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Organizational Healing: A Conversation with Ora Grodsky · Partnership Work

0:15
Paul Kuttner: Welcome to Partnership Work, where we explore what it takes to reach across
0:20
Paul Kuttner: the walls that divide us and get people working together to improve our world. I'm Paul Kuttner.
0:26
Paul Kuttner: On this episode, we're talking about organizations.
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Paul Kuttner: Organizations, by definition, are created to get groups of individuals working
0:35
Paul Kuttner: together toward a shared purpose.
0:37
Paul Kuttner: But, as anyone who's been part of an organization knows, it's rarely a smooth process.
0:43
Paul Kuttner: My guest today has spent 25 years as a consultant for social justice organizations.
0:49
Paul Kuttner: She accompanies them as they plan for the future, adapt to a changing world,
0:53
Paul Kuttner: and address challenges that are holding them back.
0:56
Paul Kuttner: She's learned a lot over the years and has synthesized many of these lessons into a new book.
1:02
Paul Kuttner: I really enjoyed our conversation. We talked a lot about healing and health.
1:07
Paul Kuttner: We discussed how both people and organizations heal and how the health of individuals
1:13
Paul Kuttner: affects the organizations they're a part of.
1:15
Paul Kuttner: We also talked about one of my favorite topics, conflict.
1:19
Paul Kuttner: As my guest shares, strong organizations don't avoid conflict,
1:23
Paul Kuttner: they learn from it and transform it.
1:26
Paul Kuttner: So without further ado, here is my conversation with Ora Grodsky.
1:31
Paul Kuttner: We'll be right back.
1:44
Paul Kuttner: Today, I am excited to be joined in the studio by Ora Grodsky,
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Paul Kuttner: co-founder of Just Works Consulting.
1:51
Paul Kuttner: Ora has spent the last 25 years working with organizations that are committed
1:55
Paul Kuttner: to building a more just world.
1:57
Paul Kuttner: She supports these organizations as they work to transform themselves and plan for the future.
2:02
Paul Kuttner: Ora calls what she does transformational consulting and has recently published
2:07
Paul Kuttner: a book synthesizing her approach entitled Justice, Love, and Organizational Healing.
2:13
Paul Kuttner: Ora writes that this is the book she would have wanted to have when she was
2:16
Paul Kuttner: starting out in consulting.
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Paul Kuttner: It's packed with wisdom from Ora and from authors and colleagues who have taught her along the way.
2:23
Paul Kuttner: Ora is a mother and a gardener living here in the Boston area.
2:27
Paul Kuttner: Ora, thank you so much for joining me on Partnership Work.
2:30
Ora Grodsky: Paul, it's a great pleasure. Thank you.
2:33
Paul Kuttner: In your book, you refer to yourself as a transformational consultant.
2:37
Paul Kuttner: I was hoping you could tell me a bit more about transformational consulting
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Paul Kuttner: and specifically how you describe it to people who are brand new to the kind of work you do.
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Ora Grodsky: Yeah, thank you. So transformational consulting is differentiated from a couple
2:51
Ora Grodsky: of different other kinds of consulting.
2:53
Ora Grodsky: We have expert consulting where somebody knows the answer to a problem.
2:58
Ora Grodsky: I need to have this thing fixed. And we have somebody come in and they fix it for us.
3:02
Ora Grodsky: And what transformational consulting adds is the dimension of really allowing
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Ora Grodsky: us to see wider than we have been seeing before.
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Ora Grodsky: So we're not just looking to solve what's called a technical problem.
3:15
Ora Grodsky: We're looking to see things in new and nuanced ways.
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Ora Grodsky: Transformational consulting is about partnering with people and with organizations,
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Ora Grodsky: not telling them what to do, But helping them to find their own solutions to
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Ora Grodsky: problems so that they can figure
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Ora Grodsky: out new and different ways of being in relationship with each other,
3:35
Ora Grodsky: new and different ways of understanding the world that they're in,
3:39
Ora Grodsky: and new and different ways of understanding their work.
3:42
Ora Grodsky: Because when working for a more just and sustainable world, we're looking for
3:46
Ora Grodsky: solutions that don't yet exist.
