Episode #54 ~ Vanguard Conversation Series: Conformity + Contribution

Leaders at the vanguard of ideas and change inspire us to loosen our grip on the comfortable status quo in favor of exploring new possibilities that better align with the altering patterns of our personal and professional lives. As we shape a world where people love their life’s work, this live conversation series showcases global leaders who embody the curiosity and discernment that stimulates a new relationship with change.

Join CEO of inviteCHANGE, Janet M. Harvey, MCC, and her co-host, Garry Schleifer, PCC, with their guest, Magda Nowicka Mook, CEO of the ICF and explore the idea of being comfortable with the tension that exists between conformity and contribution. Build your roadmap for how to have a different kind of conversation with your peers, clients, and communities.

Watch the full interview by clicking here.

Download the 4 Questions Handout: invitechange.com/vanguard-conversation-series

Register for the rest of the series: invitechange.com/vanguard-conversation-series

Grab your free issue of choice Magazine here - https://choice-online.com/

Transcript

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): Welcome, everyone.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Welcome everyone.  Take a moment and chat.  Tell us where you are Zooming into this room from.  Where on the planet might you be? 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): I'm on Whidbey Island, Washington. The northwest corner of the United States, where the birds started singing at 4 this morning.

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): Mississauga Ontario, just outside of Toronto, I can see the airport from one window, the CN Tower from the other, and if I move to my dining room, I can see Lake Ontario.

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): and you can't hear birds up on the 32nd floor much. You can hear kids and dogs, but no birds.

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): It's amazing what you can hear this high up.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Tell us where you're hanging out this morning. So good to see you, Robert Hilliard. It's been way too long. Welcome, welcome, welcome!

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): And, Susan. Goodness.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): How are you doing? Good to see you. Yeah, Danny and Tad and Lori

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Awesome. Hey, Sonya? Yeah. Good to see you, Susan Lloyd.

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Sonja Robinson: Hi, Janet.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Very wonderful. Just give the stragglers, you know. These days all of us are sliding into the seat sideways, so we'll just give it another 30 seconds before we launch in. You might want to double check that you have your handout handy. And just in case you don't, I'm sure Paige will put a link into the chat for you. You can download it.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): If you're like me, the hundreds of emails, sometimes it's hard to find what we're looking for. I loved Adam Grant the other day he had a little thing about. we need to stop apologizing for being tardy in responding to emails.

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 And he was talking about people complaining for 3 or 4 hours. And I'm like, what about 3 or 4 days? Like sometimes it takes 3 or 4 days for me, and apologizing doesn't do it any good. Well, and then there are the people that apologize for something they haven't even done yet.

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Garry Scheifer (he/him/his):  Sorry. Sorry. I'm like, I haven’t done anything yet.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): When I was a kid we had a quarter jar every time you said sorry I had to put a quarter in. You learn pretty quick not to do that.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): All right. I'm going to go ahead and get it started, because the 55 minutes always goes super-fast and we want to be sure that we get to out of here on time, and that you get to optimize your time with our wonderful visionary global leader that's with us today. I am Janet Harvey for anyone who doesn't know me, and I'm joined with my co-host from choice magazine Gary Schleifer, who will introduce himself. Yeah, look at you with the magazine.  I'm the CEO and Director of Education for invitechange, which is an ICF accredited educator. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): And of course, we also work in learning and coaching programs and enterprises around the world. This particular platform, the Vanguard Conversation series, was something that came out of, I think a glass of red wine with Garry 3 or 4 years ago. It's like we really we want to bring people together in a conversation that's on the edges of what we do every day.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Something that pushes us a little further beyond the thing that is the status quo, that's comfortable, that's easy. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Why? Because we're in a world where disruption is in every moment. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): It seems to be getting faster, more complex, and driving a great deal of uncertainty. As he and I talk this through, I said, you know, I think we need to give people a place where they can start to shift, how they're thinking, not what to think, but how they're thinking about what's happening to them. And you know ultimately, this is, as coaches, about reflection.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): So this year's entire series is about, how do we up level the way in which we do reflection in order to help us see more clearly what is occurring and understand that we have resource to respond to it.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): So at one level the little handout looks very simple. At another level you might just find it's a little profound.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): And with that, let me hand it over to Garry to talk a little bit about introducing yourself and what you think about this series we're doing.

