Trina Hoefling Untethered

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Length Warning – This is a multi-day writing that unfolds here partly backwards. It’s meaty reading, at least for me, but it ain’t linear or fast! The original posting comes last, similarly to an email thread would read backwards. This is uncensored, unvarnished, and you are a witness to my movement closer and closer to my own spiral of truth.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008 followed without a thought-break Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Employee Engagement is Big Business for Business. I guest lectured a webinar today along with two other experts for the University of Wisconsin. Our topics? Emotional and social intelligence, employee engagement, and expanding emotional bandwidth virtually. The university was thrilled with not only how many participants joined the call, but that all participants stayed for the entire webinar.

Yes, that means we did a good job. But it’s also the topic. Business has been and continues to spend big bucks on figuring out retention and how to more fully engage their people. Build and sustain trust. Nurture strong manager-employee relationships.

How does this fit with the dreary, discouraging blog posting of August 11? I don’t want to go down the Orwellian path of double speak. I actually believe business leaders do want engaged employees… so what is happening?

Is there so much animosity and distrust the bridge is too hard to cross?

Do they really mean it until faced with real change that is required and impacts them in unexpected ways?

Is it a collusion of pretending to care but really wanting to relegate the “people part” of the business to an interchangeable set of resources? To become less dependent on the most volatile, least controllable, costly budget line item?

Wow, that sounds pretty cynical, doesn’t it? So continuing to explore my question in this blog but not yet posted. I guess I do go down the Orwellian path, seeing doublespeak and cognitively dissonant actions nearly every day.

Am I simply working with clients with real dissonance, more than most? I don’t think so if I watch the business scandal media. What I think I really am seeing, and I will immediately broaden my vision to seek contrary information that will further hone the accuracy of my perception, (stream of consciousness writing), I am seeing many things (and writing many things) at once.

Back to point. What I think I really am seeing is a severed personality archetype in business today. The people doing the business of business are as often as not good people with baseline values and humanity beliefs probably not that far from mine. They are, in other words, good people.

Yet when they step into work, they become political animals. Their job is politics and relationship management. More and more I see very little work being done. Strategy being sharpened. I see action and reaction cycles. I see sociopathic tendencies in the name of business directives. I see people go unconscious. People are stressed, hypervigilant, working hard, committed to their work – only the work is becoming increasingly disconnected from the job. The job is managing the politics. The job SHOULD be managing a networked alliance focused on helping the broader organization live its purpose by achieving its strategic goals. The work is moving projects and goals to completion. The WAY you work is based on values and commitments made.

This is where it’s falling apart. The values are ringing hollow, and people are disassociating their personal values from their work behaviors as their organizations sever their stated values from their management practices. The greater the alignment, the greater the mutually beneficial commitments. (research really does support this. It’s not a nice thought with no basis. For more info in that, contact me or do your own fact checking. Share it with all of us here!)

The greater the misalignment, the greater the craziness, and the more people leave their spirit at home, or leave their organization when the toleration becomes too much or the value disconnect becomes too clear.

That’s where I seem to be.

I’m warning you…. This is truly Trina Untethered… the inner workings of my mind untethered. Before I go back to “work,” all this is factored and filtered. My vocabulary and sentence structure simplify. My second draft is much tighter when there is carry over.

Why am I doing this publicly?

First, I’m a writer. And writers want to be read. Period.

Second, I’m an experiential and social person, even though I love being alone. How much better can you get than engaging deeply in dialogue with whomever wants to be here with me, and still get to spend a lot of time alone? You just have to love it if you’re me!

Third, regardless of my day job on the contract, I’m an anthropologist and futurist and forecaster and listener and observer and friend-maker and truthteller. That’s what I do.

Truth is whatever is most so, given all I know and feel and see and hear and intuit, in this moment. Tomorrow, if I do my job well, truth changes.

