The team and the forest

Lynne here, pondering our wilding hearts

Heya Kate,

Ohhh I’m with you that learning to discern rigorous vulnerability is the work of a lifetime - navigating “where you and others are in relation to both your professional aims, your emotional needs and your own boundaries”. Since reading your last letter I’ve been pondering further this complicated process of learning the unspoken organisational rules and culture. Over the years I’ve witnessed a not-insignificant amount of conflict and pain stem from the process of learning to navigate this mix of professionalism and vulnerability in organisations aiming for non-hierarchical structures. Is this just the process of growing up professionally? Or can we navigate this with more wisdom?

For me, workplaces have often felt like a dense forest. Navigating the forest means sticking to the path. Overstep the path and you might find yourself in the dense overgrowth, ruffling feathers the wrong way. Not all of the characters in the forest are friendly. A venomous snake that will hiss at you simply because that is their nature. Or a bear that will leave you be, until you try to interfere with one of their babies. There are protocols in the forest, and you have to learn them. Not all of them can be written into an onboarding handbook - many aspects of workplace culture are unwritten. “Bring your whole self to work” does not really mean this, as you say, and the emotional labour of navigating slightly-more-but-not-too-much vulnerability needs to be navigated. Diverting from the path a few times is okay, but divert too far or too often and soon you’ll find yourself alone. It is not safe to be without friends in the forest. 

In the best teams and workplaces, the team is able to navigate the forest together, leaning on each others’ skills and experience to keep everyone safe and cohesive on the path. But as we aim toward flat organisational structures often this becomes confusing. There will always be power imbalances in a team. Some people have been there longer, some have more experience. Some people will feel more at home than others because of their background and life experiences before this team. And many will join the team carrying with them experiences of prejudice that have impacted their life so far. Existing internalised ideas of how power plays out set the tone as they embark on the emotional labour of understanding the subtleties of organisational culture. The forest is more dangerous for some than for others.

For those with power this is another level of responsibility. Navigating the forest while being supportive in relation to actual and perceived power takes skill and nuance. This needs to be done while also holding the more visible responsibilities - to funders, partners, directors, investors, the wider organisation - responsibilities that limit the support that can be offered in more specific situations. The tasks of balancing and prioritising, particularly when there are conflicting needs at play, takes an emotional toll. And all of this needs to be held and navigated while constantly giving power away to continue toward the goal of a non-hierarchical organisation.

All this to say the forest is exhausting, even without storms in the economic climate and all the other external influences. Over my years of making mistakes I’ve come to recognise that investing in policies and procedures is fundamental. They enable power to be put into documents - rather than people - that can be written, edited and adapted by the team. While this won't necessarily make emotions easier, it will always make decisions easier. Brene Brown and many others talk about moving from a power-over culture to a power-with/for culture in the team. This checklist gives some simple ways to frame this practically. The checklist is written for leaders, but in non-hierarchical teams everyone in the team can be embodying these values. 

I’m also really interested in exploring a Privilege Walk as a way to make some of the privileges of people in the team visible, and unpack the ways that life experiences shape relationships to power. I can imagine that the container that holds this activity - pre and post conversations - will be crucial in drawing out the learning, and these conversations will be harder for some than for others. Lots of care needed here.

As Earth-centred, holistic organisations we are navigating unexplored terrain. Genuinely wild forests do need to be navigated with respect. There is no straight line through, any route will require a complex navigation. In the UK there are few examples of genuinely wild forests, which might be why it is so hard for many of us to imagine the wildness back into ourselves. What if embracing the vulnerable unknown of these difficult conversations is part of how we grow the wild back into our hearts? And in turn, the world?

With love, on the edge of a jungle.

Lynne