By Peter Block

We live in a market culture that organizes itself around scarcity and barter. What’s in it for you, what’s in it for me, let’s make a deal. It treats us as if we are essentially economic beings, motivated by self-interest. As if we believe, as Adam Smith wrote, that without self-interest, no butcher will cut your meat for a meal tonight.

Aligned with the belief in self-interest, we are seduced by the desire to know what will happen next. In many ways, organizational life is designed for control and predictability. This is almost an organizing principle of management. Do anything that you want, just don’t surprise me.

This passion for certainty surfaces even when organizations declare they seek innovation. The first question on anything new –– no matter where: private sector, city hall, social service, or philanthropy –– is “where has it worked elsewhere?” Makes me want to move to a city called “Elsewhere.”

Now is a moment to seriously question how we respond to the worship of barter, self-interest, and predictability. Especially in the workplace. Especially in the community sector. This is also calling to us by a generation that leans toward purpose over promise. Purpose over upward mobility. A signal from people who do not want to go back to the office, even if they are ordered to.

Purpose over Promise

Years ago, a friend of mine, Ken Murphy, introduced me to the story of Ernest Shackleton. Ken was an executive with Philip Morris and used the story as a metaphor for the uncertainty that his cigarette company was facing. The story:

In 1915, in England, Sir Ernest Shackleton had a recruiting and retention problem much like we face today. Shackleton was planning a long voyage to cross the Antarctic overland from west to east. He was undercapitalized, was recruiting as the First World War was brewing, and was offering a workplace of difficult and challenging proportions. Shackleton became a popular icon because of his determination and will that saved the lives of his crew after their ship became icebound early in the voyage. What I am more interested in here, however, is not his heroics on the ice, but the faith and realism embodied in his recruitment strategy.

He advertised for his open positions with the following inducements:

Join an Antarctic Expedition! We promise you:

         Low Pay

         Poor Climate          

         Safe Return Doubtful

Shackleton believed that it would be a privilege to be part of his adventure. His advertising got results; 5,000 people applied for the trip. Even though the economic climate in 1915 had its own reality, I think he was onto something for our time. He, in essence, took the stance that the way to recruit and retain people was by naming the opportunity, fragile as it was, and then making demands on them instead of feeding their sense of entitlement and materialism. No barter. No career promise. No venture capital around the corner. You share the risk, not knowing if and when you will be rewarded. Or even come home.

Low Pay, Poor Climate, Safe Return Doubtful

This invitation offers a journey that proposes surprise and a larger meaning that you would be a part of creating. This purpose was compelling to many: to put your feet on land that had previously been unexplored. Perhaps to depart a life that had its own questions. Five thousand people answered Shackleton’s ad, and that was without social media or a digital reach. It was an ad in a newspaper in one city.

What form might “safe return doubtful” take today? Where does the Antarctic reside in the modern market world where our communities and workplaces exist? Are there explorations compelling enough to give up a safe return? To refuse the allure of barter? To depart the call of evidence residing or working elsewhere? Suppose this was “Elsewhere.”

Human Resources and Organization Development the Shackleton Way

For most workplaces, human resources is framed for operationalizing barter and the assumed motivation embodied in the promise of an attractive future. It is assigned the task of finding, training, and keeping people. Organization development is also an important player in this system. Its job is to make this contract of self-interest and future promise work well. For HR, the conventional wisdom is to offer people the possibility of a big and compelling future, and the training to qualify for it. Benefits now and instant wealth upon hiring or coming later with the rising stock price. Salaries and stock options are tools of choice.

This way of thinking and operating may have lost its utility and glamour. When the market is volatile, and the future increasingly unpredictable, we can be frozen in a form of thinking about what attracts good people. Many companies still offer “retention bonuses.” We have become so doubtful about the inherent keeping power of our organizations that we think we have to offer incentives for people just to stay put. Safe staying doubtful.

This same mentality exists in our thinking about how to organize employee learning. This is where training and development groups come in. OD and learning are efforts to help make living in this barter, control, and predictability world more human and relational. Our learning groups also work to make a safe experience likely. We offer easy learning. Long distance, anytime, anywhere, online, in the comfort of your own home, your car, and you can learn in bite sized segments. All useful. All offering safe return likely, easy access likely.  