So here is a place to capture slices of “truth” that inevitably change over time, partly because of the very act of capturing that truth here, and partly because you are here with me, sometimes vocally and sometimes reflectively.

[I have a wonderful project charging up on the side here in my mind. I’ve been mindmapping it for a few months now, and it’s coming closer to birth. If this stream of consciousness vibrates with you (and yes, I do mean that literally), or you are curious to know more, email me! When I get a critical mass (and that could be 9 or 99), we’ll keep the rest of you posted!]

Anyway, I’m really off point. Here’s what I was saying before we transported to a different project dimension:

Yet when they step into work, they become political animals. Their job is politics and relationship management. More and more I see very little work being done. Strategy being sharpened. I see action and reaction cycles….

My personally valued and professionally respected colleague has just had the rug pulled out from under her. I observe remarkably and fundamentally jazzed when awareness hits me for the first time…. Archetypally I have lived the second half of my life consistently creating unexpected ways for the rug to be pulled from under me. Being a Law of Attraction apprentice for over 30 years now, consciously, I have been pulling quite a major guilt trip on myself for being unable to break that pattern.

My friend has the same archetype. She is bright, competent, talented, committed, honorable, and authentic, as am I. Funny how we cannot say this about ourselves without embarrassment, but we can say it about someone we know and for whom it is true. Then I laugh because we are very much alike.

Back to my third tangent, Rug pulling archetype… bookmark this to come back to later. In a nutshell, our globe is racing toward some major rug pulling, so I guess some of us need to be able to teach people how to avert it, and if you can’t, how to handle it when it happens! LOL. A little of that need to save everyone, upstream problem-solving habit I have.

And now back to the original topic:

The political animal that possesses good people’s brains and behaviors when they walk into the Organization ate my friend for lunch yesterday. Literally. One minute she is the newest and brightest star, inundated with kudos and appreciation. The next she is spending the afternoon with her son. That fast.

The story is for another day or never because it resonates with too many painful experiences for so many.

The synchronicity for this blog posting, however, is how I have not posted this diatribe out of fear that I’m overreacting, pouty, overly negative and blaming and angry and hurt and all those squishy feelings that are so unbecoming a professional and co-creator as remarkable me. Oh, and because I don’t want you to think less of me. <sheepish grin> I don’t mind your knowing I’m human or copping to screwing some things up in life, but I do not want to lay myself out there to be sliced or diced, either. Seems a reasonable hesitancy.

Then there’s the accusatory narcissm to think anyone would care what’s going on in my head, unless they have some weird obsession with me. Yet that is no longer important enough to matter.

Here’s my truth for today. Incoming….

Her current event parallels a big chapter or two in my story. And gives me an answer to my big question from the earliest section of this diatribe on the current state of the Corporate Planet. The question was:

Is it me (and “me” points to possibilities of incompetence, bad fit, in denial, being a dinosaur, mental illness, and so on), or is something really whacky in corporations today?

Answer:

Yes, and something is really whacky in corporations today. What is “me” is that I am having trust issues…. What I don’t know is how pervasive and how widespread the disease is. My colleague’s unexpected experience points to the story being bigger than my own.

The truth is that some business’ “mind” is mentally ill, chemical cocktails that are ludicrously powerful mixes of narcissism and sociopathic behavior that when insisted upon, yields unfeeling behavior in otherwise feeling human beings. Remember The Milgram Experiment? Or Guantanamo?

To follow Shakespearian tragedy, the fatal flaw of ambition, ala Macbeth.

How ironic that my latest falling-on-the-sword story / client (not to be told in this blog because it’s irrelevant and unfair to the client who, despite its disease, does a great deal of good for people.) just had formal charges filed against them by the labor board…. Just an aside that is another synchronicity confirming I am not the problem, but I have been subverted from being part of the solution by questioning my sanity. No more!

The Corporate / Political water has become polluted, and we’ve gotten accustomed to massaging the language to make the hard news more palatable. We’ve gotten accustomed to looking to shareholders first, the public second, customers third, and human resources fourth, if that.