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): Thanks, Janet. I'm so thrilled to be here and introducing my dear friend, and we'll get to that in a second. 

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): Vanguard, with what you said, yes and it's like this whole new space to just think and be and separate yourself from everything that is and was and what's going on. So it's really a just a comfortable, engaging brain charging space. Technically, vanguard means being at the forefront of ideas that are emerging so we can proactively disrupt our thinking. Hence, how I think about the Vanguard series. 

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): And you know it's breaking apart things that we have as common. A very simple analogy would be pork chops and apple sauce. It's almost like it just rolls off your mouth anyways, and then you think well, what if we separated pork chops and apple sauce. Like apple sauce could be for something else. What if it was for, you know, a different meal, anyway, I could go on. I won't.

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): Our conversations focus on our experience of life today rather than a theory, an outcome, a process, and not even a promotion to buy anything. We're not selling anything here. We invite you to transform your process of listening to getting something, to giving yourself an opportunity to experiment and learn through practical application that is relevant to your life. 

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): So without further ado, I'd like to introduce our guest today. I am thrilled to have her here today, I've known her for many, many moons, formally Magdalena Nowicka Mook.  

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his):  I got it. I got it. With a name like Schleifer you practice names. Okay? Oh, my gosh! A better known to her all her friends, Janet, myself, everyone, is Magda, who's the CEO of the International Coaching Federation, or, as we all know, at ICF. And brings a wealth of experience in consulting, coaching, association management and fundraising.

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): She's responsible for the strategic direction and growth of the organization, partnering with the ICF Global Board of Directors and it's 6 unique family organizations that represent the ICF ecosystem, the very supportive ICF ecosystem.

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): Through her leadership the organization has become the leading voice for the global coaching community with more than 56,000 members, including most of us here hopefully, and 50,000 ICF credential holders worldwide

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): Again, most of us here. Ms. Mook received her MS in Economics and International Trade from the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland. These are things I didn't even know. Okay, like, I've known you for this long. I still didn't know this.

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Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): She holds a degree from the Copenhagen Business School in International Management and Consulting. She was recognized as a Number One Coach for the Global Influence Thinkers50 and a finalist in the Thinkers50 distinguished award in coaching and mentoring. Congratulations. Most recently she was recognized Number 10 in the top 30, so she's kind of working her way up the ladder in the funnel, of global gurus and organizational culture. She's also a trained professional coach and systems facilitator. We could go on and on and on because the woman is fabulous. We love her, and she's here to talk to us about her sticky situation.

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Magdalena Mook: Well, thank you for this introduction, Garry.

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Magdalena Mook: One other thing you probably figure it out. I was born and raised in Poland, and pork chops and applesauce doesn't go together. It just doesn't. 

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Might need a better cross-cultural example.

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Magdalena Mook: No, but I'm thrilled to be here especially as both Janet and Garry introduce the series.

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Magdalena Mook: We talk so much about how demands for leadership are different. How traits of the modern leader are different, how the expectations of the modern workforce are different. And yet very few talk about, how do we think? And how do we find new ways of addressing some issues that quite frankly are very old.

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Magdalena Mook: They may look different. They have a little fresh coat of paint on them, right? But because they happen in a very different circumstance, they need to be addressed in a completely different way.

