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Ed Schein's Process Consultation, Revisited
Humiliation is
being shown that one has much less value in a given situation than one had claimed for oneself. . . When others do not grant us what we claim or when we act in ways that show others that we claim very little for ourselves, we feel "humiliated" ("they made me feel foolish" or "I made a fool of myself"). -- pp. 109
What I found interesting was how little I had read about this before -- I'll have to have a talk with Professor Kearl at Trinity University's sociology department about that. Humiliation comes from both overstepping the value that others want to give you and not claiming enough value for yourself. I've been in both situations at INFOSEC. I was hired as a project manager and I understood that I was the one who had the end responsibility and accountability, so I acted that way. And I got cut down for claiming more value for myself than the corporation was believed I had.
What is more interesting is the result of claiming too little value. Schein continues later: "If I am feeling unsure of my status in a given group, I am more likely to remain silent, to ask genuine inquiry questions, and in other ways avoid the possibility of offending someone whose status relative to mine is initially unknown." When I am uncertain of my value, I tend to not claim much value. My voice is one who is not confident. People don't think that they have to listen to someone who is not confident about what they are saying.
I'm taking the next week to spend it with my brother and his kids in a cabin that his mother-in-law owns outside of Las Vegas, New Mexico. The middle-of-nowhere, woodsy place, not the gambling capital of the world in that other state.
I really enjoyed the week last year. Unfortunately, my dad is coming for the entire time. I really can't stand that much of him. He and I never have gotten along -- he's admitted that he just didn't like me when I was growing up (no shit) -- and if I had known that he was coming the entire time, I'd have only come for a weekend. We have too much unfinished business that I just don't have the desire to close up.
Still, I like being with my bro' and his two boys. They're neat kids, five and seven years. One's a proto-engineer with the associated people skills and thing skills, and the younger is a glad-handing, back-slapping people person who can't find his socks when they are under the bed. "I looked! I did!" Both great and seem to be the two sides of my own personality. I so much enjoy seeing them. I'll put up with my old man for the experience.
That said, no posts until the 27th. I'm not only sans connection, I'm sans computer, phone and mobile. We've got a flush toliet and lights, which is a lot you know.
Hell, yes. Let's break some heads and free the prisoners!
-- manasclerk
I had promised to pick up some very poorly off friends at the airport today, so I left BL early, drove up to O'Hare and got a rental car. They have twin girls (age 4) who are just the cutest things -- their daddy taught them about Spider-man and they say that they like Venom best because (and I swear I'm not making this up) "Venom would wear a tu-tu!" -- and that makes four at $20 a pop to get back to Indiana on the airport shuttle. For L and I, it's no big deal, but for them it's eating money. She's a prof and he takes care of the girls, teaching guitar on the side. (He should write a novel. He reads enough.)
I gave my keys to her and she drove of in our car, a lovely Subaru Outback. He and I piled the girls into the rental SUV(!) for the trip home. Mom can't tolerate the kids quite as much as he and I can -- she just get's tired at the end of the day, so he has them then, and she does parent duty in the morning. Anyways, it worked out that I had two angels in carseats in the back and he and I in the front.
About the time we got halfway there, the computer on this GMC went nuts. Every warning button and light -- including the seat belt sign -- started going off. We stopped a couple of times to see what we should do, but after consideration of the travellers and the neighbourhood around Gary, Indiana, we decided to risk it and drive home with various alarms going off every ten minutes. It was very disconcerting.
I got them home and the girls were delighted to be back in their usual haunts. He thought that it was kind of funny.
I called the rental company (Hertz, if you must know) and they are coming out to get the car. I think that they should give me a free rental later.
"People keep saying that we need to remove fear from the workplace. I ask them, 'Then where are you going to put it?'" -- Peter Block, at the Organizational Development Summit 2003 in Chicago.
We have spent a lot of energy trying to reduce fear in the workplace. Block, whom I've mentioned a lot in this blog, makes his point about workplace fear at length in this books and talks. The workplace has fear as a component of being in a marketplace. Some of this fear is gratuitous, such as a constant fear of being fired. I used to show up to INFOSEC every day thinking that I'd be called in and told that this was my last week. It wasn't a good way to live. The company obviously didn't want me around on a fulltime basis. They showed that in their enthusiasm when I finally raised the issue that they didn't want my skills. The fear that I felt was a result of their poor management, that they would not come and confront the tough issues as bosses but instead waited for me to raise it.
The point is not to reduce fear but to increase hope. Hope will overcome fear naturally. Fear of the unknown falls away at the strength of hope, desire, joy, involvement.
Don't reduce fear. Inject hope. Work on desires. Get the right people on the bus and in the right seats on it. Powerful positive emotions are what the workplace needs.
There's a reason why wartime generals are remembered more than the successful peacetime generals. They have more room to succeed, more room to fail, more room to improvise.
-- manasclerk
I start on Monday! Woohoo! Money!
This will buy me some time to think more about the organizational development thing.
Woohoo!
I clicked through blogger's frontpage to these two poems. At least on this date they were two poems (14 Sept 2003).
Another of the Beautiful broken by this fallen world.
L and I rolled back into Valpo (finally!) and looked at what rainy days have done to our lawn. It's a jungle! It looks like that grass that we grew in Louisiana, wild, untamed and about 10 in (25 cm) high.
I'm excited about having this new contract possibility. I pray on Sunday and get something on Monday. Unbelievable.
I'm not a believer in the "Give to God and He will give back to you from His unemptying purse" doctrine. I don't think that God is all that interested in my monetary success. I think He's a lot more interested in who I am, in my soul or inner man. Because, as I've said about that OD conference, the only thing that matters is who you are. Everything else grows out of it.
But I tend to never ask God for anything. I tend to ask for the bare minimum and then try to get by on my own. A pal of mine describes this as "not just wrong -- wicked" which it is. God wants to give me things, wants to fullfill the desires of my heart. And they aren't about having a house in Winnetka, as Mark observed last month. It's about seeing mine see Him.
I gotta start asking for what I want. Why did I stop with just a contract? I should ask for a contract that I really like to do!
S wants me to submit a proposal on putting together the written documentation for the big security project's service (post-development) team. He is going to push it.
It would be good to work with S again.
Last night, as L and I were going to sleep, she confessed that my being out of work in this job market scares her. Scares her a great deal. "I need to know that everything will work out", she said, not for the first time.
Do I believe that it will work out? For me, and particular to my situation, it's a matter of faith in God, that He is Who He is, that I am who He tells me that I am. I've spent the last ten years running from what is true. The fact is, whenever I wait patiently and work diligently, not taking the first thing that comes along but waiting for what I want, I get more than I could have wished for. God has a particular calling for me, something hard, something dangerous, something I'd rather have pass. And something I crave with every sinew and corpusle.
"I need you to pray for us," she said. And I did.