3:48
Ora Grodsky: So we can't use the same things that we have been doing. We need to be able
3:52
Ora Grodsky: to see things differently than we've seen them. Right.
3:56
Paul Kuttner: One of the metaphors you used in the book was a midwife.
4:00
Paul Kuttner: Could you maybe share why, sort of what's the parallel between what you do and midwifery?
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Ora Grodsky: That was a beautiful thing that somebody said to me many years ago,
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Ora Grodsky: because a midwife doesn't have the baby for you.
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Ora Grodsky: The midwife doesn't just create a baby and then like, here, here's your baby,
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Ora Grodsky: but rather helps you to do what you have the possibility of doing.
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Ora Grodsky: Maybe they bring some tools or some remedies for you along the way.
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Ora Grodsky: So you have some inputs that weren't what you had, but they really help hold
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Ora Grodsky: you in a process while you give birth to your baby.
4:37
Paul Kuttner: Oh, I love that. That's beautiful. So at what point in your life did you start
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Paul Kuttner: to realize that you were good at this kind of work?
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Paul Kuttner: And like, what were the early signs that this kind of role of helping people
4:52
Paul Kuttner: through change, of bringing people together, was something that really fit you?
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Ora Grodsky: Quite young in life, I found myself in pretty significant leadership roles.
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Ora Grodsky: And realizing that I was trying to figure out how to reinvent a wheel.
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Ora Grodsky: But I loved the idea of how do people come together to do good work without
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Ora Grodsky: oppressing each other, with really being able to bring out creativity.
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Ora Grodsky: And it was just really fun for me to do that.
5:24
Ora Grodsky: And so that led me back to graduate school with that question about what do
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Ora Grodsky: people know about how people can come together and really create workplaces
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Ora Grodsky: that work for the people who work there and different outcomes in service in the world.
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Ora Grodsky: And so that was at some point in my mid-late 20s and then in my early 30s when
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Ora Grodsky: I went back to graduate school.
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Ora Grodsky: I've been doing this kind of work ever since.
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Ora Grodsky: How do you think.
5:51
Paul Kuttner: If at all, your early childhood, your background, your culture,
5:59
Paul Kuttner: may have shaped you in ways that impact the work you do.
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Ora Grodsky: That's for sure true. I was born into a Jewish family in New York City in the early 1960s,
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Ora Grodsky: and my family really valued what in Jewish tradition is called tikkun olam, repairing the world.
6:20
Ora Grodsky: And my parents had a left-wing political perspective.
6:24
Ora Grodsky: And so I got with my mother's milk that it's my responsibility.
6:29
Ora Grodsky: It's all of our responsibility while we're here to leave the world a better place than we found it.
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Ora Grodsky: And so that absolutely has been my life quest.
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Ora Grodsky: All of my work has been involved with the question of how do we be of service?
6:44
Ora Grodsky: How do human beings create something better for ourselves and the planet.
6:50
Paul Kuttner: You bring up healing. That is a word that's in the title of your book, as is love.
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Paul Kuttner: As you note, those are two words that maybe aren't always the first words when
7:01
Paul Kuttner: we hear, oh, we're bringing in a strategic planning consultant or an organizational change consultant.
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Paul Kuttner: What inspired you to really center ideas of healing and love?
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Ora Grodsky: I'll talk about them separately, though, of course, they're very connected.
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Ora Grodsky: So my first career, I was an acupuncturist and I was the academic dean of the
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Ora Grodsky: New England School of Acupuncture and was very interested in how do bodies heal, how about human health.
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Ora Grodsky: And I, in the very early days of the AIDS epidemic, I was part of creating a
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Ora Grodsky: clinic for people with AIDS and HIV infection with a group of colleagues That
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Ora Grodsky: was just a really magical experience of working together with people.
7:43
Ora Grodsky: But what I noticed in working with people who were HIV-infected,
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Ora Grodsky: drug-addicted, was how much the societal container impacted their health.
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Ora Grodsky: And so I became very interested in individual healing, but also collectively healing.
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Ora Grodsky: How do we create environments that support human healing and health?
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Ora Grodsky: And healing, I think, is really about returning us not to a state of perfection,
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Ora Grodsky: but helping us to be deeply grounded in ourselves and our connection to each
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Ora Grodsky: other so that we can make healthy choices and we can do work that supports the world and ourselves.
