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Fitting
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The Alive Workplace
Restoring Vitality, Love, and Trust to the Organizational
Environment
By Stephanie Mines
“The question in an imperfect competitive reality is: How do we move forward together? How can enterprise touch and improve life?” — Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi
The belief in compassion and human potential that is the basis of the healing arts is a new direction for an evolving business environment. Today’s rallying cry, at such places as Toyota and Proctor & Gamble, is for love, community, sustainability, and service. They have learned the lesson that without ethical, social, and environmental engagement, economic returns run dry.
What is a healthy workplace? It is empowering, relational, aware, flexible, generous, and honest. The physical architecture is clean, spacious, well-ventilated and well-lit, and suited to the tasks and the people performing them. There are non-work spaces available for rest and relaxation. The theme is open communication, stimulating inquiry, and physical respect. While this may seem a high standard, it is actually an easy one to achieve through perseverance and commitment. It is also the most profitable.
“Healthy people make fewer mistakes,” says Lawrence Germann, CEO of Left Hand Design, an aerospace engineering firm in Colorado. “Healthy people work faster. Real health results in high levels of productivity. People who are so healthy that they are happy make a business grow from marginal financial success to share-the-wealth levels of financial success. There is absolutely no question that healthy people make for a financially expansive workplace.”
Susan Rhodes, Ph.D., a consultant with Positive Change Corps., says the “health of an organization is directly determined by the health of its people. The organization is its people.” And executive entrepreneurs David Batstone and Kevin Roberts state passionately that financial benefit is the natural result of the “alive” workplace. When workers are enthusiastic, they are efficient and productive, the two say. When employees are part of the team of a corporation, they are committed to profitability.
A healthy workplace involves several aspects, including physical health, emotional (spiritual, energetic) ambiance, and physical environment. When all three of these aspects are balanced, the workplace is a healthy community and financial success is a natural outgrowth.
So how can massage therapists and bodyworkers contribute to this new era of healthy workplace? By being part of it. “Stress and trauma have no place to go but underground in a workplace that is driven by busy-ness,” says Cynthia Kneen, management consultant and author of Awake Mind, Open Heart and the upcoming Business and the Buddha . “We learn to tough it out, but the cost to our creativity, innovation, balanced judgment, enthusiasm, service, and empathy is enormous. The case for healing the workplace is strong. We are just starting to see the enormous costs to business of ignoring our humanity,” she says.
One of the easiest and most successful ways to promote health and healing in the workplace is to recognize and address the stress created therein and seek to defuse it by providing massage and bodywork on-site or to make it, along with other somatic therapies, readily available for employees. It’s in that vein that massage therapists would ultimately do well to understand corporate dynamics, stresses, and tensions and to market their skills proficiently in the corporate environment.
The Relationships
of Business
Relationships
are central to the workplace. In fact, relationships are the cornerstone
of business. And successful relationships, unquestionably, are a
function of health. Since healthy relationships make for success
in the marketplace, it only makes sense they foster health and healing
in the workplace. It is true that financial success can occur when
a healthy relationship is not present or even valued. However, there
is always a heavy price to pay for this success. Inevitably, there
is substantial turnover and a non-relational, decision-making body
that lacks perspective and creativity. Some business owners choose
to pay this price rather than relinquish control.
People are the mainstay of business and the source of success. Providing a healthy workplace for them nourishes the roots of the business garden. As we move increasingly toward business based primarily on intellectual properties that flow from inventive human creativity, this is even more true. So important are values and relationship in the workplace that Batstone says companies owe their allegiance first and foremost to their credibility and not to their shareholders. This, Batstone believes, is the only remaining route to success for the business world.
About 12 years ago, organizational psychologists played with the idea of the workplace as a replica of the family. Unwittingly, they said, people were drawn into the work environment to reenact their family dramas. Coworkers, bosses, indeed everyone down to the maintenance crew, took on the role of each other’s family members simultaneously. This creates an unconscious undertone, the hum of unresolved relational static that weaves a mysterious web of compulsivity.