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Magdalena Mook: So I am thrilled to be invited to this conversation. And yeah, we'll see what we can get.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Yes, and we're thrilled to have you Magda. You carry a perspective, a global perspective in this field of and human developments that includes coaching as well as consulting and training and mentoring. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): I think that we’re at such a pivotal moment in society that people are really grappling with how do I do this? How do I meet the moments, and so I think the audience is in for a great treat here and let me give just a 60 second here's where we're going, folks.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Hopefully you have downloaded the handout, or you took it from the web through what Paige sent you before you came today. You will want that handy as you're listening to the story that Magda is going to share. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): This is how this is structured, so that you have an opportunity to hear the story through the lens of how would I reflect on my own thorny problem?

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Something has happened.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): It is not exactly what I expected, and maybe even worse. It feels horrible. I'm uncomfortable with the result that happened, and more often than not we get so busy we don't stop and say, hang on a second, how did I decide to do that? 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her):  And along the way we began to recognize that there are so many things happening underneath the observable behaviors?

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): There is a bit of psychology, of course, but there is also something that some just a more fundamental set of human patterns of recognizing a situation as safe for dangerous, recognizing a situation as holding some tension between 2 things. Not a polarity and not a paradox, just 2 things. We can either be in a teeter totter, or going back and forth, up and down, not sure how to get out or we can learn to stand at the fulcrum and have a little subtle adjustment. Recognizing we need a bit of both in equal in an even measure or a ratio that works for us. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): What do we have to break through? Habits, preferences, assumptions, biases. These are not questions we often ask ourselves, and yet, as practitioners, we have an opportunity to invite that level of depth. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): It opens up a doorway completely different. Today we're talking about contribution and conformity. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): This particular attention is one of 7 that came out of some qualitative research that we did at invitechange starting in 2012, with 250 executive leaders around the world. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Talking about what are the things that keep showing up over and over and over again, and it drives you bananas and this is one of them.  

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): So with no further ado, I'm going to turn it over to you, Magda. We're having a conversation here, folks. So if you want to use chat or ask a question in that way, or you'll raise your hand. We can open up the mic. That's totally fine. But this is an opportunity for you to hear Magda  share a story where she experienced this tension, witnessed this tension, and worked her way through to a new approach.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Okay, it's yours. 

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Magdalena Mook: Well, thank you. Thank you, Janet. And you tell me I have about 10 minutes, right? Because I can talk for about 3 days, but okay, 10 minutes it is.  

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Magdalena Mook: As Garry said in my introduction, I am a CEO of ICF, and therefore responsible, along with the global board of directors, for the strategic direction of the organization 

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Magdalena Mook: The statistic that I share, and yet not very not gladly, is that I've been with ICF for over 17 years. That's a long time. 

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Magdalena Mook: That's a long time. Through that time, I actually had the privilege of seeing the organization evolving in so many different ways. Sometimes evolving because the field of coaching evolved. 

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Magdalena Mook: Sometimes evolving to evolve the field of coaching. 

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Magdalena Mook: That is important going hand in hand in fact. So what I what I want to share with you today is something, as Garry mentioned, probably quite a number of people online are members of ICF or credential holders. As you know, in 2020 we introduced the new transformed structure of the ICF, that being 6 family organizations. 

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Magdalena Mook: So the story I'm gonna tell you is a little bit of a story of change management, naturally, but also going about this conformity and contribution. 

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Magdalena Mook: My job, I consider, is to always look for how we can be relevant.

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Magdalena Mook: How we can be relevant to our members and, anymore, to our stakeholders that are more than members. There is the public, the clients, the consumers of coaching.

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Magdalena Mook: There are the decision makers at any level of either corporate or governmental organizations. There are people who are trainers, coaching educators, right? So the list of stakeholders was getting larger and longer every day. 

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Magdalena Mook: With that also rose the awareness of coaching. Music to our ears, of course.

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Magdalena Mook: So again, with that very big question in mind. How do we stay relevant and those 2 know me? Well, I'm always like, where do we go next?  

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Magdalena Mook: And ICF was doing great.

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Magdalena Mook: So there was this question of contribution or conformity. 

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Magdalena Mook: What's that saying? Don't fix what's not broken? 