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Ora Grodsky: So healing, and also as an acupuncturist, my background as an acupuncturist,
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Ora Grodsky: is about using a body's own energy to heal, right?
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Ora Grodsky: Acupuncturists don't inject something into a body. We use needles to stimulate
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Ora Grodsky: the body's own energy or other ways.
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Ora Grodsky: And organizational work is kind of like that, too, transformational consulting.
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Ora Grodsky: We're not injecting something into the organization necessarily,
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Ora Grodsky: although we do bring tools and wisdom in.
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Ora Grodsky: We're really helping the organization's own energy to align and to flow.
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Ora Grodsky: So that's how I think about organizational healing.
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Ora Grodsky: Love, I think about how important it is that love is part of the equation.
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Ora Grodsky: And by love, I don't mean romantic love. I mean, love that is care,
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Ora Grodsky: that really treats others and ourselves with dignity, with respect,
9:25
Ora Grodsky: with allowing ourselves to fulfill our potential.
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Ora Grodsky: And without love, without the care for each other, without care for the world,
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Ora Grodsky: we are creating solutions that are literally killing our species and killing our planet.
9:46
Paul Kuttner: This podcast is about the work of bridging across the cracks and the fissures that divide people.
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Paul Kuttner: In your work, it seems like those cracks are often seen within a single organization.
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Paul Kuttner: What, in your experience, are some of the main divisions or cracks between people
10:04
Paul Kuttner: that need healing, that need addressing?
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Ora Grodsky: Often we think, well, these two people don't get along or they don't like each
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Ora Grodsky: other, they can't work together.
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Ora Grodsky: And I think usually it's if we look upstream at the context that they're in,
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Ora Grodsky: then we can see why those cracks happen.
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Ora Grodsky: So are their goals clear? Are they clear on what they're trying to create?
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Ora Grodsky: Are they clear what they stand for, what their values are? Are they clear on what their roles are?
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Ora Grodsky: Often when those things aren't clear, then we as humans get a little contracted.
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Ora Grodsky: Maybe our nervous systems get a little dysregulated. And then we come out of
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Ora Grodsky: good relationship with each other.
10:48
Ora Grodsky: And so a lot of times those cracks are about the context is not clear enough.
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Ora Grodsky: And often that can be informed by identity, by is there misunderstanding across
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Ora Grodsky: race, across gender, misinterpretation?
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Ora Grodsky: Are there power dynamics that are at play across differences of identity that
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Ora Grodsky: we also need to look at and make more explicit? it.
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Ora Grodsky: Oftentimes, people aren't even aware, people who are perpetuating those,
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Ora Grodsky: obviously people who are on the receiving end of those kinds of dynamics are
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Ora Grodsky: very aware that that's what's happening usually.
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Ora Grodsky: But that when we can surface those, people have an opportunity to come into
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Ora Grodsky: different relationship across difference.
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Paul Kuttner: Right. It would be helpful at this point, maybe to get concrete and hear some
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Paul Kuttner: examples of some of the work you've done
11:39
Paul Kuttner: Specifically, you keep talking about context. Context is important.
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Paul Kuttner: I know from when we spoke on the phone before this, you talked about creating a container.
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Paul Kuttner: You talk in the book about holding space. Maybe tell us a bit about what it
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Paul Kuttner: looks like for you to create a container where these conversations can happen,
12:00
Paul Kuttner: where this healing can take place.
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Paul Kuttner: When does that start? And I'm thinking, you know, long before you get in the
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Paul Kuttner: room with people, with a group, to have a dialogue, to do planning,
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Paul Kuttner: like what's all the run-up that goes into preparing to create that container?
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Ora Grodsky: Yeah, quite a lot. And often it looks very easy and people think,
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Ora Grodsky: well, you can just come in and do this and run a meeting, run a day-long retreat
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Ora Grodsky: for us. We don't need to plan.
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Ora Grodsky: And it's really important to plan. I think it's also really important to note
12:30
Ora Grodsky: that we have to balance that with Adrienne Marie Brown talks about more presence, less prep.
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Ora Grodsky: And I really believe we need to bring our presence is a huge thing,
12:39
Ora Grodsky: but we also need to prepare.