The training industry also tells you exactly what you will learn, how it will improve your performance, and how the skills are portable. Take this course and here is what you will leave with. We offer programs on nights and weekends so the time comes from your personal life and not your job.  

Whether we are recruiting for employment or for designing for training, the strategy seems the same: Sell, make it convenient and undemanding, and promise a better future path.

Recruiting

If we want to create a workplace of accountability and collective responsibility, we need to contract very differently at the first moment of recruitment. Instead of nurturing entitlement and self-interest, we might confront people with a recruiting offer something like this:

Join Our Organization and Become Part of a Place Where We Learn from You

You help create our culture, our journey, as well as learn how to adapt to who we are. No more onboarding. This partnership takes the form of:

• You are expected to care primarily for the well-being of the institution and the larger society. We have no mentoring program, offer modest benefits, and have no organized way of planning your career. Cooperation and peer relationships are more important than competing.
• Our purpose is to do something important and worthwhile. Recognition comes on its own schedule.
• The chances of getting rich quickly are slim. Only a few players in our industry will really prosper, so come to work at a place where the experience of each day is its own reward and let tomorrow take care of itself. Which it will do anyway.
• Safe return doubtful. Our company has its risks. The work is hard, the environment is unpredictable, and the management keeps changing its mind. Messages about imminent improvement and optimism about our future are ways of managing the news. 

This kind of promise will attract adventurers with a heart. It defines the meaning of accountability and offers some emotional integrity. It will draw people we can count on, people who cannot be bought with an appealing promise. Based on this offer, the ones that do show up will be the ones you want to build a business with.

Rethinking Retention

People stay in an organization that respects their freedom and gives choice about their learning. Our training efforts would change radically for the better if we solicited participation with an offer similar to the recruiting promise. It might look something like this:  

Choose Among Our Training Offers

Here is what to expect:

• Your learning is in your hands. We want to support your participation in a long-term learning commitment. This effort requires time, depth, and personal engagement. Nothing of real and lasting value can be achieved in a few hours, on your own, or on the run.
• Our programs provide experiences where your participation and connection with other learners is at the center. While we offer programs which focus on what we think is essential, you will not be presented with immediately applicable skills, tools, or techniques. Nor will you be asked to end this program with a list of action steps. You have all the skills and tools you need.
• Our purpose is to shift our thinking and consider the possibility of creating meaning. Simply choosing to go to and reach our Antarctica is the point. Especially since it is getting warmer.
• You will not be asked to evaluate the presenters, only to evaluate the quality of your own participation.
• Come by choice. If others want you to attend, stay away. If your boss thinks this experience would be good for you, ask why. Then make your decision. You know what you want and need to learn. Come if this fits. The years of being a good son or daughter are over. Besides, by design, for our live events, the food is mediocre, the chairs are uncomfortable, and the location inconvenient.
• One useful question in choosing is “What courage is required of me now?”  

The Point

These offers, while a little extreme, reflect life as it usually turns out to be. Plus, when we approach recruiting and retention as a marketing and selling task, we devalue ourselves. When we treat employment as something people have to be talked into, we are converting our own doubts into institutional practice. Institutionalizing us as partners rather than parents is a shift worth considering.

By the way, the real trip to the Antarctic ended with the ship hopelessly stuck on an ice floe. It sank. The crew made it to solid ice. And then waited. Shackleton heroically took a small boat to seek help and succeeded against all odds in saving the crew and getting them to safety. Safe return, though not promised, did occur.

By Peter Block

Transformation occurs first in the mind. It is then triggered in an infinite number of ways. What each entails is a shift in narrative. A shift in the story we choose to live into. Each entails a movement away from our historical way of naming our being in the world. Then discovering and choosing new words that name the future we aspire to. It is the moment when we decide to choose a future distinct from the past. 

What anchors each form of transformation is a brief way of speaking of the aspiration. A phrase or a sentence that captures something essential. It is a marker that is always available.  

Some markers are for a city or a country: 

One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.
We, the people. . . .
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  

These markers appear in history, they appear on statues and on buildings. There are also markers that each of us holds within. 

My daughter, Jennifer, became attracted to tattoos. As they expanded over her body, I asked her what the tattoos meant to her. She said each one represented a transformation in her life. Together they were an art form that documented her path of what was occurring with her, what meant most to her, what she wanted to name and remember.  

