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I have had two major experiences lately that have got me reflecting on what it is to be a change agent and the kind of change agent I want to be.  The first is the General Election in Ireland – full of people saying they want change (i.e. they don’t like what they have) and very little cohesiveness about what exactly the change is that is wanted – it all seems sadly predictable that the new lot will soon be pretty much as unpopular as the old lot as people say ‘no, no when we said we wanted change, it wasn’t that …’.  The second experience has been co-facilitating for the amazing Ireland : Iceland project (www.irelandicelandproject.com) – lots of wonderful people, but many still, it seems, with a great temptation to say ‘this is what we think someone else should do …’

.Fortunately, at this point some people have stepped up and said ‘this is what I am willing to take responsibility for, who wants to join me ?’ – this is great, but it also rang some alarm bells for me in relation to what I know about change agency and how change happens.

Sitting with my alarm bells the last day or two, I suddenly realised what I was doing – I was sitting saying ‘this is the change agency that someone else should do ..’ and not starting with myself.  Thank you Ghandi.  My alarm bells, my stuff.

So, exactly what type of change agent do I want to see in the world and how am I going to try to be one of them ?

My ideal change agent starts by giving attention to three things :

(i)  the quality of their relationship with their self

(ii) the quality of their relationship with the people who matter most to them

(iii)  the quality of their relationship with the whole system (this could mean an organisation, a nation, the whole of humanity, the whole of nature and or some higher purpose – I think the approach can work at any of these levels)

Relationship with self

When I did my Masters on Change Agency – my first real a-ha moment was reading something like ‘the first duty of a change agent is not to inflict their unresolved anxieties on others’ – genius – we all have unresolved stuff from childhood and from today and yesterday too and unless we have a reasonable level of self-awareness, we will act these out through habitual patterns.  My ideal change agent (coach, facilitator etc) doesn’t pretend to be perfect, but they are pretty good at catching themselves.  Meditation and other practices undoubtedly help.

My ideal change agent is particularly wary of ego and heroic models of leadership and followership.

My ideal change agent is not disappearing up their own navel, exclusively pursuing internal personal development without trying to make their external contribution to the world.

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Relationship with key others

The models I like most for this are Martin Buber who wrote about ‘I : Thou’, based on the premise that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships and Carl Rogers who wrote about ‘unconditional positive regard’  – blanket acceptance and support of a person regardless of what the person says or does.

Many consultants start from a diagnostic ‘what is wrong with this person / organisation / country / race ?’ type place – positioning themselves as an expert looking down on poor human beings who don’t really get it and getting all strategic about what should be done.  I don’t like that position and I recognise it as an easy one to fall into.  This is not to say that this position has no value whatsoever, just that I think we over-do it.

To get into an ‘I:Thou’ relationship, the ‘I’ has to show up with all its vulnerabilities and be open to engage.  This is not easy and for me has particularly been a really struggle in commercial settings, where the orthodoxy is to sell yourself as an expert rather than a human being who is good at some things and vulnerable in other ways.

Another little story that has been very formative for me was from a friend who met the son of a world famous management guru at a conference and said to him – ‘what is your Dad really like ?’ – the reply was something like ‘he is quite quite brilliant – he sits at breakfast and says brilliant things – but he is a crap dad’.  My ideal change agent is not a crap dad, mum, son, daughter, friend etc

I also like the story of Tim ‘Mac’ Macartney who asked a Board of Directors of a major company something like ‘If you are not taking decisions for the benefit of the children and future generations, then what are you doing ?’.  My ideal change agent asks challenging questions like this.

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Relationship with the whole

My Masters thesis was about what was different about the lived experience of change agents (people who seemed like good ones !) who worked in sustainability as opposed to change agents who did things like implementing quality systems or stuff like that.  My two main findings were about their ability to make connections and take a whole systems perspective (and thus deal with complexity) and that their lived experience included substantial times of ‘joy’.  The ‘joy’ thing was a real surprise to me, so I burrowed into that some more and concluded that this deep joy was about knowing that your work was connected to your authentic self and a higher purpose.  Whether things work out or not, if you know what you are doing is the best thing you could be doing on this planet, then joy tends to follow.

My ideal change agent experiences joy, but not all the time, they go through a lot of tough stuff too.

The ‘whole system’ involves lots of people.  Our conventional approach has been to try to manage systems through hierarchies, as if the people at the top can know everything that is going on and what is needed and then boss everyone around appropriately and as if people will do what they are told.  There is unquestionably a place for hierarchies, but as things get more and more complex and less and less predictable, they are a less and less useful organisational form.

One major response to the declining usefulness of hierarchies has been to sit in circles, just as humanity has for thousands of years.  Stereotypically, we sometimes sit in circles and talk about feelings and wait for magic to happen and sometimes it does.

But, in general, circles tend to be less good at taking action.  They also tend to be less good at acknowledging the place of structure and order.  (Think for example about how an air traffic controller does their job – managing complexity through procedures and authority).  Networks (including on-line social networks) are another form that introduces new possibilities that we are only beginning to appreciate.

My ideal change agent can work flexibly, moving between hierarchy and circles, necessary structure and creative generative chaos, as needed, knowing how their personal patterns tend to be tripped by each type of system pattern and helping others to feel safe enough most of the time through the inevitability of change.

My ideal change agent absolutely knows they don’t have all the answers.  They are curious to learn and they experiment, often playfully.

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So that’s some idea of the change agent I want to be.  I have come to realise too that I am very privileged to have had the experiences I have had and to have worked with so many great people, so I think it is important for me to be a change agent who supports other change agents to be the change agents they want to see in the world and this blog is one little piece of that.

I also know it is key to be a collaborative change agent – ‘the time of lone wolf is over’ (I suggest you google this if the quote is not familiar to you) – my next steps are to move into a different space in this respect – more on this soon ….

(or give me a call and ask me what’s going on ?!)