Stories and Organizational Culture

In this week’s learning we understand the importance of The Story. The Story is an integral part of communication and it is a great way to impart meaning and relevance to any situation. It can be easier to relate to a concept when you are able to contextualize the material in story form. Stories give life to living. In my current role I work with disabled veterans or veterans that are facing barriers to employment. My task is to case manage these veterans to aid them in overcoming these barriers. This involves everything from creating resumes to working with veterans as they go through addiction recovery and PTSD treatment, and that is just my office. In my organization over a dozen (perhaps more) programs are administered dealing with employment and assistance issues. Some of these are simple grants for education or training but others, like my program and a few others, are intensive services designed to directly address the needs of clients. In this capacity many people develop a bit of a dark sense of humor or create other coping mechanisms. Story telling is one of those mechanisms.

To pinpoint one particular story would be very difficult. A great many conversations occur when someone plops down at your desk and says, “You have to hear this…” This isn’t to say that there aren’t some that don’t stand out more than others. One story involves a man that needed to wire money from his New York accounts because Obama was bombing Libya and his liquidity was an issue. This man suffered from an obvious mental illness but he is only one of the many heartbreaking stories that live in and breathe in our waiting rooms. There is the story of the battered wife trying to feed her children. There is the story of the man laid off from work for no reason other than the employer wanted to hire a family member. There is the story of the young veteran home from the front and finding out that a great deal of the time a “commitment to support our troops” really just means a bumper sticker and not a job. Yes, there are also stories of people attempting to scam the system though those stories are in far less supply than some in the media would have you believe. In all of this there are the stories of the men and women that work in our building. There is the story of the man whose wife left him. There is the story of the low wage earners here that struggle to make ends meet as wages fall far behind cost of living. There is the story of the guy that struggles with his own mental illness as he works to help others solve theirs. These stories merge into a greater story, a unified story, of the daily struggle to take care of one another. I believe that stories are just crystallized versions of life; much like poetry is the crystallized essence of a moment or feeling. To ask for a single story would be to do a disservice to how all these stories unify a culture. I have held and will always continue to hold to the concept that we too often focus on the tree while the forest goes unheeded.

These stories bring together the office as a whole and they do provide a bit of focus for what we do. We aren’t paid very well, civil servants rarely are. The newsmakers make news because they are rare. Many of us do what we do because we believe that we can make a difference in someone’s life. Others do this work as a means to garner experience in office settings. And still others do this because in our region of the country it is one of the better jobs you can have. This isn’t to say that these people are not professionals, they are, and through these shared stories we can reaffirm a bit of our commitment to what we do. This is how stories impact my organization’s culture. They provide shared laughter and success and sadness. In an organization designed to affect lives isn’t laughter, success, and sadness life itself?

Women, Diversity, and the Workplace

The topic of diversity and gender equality is broad and, quite naturally, diverse. For this blog post I am reflecting on the comments made by Rosabeth Moss Kanter as they pertain to gender discrimination.

Ms. Kanter makes an early point that it is difficult to draw black and white distinctions about gender inequality while being firm that it exists. Women and men often find themselves in different roles as far as leadership is concerned. Men are found in high risk roles and women are found in people roles. This distinction may be reflected in the national pay disparities as high risk roles tend to pay more. This begs the question, why don't more women get into these roles? Kanter states that people trust people that are similar to themselves. If men have traditionally are in high risk roles as places by obvious discrimination in the past it stands to reason that men will promote other men to those roles. However, Kanter states that women are making their own inroads in other areas such as sole-proprietorship's and even politics. It may be that there will be a shift to women in power in the future.

The crux of many of Kanter's comments centered around women taking care of other women and through that sort of empowerment, create company cultures that are supportive of family and gender equality. I really like her perception that people trust the judgement of those that find familiar. However, that sword can cut two directions. As we grow a new generation of leaders it is important that we begin to not discuss the gender of a candidate but rather what they bring to the table. Supportive corporate cultures will begin to chip away at these distinctions as they will allow workers to thrive free of discrimination concerns.

Yukl brings a few concerns about gender identity to mind and these also need to be addressed in the broader concept of diversity. Once again, I feel that as these ideas gain acceptance by larger amounts of the population you will see trans-gender (using this term to include gay and bi-sexual as well) people moving into leadership roles and then bringing their values with them to the workplace. As noted, this will start to change corporate cultures as well.

Many of Yukl's other reasons for sex-based discrimination such as lack of inclusion, lack of mentoring, and lack of opportunity I feel can be addressed by people trusting what they see as similarities. To say this is discrimination is inaccurate as I think discrimination is willful. Instead this is a lack of emotional intelligence and self-awareness. Becoming aware of one's own biases and tendencies is important for any leader and must be addressed if we are to become a more diverse and inclusive group of leaders.