So it is with the phrases and sayings each of us was touched by and retains. They are tattoos of the mind rather than the skin, markers of transformation, not just improvement and steps forward. They are an art form in their own way, to capture the nuance of consciousness and meaning. 

These tattoos come in the form of one-liners or short quotes. In sharing them we are reminded of who we are, who we aspire to be, and how we find our commonality. They are not just what I may post on my mirror, or screen or wall, but statements, in the sharing, that bring us together. When we make our shift in story public and visible we generously make known to others what becomes a piece of a communal transformation we are living into and, in the sharing, what reduces our isolation. 

Here are two that I am unable to erase. 

I am warning you that if you argue with me, I will take your side. 
Peter Koestenbaum

This warning awakened me to the idea that certain conversations don’t take us anywhere. Opinions, points of view, evidence-based being are real, interesting but to argue about them becomes a contest, even if expressed with kindness and enjoyment. They are interesting but reinforce the illusion that being right is more important than being connected or surprised. Of course, we are interested in each other’s view of the world, but arguing, debating, persuading is very different from curiosity.

This tattoo––If you argue with me, I will take your side––affirms that certainty keeps us apart. I can strongly believe in something and can also recognize that this does not mean it is right. It is also liberating, in that I can express a point of view knowing that I do not have to defend it.

All transformation is linguistic.  
Werner Erhardt

This statement was a shock to my system. It made a distinction between words that create a world and words that are just talk. I had believed that the stories I tell about myself, my history, this moment actually stand for something. I was missing the insight that they are fictions I have created, conclusions I have drawn, that were useful for a moment but keep me frozen from an alternative future. They express the idea that who I am can be explained by where I have been. As if my past is the cause of my present. 

This tattoo is a symbol giving shape to the insight that healing occurs when we re-remember our past in a more forgiving way. This is the core function of all the ways we choose to shift our way of being.

We give still importance to people telling their story. It is useful for being seen and valued, but the third time we tell our story, and act as if it is true, it becomes an obstacle to living into a future of our own creation. When transformation is known to be a matter of language, claiming our freedom takes the form of naming an alternative story, chosen in this moment, independent of what is occurring in the world, or not burdened by a change being required from those around us.     

A personal example: My historical story was that I am a loner. A gypsy. A permanent observer of life and the world around me. There came a moment in a workshop I was running in Cincinnati, where I lived. At that moment in the event, all in the room were asked “what courage is required of you now?”  

Damon, a friend in our small group, looked at me––gypsy, facilitator of the session––and said, “Well, Peter, what courage is required of you now?” I chose to answer. “I am afraid of going public with all the ideas I easily express in communities other than my own. I am afraid my skin is too thin to live with the consequences of my actions.” At that moment, in answering that question, I chose to no longer hold onto the story of myself as a permanent outsider but take on the one where I am a participant and citizen of where I lived. This took years to take shape, but the transformation began with those words. A story reconstructed in a conversation.     

Is the idea that all transformation is linguistic true? Perhaps not. But it is uncomfortably useful. It leads us into questions and conversations, that in the act of answering and engaging, we become agents in the world we inhabit. Which may be the point of it all. 

By Peter Block

Gift:

Something willingly given to someone without payment.

A natural ability or talent.

Success at building strong communities and organizations is accelerated when we focus on and give full expression to our gifts and the gifts of others. This is in contrast to the more common practice of focusing on what is missing and problem solving for a fix.  

Giving full expression to our gifts requires us to know what they are, in specific terms. Once we know them, it is still a challenge to own them and treat them as if they are important. This is difficult not only because of our modesty, but at the moment I own my gifts, I become accountable for their application. So, we often prefer to give our attention to deficiencies, which demand little of us other than an apology and an improvement plan.  

Gifts come to life when we choose to tell others the gifts we are receiving from them. In this moment, not yesterday or tomorrow. More important is to invite others to tell us what gifts they received from us this time we are together. Awkward? Yes. Impactful? Yes.

The larger meaning of this is that we choose to create a context where gifts are central, primary, the point. We choose not to treat a discussion of gifts as being self-centered or useful only on occasion.  