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Ora Grodsky: So before we even come into a room to talk to each other, we need to clarify what's called our POP.
12:48
Ora Grodsky: This is a framework by Leslie Sholl Jaffe and Randall Alford that says that
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Ora Grodsky: for every process, for everything that we do, we first ask, what's the purpose?
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Ora Grodsky: Why are we doing this thing?
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Ora Grodsky: And then we say, what are the outcomes? When we're successful at the end,
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Ora Grodsky: where do we want to be? What do we want to have?
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Ora Grodsky: And then we can design a process for how we're going to have that conversation.
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Ora Grodsky: And what's often true is we come into a room to talk to each other.
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Ora Grodsky: I've got my agenda, you've got your agenda, and we're in different conversations.
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Ora Grodsky: But just preparing to really know what is the conversation that this group of
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Ora Grodsky: people or these two people need to have in this moment and agreeing,
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Ora Grodsky: yes, this is why we're meeting.
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Ora Grodsky: This is what we want to get out of it. And then this is the way it's going to
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Ora Grodsky: work for us to have that conversation, not to be rigid, not to be inflexible,
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Ora Grodsky: but just so that we can know what the expectation is and what we're working towards together.
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Paul Kuttner: What does it look like for you to actually set up a retreat, a meeting?
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Paul Kuttner: What are you thinking about? What are you paying attention to when you actually
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Paul Kuttner: get all these people in the same room.
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Ora Grodsky: Well, always when I'm doing a project, whether it's just one meeting or a retreat,
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Ora Grodsky: or it's an ongoing, you know, multi-year or multi-month change effort, I work with a team.
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Ora Grodsky: And so that often includes the leader, who's usually the person who's brought
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Ora Grodsky: me, I often work with a colleague, brought us in.
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Ora Grodsky: But we want a team of people to plan, to really understand the different,
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Ora Grodsky: interests that are being represented. So as a consultant, as a transformational
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Ora Grodsky: consultant, it's not my agenda, it's our agenda.
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Ora Grodsky: And that team helps to design, well, okay, where are we?
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Ora Grodsky: Where do we want to be at the end of a retreat? Where are you relative to the
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Ora Grodsky: things that you want to have happen?
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Ora Grodsky: Is there any preparation you need to do to get, what do you need to do to get
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Ora Grodsky: everybody in the room ready to have the same conversation at the same time?
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Ora Grodsky: What's the culture of that group, what's going to work for them,
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Ora Grodsky: what's not going to work for them, what's a stretch, a little bit too much of
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Ora Grodsky: a stretch, what's the right stretch for them, and then look at,
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Ora Grodsky: well, where is this thing going to happen? Is it virtual?
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Ora Grodsky: Is it in real life? If it's in real life, what are some of the criteria for a successful location?
15:09
Ora Grodsky: Space matters a lot.
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Ora Grodsky: It's really important that there's a space where bodies feel comfortable.
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Ora Grodsky: I'm a big fan interest in And polyvagal theory,
15:21
Ora Grodsky: which has come out the last few years, thinking about our nervous systems and
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Ora Grodsky: the condition of our nervous system and how when we're constricted,
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Ora Grodsky: when we're in fight or flight or freeze,
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Ora Grodsky: we just can't relax, be in relationship together, think well.
15:37
Ora Grodsky: We're really operating out of a dysregulation is what they call it.
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Ora Grodsky: And so what's a space that allows our bodies to feel regulated?
15:45
Ora Grodsky: How can people get there? What do people need? Are there accessibility needs that people have?
15:50
Ora Grodsky: And also good food. Super important. Right.
16:01
Paul Kuttner: One of the things that I really appreciated about the book was the section on conflict.
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Paul Kuttner: So it came up in the chapter, Transformational Change is Hard Work,
16:11
Paul Kuttner: which is an excellent title, by the way.
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Paul Kuttner: In my experience, conflict and disagreement are often left out when we tell
16:20
Paul Kuttner: a story of a partnership or a campaign.
16:23
Paul Kuttner: But we know from experiencing it, the conflict is always present.
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Paul Kuttner: As you write in your book, our instinct is actually often to avoid conflict. It can be very scary.
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Paul Kuttner: It can put us in that fight or flight space that you just talked about.