The “me” part of the answer of Yes is that I no longer believe that I / we are stronger than the Borg of 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th . Corporate politics reduces people to survivalist behavior. I’ve spent all my 25+ years as an organization psychologist working at the very senior and most strategic levels of the organization, as well as hanging out simultaneously with the housekeepers and engineers. I am a change maker, always lifting the organization and its people to higher functioning in Maslow’s hierarchy and the marketplace. I pay attention. I understand politics. I work within the political and cultural milieu and respect it.

I see a growing and shameful trend. I have seen good people throwing people under the bus without looking back. I have been thrown under the bus more than once. I was beginning to think it was me. I have seen good people being thrown under the bus. Like yesterday. I still ask what, politically, did we do to blow it? And go back and try to do better next time without violating my principles or breaking any promises while building bridges within the company.

But I have become weary, as the original blog bleads so painfully.

Then I’m afraid because by being honest about this I invite not only judgment, but also the very real possibility that good client work might go away or never come in.

Then today I listened as my bright, amazingly competent and committed friend told me her story. She was thrown under the bus, and the people who did it didn’t even try to hide it. It was acceptable, albeit unfortunate, behavior. “I’m sure you understand.”

You know what the really sad part is, and why the answer to my question is Yes, and Yes?

The sad part is, my friend did understand. Someone has to be sacrificed. This time it’s me. I get it.

Yup.

How crazy is that? Crazy enough for me to wake up! Two talented professionals expanded emotional bandwidth by connecting at a level we had not shared before, because to go down that path of honest self-doubt and fear? Well, that’s pretty risky to admit that you are beginning to question yourself. It’s more socially acceptable to say you’re a drunk than to admit you think you might be going crazy because the world just isn’t making as much sense as it once did, or you just don’t know that you can make yourself care or STOP caring. That, in psychological terms, is called a double bind. And some solid research, if I am current, suggests double binds create cognitive dissonance and that leads to disassociation, which is the first stepping stone to crazy.

So we now know we have been crazy, crazy for thinking we could change crazy. And crazy for internalizing the blame at some level. And very good-minded and hearted people because despite everything, we still truly believe that, at our best, we are all still good people.

So let’s start waking up to the tolerations that are becoming tsunamis in our own lives.

For my friend and I, it’s picking different ways to share our talents, or at least with different kinds of organizations.

For me it is reducing my financial needs significantly so I have more choice about who I work for and how much I need to charge to do it.

I love my home, but if I want to teach at a university again, if I want to do research, if I want to spend more time creating a movement…. Or if I only want to work with hand-picked clients who may not have the immediate cash flow to pay me what I’m worth all at once…. If I live in a smaller, less expensive place I not only can say Yes to anyone or anything I want and No to pathological clients.

This is a huge victory! I am applying the Law of Attraction fully by pulling toward me simplicity, integrity, choice, joy, and flow. I feel a smaller, one-story, cottage feel. Last time I felt this strongly, I found The Sanctuary here. I have always called myself a steward of this property, not the owner. I now am clearly pulled toward that cottage. Or more accurately, pulling the cottage toward me.

So I will be listing my home for sale by end of August. Let me know if you want to know more! (She is a grand Victorian on a 4000 square foot lot in the hear of the city, a project to restore her to the powerful beauty she once was.) I’m looking forward to meeting the next person, family, or organization (zoned mixed use) that will steward this oasis in the heart of Denver.

For you, moving out the tolerations / tsunamis might be tightening the door knobs. Or speaking up, at least to yourself, and paying attention to What Else?

How about that for a simple movement? What if, at least once a day, we committed to look at some event of the day, examine how we see it, and ask ourselves, and answer ourselves in possibility, the very simple question:

What else is also possibly true about this?

Monday, August 11, 2008 – Remember, this is what launch blog so is earlier thought….