This is not easy because the dominant contemporary context gives great importance to deficiencies, problems, self-improvement. Our consumer culture attends to what is missing in us, what we might become. Otherwise we would only buy what we needed. What we are not in the habit of practicing is a conversation about gifts exchanged in the normal course of being together. The dominant culture does not see recognition of gifts –– our own and those of others –– as the essence of producing outcomes and of connection, belonging. Making a place better, whether a home, a workplace, a neighborhood, a council meeting, a town hall meeting, a garden or book or dog club.

Our purpose here is to encourage the importance of naming gifts as a routine practice. Plus, to detail what the conversation looks like.

Our Current Habits  

Naming gifts is most often saved for a special occasion. This is where we see three conversational gift habits:

1. On Departure. Retirement and death are the established occasions when we talk about a person’s gifts. In the case of death, it is called a eulogy. In this moment, we will be forgiven. People will express their gratitude towards us and say what they will miss. People will describe what was unique and special about us. Unfortunately, we are likely to miss the conversation. And by just a few days.
   At retirement or leaving the workplace, same conversation. We get to listen to this one.  We will hear their gratitude. Our unique capacities. What is special about us. Unfortunately, this conversation occurs on our way out. We are gone tomorrow.  Plus, the occasion only occurs a few times in our lifetime.
2. Personality Analysis and Self-Improvement. We have written tests for assessing and giving meaning our gifts. FIRO-B tells me about my leanings toward control, inclusion, and affection. Myers-Briggs lets me know I am an INFJ. Introverted, intuitive, feeling, and judging. Positive psychology helps us focus on our strengths and how to build them. Social-emotional training develops and indexes our path to relational maturity. Performance reviews are another common habit where our pluses and minuses are discussed. Therapy is also a prevalent practice.
3. Victory. When we win, our gifts are celebrated. Best in class. Sports achievements. Promotions. Awards. Grades. The message here is that acknowledging our gifts has to be earned.

Exchanging Gifts as a Regular Relational Practice

As we seek connection and belonging or an alternative future, naming the gifts we have received from one another each time we are together is a powerful practice. It deserves to be ranked up there with Robert’s Rules of Order in the public sector, and PowerPoint presentations, updates, and staff meetings everywhere else. We can be very specific about what this would look like. To create the context for the gifts conversation, there are some distinctions that are useful.

• Gifts vs Strengths. There is a distinction between stating what gifts I have received from someone on this occasion and a discussion of a person’s strengths. It is not our task to analyze or name what others are good at. Strengths are an abstraction and prone to projections. The word “strength” also brings the presence of weakness into play.  We want to tell people what difference they made, not what strengths they possess.
• Being Enough vs Needing Improvement. The gifts conversation as envisioned here is not about self-improvement. Self-improvement functions out of a context that something more being needed.  It is a useful industry, but its larger context is that we are not yet enough. Advice is needed, and there is always work to be done. Still, there is something twisted when we take on the responsibility of helping the other become a better person. It is a colonial practice, packaged as mentoring and generosity.   

The context for building successful communities and organizations begins with the stance that we are enough. Period. What builds a better world is to create ways of acknowledging and amplifying the fact that each person has all that is needed. This begins with seeing our gifts clearly so they can be amplified. This is what creates agency and accountability.

The Practice of the Gifts Conversation

The gifts conversation is powerful when we decide that exchanging gifts for its own sake is essential. The intent is to learn what action I am taking, now, in this moment, has value and meaning for the people in the room and the purpose of our gathering. Naming this teaches each what to focus on and shifts the energy and potential for all in the room.  

Here are the practices that build a gift-minded way of being. This conversation occurs in the middle or the end of every gathering.

   Practice One: When you choose to describe a gift you have received: 

1. Focus on the conversation you just had. Pick a person. Name names: Sally, Lopez, Derek … Say: I want to say something to you. State the gift you received. For example: You listened. You surprised me. You were vulnerable. Your way of thinking added something new. You named your doubts. You bring a quiet warmth to the discussion. You shared an experience close to mine. I have seen you around but never got to know you.
2. State why their action matters to you. Example: This matters because … it is rare for me to be with someone who does not have something in mind for me. Also, I am usually very cautious, and I wasn’t cautious in this conversation. I thought I was alone and something was wrong with me. I discovered that is not so. Your presence with me told me I was not crazy.