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Paul Kuttner: You're very honest in the book about the ways that you tried to avoid conflict
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Paul Kuttner: early in your career, and I definitely related. to what you said.
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Paul Kuttner: So my question is, when did you first realize that you personally needed to
16:51
Paul Kuttner: change how you addressed conflict in your work?
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Ora Grodsky: I would not say that happened all at once.
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Ora Grodsky: I would say gradually over time, certainly when I was in graduate school and I first learned about,
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Ora Grodsky: the importance of conflict to growth and noticing in myself my tendencies to
17:10
Ora Grodsky: avoid conflict or the ways that I avoided conflict.
17:13
Ora Grodsky: I'd say that that took some time, a repeated exposure to people who really understood
17:19
Ora Grodsky: those ideas, were patient with me, and then understanding the difference between conflict and harm.
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Ora Grodsky: That conflict can cause harm depending on how it's handled, but it's also necessary
17:34
Ora Grodsky: for creativity and for growth.
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Ora Grodsky: So I think I was afraid of conflict because I equated it with harm,
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Ora Grodsky: with loss of relationship, with harm.
17:44
Ora Grodsky: And to understand we can be in conflict with our needs, it doesn't mean violence.
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Ora Grodsky: It means listening, understanding, being willing to see, again,
17:59
Ora Grodsky: a wider aperture, a bigger picture of what's happened.
18:03
Paul Kuttner: Are there specific tools or practices that you like to use when you see conflict arising?
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Ora Grodsky: Well, there's so many different ways of addressing.
18:16
Ora Grodsky: I am a big fan of a process called deep democracy, which their motto is wisdom
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Ora Grodsky: in the know, N-O. And so the theory is that every voice of dissent has some grain of truth in it.
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Ora Grodsky: There's something in there to learn, maybe not the whole package of it, but there's something.
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Ora Grodsky: And so how do we listen long enough to see where's the wisdom in the know?
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Ora Grodsky: It's not that somebody is completely opposed to this idea. They just want to
18:43
Ora Grodsky: make sure this really important thing gets included.
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Ora Grodsky: And when we can slow down and hear that, then we can really create the possibility
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Ora Grodsky: of people coming along and creating a better outcome than something that misses
18:57
Ora Grodsky: something really important.
18:59
Paul Kuttner: Right. And in the book, you even put that on yourself. So I noticed you talk
19:03
Paul Kuttner: about resistance, people who are resisting you, resisting the process, resisting this.
19:08
Paul Kuttner: You know, and I appreciated it
19:10
Paul Kuttner: because I think it can be easy to dismiss resistance and explain it away.
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Ora Grodsky: Yes.
19:16
Paul Kuttner: But you really talked about pushing yourself to see what's the value in the
19:21
Paul Kuttner: resistance. There's some knowledge there.
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Ora Grodsky: That's exactly it.
19:24
Paul Kuttner: Do you have any examples of times when you've really been challenged by people
19:27
Paul Kuttner: in the room and people have really challenged the process and what you learned from that?
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Ora Grodsky: Well, I would say earlier on, but what I've really learned mostly is not to
19:38
Ora Grodsky: come into the room where the meeting has happened before everybody who is going
19:43
Ora Grodsky: to be there agrees to and understands what's going to happen.
19:47
Ora Grodsky: So a lot of that really gets addressed with the preventions of making sure we
19:53
Ora Grodsky: have the right agenda. We've done what we need for people to be in the room.
19:58
Ora Grodsky: But, for example, I was facilitating something recently, kind of a favor I was
20:02
Ora Grodsky: doing to a group, for a group, as a volunteer.
20:07
Ora Grodsky: And I worked, and it came up very quickly, but they really needed a planning
20:11
Ora Grodsky: retreat pretty quickly.
20:13
Ora Grodsky: And I did some work with a small committee to make sure we had the right agenda.
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Ora Grodsky: And I said many times, okay, so this is really the goal.
20:23
Ora Grodsky: This is the thing we're working on. everybody agrees. Can you make sure everybody agrees?
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Ora Grodsky: And yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And we get lo and behold, we get in the room and
20:33
Ora Grodsky: somebody, they introduced the thing and somebody raised their hand, I don't agree.
20:37
Ora Grodsky: And so what I know needs to happen then is that we need to find out why.