In 2004, we are growing increasingly holistic, adding more dimensions to this family reenactment theory, including a heightened consciousness of the psychological and physiological implications of stress. Workplaces are not only venues for human interaction and productivity, they are also places where physical and spiritual needs are expressed. This has always been true, but now we are acknowledging these aspects of the workplace as human community. The physical design and structure of the workplace shapes the physical health of the individuals who inhabit those spaces. Sensitivity to the emotional and spiritual levels within the workplace is essential to combat the steady rise of workplace violence, such as mobbing — when an alienating work environment has workers ostracizing other workers, thereby sabotaging emotional and psychological workplace dynamics. In the final analysis, the overall health of the workplace signals healthy revenues.
Beyond this, what happens in the workplace affects the larger environment, including the immediate neighborhood or community, the culture as a whole, and even the planet. As Gun Denhart, founder of the successful Hanna Andersson clothing line and developer of the Hannadowns program to benefit children in need, says, “You can’t run a healthy company in an unhealthy community. If the community falls apart, your company will suffer as well.” Of course this is true on a global level as well and is precisely why corporations have an unquestionable responsibility to care for the environment and not plunder it.
Companies can and do take value-based stands, even radical ones, and succeed financially. Caring about the world (both the environment and its inhabitants) is entirely realistic. There are many examples. Here’s just one. Kinko’s, L.L. Bean, and Patagonia refused to do business with Boise Cascade, a giant timber company. They boycotted their paper products because Boise Cascade harvested old-growth trees. This ultimately forced the timber company to reevaluate its supplier relationships and, in 2002, prompted it to drastically reduce old-growth logging.
Courage is another attribute of health.
Why
Bring Massage and Bodywork into the Workplace?
Tom
Chappell, founder of Tom’s of Maine, is famous for his
corporate mission and his success. “Managing for profit and for
the common good — it works,” he says. Companies like Tom’s
and Cliff Bars support their employees to stay physically fit, to learn,
and to heal. They pay them to exercise and relax during the work day,
and they provide the space for these things to happen. They also pay
them to attend personal growth and healing seminars. Hanna Andersson,
the children’s clothing company, pays a portion of employees’ child
care costs and donates both profits and clothing to children in need.
Timberland, the shoe company, pays employees to volunteer in their
community. These investments result consistently in increased profits
and enduring customer and employee loyalty.
Providing massage and other bodywork to employees is another guaranteed high return investment for success. An employee’s body and brain are the very vehicles of business accomplishment. It makes good sense to invest in those bodies, providing service by nurturing them, soothing them, and restoring them from their labors. In addition, educated touch also soothes the nervous system, thereby hampering the potential for conflict in the workplace.
People under stress are profoundly transformed through the experience of massage, energy medicine, or any of the other somatic therapies specifically designed to speak to the nervous system and allow the primitive, survival brain to relax so that higher, more creative functions can dominate. It is because the primitive brain, which speaks directly to the kidney-adrenal structure (ruler of immune system strength), cannot differentiate past from present that current stressors attach to and evoke historical violations. A therapist who understands this and can provide differentiating resources literally can help change the way conflict is perceived. Employees freed of patterns of over-adrenalization (either sympathetically or parasympathetically driven) are liberated into their inventive creativity.
In addition to general well-being motivations, employers can extend time and co-payment for somatic therapies when workers are chronically absent or when “presenteeism” is observed. Presenteeism identifies employees who show up but are distracted by tension, stress, and pain. Estimates made by Stress Directions, a company investigating and documenting stress levels in the workplace, indicate that presenteeism costs small companies more than $1.9 million a year. The cost to bigger companies is estimated to be more than $115 million a year. In addition, Stress Directions, along with physician John Sarno, have clear evidence that “back pain has been the No. 1 industrial health and workers’ compensation cost problem in the United States and is on the rise.”1
There is compelling research suggesting that psychosocial variables are at the core of chronic back pain. In an award-winning study, Dr. Eugene Carragee of Stanford University found that “back pain is a psycho-physiological phenomenon involving psychosocial components that typically go undetected and untreated.”2
The Bodies
of Business
Physical
bodies are marvelous instruments, and it is almost a truism to say
we take them for granted. However, whether we recognize them or not,
they are actively participating in the workplace and offering their
owners a running commentary on work experience. In fact, you could
say our bodies give us regular, personalized work evaluations. We
need only the education to read the data. This is what a somatic
therapist can provide. Bodies freed of stress, both from the past
and the present, naturally become creative, motivated, and participatory.