  Practice Two: When someone says something nice to you:

1. Say: Thank you. I like hearing that. Do not respond in kind. Do not be humble. Do not tell a story about your struggles, how your sibling is better at this. How you got lucky this time. How the other person brought it out of you. Do not deflect the attention. Courage is required to take it in without reshaping it with history, explanation, or humility. Thank you. I like hearing that. Pause. Inhale.
2. Share with the person who named a gift of yours just now what that means to you. You might say that connecting with strangers is not easy for you. This moment is an antidote to your impatience for a to-do list and you find it challenging to simply connect with others for its own sake. You like to control things, and this moment is an example of knowing you are capable of just being present for another. Or you tend to think your ideas are too radical; it is good knowing they might have more value than you realized.
3. Ask: Is there anything else in our conversation that made a difference for you?
4. Repeat: Thank you. I like hearing that.

  The purpose is to accelerate connection and value it as the necessary path to outcomes, learning, and accountability. An alternative future is based on this.    

  Remember the conversation about you at the moment has a larger purpose: to deepen your connection with all who are on the call or in the room. Also, it affirms a context of our being enough. It also is of value to others who witness this moment.

  Practice Three: When someone leaves early.  

  The gifts conversation is also useful for small departures, moments more frequent than death and retirement. This is when someone has to leave a gathering early. Instead of sneaking out at the break or when no one is looking, we take a moment with the one who is leaving to value the fact they showed up. This expresses appreciation for the time the person was present. This serves to complete the circle in the absence of the person leaving. Even if they said nothing all day.

1. The process is for the convener to ask for any three people in the room to share with the person leaving: Here is a gift I received from you as a result of you being part of this today.
2. Next is for the departing person to state what gifts they have received as a result of being there.
3. Thank you. I like hearing that.

One More Thought   

The point is to put gifts on the agenda in as many ways as possible. This recognizes that asking what we can do better next time has limits; it reinforces the idea that focusing on what is not working takes us somewhere. One version to establish the value of the gift conversation, this one declares we have agency for this event: ask the question halfway through a gathering Are you getting what you came for?

This gives time to act, together, on getting what we came for. Surveying participants after the event is a nice gesture but treats people as consumers giving feedback, not as creators of the time we spent together.

Thanks for Reading

One purpose of every convening is to give form to the world and culture we want to inhabit. This happens when we reshape small and important elements of convening. The questions we ask and the way we convene are what creates a future we do not have to wait for.  Focusing on gifts as one category of meeting design enables us to believe that all we need for transformation or shift is present in this room. Something or someone more is not required for authentic change to occur.

Full Disclosure

I was in a day-long gathering recently and I had to leave early. I had led the morning session but would be gone for the afternoon.

It occurred to me that maybe I should treat my early leaving as a rare moment where I choose to practice what I preach. Before we broke for lunch, I told the group what the three gifts were that I had received from them in our time together.

I then nervously asked in a whisper, what gifts had they received from me? I know what the process is. See above. I just am not in the habit of following it.  

For the next ten minutes, I heard from people I have known and cared about for a long while, years in many cases, and from others whom I had just met. They were specific in describing what my work had meant to them in the past and the gift of how I had been with them in the gathering that morning.  

In hearing what impacts I have had on their practices, in addition to being appreciated, I received insights into the detail and texture of what words and actions of mine had meaning to them. Most were surprises. They mentioned certain times we had been together.  They talked about shifts in their thinking. Ways they had transformed their own practice. Ways they had received value from my words that I could not have known without this conversation.  

In those ten minutes, I was given –– in a way that surprised me –– the gift of being present in a premature version of my own eulogy. I received the gifts and experienced the discomfort of having to exhale into the realization that the work I have committed to makes  a difference. That moment answered questions and doubts that haunt us all. It happened not as the point of our gathering, or as a learning opportunity, but as a footnote to the bigger reasons for us to gather.

This is what the gifts conversation offers each time. A small metaphor of what will restore our humanity in the face of a commodifying culture. We may still leave the meeting with a list of what to do, but we will hold it lightly, knowing it was really not the point.

Thank you. If you want to let me know of anything here that was useful to you, I would like hearing that.