20:42
Ora Grodsky: And so I did a process of going around the room and hearing from everybody kind
20:48
Ora Grodsky: of how was the proposal landing for them.
20:51
Ora Grodsky: And we were really able to surface that actually the person who raised their
20:54
Ora Grodsky: hand and said, I don't agree, really had a small concern about it.
20:57
Ora Grodsky: And we were able to shift it in such a way that it incorporated his wisdom to
21:03
Ora Grodsky: the betterment of everybody's interest.
21:06
Paul Kuttner: Can you tell me about the Conflict Avoidance Escalator?
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Ora Grodsky: Yeah. Thank you for asking about that.
21:13
Ora Grodsky: That is based on a couple of people's different work that I put together in a particular way.
21:19
Ora Grodsky: It's based both on the Ladder of Inference by Chris Argyris, which basically is
21:24
Ora Grodsky: a step-by-step process of how we as human beings take in data that really confirms
21:30
Ora Grodsky: what we already believe.
21:31
Ora Grodsky: And then we're kind of in that reinforcing loop of only then taking in more
21:35
Ora Grodsky: data to reinforce our position. I combined that with Bill Kreidler,
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Ora Grodsky: who unfortunately died in the early 2000s, late 90s.
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Ora Grodsky: But he did a lot of work on conflict resolution in schools and talked about
21:50
Ora Grodsky: a conflict escalator and how conflicts escalate.
21:53
Ora Grodsky: So the conflict avoidance escalator, which I developed, talks about what are
21:58
Ora Grodsky: the consequences of not saying the truth to each other and how that really escalates
22:06
Ora Grodsky: our disconnection from each other.
22:08
Ora Grodsky: So maybe it starts really, you know, it's a small thing happens. I interpret it in my way.
22:14
Ora Grodsky: You interpret it in your way. But I make up a story.
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Ora Grodsky: I don't want to make waves, so I'll just let that thing go.
22:21
Ora Grodsky: But then the thing goes and it goes on and I make up more of a story about,
22:25
Ora Grodsky: well, this is why they're doing this thing.
22:27
Ora Grodsky: And it may or may not be true because I haven't just asked, well,
22:30
Ora Grodsky: why did that thing happen or let you know the impact on me? And there are steps
22:34
Ora Grodsky: in the conflict avoidance escalator that we can see where things become intractable.
22:39
Ora Grodsky: But really, it's because we weren't able to come back down and both ask about
22:46
Ora Grodsky: what is happening and express the impact on us, and then tensions rise and we
22:53
Ora Grodsky: lose trust, partnership,
22:54
Ora Grodsky: collaboration, and authentic relationship from allowing small things to get big.
22:59
Paul Kuttner: Right. Do you find yourself using any of this stuff in your own
23:04
Paul Kuttner: marriage and your own relationships?
23:06
Ora Grodsky: Of course, because you're a person in the professional world,
23:11
Ora Grodsky: you're a person in the personal world.
23:13
Ora Grodsky: And so that's not really different in terms of the skills and tools that help
23:18
Ora Grodsky: us to be in deep relationship with each other.
23:21
Ora Grodsky: And so, yes, absolutely.
23:23
Ora Grodsky: All the skills of listening, all the skills of asking, all the skills of questioning
23:28
Ora Grodsky: my own assumptions of breathing, of allowing space when there's a stimulus.
23:33
Ora Grodsky: That's not different in my personal or professional life.
23:44
Paul Kuttner: So most of the organizations you discuss in the book seem to be multiracial,
23:51
Paul Kuttner: at least to some extent, in terms of who makes up the staff,
23:54
Paul Kuttner: the leadership, the board.
23:55
Paul Kuttner: Could you talk a bit about how race plays into the dynamics of an organization
24:00
Paul Kuttner: and how you explicitly address it in your work?
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Ora Grodsky: Yeah. Race plays into the dynamics
24:05
Ora Grodsky: of everything. In the United States of America, this is not a secret.
24:09
Ora Grodsky: We are deeply rooted in racialized capitalism, racialized ways of assigning
24:16
Ora Grodsky: value to different people based on our racial identities.
24:22
Ora Grodsky: And so that shows up everywhere. I'm a white Ashkenazi Jew, and so there's a limit.
