What we miss about culture, and how to fix it

“There is one thing in this world you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there's nothing to worry about, but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life”. — Rumi

What is generally completely ignored about culture in an organization is how much it relies upon the innate and personal morality of the individual workers and management.

I have never seen anything written about how important this quality of the inner life is to the health, vitality, and resilience of an organization. To me, this is a serious oversight, and it’s a central issue we need to address.

The experts, tools, steps, systems, methods, ayahuasca journeys (talking to you California), leadership retreats, and other efforts to develop culture and leadership is all just downstream of what is most important.

Which is, the development of the self and relationships through inner work. 

Today I want to show you why this is so through the lens of morality. Though, because of where we are at in our evolution, it has to be done with knowledge about what freedom is. I’ll also discuss three areas in the day to day activities where you can absolutely nourish the collective inner life of culture and leadership at work. 

Morality and freedom, while they go hand in hand as you’ll see, are a bit awkward and somewhat taboo topics. The word morality has an immediate preachiness about it. So to ease us into this topic, I’m going to start with freedom and give a definition of what freedom is for you to consider. This will help us navigate through morality and come out the other side with something useful and applicable.

Here’s why I am talking about this

For years I taught violin to various ages of students, and one difference I observed between those who made progress and those who didn’t was not talent, actually. It was whether they had heard a master violinist play often enough that they had formed an inner picture of what the instrument was capable of. If they had that, they had more of a feel for the violin and its potential. Otherwise they floundered and quickly lost interest. Talent played a considerably smaller role than one would expect.

And this is why I work to bring you picture after picture of these concepts. You have to have them in order to orient into what is possible, what the future is bringing toward you, and how your leadership can play a more decisive role in our collective evolution.

This is how you build capacity for exact Imagination, rather than only fantasy.

A definition of freedom

Rudolf Steiner defined freedom as “the sense of being capable of actions motivated solely by love” (from his book, Philosophy of Freedom). 

What this means, in my view, is that freedom is an entirely inner experience before it becomes an outer one. If you are acting out of motives not fully imbued with love, then you are compelled by another force — for example desire, antipathy, disdain, need, fear, power, hurt. Forces that are not coming from a place of freedom in you, but that have enslaved your will, driving you. 

In my coaching work, some of what takes place in my office is unpacking those forces of motive and need, and coming to understand the usually subconscious drivers of behaviors that are keeping someone locked in a situation they don’t know how to change. 

The answer to their dilemma is always freedom from the compulsion coming from the will. The journey there is transforming the habitual ways of thinking which will have positive consequences in the feeling life before we finally can succeed at redeeming whatever was driving the will.

True freedom is an experience of love where there are no strings or conditions attached, and motive has a purity to it, an unconditional kind of love. 

A will that wants to grow, nurture, and nourish love in the world has no expectations of getting anything in return because it’s a will that has been transformed from an inward facing self-focused, self-feeling, need-based will to its opposite: an outer facing, non-egoic will that is free from subconscious and ulterior motives.

I have a long way to go before I can live up to that kind of inner freedom. However, I will still work with this picture because without it, how will I know what I’m striving for? 

And now, armed with this definition of freedom, let’s have a shot at morality.

Morality is either an inner or an outer driver

We are (as I’ve explained elsewhere) somewhere in the middle of an inflection point, or transition, from an old world style of morality that is imposed from outside by social systems, expectations, and structures. This old world morality is from earlier developmental stages of consciousness in evolution, best expressed in the Old Testament with its stories of leaders and kings ruling with an absolute and centralized authority. 

We have grown out of an old testament morality, and are growing into a new phase for which we are not quite ready. This new world morality is now coming into being in a desire for more self-responsibility and a stronger intuition of a morality motivated by love. 

But we have to get there. And this is a role that business could play.

If we are not acting out of a morality that is driven by love arising out of an inner experience, then we are not truly free. We are all moving on a spectrum going either toward or away from that goal.

Otherwise it will be a morality that is driven from without - either by a value system given to us by family, culture, government, or our boss — or by our own values derived from beliefs and assumptions which very often can be its own form of enslavement.

