Sitting in the shit…as an organisation
Last week I wrote a short article on ‘sitting in the shit’. I spoke about how often we perform a dysphoric version of ourselves that ultimately tells our psyche that feeling rubbish represents failure & stops us from being able to sit in the shit.
Let’s talk about how this can occur on an organisational level, ultimately leading to a culture of burying problems as well as to becoming a traumatised and traumatising system. Organisations are made up of human beings, as much as we might like those buzzwordy metaphors (how is a company like a fish???). And human beings hate feeling uncomfortable. Most of us are pretty crap at sitting with difficult emotions, and our reaction is often to make ourselves busier, to move forwards.
The problem with our problem with feeling uncomfortable is that the reaction is usually to speed up, react, to suppress and crack on. But when you react to difficult feelings too quickly, you get that revolting, chaotic, evil sense that you’re a ball in a pinball machine, and someone else or something nameless is pinging you around at random.
Me, 3 days ago :)
As an avid and passionate job-hopper (yay please hire me), I’ve bounced around many companies. After a few years, patterns have emerged and I imagine they’re probably found elsewhere too. Have you ever felt like your organisation is a ball in a pinball machine being pinged around at random? Yeah…me too.
Humans are complex and fallible, and as mentioned, don’t like feeling bad. Starting or running a company is a risk, and risk provokes anxiety, which provokes reactivity and the impulse to gather momentum — which ends up in an organisation that is panicky, dysregulated, and separated from reality. It becomes a traumatised and traumatising system.
What do I mean by traumatised and traumatising system?
Traumatic events push the nervous system outside its ability to regulate itself. For some, the system gets stuck in the “on” position, and the person is overstimulated and unable to calm. Anxiety, anger, restlessness, panic, and hyperactivity can all result when you stay in this ready-to-react mode. This physical state of hyperarousal is stressful for every system in the body. In other people, the nervous system is stuck in the “off” position, resulting in depression, disconnection, fatigue, and lethargy. People can alternate between these highs and lows.
An organisation is not a tree or a fish or a family; it is literally a web of its leadership, employees’ and clients’ nervous systems. When there is constant and acute strain on that web, those individual nervous systems become chronically stressed and the overall system becomes traumatised, swinging between restless highs and lethargic lows. The highs and lows perpetuate a vicious cycle; the uncertainty and inconsistency leads to further anxiety, which leads to further reactive speeding-up, and further stress…and you get the picture.
There are a lot of passionate people out there who really want to do good work. The issue with a traumatised/traumatising system is that it cannot allow employees to do their job well because of the sheer speed, the shifting goalposts and the anxiety of leadership which plays out in controlling behaviour and micro-management. On an individual-to-individual level, we would call this an abusive relationship.
In an ideal world, there would be systemic practices in place for those nervous systems to positively co-regulate. But all too often there is little space for conscious co-regulation and instead people subconsciously feed off each other’s stress.
Organisations trapped in this pattern of behaviour only know how to march forward (linear); they don’t know how to change (cyclical). They get stuck.
What to do, what to do
Well, when your friend, partner or child is feeling a bit panicky, what is the best way to help them? Here’s a few pointers:
S l o w i n g d o w n
Holding space for fear and sadness
Grounding exercises using your senses
Talking about change & how it feels
All of these things are part of what I call ‘sitting in the shit’; slowing down enough to feel those difficult things, and understand what they’re trying to tell you. If you are feeling a bit crap, or your organisation is feeling a bit chaotic, something is probably wrong with the way you’re currently doing things.
It’s REALLY IMPORTANT to say: these pointers are not something to just chuck at employees and say ‘hey, here you go, here are some self-care tips, now go be happy with your exhausting workload’.
The whole system needs care. Putting the onus on the employees without changing the system only perpetuates the culture of kicking the problems into the long grass. It’s also pretty close to gaslighting. Sitting in the shit means taking those pointers and thinking about how changes and practices can be embedded deep within the company culture, policies and behaviour.
Many of you will be reading this thinking ‘yeah, it’s all very well trying to slow down, but W investor needs X, Y client wants Z’. But I challenge that. If you are a leader in your organisation, you do have the power to influence the pace of your organisation; even if it’s just in your team. And individual employees: you do have the option of walking away.
In any case, slowing down really really seriously is the only answer.
You can work with me to slow your organisation and bring it back to a grounded centre.