Bodies that love their work can’t wait to go there. Bodies that dislike their work may refuse to go. Resistant bodies may not have much to contribute even when they do go to work. Dialoguing with the body is easy when you know how, and everyone can learn. The advisory committees are your own cells living in your connective tissue, and these cells are tremendously responsive. You don’t have to be a medical professional to speak their language. Connective tissue is articulate and immediately communicative. Are you listening?
It is hard to imagine an employee who would not feel eager to go to a workplace where her body is esteemed. The reward for nurturing the body in the workplace is enhanced creativity, efficiency, and (the favored word of business) productivity. Providing massage, energy medicine, or other bodywork opportunities in the workplace sends an unquestionable message of true caring.
References
1
Insurance Information Institute Data.
2
2002 Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Study of
the Lumbar Spine.
Health
Scoresheet for the Workplace Physical
Health 2. Do the health benefits provided by the company truly serve the employees? How is this determined? Are there health benefits available that meet employee needs more thoroughly? Is there ongoing research on this issue? Is this an item for discussion, and is it periodically reviewed? 3. Given that stress is inevitable in any workplace, how does the organizational structure provide for recovery? Is massage therapy or similar bodywork available on-site? Is there room to do physical exercise, relax, or meditate? Are classes provided in stress-reducing opportunities such as yoga, therapy, exercise, art? If yes, are these opportunities sufficient? If no, why not? 4. If the workplace is in an area that has exposure to toxins, such as a highway, what is in place to protect workers? Is this sufficient? Is it effective? What else needs to be done? 5. If an employee feels their health is in jeopardy for any reason, what avenues are available for support? Can the workplace be mobilized to support workers with health (physical, mental, emotional) crises? If these situations jeopardize production and the health of others, what measures can be implemented for the benefit of all? Environment 2. Do employees feel physically safe in the environment? What dangers exist for them? Are potential dangers investigated and corrected? Is employee safety a top priority? 3. Are employees encouraged to be actively involved in creating a workplace that suits their tasks, their physical needs, and their comfort? 4. Does the workplace include non-work spaces that provide true relief for employees? This refers to lunchroom space, exercise rooms, social areas, private space, personal space, resting space. Do employees feel they have a space to themselves or is the workplace all about product, management, and owners? 5. Are there an adequate number of bathrooms for men and for women? Are the bathrooms private and safe, clean, and well-stocked? 6. Is good lighting provided? 7. Is air quality clean and sufficient? Does air circulate freely throughout the workplace and is that air free of pollutants? 8. Is clean, healthy water available to all workers? Emotional
Ambiance 2. What happens in the workplace under stress? For instance, when a deadline is at hand does everyone cooperate or is there resignation and tension? What does management provide for regeneration after a stressful period? 3. What happens when an employee is going through a hard time, such as a divorce or a loss, depression, or anxiety? Is this attended to, acknowledged, honored, and are resources offered, or is it ignored? 4. Is community service and engagement, such as support of local nonprofits, a part of company policy? Are employees who serve the community rewarded? Can community participation be incorporated (embodied) in the company to the benefit of all? What is needed to make this happen? ©Stephanie Mines
Resources Batstone, David, Saving the Corporate Soul , San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 2003. Chappell, Tom, The Soul of a Business , New York, Bantam, 1993. Deming, W. Edward, The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education , W.Deming Institute, MIT Press, 2000. Deming, W. Edward, Out of the Crisis , W. Deming Institute, MIT Press, 2000. Gladwell, Malcolm, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference , New York, Little Brown, 2002. Heider, John, The Tao of Leadership , Atlanta, Humanics, 1985. Kneen, Cynthia, Awake Mind, Open Heart , New York, Marlowe & Co, 2002. Ludema, James D. et.al, The Appreciative Inquiry Summit , San Francisco, BK Publishing, 2003. Mines, Stephanie, We Are All in Shock: How Overwhelming Experiences Shatter You and What You Can Do About It , New Jersey, New Page Books, 2003. |
