Dan Joyner: The Pain of Every Leader

The Common Good podcast is a conversation about the significance of place, eliminating economic isolation and the structure of belonging.  For this week's episode Joey Taylor speaks with Dan Joyner about participatory leadership, pain, fear and hospitality.

Dan Joyner is a change management consultant and facilitator in education, government and the civic sector. He has significant senior leadership and ground-level knowledge and experience. As a collaborative consultant, implementing social technologies, coaching and developing leadership capacities are key offerings. Dan’s expertise includes: executive coaching, large group facilitation, narrative practices, participatory leadership, community restoration, classroom/lead teacher coaching, and experiential learning.

Works referenced in this episode

• Remember by Joy Harjo
• Six Conversations
• Possibility Conversation
• John McKnight on Hospitality
• Harrison Owen on Open Space
• Open Space Technology

This episode was hosted and produced by Joey Taylor and the music is from Jeff Gorman. You can find more information about the Common Good Collective here. Common Good Podcast is a production of Bespoken Live & Common Change - Eliminating Personal Economic Isolation. 

Transcript

 We're finishing a six year relationship It was something that started early on with the six conversations that kind of laid the foundation as a district, for their evolution into a project-based learning district. A restorative practices district. And a third thing they were already into, it's called responsive classrooms. All of these are conversational.  I learned from the sixth conversations and  how  organizations operate how any room of human beings,  no matter what the purpose, I mean, it could be a family, small group, family members that are coming together to plan a funeral, you know, it's kind of a, a messy situation, but they're a small group of humans who come together. To talk about that very important thing. So it could be a math class, fourth grade math class. I heard Peter Block say once that it was this work of sitting in small groups and structuring the room in certain ways and asking certain questions and little protocols for the conversations. He said that it's improv for real life. so when I say it's the foundation for my work, It's the foundation for how we'll operate together as a group of human beings.

I love that improv for real life. That's a great framing.  How do you describe the work of your life? What do you say?

Well, you know, I, I, um, I met a, a friend of Peter's once  and  I was just getting into the consulting work and trying to find my way and figure out exactly what is it I do and how do I do it? And so my conversation with her was, how did you do it?  And there was no straightforward answer. Cause what she said to me, she says, well, I've gotten to the point now to where my clients pay me to have dinner with them, and that's what I get paid to do. And at the time, that didn't make sense to me. But now it does, it does. You know, when I think about the growth, and  I have to use this idea of the Pennytown local school district and this six year relationship and the good fortune that I kind of had the opportunity at the beginning to work with  the high school principal and assistant principals. That's kind of where I started. So that work kind of kept me kind of at the top of the system, the administrative level of the system, and including the board office with the superintendent. And they're getting this concept of conversations because that's what they chose to do, they committed to become practitioners  participatory leadership, collaborative leadership, And so that's what all project-based learning and all these things are about. They're about collaboration. So they've become such practitioners for this period of time that now my relationship with them is kinda like, we hang out once every couple of weeks or an hour and a half or two, and that's our work. We just talk about the work that we're doing as practitioners, we're a community of practice and so I get that. I understand that concept, but yet in that system, my work now Has kind of evolved to working on the ground with second grade teacher in the second grade class around stories and harvesting stories and, and it's all narrative. It's all about story and narrative and the conversations. We have structures of, of how we occupy the space, the room and obviously we're in a room for a purpose. There's a purpose and  we always want to help our clients, so to speak. Whether it's a classroom of students and a teacher, we want to help them achieve their business purpose so they have a purpose, you know, and and they're really focused on that. But at the same time, we want them to Learn and practice together with us doing that or achieving or accomplishing that purpose through participatory and collaborative means. So that's kind of the work I'm doing on the ground, and that's the work that I started with, with the administration. The administrative team is leading through collaboration. 

You said this thing about the school district, that they chose this path. And, a big part of this work is this idea of choice over mandate, would you be able to describe what it was like for you to make the choice to do the work that you're doing now? Was there a crossroads moment for you where you were like, yeah, this is the path for me that I'm choosing to go down?

