mutual reinforcement is the essence of society. What we call good manners or etiquette is in fact culturally necessary in daily life.

Here is an experiment you should try for yourself: observe your daily interactions with other people and see if you can recognize that each situation determines the roles you play and the rules you follow. Also note how every request requires a response and see what happens if you simply give a blank face and no response at all to the person who is asking ‘How are you doing?’

When I started preparing the presentation titled ‘How can social media support you in your Me Inc journey?’ I had the feeling that I needed to make a quick manual for professionals to do their own branding on social networks. Something entertaining with no strings attached. However, as I progressed I realized that the engagement in social media for professionals is not a nice-to-have anymore. The internet has changed our economy, our society and also the way our brains work. I guess the real question is: ‘Can you still afford not to use social media?’

1997: ‘Me Inc’ is Called into Existence

In 1997 Tom Peters coined the term ‘Me Inc’, and this was the theme of the community event I was presenting. According to Peters:

Being CEO of Me Inc. requires you to act selfishly — to grow yourself, to promote yourself, to get the market to reward yourself. Of course, the other side of the selfish coin is that any company you work for ought to applaud every single one of the efforts you make to develop yourself. After all, everything you do to grow Me Inc. is gravy for them: the projects you lead, the networks you develop, the customers you delight, the braggables you create generate credit for the firm. As long as you’re learning, growing, building relationships, and delivering great results, it’s good for you and it’s great for the company.

Regardless of whether you are fertilizing your Me Inc within the boundaries of an employer or whether you are farming your own Me Inc fields, the point is that you are your own HR manager when you travel that path. You are the one who decides how your own ‘human resourcefullness‘ gets spent. Have a look at the below slides to see how I linked this fundamental insight to what is going on today in the new world of work.

2011: Same Insights, Different Sense of Urgency

14 years ago – when Tom Peters started to talk about Me Inc – being your own HR manager was still a weird thing to think or talk about. Today the digital economy has flipped the laws of gravity, certainly when it comes to balancing trust and control. On top of that, online social networking platforms have added a layer of literacy on top of our intelligence.

Now it gets even worse: the platforms of which we thought that they would be restricted to desperate housewives and couch surfing teenagers are going mainstream. To make things worse: with the velocity of a puck on a icehokey field the collaboration pattern of social media will begin to influence the core business processes of our organizations. And that is why I changed the title of this presentation. Think I’ll do that more often.

Last week I underscored the distinction between communication and non-communication. The bottom line is that you should always ask yourself whether your action is being in service of ‘community’ or not. If the answer is yes, then you are practicing the art of communication.

Are we on the same Screen?

In this article I want to reflect on what this means in terms of the optimal number of screens that should be in use during a meeting; this includes all kinds of screens: laptops, desktops, large presentation screens, smartphones, tablets and e-readers.

Remember that meeting where the chairman is pointing to the screen, your neighbors are fiddling around on their iPad, and you are checking your email on your Blackberry? Sure, you heard what was being said and the exchange of information did not get lost. But was it worth having a meeting for? Could the same information not be exchanged by email?

The point is that a screen – no matter how small – exerts gravitational power on the attention of human beings in its proximity. This is not positive or negative. It’s just a fact we need to be aware of. Once we are fully aware of the gravitational power of a screen, we can start using it consciously when we chair a meeting and when we are in a conversation.

The above graph summarizes what it all comes down to. The different types of communication are visible as layers. The number of screens in use during a meeting determine the effectiveness of the communication. Let’s have a look at what this means for a face-to-face communication between to people (black dotted line) and for a meeting with more than five people (red dotted line).

The gravitational power of screens and the damage it does to communication is clearly visible on this graph. For a face-to-face conversation, zero screens is best for communication (i.e.: conversation and relationship) to happen. For a meeting where more people are present, a screen may come in handy to make sure all people are on the same page / screen.

The Moral

A few years ago, answering your phone or checking your email used to be rude. Now it is the norm. Again, this is fine when you want to exchange information, but for true conversation or relationship to occur, I advise to drop the device.

As for meetings, the advice is to have less meetings, and to be there with our full consciousness whenever a meeting is organized. I bet those meetings will be better prepared, will not take so long and create better community. Strange as it may seem, a device-less meeting sounds like a revolutionary thing.