Using a study of the life of St Francis of Assisi, Steiner gave three lectures where he talks about how the development of morality is based on the belief in the Divine at the bottom of every human soul, on the boundless love that springs from this belief, and on the hope for each human soul that it can find its way back to the Divine.

At the most simplistic level we can talk about morality as being an idea for what is right or wrong, good versus evil. But I think we need to go further than this because, as I said in the beginning, we rely on the morality of the people in an organization without acknowledging that we do so. 

Upstream of morality lies this issue: we need to look inward as the source of our freedom but we get seduced over and over again to look outward. The real work in the world is self-transformation, not outer success, ambition, or material acquisition.

We won’t find the answers to morality through manipulation of behaviors (the carrot and the stick), nor though laws nor social constructs of right and wrong. 

This is a hard truth to face because it renders much of what we care about and invest in with regards to culture development as less important, as paper boats floating on a wild and destructive ocean of the collective inner life. They haven’t a chance of surviving when the spaces within and between people in a culture lack moral imagination. 

The human being is at any moment making choices based upon an inner compass, a sympathy/antipathy reaction to life. And so whatever we do needs to work with the reality of this inner life.

I suggest we take advantage of humanity’s super-conscious desire for freedom and to live a life with others built upon a foundation of a morality striving for love.

I do think this is within reach, to the degree that we collectively are ready. And wherever and however we aren’t ready, we can sow seeds for the future ripeness that is coming because of our actions right now.

Practice is the only way to grow capacity

The interesting thing is, freedom as a concept guiding culture building efforts can actually lead to greater self-responsibility, agency, and creativity in people. This is counter-intuitive in a world that believes better systems of enforcement, control and incentives lead to better business outcomes.

Freedom and morality hold the key to understanding humans at work and how we can set up conditions for greater self-responsibility, agency and creativity. I’m going to introduce a few places where that can happen, or rather, where you can set up the conditions for practice.

Maybe because my background is in music, I have an unassailable belief in the power of practice. How else would you build capability? I also have an equally unshakeable belief in the potential in others, also based on experience. People grow, transform, and change all the time. 

The more you build practices for growth into your organizational culture, the more this will be true.

What are the practices on a day to day basis that can help us grow into a morality based on love at work?

I’m going to outline three here for you. They aren’t the only three, of course; they are a place to start. All three are designed to touch on the inner life of the individual, but the practice of which takes place between people. 

However, these three belong together in a whole, focused specifically on communication which is the blood-flow of the social realm. I see them as indispensables that form the foundation for everything else.

Practice one: take responsibility for your projections

If you’re not familiar with this term from psychology, here is a definition of projection I took directly from Psychology Today: “projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal, or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another. For example, if someone continuously bullies and ridicules a peer about his insecurities, the bully might be projecting his own struggle with self-esteem onto the other person.

The concept emerged from Sigmund Freud’s work on defense mechanisms and was further refined by his daughter, Anna Freud, and other prominent figures in psychology”.

I can build on this definition by adding that, because we look through a lens colored by our implicit biases, habitual thoughts and worldviews, we are continually projecting onto the world and others. We only learn through regular practice of self-reflection to take back our projections and “own” them. 

Through self-reflection we learn to observe our tendencies to judge and assess the world through this lens, and once you see it you can then take responsibility for it. You can see how it shapes your feeling life and the decisions you make, shaping the course of your life in myriad ways. 

For a bigger discussion on taking back your projections, watch or listen to this podcast episode with me and Rachel Hazlett-Karr.

The practice here is, as I already mentioned, self-reflection. I have a daily practice of journaling where I write down morning thoughts and reflect upon my behaviors, concerns, fears, — and my particular achilles heel — doubts. I don’t write a lot, just enough to give attention to any inner disquiet and reflect on its sources.

Without a regular, rhythmical (meaning ideally every day) practice of journaling, self-reflection is much less reliable as a check for projection. And getting on top of projection is the backbone for any self-realization journey. 