Yeah. There was a pivotal moment in my life, in my career where I knew I had a choice as a leader. So  my previous career was, I worked for Hamilton County and I I worked there 30 years. For 25, those 30 years I was a leader became an administrator. Actually I I did training too for the county  training division. so my 30 years there was pretty much being a leader and the training focus was on leadership. So I kind of became a practitioner in that way and I enjoyed that work.  after I left there. I retired from there.  that's when I transitioned to becoming a consultant. And that's when I met Peter Block, actually shortly after that and started getting into this work and understanding the whole field of consulting and organizational development. Because my first exposure to it kind of came out of that whole realm of organizational development, organizational psychology. But what it meant for me was I found an answer to the pain I felt as a leader. And the pain I felt as a leader was being charged with controlling people, my staff. And I was a good bureaucrat, I did everything that I needed to do to control people, and I used all the devices for power and reward that I had. And I learned how to do that and do that well. And I also learned as a bureaucrat that if you did that well, you stayed whole in a system that's pretty scary from the top,  so there's lots of fear that permeated the system. And  I was the kind of person I noticed that even the people that seem most secure in the system politically and position wise, they too had fear. , but seeing another side of how to make decisions as a leader, which is the hardest part. And secondly, how to do it without controlling people or having to control people. When I learned that that was possible, that's when I got excited about this work. And it made me want to help other leaders learn that they don't have to feel the pain that all leaders feel in bureaucracies, and I mean all leaders, but one of the things you have to show toughness. You know, you can't let 'em see you sweat. So we can't see it a lot, but it's true. All leaders feel that pain because they're trying to control people. And what we know is human beings can't be controlled. Yet we're charged with controlling them. And they do,  they get in alignment, right? Because the system, like I said, is scary. Either you do it or else, and people don't like the alternative, so they do it. But there's all this upheaval with turmoil, interpersonal, the feelings that go on among people. It's just really clear to me  as an administrator in a bureaucracy. Really caring about the work and caring about people. I just saw how much pain people felt and how much I felt personally. 

That's a really compelling answer. I, like the framing of pain and fear. I was also struck by, the groups that you work with have a identified purpose that they're trying to work towards. And when I'm doing this kind of work, I often to use your words, feel some fear around achieving those outcomes. Getting to those ends and I think this participatory kind of model for me feels a lot more outta control.  It's impossible to determine or prescribe do you feel a palpable sense of fear or like insecurity in this work? How has that fear shifted for you as you've come into this work? Is it still there? Has it gone away? 

No, I, the fear is there for me. My first work with I'm using Finn Times. It's just such a great example and I'm, I just been there forever and so it's easy to talk about experiences there. But my very first experience there was, to help the high school principal facilitate an all staff meeting. And to do that meeting in a participatory way. So they knew they wanted to have this all staff meeting. They wanted to introduce something new that they wanted to bring to the high school. And they also realized at this point that they wanted everybody to be involved. And so they learned about me, and that's where I came in to help them think about that. And so what we decided to do was to use a process called open space. Technology and open space technology is a way for large groups of people to come together.  And there were about 80 people that were gonna be together here and then we spent a half day together and they created the agenda. The people who came, created the agenda for the day based on the invitation that they got from the the administration at the high school. And I remember leading up to that, The principal, she tells a story about calling me the night before and asking me, are you really sure that this is gonna work? Because she doubted that people would be interested enough to create the agenda themselves. So we were going into that meeting without an agenda I remember, and I, I always do. And when you set up an open space, everybody's there. And then the moment as the opening facilitator, you stop talking and it's time for people to begin creating the agenda. I worry that nobody's gonna get up. And sometimes, if you're in a kind of a toxic environment, you know, kind of the backstory,  you know, there's tension in the room.  I worry a little more when there's tension there, but what I've learned from experiences is that it always works and that it was true if anytown that very first time, I couldn't finish walking away from the setup before the first person got up and ran to put a topic up on the agenda. That's when the principal was convinced that very moment that she also had that same fear. That there was so much resistance and animosity in the system was so toxic that nobody would take any liberty to do anything because, they were used to people waiting to be told what to do which is the opposite of, the freedom to collaborate, you know? command and control.  That's how these bureaucracies stay intact and you wonder how can it be so toxic? But yet year after year, the organization exists. How is that possible? That's just how it works. Bureaucracies are designed to exist. And  maintain the status quo. So day after day school opens, it closes for the summer, next fall it opens again. Now people may not like the results but the next fall school opens up. It's, you know, So it stays together. So I understand that bureaucracy's work. 

Yeah. they, they work to accomplish a specific goal, even if it's not the goal that everybody thinks they're working to accomplish. 

That's right. Yeah. That's right. And that's  what I've learned. Yeah. that's the equivalent of people requesting that you tell them what to do. Even though they don't like it, we don't, none of us like it. None of us like to be told what to do. So why is that? Why do we behave in that way?