I’m blogging at some risk today. At least it feels pretty scary to me. While much of my life is and always has been / will be quite blessed, I have been struggling. As a 25+ year self-employed consultant who a d v i s e s. I also know that, like it or not, people judge. And the more information I share, the more opportunity to twist, misunderstand, judge.

And I’m tired. I don’t have the energy to clarify misperceptions, try to win anyone over, ignore and delete disagreement, or even digest healthy but different perceptions. I am increasingly dissatisfied with how I see the world today. I’m the eternal optimist digging through the crap for the pony. I’m really not kidding, for those of you who don’t really know me yet. I’m the one who fights depression yet still finds ironic humor in life if nothing else, and I’m ridiculously entertained by my own endless seeking for more accuracy and clarity in a fluid sort of way. It makes me good at my job and usually pretty good at my life. And the gift is a real appreciation for so much….

I actually continue to be hopefully optimistic. I am having a harder time in some ways than ever, yet am more peaceful in the midst than ever as well. I am writing again. A lot. I am journaling again. Daily. I get jittery if a week goes by and I don’t blog. So I’m still engaged. But back to the discouragement and fatigue.

How does it show up in my everyday life? Let’s start with the anger that has been igniting more of late. First, a reality check…

[Not a rhetorical question-]

Has anyone but me – typical global and.or US citizen – felt at all ignored, disrespected, taken advantage of, road-blocked, boxed in with seemingly nowhere to go, having imbeciles and greedy b**t*rds take what is rightfully yours (whether it’s credit for your work or your hard-earned money), and you just can’t believe it is happening to YOU? Unfamiliar with how it feels to be a victim?

Well, while it’s not all of me, it is certainly my feeling at least part of my day too often than is bearable.

Has anyone but me been a law-abiding citizen, break-the-rules only when based on solid competence, experience, and.or ethics? I don’t cheat on my taxes, but I do study the patchy history of the 16^th Amendment. Not stupid, just compliant. I never cheated in school or work, though I am increasingly questioning the integrity of some of the leaders I’ve helped and supported. Dirty little secret. I apparently have a high tolerance for bad behavior because I always look for the best from people.

I find little humor here.

I’m having a harder time being passionately supportive when I don’t fully trust some companies’ leadership myself.

For me, for what I do and who I do it for – this is a problem.

My work is helpful regardless of the original motivation in hiring my talent. I have passionately and fully negotiated as clearly as possible that I / we be unleashed to develop the organization and the people, neither at the expense of the other.

I take up the armor of overcoming the slings and arrows of “This is just another fad of the month” and “I know you believe this, but you don’t know our executive team the way we do.”

And I (or we, but I can’t keep saying we, so since this is my blog and I don’t want to speak for anyone else, first person singular, please.)…

… I get to work. When I get to dig in and do the work, I get to work. And it isn’t “work” because it’s what I would do if I never got paid for it. I’m a continuous learner and facilitator. A magician when it all comes together, at least sometimes.

WE – the people at the client organization and I – get to work. Sometimes we even get a straight pipe to the decision-makers, and when the Yes to the work matches the Yes to the support, we rock it out.

I love that. And then I stop fishing and start teaching.

I love that.

But guess what? More lately the real changes are getting in the way of some other agenda. I’m not the best hire when the “agenda” doesn’t match the “stated objective.”

And now I’m getting uncomfortable. I love many of my clients, and nearly all of them are impeccably congruent and wonderful. I have an early like for some of my prospects. But the faith in the typical company client today? The faith that the executive leadership really wants to become their personal best and help the company be its best? Not so much a full cup of trust going in any more. That is uncomfortable for me.

IF I blog about this, I risk losing clients and certainly risk losing prospects who would be worried that I would have issues with them or might not be “on their side.”

I’m not talking politics or party, or management versus labor. I’m talking about the degradation of trust I feel when scapegoating becomes standard practice at the highest level of the organizations. Leaders in business and government are often caught in lies. Ironically, I was taught by my mentor years ago to always position my professional contribution to a client’s success this way:

“If we succeed, you get all the credit and made a great decision when you hired me. If we fail, it’s the consultant’s fault.”