24:28
Ora Grodsky: I've done a lot of work and continue to do a lot of work to understand how racism,
24:33
Ora Grodsky: particularly anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, how that lives within me,
24:38
Ora Grodsky: and to try and not collude with it as much as possible.
24:43
Ora Grodsky: And what I understand in working in multiracial organizations is,
24:47
Ora Grodsky: first of all, there's just things I'm going to miss through my white lens,
24:51
Ora Grodsky: that it's really important for me often to partner with colleagues of color who will see things,
24:58
Ora Grodsky: who will earn trust that I'm not able to do because of my identity.
25:03
Ora Grodsky: And also important for me as a white consultant to be able to speak a truth that I see,
25:10
Ora Grodsky: that sometimes it's harder for people of color to say it's riskier or that people
25:15
Ora Grodsky: will hear from me because of my identity.
25:19
Ora Grodsky: And so I think it's always present racial dynamics, even in entirely white organizations.
25:24
Ora Grodsky: We have to say, why in this moment in history is this organization all white? What's happening here?
25:30
Ora Grodsky: And so it's always present.
25:33
Paul Kuttner: One of the big issues that often comes up in these conversations around partnerships
25:36
Paul Kuttner: and collaborations is power differentials.
25:39
Paul Kuttner: So how hard it can be to get authentic and honest collaboration going when some
25:44
Paul Kuttner: folks in the room have a lot more access than others to authority or influence
25:48
Paul Kuttner: or positional power, things like that.
25:50
Paul Kuttner: How do you work with groups to address kind of differences in positional power?
25:56
Paul Kuttner: I think one of your main tools was listening.
26:00
Paul Kuttner: Can you talk about sort of how you explicitly go about addressing listening
26:04
Paul Kuttner: as it relates to power in organizations?
26:07
Ora Grodsky: I learned that my listening has a volume and that when I'm interested,
26:13
Ora Grodsky: the volume of my listening is larger and I can tune out if I'm not as interested.
26:19
Ora Grodsky: And so I've worked for many years on really turning up the volume of my listening.
26:25
Ora Grodsky: And so I think one thing that's really important is to help other people learn how to listen.
26:32
Ora Grodsky: And so there are activities you can do around that, deepening our listening.
26:38
Ora Grodsky: You asked about my home life, and it's really important to me that my children,
26:44
Ora Grodsky: who are no longer children, they are now adults, feel listened to.
26:48
Ora Grodsky: They understand that their voices are really important, even though as their
26:53
Ora Grodsky: parent, I had positional power.
26:56
Ora Grodsky: And I think it's the similar thing of teaching people the beauty and the power of listening.
27:02
Ora Grodsky: I remember doing a workshop years ago with a group of women,
27:07
Ora Grodsky: and we did something around listening,
27:10
Ora Grodsky: and they all at the end of the day said, this is going to change.
27:13
Ora Grodsky: I'm no longer just going to be focused on cooking dinner while my kid is trying
27:17
Ora Grodsky: to get my attention, but I understand that what they have to say is important.
27:21
Ora Grodsky: So working with leaders with positional power to help them understand they don't
27:26
Ora Grodsky: have to have the answers.
27:27
Ora Grodsky: They have to be present and really being willing to hear what other people have to say.
27:34
Ora Grodsky: I think if you create a committee or a group of people working together across
27:39
Ora Grodsky: positional power and the people with positional power are not willing to deeply
27:44
Ora Grodsky: listen, it's not going to work.
27:46
Ora Grodsky: And it can be hard because they got to have the positional power often because
27:50
Ora Grodsky: they did have the answers.
27:51
Ora Grodsky: It can be a real liberation for leaders to learn, I don't always have to have the answers.
27:57
Ora Grodsky: I need to be able to really listen and then help people figure it out and own my power.
28:02
Ora Grodsky: It isn't just, I don't know anything, you all figure it out.
28:05
Ora Grodsky: But to both own your power and also share your power, it's a liberation for
28:10
Ora Grodsky: a lot of leaders who feel they have the weight of the world on their shoulders.
28:14
Paul Kuttner: That approach is a little different than an approach that really might push
28:20
Paul Kuttner: organizations to be flatter, to redistribute power in more structural ways.