Yeah. It does feel like there's an assumption around leadership that we don't really have the resources to know what's good for us or what the way forward is, and so we need a leader to elucidate that path for us. And it is interesting because once the path is laid out in front of us, most of the time we disagree with it and we have resistance towards it because we weren't a part  of determining that path. But  is some assumptions there, I think around the general lack of competence of other people. Right. I wanna talk for just a second about this idea. You go into this room, you're facilitating this all staff meeting. The superintendent says, are you sure this is gonna work? And you're like, essentially, trust me. And you see the room shift from skepticism and dysfunction to participation, what are some of the ingredients for you as you think about how to frame that activity or invite people into that space? What are some of the significant ingredients that you want to make sure that you hit on and maintain in order to help that transition from skepticism participation?

  Accountability is one of the requirements of a leader what I've learned is that people choose to be accountable. So it's still accountability, but it's two different types and the outcomes are different. So holding people accountable. Is, what we do through policies and mandates and the control and power that we have over people choosing to be accountable comes as a result of an invitation. So we learn a different language. And so it's all about language and what we talk about. And that's how we create the shift from mandate to. Chosen accountability from held accountability to chosen accountability. So that's our role as leaders. And so what we can do as leaders, as in that first open space, we can create the container where choice is on the table for everybody in the room. And what I mean by that, the container is that room we were in the gym. And we created an architecture where people could move around, where they could create their own topics where they could just kinda hang out and do nothing if that's what they chose to do. But everybody had a choice about how they were gonna participate in that half day conversation. And so it was the structure that we created. It was how we set the room up. It was the questions that we asked and the little bit of structure. Scaffolding that we created through the design of the meeting. And so that's it. That's what leaders who are collaborative, that's what they learn to do. They learn to operate  in that space, in that domain, which is a domain of complexity. And it is complex. You can't control what people talk about. You can't hear everything that's going on. Because it's many people having many conversations about many topics. So it's rich, it's an ecosystem of choice and learning. So I mean, that alone, just that definition of working on something with that degree of richness and complexity, and then knowing how we can come out of there as a whole group, as an organization with some clarity. About what happened where we're going. Leaders have learned that clarity emerges from these divergent, complex small groups conversations among people who are there for common purpose.

Talk about trust a little bit in the work that you do, is trust a prerequisite?  Is it a result of the work? Is it the, the path of the work? How does trust factor in here? Because it feels like, Somebody needs to trust you enough to invite you into the space, you know, they don't know what the heck you're doing. They're like, well, Dan's got this. 30 years of  working for the counties, has some credentials. He seems legitimate, let's give 'em into the space. But then everybody else in the space is trying to figure out who the heck you are and what the heck you're doing. So where does trust come into this process? 

Yeah, the whole thing is based on relationships. So even my work at the very beginning with a potential client, for lack of a better word it starts with establishing a relationship. So I know that I can't go in trying to persuade and sell people on jumping into this work together. It takes beginning with establishing a relationship. And so even once we get started, that's our mantra. In our work, the very first thing we learn and say is connection before content. And so connection is first. Everything starts with building relationships. So that's where the trust comes in, the work of, I kinda learned from John McKnight, the whole idea of hospitality. The definition of hospitality is. Connecting strangers to strangers and enabling them to share their story. So if I'm a district leader of a school district, part of my job is to connect the whole system to itself. So everywhere I go, everything I do, I want to connect members of the system to each other, and that's one thing I have  power and control over. I can do that. I can ask people to get into small groups of three with people you know the least, and give them an opportunity to sit close together and kind of share their story with each other in a real intimate way. And it's amazing how many people say what they were able to talk about and share with a group of strangers. That felt so different and alive to them compared to what they're able to share day to day with the people they work closely with. And so it just shows that  it's that connection with somebody you don't know so well as opposed to the connection with people or like-minded people who kinda keeps the same narrative going. Nothing new, happens nothing can come out of that other than what you already know. So this idea of connecting strangers to strangers keeps interest going always in the system. Curiosity, learning who people are over the story that you've heard about them or the assumptions you make about them. Really getting to know people for who they are that you work with day in and day out. So once we get that pattern, we get that practice now, then it can begin to permeate the system. 