If you don’t like writing, well, do it anyway because the practice of articulating your inner world is absolutely necessary to personal growth. You’re welcome to argue this with me, though I’m pretty darn sure about it. The important thing is you find a way to externalize your thoughts and inner experiences and lean on the healing power of the word via articulation.

What does this have to do with work, and morality? Without taking back our projections it’s a great deal harder to see the higher in another person when we’re full of resentment or bitterness based on enemy images we’ve created about them, let alone care about them. 

We won’t be able to take the whole into consideration nor hold the needs of others equally to our own. We’ll be focused more on our own concerns than extending our consideration out toward others. Owning your projections is a big part of maturing into a capacity for a leadership presence that others look up to and trust.

This is something that we each individually need to practice. 

Also, taking back your projections is necessary for the next practices I introduce.

Practice two: improve your communication know-how

How you communicate with others on the day to day level is where the rubber really hits the road when it comes to improving organizational culture. If we all knew how to graciously handle conflict without backsliding into blame and shame, we’d be a lot less afraid of it. We’d be more willing to speak our truth and less afraid of consequences. We’d be less obsequious to power. 

I am trained in a method called Non-Violent Communication (NVC) and have a lot of practice using and teaching it. It’s a good toolkit, but very easy to weaponize. It’s only as good as its wielder. 

Already having a practice of owning one’s projections is actually really important if you want to communicate well. Once you have that understanding and conviction within you, then NVC becomes the place of practice on a daily basis. You’ll see the positive consequences of taking ownership (practice one) and how it unlocks relationship dynamics. 

The practice here then is to read the book by Marshall Rosenberg, Non-Violent Communication, A Language of Life. This is the basic know-how you’ll need. Having such knowledge about communicating one’s needs and how to make a specific request will not only make your life easier, but you’ll be able to do so while leaving the other free.

You’ll have to read the book to see what I mean.

Practice three: facilitation

The next step from here is to get a basic training in facilitation. Learn and practice the art of convening, organizing, designing, and running meetings. This might sound like overkill, but if you know how to do these things, then you’ll never tolerate another boring, inefficient, or unnecessary meeting again.

Your team’s health relies not only on the strengths of individual people but also on the spaces between and within people. Tension and discomfort can act like poisons to team vitality. And while most people tolerate them, these fault lines can become fissures and ruptures. Too often, teams fail exactly along the fault lines they unwittingly allow to grow. I’ve personally seen such fissures turn into an insurmountable chasm that destroyed a multi-million dollar project.

Otto Scharmer of MIT calls the space between people a “social field,” which he defines as “the quality of relationships that give rise to patterns of thinking, conversing, and organizing, which in turn produce practical results.” Meetings become toxic when people neglect the social field: where there should be warmth, interest, enthusiasm, and flexibility, there can be all manner of opposites: coldness, apathy, manipulation, and so on. 

Nothing drains a team’s energy and goodwill like a poorly run meeting. But just as meetings can play out toxic repetitions of destructive patterns, they can also be a place to make big progress together, support and empower individuals, and build community. Your meetings, moreover, are not just a place to get stuff done. They are the place to cultivate the space between people, the “warmth factor” that forms the basis of a healthy team. 

They provide opportunities to creatively disrupt unhelpful patterns and habits and support the health of the social field. Great things can happen and move in meetings. They can be the heartbeat of a living and healthy culture.

Meetings are a golden opportunity to invest a little bit over time into the social fields and the relationships within and across teams. Over the long term, the culture of the organization will greatly be supported by this.

If everyone was invested in excellent facilitation, and never tolerated a sub-par meeting again, then you have raised the bar considerably toward a higher level of moral imagination for the social life in an organization.

In Conclusion

What is the opportunity at work? What exact and moral imagination can employees, management, and leaders carry with them that reflects how they want to be together? Work is a community, a fellowship of people thrown together to figure out how to continually co-create something bigger than themselves. 

Organizations have an opportunity to take into consideration a healthier level of culture that they build together through daily, easily overlooked, and seemingly insignificant practices like the ones I’ve outlined here. 

As Gandalf said in the Lord of the Rings: “I've found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay”. 

Can you see where the true power lies in the development of culture toward something moral and free?