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Magdalena Mook: That was definitely a choice, and that would not have been a bad choice. 

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Magdalena Mook: But we started observing and, of course, with great input from the board, we started observing quite significant changes in the marketplace. Organizations creating internal coaching practices, managers and leaders started using coaching skills, coaching cultures being built. And we're kind of scratching our head, saying, and we don't have a space for that within our organization. 

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Magdalena Mook: Which led to another question, what else may be missing? Or maybe not. Maybe it's just not our swim ;ane, and that's fine. However, that decision had to be made with enough information. 

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Magdalena Mook: So this is where we went a little bit on that contribution side, saying if we truly believe in our vision and mission as an organization, are we where we need to be? Should we be doing something else? 

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Magdalena Mook: Could we be doing something differently? 

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Magdalena Mook: All those questions. So, I've been living with that question for a long time, which I've been taught at the systemic training that Janet and I actually took together, that it is really important to stay with the problem. Don't be afraid of the problem. Don't too quickly jump into a solution before you examine different facets, different angles, different consequences. We call them unintended. 

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Magdalena Mook: But think about it and you probably going to come to some idea what could go wrong. So yeah, I thought I did. 

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Magdalena Mook: Then the concept has been presented to the board, which was very enthusiastic about the whole idea. 

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Magdalena Mook: We got the green light to develop further details. 

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Magdalena Mook: And this is when contribution and conformity came to its head. I was ready. I was so ready. It was all contribution without realizing what are those assumptions, preferences, biases, experiencing experiences that were so different and therefore produced different questions and different level of comfort with the actually pretty bold move for the organization. 

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Magdalena Mook: What I also didn't fully appreciate was that there were so many different stakeholders.  

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Magdalena Mook: My staff. I thought we're all in it. Neglecting the fact that any change produces certain fear of something dramatically changing for them, for their respective jobs, for their respected positions, for how they relate to the rest of the organization. We were all good at the very high level of the very emotional level and then it had to be matched with the data to support it. 

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Magdalena Mook: And then, you know, I would grow impatient at times about so many questions where, fortunately or unfortunately, change management for you, the only reasonable answer was, I don't know. 

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Magdalena Mook: We won't know until we start doing it. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her) : It's so common for leaders what you're describing.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Pause for a second everybody and think about the folks you're supporting as a coach or a consultant, whatever your role is. How often do you hear them say I don't have an answer. It seems to me that that's gotten more frequent. 

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Magdalena Mook: Yeah. And I think that this is also not comfortable for leaders to say I don't know. 

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Magdalena Mook:  For generations, that's what we're supposed to do. To know and to say what to do. 

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Magdalena Mook: And then, you know, because I was sitting and we were doing tons of research. So, I was like, how can you not see that? Well, clearly, because if somebody didn't spend 3 years researching the issue that may not be as obvious as it might have been for me. And then so that was an assumption. The bias for me also was that I was like why are we not moving faster? Because we had to slow down, make sure that our assumptions made, so far, were good. 

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Magdalena Mook: And only then, take the next step. So stay a little bit in a conformity of the moment before we make yet another contribution to the next step. 

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Magdalena Mook: Sometimes I would get annoyed with some questions or number of questions, only to realize that for some very important stakeholders in the equation, that was their duty to ask those questions. They were not trying to be difficult. That was their job to ask those questions.  

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Magdalena Mook:  We finally came to the place where we could launch, and you would think that that's the end of the story. Uh, uh! That was the beginning of pandemic, right?

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Magdalena Mook: So don't do it, don't launch a new product or transformation of the organization when there is a major pandemic happening. We, of course, started in January, and then by March we knew that things had to be different, and that was another very, very important lesson for me, because naturally we had to slow down again and very significantly because the need of the community was different. The need of a community was somewhere else, and that was again our duty as an organization to respond to that first.  

