I didn’t know, but we had a social contract!

Benito Guidi
Jul 22, 2017 · 7 min read

More than about social contract this is a story about self contract, about love and passion!

This was a very important week to me!

I just left the hierarchical power based “orange” organization where I used to work, it is sad to say, but I was invited to leave, my way of being and work were no more “acceptable”. I am too much subversive, I think too much, I want to change too many things, I need purpose, I like to understand and provoque reflection about what we do and how, i want to have fun and make questions, and that was not possible, not anymore.

I used to be an outstanding worker, a recognized talent!

All started almost 4 years ago when there was a lack of power, when in my team we didn’t had the manager of our manager, we had no direction, so that we had to create our own way of work and we did it. In the first year we just responded to the organizational requests in our ways, instead of going outside to find training content, we just started to create it, we didn’t had budget the company wasn’t doing good!

Then came the new manager of our manager, and it was cool because she just left we carry on with our job, she gave us some direction and really believed in our work. So we had the “ok” to do what we thought we had to do!

We were the training and development area of a big multinational, we were just 5 people, so we started to focus in training to develop people! And we succeed! We had an amazing success. Our internal customers were happy because we spoke their language, we knew about their problems, we didn’t had the responses for their problems, but we had passion, time, questions and tools! Of course we made a lot of mistake, but we started to learn fast and to did great things!

At that time I didn’t know but we had a social contract. We had a mission and it was beautiful: create an environment of thinking opportunity to improve the work and the personal life of our colleagues, all of them, with no differences between their hierarchical position. And we had roles!

Our social contract was something like this (it was not written, but it was practiced):

  • We will hear from our customers what they need to learn, we will do this speaking with them and sending them questionnaires;
  • Once we had decided the topics to be offered as training session, everyone of us had to deeply study the subjects;
  • Every one would make a training session for our team and the team would give the feedback about what was more interesting and should be used in the final training;
  • No one could criticise the trainer, just point out the content that was more or less interesting to our customers in the daily use;
  • The trainer could ask for feedback and point out the interesting things that the others would do in facilitated the training session;
  • After that everyone shared the content we would create our best content;
  • We would do 3 test with our customers;
  • We would make the changes they pointed out;
  • We would start to spread the content all over the organization;
  • Everyone of us would choose what training would be more interesting to apply;
  • We would dedicate 80% of our time and energy to make the training sessions;
  • We had to enjoy, to have fun and to learn

This is what happened: we trained all the young, middle and senior managers in our organization, we were able to “create” a poll of internal facilitator all over our Nation, we adapted the leadership training for non leaders and did the same, we passed 2 years doing this, we save more than 5 millions dollars with external training! We learned a lot about our organization, our colleagues, ourselves, we had fun, we were proud and happy with our jobs! It was the first time for me! Seriously, wake up and be happy to go to work! It worked fantastically good!

We had no job descriptions to respect, we just had to accomplish to our role: be the trainers, the researchers, the coaches, the good energy peoples, the one that wanted to do good job!

Then something changed, the manager of our manager left the company, a new gap of power came but this time things were in a different way. We were expected to “produce” what was expected from a traditional Training team: to spend the money with external consultant and to do reports and powerpoints about our works. A lot of powerpoint, powerpoint for everything!

Our social contract was no more working and we hadn’t none! Our roles were banned and we had to respect our job descriptions! We just had to wait for orders and accomplish with it! It was a dramatic change!

I had luck for some more weeks. I really loved my job, so I always offered myself to do the trainings as for my internal clientes it would be faster and simpler than buy it from outside. I always created something new and many areas of the company used to request my training session and team coaching.

This was real until few weeks ago, when I was asked to stop doing training to start doing powerpoints, I resisted, I didn’t want to. The value of my job was clear for me, people that came in my training loved them and learned a lot, I used to do great workshop about leadership, problem solving, creativity, communication, self development, productivity and so on! And suddenly I had to stop everything to do powerpoints and interact with external suppliers!

I tried to change, I did some powerpoint but I wasn’t good in it and I wasn’t able to understand what I was doing. Why. Which one was the purpose. Then I realized that there was no more meaning in my job, I was doing things that I did not understand and when I understood I didn’t agree! It was making me feel bad, sad, nervous. So I started to find ways to go back in the classroom and I was told: or you change or you leave. I didn’t changed!

This weekend is my first weekend out. I am an entrepreneur now! This weekend I started my company: Conversare Lab (Laboratory for change). We are online, already sharing content, and on monday I will start to arrange meeting to sell my products to other companies!

I will become the supplier for other companies! And I want to be paid to do my best to share my experiences, to show that there are different ways of doing our work, and of course to share what I am learning about self-management.

Conversarelab is a startup with a purpose:Gather and share knowledge online and offline about work and life strategies to facilitate reflections about improving the human life experience on planet Earth. Change is inevitable, and we need to find better ways to pass through it

Conversarelab is a self management based startup. We have roles, not job descriptions! We are creating our metrics! We are learning how do to do great job!

Conversarelab will have a great social contract, if my colleagues of the self management intensive course Vinny and Ken will agree I would like to start with the one that we did together in a super unique collaborative way. That follows:

  • Respect one another, treating each other professionally and with integrity.
  • Communicate openly and honestly with each other.
  • Listen to each other’s concerns and ideas with attentiveness and discernment, without interruptions
  • Honor the confidences of others.
  • Strive for excellence by consistently giving our personal best to each other and our customers.
  • Be accountable for our actions.
  • Respect to the others time, Respect Deadlines
  • Foster a fun and friendly workplace.

When in meetings we:

  • Contribute in a positive way
  • Listen to our colleagues
  • Never discuss Team Members actions, if that Team Member is not present.

We take care about Honouring our Commitments

  • When we commit to a task or a role, we are expected to complete that task or role to the best of our ability.
  • If we feel we cannot offer a commitment, then we must NOT offer that commitment, we must allow someone else to offer their commitment instead.
  • If after giving our commitment, we are unable to complete a task, either to the desired level or within the desired timeframe, we must ask for help and assistance from our Team Members before the deadline or expected completion date.
  • If we fail to honour our Commitments, it is the duty of other Team Members to hold us to account in a respectful and professional manner.

And we have an illustration to resume it:

If you want you can visit our facebook page and support our movement: https://m.facebook.com/conversarelab/

Writing this article I realised that I have the most important thing: I have a history to share with people. And I am fully grateful to everything that happened. And as Milton Erickson’s Five Principles teach us:

  1. People are okay as they are.
  2. People already have all the resources within them to achieve what they want.
  3. People always make the best choice they can at the time.
  4. Every behavior has a positive intention.
  5. Change is inevitable.

And more important, I’m happy to not blame anyone nor the situation.

I am grateful about what happened and what is happening.

I’m happy to be in charge of my destiny and grateful about all my experience in my previous work! I made great friends and great positive impact, this is what matters!

Things just happens, we decide how to pass through!

Thanks for your attention.

Benito

Practical Self Management Intensive

this is the place where we show our work

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Benito Guidi

Written by

Problem solver

Practical Self Management Intensive

this is the place where we show our work

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