A little unexamined statement to lower the risk for the client to hire me. Then, a client really did. I got over it after shaking it off, and it made little impact. Then it happened again. I am resilient and learn and move on. This last time, however, shook me to my core for many reasons. The relevant one here is my existential crisis about what this is all about. This time I was sent home for them to save face. The only problem was I was not part of the deception or the accusation. I was just caught in its web. Liars need scapegoats. It’s usually a middle manager, or a consultant….

Without belaboring the point, I can tell stories from 2 decades ago.

Sometimes I dodged the bullet, and sometimes I didn’t. I still loved my work.

Now I’m at that half-century mark where I reflect and open to what’s next. I see, sadly, a disturbing trend in my small little sample size called “my life.”

Note: I still believe there are a vast majority of high integrity business owners and leaders who are not contributing to this decline. I also believe, however, that news soundbites report latest scandal’s 15 minutes confirms my observations. And, in support of all us honest and fair employers out there, it is harder for an honest person to override the low vibration of much business practice today.

Before I spiral down into a b**ch session, let me simply say Thank You.

I am changing my life dramatically (Personal goal target is within one year) so that I can afford to do w h a t e v e r is my best and most joyful and fulfilling work, regardless of income derived from it. I still don’t know exactly what that looks like, but having fewer financial and personal responsibilities give me time and choice. Very big with me.

Get ready for a change.

I love what I do and want to align with the right organizations, whether business or NGO. Heavens, I’ve even dreamed of being part of the transformation of this country / global citizenship up close and personal.  I recalibrate to open up the options.

So, I’m grateful. NOT for the gnats on my butt and mosquitoes in my dark bedroom, but for the clarity. I do not want to support what does not work anymore, and that starts with my naiveté.

Get ready for a change.

I always believed Justice would win, and God would make sure of it.

I don’t know if I still believe that, but I do want that. And I seem unable to settle for less.

Have this problem. I don’t need things to be perfect or even right, but I have always needed things to be reasonably fair. And I have always needed to work with and for people I basically trust to have some commitment to fairness.

I operate from swift trust; the glass was filled from the beginning with trust, and it stayed full or leaked out as we prove our integrity to one another over time.

The beauty of this is I get to iteratively practice empathy. I stretch my thought process, my values and beliefs, my experience by learning your stories and thoughts and beliefs. I change as a result of this glass of trust making it possible for me to talk to you, work with you, explore with you. I change my thoughts about what we work on. I also confirm or change my thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about you.

Either people are getting more politically waxed before going out in public, or I’ve been a naïve sap for many years and have been manipulated far more than I even knew. I know I have been tricked through the years. I don’t know that I could have the impact I do if I didn’t open myself to being psyched. I don’t usually get tricked too many times without learning and extrapolating the lessons, though.

If anything, my bigger guilty mistake has been refusing to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt without putting better precautions in place. One part laziness, one part pony hunter, one part delightful fellow human being who analyzes and problem-solves in wonderful ways by taking the chance to really look more closely and expand emotional bandwidth. The person is generally still genuinely value-based; I get lost in that and while I see the political behavior and scapegoating, I tolerate it because I know they’re paycheck- and politically more dependent on coloring inside the lines than I am. This client is one part of my paycheck. For them, it’s the whole paycheck. I get it. I understand. I trust they are doing the best they can.

Only now more frequently I see bad behavior. The apology delivered passionately and efficiently while Brutus stabs Caesar.

In all our political correctness and glorification of “human resources,” I have to watch behavior. I’m a psychologist. Most of what we learn comes from paying attention. Knowing what to look for helps, but seeking patterns is the key.

And I see lots of patterns. But for now, one pattern suggests humans really are thought of, talked about as, and patronized as “resources”, not people.