Protocols to Resolve Conflict in Group and Work Settings These protocols support all participants to create a framework for acknowledgement and discussion, restore peace in the environment, and allow work to continue. It is impossible to avoid conflict. It is part of life, part of human dynamics, and, from my perspective, more likely now than ever before due to the traumatizing nature of the world we live in. However, a certain amount of conflict is a sign of health and, if handled well, can become a mine of rich discovery and, most importantly, an influx of new energy. This is the payoff for looking conflict in the eye. Resolved conflict lifts the locks and opens a fluid release of fresh energy like a river cleared of its log jams. The protocols that follow are based on my understanding of what the nervous system needs in the way of language and human contact to find stability. I have borrowed from Harville Hendricks’ dialogues for couples, extending and improvising on his suggestions to adapt them for business and other communities. I must add that the nervous system also demands a certain quality of touch in order to repair. See my comments on massage and bodywork in the workplace beginning on page 38. Here are four fundamental points for groups experiencing conflict. • Do not let conflict force you into denial or repression. Avoid the impulse to placate, overrule, ignore, or squash conflict. Mine it. Give it space. Find the skills to do this. These skills are extremely worthwhile to cultivate for any and all relationships. • Create an honorable space to explore conflict. Claim the time to step out of the business agenda (or any other agenda, no matter how pressing) to create an honorable space to address conflict, giving it a container and an appropriate place. This will ultimately, if not immediately, help business. Trust this. It may be a new concept for the corporate world, but it is a completely trustworthy one. • Conflict is always a mirror. A conflict that occurs in a group is never about just two or three people. It is always about the entire group (business, family, relationship, agency). Everyone is impacted by conflict, and everyone benefits from its resolution. Conflict is never an “us and them” condition. This is true wherever there is conflict, including at home and in the world at large. • Fear and resistance fuel conflict. The conflict you ignore increases steadily in its capacity to disturb and disrupt. Ignoring conflict will never make it go away. Guidelines
for Conflict Resolution 2. Empathy is emotional health. Empathy is always possible and is the most effective healing balm for emotional wounds. An inability to empathize points to “dis-ease.” If you are without empathy for anyone, explore this within yourself to find out why. 3. Apology. When someone has experienced a violation, for any reason, heartfelt apology first mutes and then silences the pain. Without it, resentment builds. Resentment is toxic to the workplace. When an employee harbors resentment against a manager or another coworker, the entire workplace is at risk. Apologies can be given simply because someone is suffering. 4. Boundaries. Honoring time commitments is central to the integrity of the healing process. It builds the foundation for all healing which consists of safety and trust. Without these two components, healing, and resolution are impossible under any circumstances. 5. No attacks. Personal attacks are completely off limits. Each participant must take responsibility for their own feelings. The way to express dissatisfaction about another person is to explain it in terms of what your own feeling is. An example of this is, “When Helen speaks about this project as ‘hers,’ I feel excluded.” 6. Facilitation. Someone should be designated as the facilitator or a facilitator can be brought in specifically to resolve conflict. This person is in charge of maintaining the integrity of the communication structure and is a servant of the group. She is the time keeper, the rule keeper, and provides the opening and closure that every meeting requires. This is a skillful position and deserves recognition in the form of appreciation and compensation. Protocol
1 — Dialogue design for
group process One at a time, the individuals experiencing the conflict are invited to speak. A timeframe is determined by the designated facilitator. Each speaker is heard thoroughly, and the following kinds of responses are entertained: Empathetic mirroring. Individuals in the group are invited to mirror back to the speaker what they heard her say and to empathize. Here are some examples of what this might sound like: “That sounds very painful.” “I can see why you feel frustrated.” “You have a right to be angry.” “I feel badly that you are so uncomfortable.” Eye contact increases exponentially the magnitude of empathic mirroring. Validation. Group members are also invited to validate the speaker. Validation can sound similar to empathy, but there are subtle differences: “I remember being in that position before and here is how I resolved it.” “I had an experience like that once, and this is how it worked out in the long run.” “I know this is difficult but I support you in finding your way through this. I believe you can do it, and I am willing to help.” Validation has more to do with personal support, and empathy has more to do with contact and connection. Reflective