Nurturing a regenerative work culture through “inner work”
A reflection on my integration into the Purpose + Motion team
When we started exploring the collaboration between Pablo & Mike (who have founded Purpose+Motion 4 years ago) and myself in spring last year, we decided to embark on what felt like an “experiment”. Given we have successfully concluded the experiment (by me actually joining the partnership officially earlier this year), and year-end always has a bit of a vibe to reflect on things, I would like to take a moment to share with you what we have been learning so far and how my integration into the team went. I believe, part of this can be useful for you (dear reader ;) ) if you are also on your journey towards a regenerative future and believe “inner work” is essential. And it will give you a bit of “behind the scenes” to us (and what we support others to do).
Where did we start off?
I (Alex) was at an important cross roads in my live: I have just had a second burn out, after having shifted to a new job that at first seemed to be the right fit, however when I started working in that team, I realized that whilst the purpose of the organization was really close to my heart, the work culture and leadership was not a fit at all — mostly due to what I perceived as the incoherence between the work done aimed at achieving impact outside of the organization and how certain values were then lived on the inside (which is often harder to see from the “outside” during a hiring process). This experience was a painful learning opportunity for me personally, so when I started talking to Mike and Pablo, I knew I wanted to do things differently, taking more time to have open and transparent conversations to get to know each other, get to know P+M from the inside and see what could make sense to all of us. This was a particularly big step to me, as it meant: leaving Basel (Switzerland,) where I had been living and working for the last 6.5 years, and moving to Berlin (Germany), whilst also changing into a very different area of work (becoming a consultant for transformation processes).
At the same time, the stakes for Mike and Pablo were also high, as they have had some not quite successful experiences with trying to integrate another member to their team before, and hence felt it was important to look at how and who to take another chance with.
What was our approach?
BUILDING & MAINTAINING TRUST
Before I officially started working with the team, we had a series of conversations amongst the three of us where we got to know each other, our desires, vision, values, experiences, and expectations — mostly through open conversations and curiosity and generously sharing what we feel like, need and want — a bit like “dating” ;). Additionally, I had the opportunity to join and experience some parts of the work Pablo and Mike were doing at that time, which gave me a much better idea of what it looks like in action.
In retrospective, slowly building up (and consciously working to maintaining) our trust has been a key ingredient to make the relationship work, which included amongst other things open and respectful communication at eye level. I have learned to feel more confident and really appreciate us being able to openly share what is going on (physically, emotionally and mentally), where we struggle, where we need something from each other and doing this in a respectful way (which took and often still takes me quite a bit of effort as I still need to “overwrite” a lot of experiences and therefore narratives I have from previous jobs, where this was not appreciated and even sometimes meant that I have been told off for it as this was not considered being “professional”). For me, learning about and integrating models like non-violent communication (NVC) was really helpful to have more meaningful and honest conversations amongst us, next to the importance of being able to observe and practice how conversations could be held in a work context — without having to maintain a “professional mask” — through the role-modelling of Mike and Pablo. I have slowly been learning and gaining my confidence that showing myself in a vulnerable way is a powerful way to build trust and therefore bring the relationship and potential to a next level. This is sometimes scary as one always takes a bit of a risk to get hurt, but it can release so much energy that can be used for having a real impact when you can be your actual and honest self and do not have to maintain that mask of what some consider “professionalism”.
How do we keep this up? We practice to keep our relational space clean and open through regular check-ins in our meetings and prioritizing whenever there is some tension we need to look at as a team — so “going in(side the tension)” before we “move on”, be it in our internal meetings or in our monthly team coaching session (more on this in the rituals part below). At the same time, we are fully aware that this is not easy and takes a continued conscious effort — which we believe is worth it to be able to have a good and trusting relationship amongst us so we can be at our best as a team. We are also not perfect: One of our main learning edges as a team in this context is to be able to address difficult conversations and unpleasant topics, even more early on.
SETTING UP AND REFINING AGREEMENTS
Another valuable ingredient to building our partnership has been setting up explicit agreements based on what is important to us and for our work (including how to add new and refine our existing agreements). In order to be able to get to point where we see each other at eye level, it was important to talk through what is important to us and look at a couple of scenarios that we could be facing (and how we would go about them). The scenarios we talked through were:
- Decision-making and dealing with conflict: How do we make decisions as a team and what happens if we disagree and/or have a conflict? (We clarified which type of decisions we make individually, in which ones we need to involve the full team and how to do it. For this we use a version of “sociocracy”.)
- Growth: What does this mean for us and how do we feel about it? Is there a limit for us in terms of what is enough?
- Ownership and liability: We looked at how we wanted to legally set up our company and ownership and what this also means in terms of liability for each of us. We considered the concept of “steward ownership” and given our legal structure already means we own the company to a third each, agreed on setting up and a couple of core principles that we want to commit to (we are still developing those as we speak) next to the partnership contract we have in place.
SUPPORTING RITUALS AND SPACES
Another ingredient that I’d like to mention here, has been and still is the availability of rituals and spaces that ensure we can keep working on our own internal relationship. We do this through check-ins at the beginning of our meetings, a section where we go through any “tension” that needs to be looked at in our weekly alignment meetings, a symbolic connection circle (where we sit/stand in a circle holding hands, connecting to each other through a short guided meditation that one of us invites to) and a monthly 3-hour coaching session where we can go in more depth of anything that is relevant to us. Some of the topics that have been coming up and we are currently looking at are: What are the power dynamics in our team and how can we work with it in a healthy way? How can we decolonize our work and relationships? What does it mean to be a regenerative business and how can its culture look like?
Consciously making time and providing a space for these types of topics to be looked at has proven very helpful to both make it much easier to bring some of those topics to the team (which sometimes feels a bit uncomfortable, but as there is a designated space for it, the hurdle and effort of bringing this up decreases a lot) and to not forget about it and therefore ensure we can really practice what we preach. Again, we know we are by far not perfect, and trust me: we also get into the “hustle mode” and fall back to old and unhealthy patterns at times. It does help though to have those built in reminders into our spaces and routines to get back to the attitude of prioritizing “inner work” which we know is healthy in the long run. This is not just adding value to us, our relationships but ultimately it does to the work we do with our clients (who can then also pass this on to their areas of influence).
What‘s next?
We understand this work not as something that will ever be completed, but rather as an ongoing process that is needed to nurture and strengthen our relationship and through that the work and impact we can have with our clients — both by sharing some of those learnings we are making ourselves and supporting them in the challenges that come up in their very own transformation processes. We will remain curious, eager to experiment and improve how we look at things, mess up things and fail along the way, learn a lot and keep sharing it with you and whoever is interested.
Drop me a message, if you would like to learn more or want to share some experiences from your own journey!