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Magdalena Mook: And yet, you know, there was this sinking feeling of like, Great. We spent so many years planning for it, and now we were probably not going to do it and that was wasted. There was a sense of loss to some extent.  

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Magdalena Mook: Again, the beautiful moment that was that the board said, well, we slow down. We didn't say we're were dropping the project or not. We just have to find a different way. 

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Magdalena Mook: Different pace. 

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Magdalena Mook: We're going to have to find a better way to continue with our plan. 

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Magdalena Mook: Not easy, especially when the circumstances that we had 0 control of. That's another beauty. Right? You make those plans and you think you thought of everything and then a pandemic. So it's this being prepared for the unexpected. We can't know what that unexpected is. That's why it’s called unexpected. But being prepared that it's going to happen. 

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Magdalena Mook: And we are going to have to respond. Sometimes that response is actually to stop. 

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Magdalena Mook: Stay in the conformity space because it's not, as you said, Janet, it's not polarity, it's not paradox. Conformity is often a good thing.

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Magdalena Mook: If for no other way, if for no other reason, not even regroup, just rest. Just rest. 

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Magdalena Mook: Get your faculties together and keep going. 

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Magdalena Mook: Maybe, when you have to change a little bit of the trajectory. 

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Magdalena Mook: That's all good. And it happens when you have that time of conformity. 

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Magdalena Mook: So, 3 years later, I'm very proud of where we are as an organization. Garry, I provided you with that bio only a couple of weeks ago, and we're over 60,000 members. So this is just phenomenal what we see in the field of coaching, of the awareness of coaching growing, and we believe that what happened in in the organization is a reflection of the evolution outside of us which either you go with it, or you're going to stand behind. And also the wisdom of going there when there was a right time to do that, and being in conformity when it was time to either implement what was already experimented or to, as I said, rest and rejuvenate. So I think I'm going to stop there.  

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): I think you've done it. So that that in step 3 of the reflection practice the new awareness was the complexity of stakeholders, the influence of things outside the system that you couldn't control for sure, and then recognizing it, the adjustment or agility and pacing necessary for the people who were involved in actually implementing or having some? I don't know. I might say a little bit of patience and compassion with your own change process. Would that be fair to say? 

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Magdalena Mook: Yeah. And I think that you just mentioned something very important, because we talk so much about what is expected of the leader. And, Janet, you've heard me speak and write about it a lot is like, and who has the leaders back? Right?

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Magdalena Mook: So this is this is really important. How we make sure that we pay attention to our own burnouts and that we seek the ways of having that safety net and network that will allow us to be supported, feel supported and therefore being prepared to take steps as it is still expected. We may not have all the answers, but we are still expected to lead.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Yeah, I'm adding that one, normalize being prepared by rest and restoration. All right, thank you, Magda, and we're going to pick this back up after the breakouts, where you all will hopefully bring some questions back. We're going to give you 15 minutes to mess around with the handout. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): I hope you've given some thought to a thorny problem that you are already working. As you enter the breakout room, you might be with somebody you do not know. So, take a moment to share with them a personal value, something that might be in your top 3 that would help reveal a little bit about who you are.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Of course, share your name, and where you're living, and then one or the other of you drop right into your thorny problem and give yourself a chance to practice a little bit with the 3-step reflection process. When we come back after 15 min, questions, comments, asking Magda to amplify. We'll see where it goes and trust we all know how to show up in the moment.

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Alright, Paige! Have you got it all set? 

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Paige Christian: Thank you. And it looks like we just lost a few folks. So let me just make sure everybody's got somebody. 

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Janet M. Harvey (she/her): All right. Why don't you take us off spot like please, Paige? That would be wonderful. And anybody that wants to please turn your videos on so we can see each other. And it will be a little bit easier to use the raise hand which is down in reactions in the lower right of your Zoom screen. The floor is open for comments, questions from your experience in the breakout room, and or something you want Magda to build on. 

00:30:25.710 --> 00:30:30.679

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Truly, was it so profound that you just don't know what to say? 