I see bad behavior all around, including my own. I’ve been pretty cranky and negative! Of course, I’m not bullying people or raping the land. But it’s got to change anyway.

Get ready for a change.

It seems nearly everyone has been vibrating at a very dense level, the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. For someone who is in the business of raising personal and business excellence, it’s hard –

We are working more hours (or jobs) than ever

We have a resurgence in labor organizing and, ironically, the company’s advocate for the people, HR, is often tasked with union busting. Called by many names, usually with mixed motivation. But here we are, the two advocates for people’s rights at work set against each other. How ironic is that?

What master mind came up with the strategy that would virtually guarantee no one’s voice gets heard?

The English major enjoys irony, but it wears heavy on the spirit after awhile. We’re in a play and have forgotten we are actors. I remind myself, but the gnats and mosquitoes lately are irritating me to the max. They feel very real….

I’m working more, sleeping less, and feeling less of the passion. When I redirect to areas of passion, I see big spikey risks everywhere. While still fully competent and capable and willing to do great work, I am stepping out of the safety zone if I post this. I’m not arrogant enough to think so many of you are reading what is, basically, an unmarketed and very new blog. But the savvy decision-maker is behind the times if s/he doesn’t at least google my name before hiring me, especially since s/he is trusting me with very sensitive situations.

I’m pointing the metaphorical finger here at most, if not all, of us. But how many like that? In my experience, whistle blowers are admired from a distance but carefully avoided up close.

I will have opened myself to discrimination based on my views. Until some of my Decision 50 actions are complete, I am at risk. (Decision 50 – makes it sound real. I like it. Bookmark that for another day.)

Yet I confess. I have enjoyed the people I work with a lot, but the “mission” less so if I have any reason to question the company’s integrity. I am notably flexible and nonjudgmental, so it scares me to even admit I am flirting on the edge of disillusionment. What comes next? Writing agonizing poetry?

Again, I’m simply in an existential crisis because I want to work with clients and partners who value integrity and fairness. My confidence index in Corporate American / Global Companies is shaky. If it’s the right thing to do for the business and the people, it might get done. If it’s the right thing for the people only, it seldom will happen. If it’s right for the business, a yes is very likely.

Some days I feel totally stuck. And perhaps even repulsed knowing that I have never before let myself get stuck for very long. Honest reflection, accurate observation, compass setting and hard work with course correction – this has been my way. Lately, though, doors are closing and gnats are swarming and mosquitoes are biting. Don’t like camping as much as I used to, and I don’t want to do it anymore unless I have a soft bed and a barrier from the bugs at least while I sleep!

So I’m moving out of the swamp, man!

I needed to know deep discomfort to get out of the muddy world I have been living in, I guess. Honestly, I have wondered who I am and who we are as a species, and what I / we are now supposed to be doing. Something truly does have to give. At least for me.

Due to circumstances that are only a distraction to go into here, I have felt practically prohibited from helping. I watch prospects do exactly what I know will very possibly be a big mistake, and I am unable to sway them.

[When I look back at the advice I gave that was taken and the results, and the warnings I forecast that almost always played through, I cannot humbly say IMHO. I am not always right, but I am better than the average observer.]

I am hooked on advising wisely and helping pragmatically. It’s a spiritual discipline for me to walk away from prospects and clients, hands tied out of respect for their right to choose their own destiny. Huge ego-based statement…. I concede. Things are pretty raw right now, and I did say it was an addiction, after all!

I realize more than ever what I don’t need anymore, and how my choices have bred limitations and tolerations. I am taking steps back toward purer and simpler and that which has always sustained me.

My door is opening to more beginnings. I still have a lot of steps to take to address great challenges, but in the end, I will live much closer to my Heaven on Earth. I start by trusting I have support, and gladly giving mine where it’s useful and I can.

And hope this blog doesn’t cost me too much. Because, really, this is a very exciting time! I squirm to peek around the next corner.