I would love to talk about story for just a second. I hear Peter talk a lot about how we have these stories about ourselves,  and the stories about ourselves. It doesn't even matter if they're true, the idea is that they're doing something for us and because he focuses on the function of stories instead of the veracity of the stories. He introduces the possibility of these stories can be changed and that we can author a new future together. And so,  I just would love to hear you talk about that dimension and when you're talking about story, what are people actually invited to share?

The thing from Peter's work and story comes from the idea of all changes linguistic. So it's a conversation that we have, whether it's a conversation from the past or story from the past. Our story about the present, what's going on right now. Or the story about a future possibility so story, narrative, language. It's all how we know, it's all how reality shows up for us. It's a story, it's a narrative. So the story I tell about myself is exactly who I am. And that's different from the story that others tell about me. Now I can take that as, okay, that's who I am, that's what people say I am, then that's who I become because that's a story I tell. But I am also the narrator of my own story, and I do have a choice about the story I tell. Even if it's made up, it's the story I choose to tell  and if somebody else tells a story about me or we share a story about the same situation, it's their version  that story. So they're making it up too. It's all fiction. It's all made up,   yet. If there's truth to that story, that conversation about who I am is true, that's who I am, then that's where the power is. So the power is in the conversation. The power is in the thinking.  the narrative part of how we operate together  is where the substance is. That's where the power is. And that's where the energy comes from too, the energy to act. So you can see the difference in different kinds of conversations. And Peter's six conversations clearly points this out. For example, the possibility conversation. That conversation is a conversation where possibilities replace problem solving. So a narrative, a story about the problem. If you think about it, it's a story from the past. It's a story that's already happened. That's how we know it's a problem. What I also know about that problem narrative from being a leader and working to solve problems is that it consumes energy  talking about what's wrong, what you need to improve on, you failed. All those things are kind of measurements of my success and my worth. That's a story from the past. That's a story somebody else makes up. That's a story the grade book tells about who I am. What we've learned is that if we can shift that narrative  problem narrative and turn it into a possibility narrative, then it changes the energy, it changes the focus it creates and kind of propels us energy wise toward a future, that future possibility, which is an alternative. It hasn't happened yet. It's something that's a possibility. 

Let's talk about your personal narrative work.  We started off the conversation by I asked you what is the work that you do? And that's a story of how you look at yourself. But if I was more open-ended, maybe we frame it as a possibility kind of conversation.  How would you conceive of yourself in terms of the possibility conversation?

I've arrived at this point of realizing that all change is local. All change is small, it's slow,  and it's relatively inexpensive. So that's kind of the opposite of what  bureaucracies and systems want to see when it comes to change. You know, we want it fast. We'll throw lots of money at it, but real sustainable, transformative  change is the opposite of that. And so I've learned that my power  is most impacted in small, intimate ways. So working in a fourth grade classroom to build writing skills, I can be more impactful by helping those 22 students  relationships with each other. Collaborate when writing together and getting their thoughts on paper, thinking together I can be more impactful there helping create those conditions than from a distance trying to orchestrate it. 

The stuff we're talking about, let's be totally honest. It's, difficult to make tangible, I mean, change is linguistic. It's relational, it's dynamic, it's interpersonal and, there's fear involved, there's frustration involved. It's not a simple thing at all that we're talking about. So when you think about all the challenges that are around this work and. All the things that you have to juggle and handle what keeps you coming back to it.  Is there some like fuel that you have in your tank to keep you going and, and Yes. to navigate this work? 

Yeah, absolutely. The whole idea that this work is not an argument against traditional systems and structures. That's where the resistance comes in, because again, this traditional systems are, fear-based, and everybody fears somebody above them in some way. And so we don't want to create any more fear. There's enough of that. And so I, I, I say right away, this is not an argument against Traditional schooling. I understand, that structure, but  this is an alternative. There's an alternative to what you talk about within those systems. And so that's where  the humanity and the living system comes into play because we're complex. And so the talking and the interactions and the knowing. And the belonging and all those things. That's the work that I'm talking about. So it's not an argument against any of that. But if we're all together, 22 kids are in a homeroom class for 45 minutes, all right, they're in those four walls realizing that they are a living organism and learning is something social that happens among them. When they start to connect with each other and those relationships are thickened and their stories of who they are, are listened to effectively by their peers, by each other, and by their teachers and by everybody, the whole community then I think that's where the whole system will shift because everybody will know that who they are. Matters. And they will see themselves in a system that hears them, that's curious about who they are. Over a system of colonial attitudes and narrative about who they need to be.