0:30:38.630 --> 00:30:40.680

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Go ahead, Kimberly. 

00:30:41.380 --> 00:31:05.530

Kim Lee Robinson: Hi! And so good to see you, Janet. So it was an educational experience for me. I think the first thing I noticed was that I was learning so much from Robert, who was my partner, about his experience, and just listening to him was bringing up another situation from me. So it was kind of like killing 2 birds with one stone.

00:31:05.820 --> 00:31:16.629

Kim Lee Robinson: It also just felt so timely that I feel like it's like this week I have to come to some conclusion about, you know my next step forward with my thorny predicament, and I was able to kind of gain a lot of clarity from this. So, I really appreciated the exercise and appreciated meeting Robert. 

00:31:30.460 --> 00:31:54.509

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Very good, good, wonderful! And you know this is the key to reflection. I so appreciate the ICF added this as a key skill. It's skill 2.4, in competency 2 that we have an ongoing reflection practice. And in some ways that's the genesis of this resource that we've handed to you. I was doing it with leaders and then I realized, hang on a second. 

00:31:54.710 --> 00:31:58.409

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): So I'm glad you enjoyed that. Go ahead, Leslie. 

00:32:01.420 --> 00:32:18.669

Leslie Shank: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm speaking to you from a Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, today.

00:32:18.740 --> 00:32:34.840

Leslie Shank: We started our conversation today about the whole notion of conformity and contribution. So we didn't start with the exercise, the reflection exercise, and I think the whole idea of conformity being in rest and rejuvenation was really an interesting conundrum, if you will. To really sit in the place of thinking about conformity, which has the connotation of actually being something you're not or conforming to, or actually fitting into, something that isn't quite who you are.

00:33:10.090 --> 00:33:15.450

Leslie Shank: And yet thinking about it from the perspective of being present and aware, and listening and sensing. was a whole different perspective. To take before contribution before actually taking action. So I really appreciate that more in depth conversation that we had. So thank you very much, just even for provoking this deeper thought. 

00:33:46.970 --> 00:33:59.710

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): You know I think you might have storied it and I think you've articulated underneath the story the reason this notion of tension rather than polarity or paradox is so empowering. 

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:07.619

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): We are conditions out of our habits and preferences and biases and assumptions to hold a point of view about the qualities, conformity, and contribution. What happens when we flip the coin over and we start to feel the embodied state of it? 

00:34:15.889 --> 00:34:22.699

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): So if I hold conformity as rest and restoration so that I can see more clearly, it drops the anxiety. 

00:34:24.400 --> 00:34:42.690

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): I still might have the issues with conformity. Like, why can't these people break out of their habit? Okay, that's there. I get that. But they're not going to break out of their habit out of your annoyance. That's not going to work, leader. Right? Yeah, that's great. Thank you very much, Leslie. Sheila, you had your hand up. 

00:34:45.120 --> 00:35:01.469

Sheila Kern: Thank you. And Leslie, I'm from the other coast of Canada. I'm in Vancouver right now. I hope that you and your family and everyone out there in Nova Scotia are doing well with those fires. It is pretty scary.

0:35:01.710 --> 00:35:07.640

Sheila Kern: I had an excellent conversation with 2 gentlemen, both actually in India. Pronov and Mada.  

00:35:12.380 --> 00:35:23.160

Sheila Kern: It's interesting to hear you say that this is kind of an intuitive process, because they outlined their steps to thorny problems in an exact way that reflects the practice. So it was interesting hearing from these at career long practitioners, just how they incorporate this almost intuitively. 

00:35:40.840 --> 00:35:45.770

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Thank you, Sheila. Pranav, do you want to say something more about that? 

00:35:50.650 --> 00:35:54.409

Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): Wasn't ready for the spotlight? 

00:35:55.240 --> 00:35:57.670

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): I guess not. Okay. Anybody else 

00:35:58.050 --> 00:35:59.649

Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): You have to unmute Pranav. 