28:27
Paul Kuttner: How do you think about the relationship between what you're talking about in
28:30
Paul Kuttner: terms of listening and sharing from the top versus sort of more challenging
28:35
Paul Kuttner: the underlying structure of leadership?
28:39
Ora Grodsky: I would have had a different answer to this years ago.
28:43
Ora Grodsky: And maybe I'll think about this differently in the future.
28:47
Ora Grodsky: Where I am right now is I believe more in hierarchy than I used to.
28:53
Ora Grodsky: And I understand that hierarchy does not mean oppression.
28:57
Ora Grodsky: But I do think there are levels of accountability that people have that when
29:02
Ora Grodsky: we don't tell the truth about it, it's burdensome.
29:05
Ora Grodsky: So I myself worked in a collective years ago, and the truth of the matter was
29:12
Ora Grodsky: that we pretended we had equal power, but it wasn't true.
29:17
Ora Grodsky: And doing that placed a huge burden on the people who were actually doing more of the work.
29:22
Ora Grodsky: So I do believe in creating environments within which people can do their work
29:29
Ora Grodsky: in the most creative, engaged way.
29:32
Ora Grodsky: And I also do believe we can have
29:35
Ora Grodsky: real relationship and accountability and efficacy across levels of power.
29:43
Paul Kuttner: That's fascinating. What would surprise someone who's unfamiliar with your job?
29:49
Ora Grodsky: I would say for me, I don't know that this is true for other people,
29:53
Ora Grodsky: how much time I spend taking care of my own nervous system.
29:59
Ora Grodsky: So really spending time in the mornings, meditating, doing yoga,
30:05
Ora Grodsky: regulating myself so that in the moment when surprising things happen, I can stay regulated.
30:13
Ora Grodsky: Because, as I quoted Deb Dana in my book, and I'm paraphrasing her quote,
30:19
Ora Grodsky: but only when I have a well-regulated nervous system can I hold space for other
30:24
Ora Grodsky: people to become regulated.
30:26
Ora Grodsky: And so the amount of time and attention, not in a selfish way,
30:30
Ora Grodsky: but starting with myself and tending to my own,
30:34
Ora Grodsky: Regulation is a really important part of the work. It's not extra or different.
30:39
Ora Grodsky: And re-regulating because I'm human.
30:42
Paul Kuttner: Right. No, that's great advice. So that's the end of my questions.
30:47
Paul Kuttner: Thank you so much for coming on today, for coming down to the studio.
30:50
Paul Kuttner: I really enjoyed talking to you.
30:53
Paul Kuttner: Do you want to just say real quick where people can get this book?
30:56
Ora Grodsky: Sure. Yeah, thanks. And by the way, Paul, this has been a pleasure for your
31:01
Ora Grodsky: listeners to know. Paul and I knew each other very briefly many years ago.
31:05
Ora Grodsky: So it's just lovely to reconnect.
31:07
Ora Grodsky: And so you can find Justice, Love and Organizational Healing wherever books are sold.
31:13
Ora Grodsky: I will say it's I wrote it with consultants in mind, but it is very appropriate
31:17
Ora Grodsky: for leaders, managers, all organizational change agents.
31:22
Ora Grodsky: And so I'm recommending people buy it from bookshop.org or from your local independent bookstore.
31:29
Ora Grodsky: And my website to find me is just-works.com. Fabulous.
31:37
Paul Kuttner: And I'll put all that in the show notes and thank you again.
31:42
Paul Kuttner: Thank you, Paul. It's been a pleasure.
31:43
Ora Grodsky: Yeah, it really has been. Thank you.
31:47
Paul Kuttner: Thank you all for joining me today. To see the episode transcript and show notes,
31:52
Paul Kuttner: head over to partnershipwork.podbeam.com.
31:56
Paul Kuttner: I've included some links to places where you can learn more about today's guest
31:59
Paul Kuttner: and the topics we discussed.
32:01
Paul Kuttner: Partnership Work is an independent podcast created with the incredible support
32:05
Paul Kuttner: of the nonprofit organization Urban Media Arts here in my hometown of Malden, Massachusetts.
32:11
Paul Kuttner: Check them out at urbanmediaarts.org. I'll see you next time. Take care.