comments. Group members are invited to reflect on the source of conflict, based on their knowledge of the individual speaking or on their own experience. (“I remember when you told me about your mother’s death and how you felt so alone at that time. You may feel abandoned like that again now.” “We shared our feelings of competitiveness with our brothers. This reminds me of that.”) This emphasizes long-term perspective and community. All of these comments are presented within a clearly designated and maintained timeframe. The speaker receives the commentary and when it is complete, the facilitator asks the central figure(s): “Do you feel heard and seen? Is there more you need to say?” If there is more, time is given for more expression, reflection, empathy, and validation, within the context of the time available. When this process is complete for all individuals in conflict, the emotional ambiance should be tangibly different. This is frequently totally sufficient to resolve the conflict. Sometimes it is not a matter of doing anything. It is just a matter of providing space, listening, articulating, and communicating. Simple, heartfelt, empathic communication can erase loneliness and alienation. Whatever time is invested in such an exploration will benefit the company (corporation, organization, family, relationship) beyond calculation. In those instances when the problem has escalated for too long without attention and is calling for a review of something in the workplace, this second protocol may be necessary. Protocol
2 — Actively resolving conflict Group members are then asked to validate, reflect, and empathize and also suggest options for eliminating the frustration. This is supervised and timed by the facilitator. From this experience, the facilitator suggests three possible solutions to the conflict. The individual who has presented the conflict chooses one and the group gifts him with a commitment to make the change. Following is an example of how this might go. Person experiencing conflict: “I feel that my needs to be part of the decision-making process regarding this particular contract are ignored. I feel qualified to be a participant in the decision-making but despite my repeated requests, this does not occur. This reminds me of how I was ignored in my previous job where I felt closing one of our branch offices was a mistake. No one listened to me and the consequences were disastrous, as I had predicted. This also reminds me of how my son has ignored my perspective on his education. I feel invisible, and it is very disturbing. I am preoccupied by my frustration.” The group expresses empathy and understanding and offers some suggestions for how the situation could change. The facilitator extracts three possibilities from this discussion. One is that the person experiencing the conflict could write a proposal for the kind of action he would recommend in regard to the contract in question, distribute it to the concerned group members, and get feedback. Another is that the decision-making body debrief that individual in terms of his perspective on the contract and why he has not been included. Finally the facilitator suggests the individual explore whether he is exaggerating the condition. Maybe it is just not appropriate for him to be involved. The person initiating the discussion now receives a “gift” by choosing one of the suggested options. Of these three options, the person in this conflict picks the first and agrees to act on it within a week. Everyone directly concerned commits to responding to the proposal, within two days of receiving it. A meeting is set up for that feedback to occur. Participants commit to attending. The meeting is brought to closure with everyone expressing appreciation for the time given and the feedback presented, expressing their feelings about the process in a time-limited way. In this scenario, the person feeling frustration has been gifted with the opportunity to be thoroughly heard. It is very difficult to sustain resentment when one is being acknowledged. This also helps relieve the tension between survival and expression that affects so many employees. When articulating dissatisfaction is not a cause for job loss, the work environment is free and spacious and conflict produces possibility rather than repression.
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The
designs offered here are not intended for deep psychological
probing, but rather to permit group process to proceed without
being waylaid by unwieldy conflict and repetitive negative interactions. Stephanie Mines, Ph.D., is founder and director of the TARA Approach for the Resolution of Shock and Trauma. Her most recent book, We Are All in Shock: How Overwhelming Experience Shatters You and What You Can Do About It (New Pages, 2003) provides a broad spectrum of self care, empowering treatments for every form of shock. Mines has worked with corporations, directors, and managers to create healing in the workplace. She can be contacted via her program’s website at www.Tara-Approach.org or 303/499-9990.
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