Pranav Sinha: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it was certainly wonderful. First of all, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity at this network with 3 people in the conversation room breakout room. So it was great number one. Number 2, conformity and contribution to me sometimes it looks 2 opposing factors.

00:36:32.170 --> 00:36:33.600

Pranav Sinha: But without conformity you cannot move further and without change you cannot move forward. 

00:36:42.850 --> 00:36:49.250

Pranav Sinha: It's a paradoxical situation. So when the bond or seat is in peace or silence, you can see what is their lying beneath. 

00:36:58.010 --> 00:37:00.260

Pranav Sinha: When it is turbulent you cannot. 

00:37:00.520 --> 00:37:13.589

Pranav Sinha: So once you start seeing what is there, and that is the time when it is conformity, what I see in an in any organization is that you can have a great look there and then you start contributing to change. 

00:37:18.460 --> 00:37:24.360

Pranav Sinha: And that is what I told Sheila and Madan is that I hate status quo.  

00:37:29.780 --> 00:37:34.150

Pranav Sinha: I am there for change every moment, though my background is from HR. 

00:37:34.510 --> 00:37:41.810

Pranav Sinha: But I need to change everything. And I was in the basically policy making so I used to change very quickly. What is not working should be changed. 

00:37:47.360 --> 00:37:53.980

Pranav Sinha: That is how I saw it, and it was great to listen to my 2 other fellow breakout room members. Wonderful. 

00:37:57.890 --> 00:38:05.289

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): You have also seeded something I want to notice more directly, which is as the leader, if I'm stuck in my conformity of my method of moving quickly to make decisions, if that's my conformity and I see that my contribution is the ability to be a speedy decision maker, I will miss some of what's going on. 

00:38:25.120 --> 00:38:30.249

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): So these qualities are first in body than the leader.

00:38:30.280 --> 00:38:42.329

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Then, if they can be still and stand, I always do teeter totter. Can you stand at the fulcrum? Have a little bit of movement left and right, and start to see what's actually happening in the system to Magda’s story right? Multiple stakeholders. They, too, have their own rhythm around conformity and contribution.

00:38:51.840 --> 00:39:04.490

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): So we bring that up from the inside out. We will miss some of the important information about finding more right answers. There's always more than the one we come up with. 

00:39:04.980 --> 00:39:07.860

Pranav Sinha: Exactly. Perfect. Thank you very much.

00:39:07.870 --> 00:39:10.300

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): You are very welcome. Thank you. 

00:39:10.620 --> 00:39:12.170

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Anybody else. 

00:39:14.350 --> 00:39:15.730

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Yeah, go ahead, Darlene. 

00:39:19.920 --> 00:39:36.029

Darlene R Hess: Thank you for seeing my hand before I found the place. 

Garry Schleifer (he/him/his):  I love it. It was like you could see you doing this thing. It's here somewhere.  

Darlene R Hess: Yeah, this is this workshop or this opportunity came just the right time for me 

00:39:36.370 --> 00:39:41.839

Darlene R Hess: I've been tasked to lead a task force for an organization on nurse coaching. 

00:39:42.170 --> 00:39:59.950

Darlene R Hess: And I'm very concerned for me and this is where I'm where I am. I want to get this off my plate. I know I'm the best choice, or I'm a good choice. Let's put it that way. I am a very good choice for doing this, based on my background for the organization. 

00:40:00.140 --> 00:40:13.829

Darlene R Hess: So I'm taking notes here about things that people are saying that is coming up for me. When I tackle something, I want to get it done and when I work by myself I can do that. 

00:40:14.950 --> 00:40:16.689

Darlene R Hess: That's my style. 

00:40:18.110 --> 00:40:33.470

Darlene R Hess: I know that I'm going to be working with a group that includes members for whom that is not their style and I'm feeling a lot of tension around this. I would like to just have this project taken care of and off my plate. 

00:40:33.790 --> 00:40:44.110

Darlene R Hess: I want to do it and when it came to values it was very helpful here today in the group to have someone to say out loud to what was going on inside of me. That was probably one of the the most useful things for me was to be heard.  I want to be loving and kind, you know. Those are my values and inclusive. 

00:40:59.590 --> 00:41:03.079

Darlene R Hess:  I value getting things done. 

00:41:05.820 --> 00:41:16.239

Darlene R Hess: I know the process of allowing and being still and waiting. So all of this is coming together right now for me.  

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00:41:16.590 --> 00:41:29.090

Darlene R Hess: So Magda, when you spoke, I identified so much from my own perspective, what I'm facing, what you were talking about. That lasted for a few years for you, and I'm thinking this could last for a long time. It has to do with the supervision competencies on this coach supervisors. 

00:41:40.150 --> 00:41:52.069

Darlene R Hess: It just dawned on me in a bigger way how much I see others addressing that same kind of issue, or at least I think that's where it is. I haven't looked at that in a long time. 

00:41:52.070 --> 00:42:10.249

Darlene R Hess: So Janet, and Garry, thank you so much for this. This is so timely for me personally. And I grabbed it when I saw it yesterday when it came across my email. So I had to say something. Thank you to my 2 group members, too. Thank you so much. 

00:42:11.520 --> 00:42:24.880

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Thank you, Darlene, and I appreciate your humility and vulnerability to say what the experience is. This is what our clients go through. It feels uncomfortable to be sitting in this tension and yet you can't escape it. 

00:42:28.320 --> 00:42:46.760

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): It goes on and on, and in some ways it gets even more sophisticated as Magda was describing. The number of stakeholders increases in the complexity of the work itself. I mean, I think back to my early nineties when I'm learning coaching and thinking to myself, Oh, yeah, I got this and 5 years later, going. No, I ain't got this. I'm an educator now, and I can tell you every day I learned something from clients and from the students. It's like, Oh, there's another innovation edge coming, so it never goes away, and your acknowledgment is a beautiful way to stay in the tension with all of your resource, and know you're not alone.

00:43:11.610 --> 00:43:22.060

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Yeah, beautiful. Magda, of what you've heard, how might you bring us to completion for today in your own reflection in working on the story and being with us? 

00:43:24.340 --> 00:43:28.539

Magdalena Mook: Hmm, well, first thank you for such a beautiful sharing of the conversations you had during the breakouts. 

00:43:33.900 --> 00:43:49.919

Magdalena Mook: One reflection, yes, and this is something Janet, you put the words to something I couldn't quite vocalize and it is that sometimes we put labels on those positions. Conformity, even through contribution. Conformity feels so passive, right, and contribution is like, Yay, let's go.

00:44:00.860 --> 00:44:07.370

Magdalena Mook: It doesn't have to be. It's our own interpretation. I think that really helps to be refocused and give ourselves permission to rename and relabel and look at it definitely that way. The other one for me is that complexity of stakeholders that you need to deal with. That's something that was probably most difficult for me to navigate and to just have a good view of it. 

00:44:35.120 --> 00:45:04.269

Magdalena Mook: So I would like to offer it to all of you that when you're having that thorny issue, make sure that you truly identify all stakeholders, because something or somebody may come from the left field, and you will be really surprised.

00:45:04.610 --> 00:45:21.600

Garry Schleifer (he/him/his): Yeah, thank you so much, Magda, for everything that you do, for who you are and for staying the course through your 17 years, which I can't believe, and for being here today for us to thank you. We're blessed.

00:45:21.690 --> 00:45:31.710

Janet M. Harvey (she/her): Well, everyone, we'll see you on July twelfth for the next one, which is Entitlement and Self-responsibility. 

00:45:31.890 --> 00:45:44.999

Check out our Youtube channel. Janet has got some really good 20-minute pieces on these very subject matter. So please check that out.