During the Lewin on Racism Webinar, participants discussed Lewin’s contributions to organizational development and race relations, the application of his theories in real-world contexts, and upcoming events like the Lewin Center’s celebration of his 130th birthday on September 9th with a focus on democracy.
Transcript
So I’m Gil Crosby, and it’s a pleasure to be with you. So far, it seems like all of you are network people and Lewin Center people. It seems like three of you know each other in some way. Two of you? Okay, okay. Today, I just learned that Taylor and Francis published this book that’s on the left there. I don’t know if you can see that. Let me get everything set up so everyone can see it.
Cool. It’s been a couple of years since I got tired of reading various small things saying that we need to move beyond Lewin and that Lewin’s change model is too simplistic, etc., etc. Each time I read those things, I could tell from the way they quoted or talked about the change model that they hadn’t actually read Lewin. So I decided to write a piece called “In Defense of Lewin” and published it in the net publication, “The OD Practitioner,” at the time. In the process, I realized I had read very little Lewin myself. So I started reading, and I read and read and read. I thought that, besides that article, it would be nice to have a book that takes something like social change and organizes all the different things Lewin wrote. Education plans, change, the T-group methodology, the social construction of reality—he covered all kinds of different concepts in his many papers. I had always been a little intimidated by his papers. Sometimes I picked up a paper that was mostly psychological topography, where he used geology and map-making constructs. Other papers were full of physics, and I’m not much of a mathematician, so I never had much success. But I realized that when I really started reading, there was a lot that was very accessible. So I had to read it all to find the right stuff.
So that’s part of what this whole thing grew out of. Lewin was very keen on understanding, writing about, and addressing what he called the minority experience. He was born a Jewish male in what was part of Poland at the time. He grew up pre-World War I, under the Kaiser. In Germany, he ended up in the German army. He was there through the post-World War I years and the rise of Hitler. During that whole time, he applied his emerging social science to understanding prejudice and the minority experience. So here’s a unique view on that, which I think is quite practical. What you’re going to get here today is my understanding of Lewin’s perspective, the application of his social science to it, with a quick review of Lewin’s action research addressing prejudice. There was quite a bit of it. He applied it in some unique ways. Finally, I’ll discuss his methods that can be used to address racism and other isms today. That’s my intention. Here’s Posen, and here’s a little drawing I did for my book of Lewin in a foxhole during World War I. Over here, the other soldiers are praying and promising to be good Christians from now on, and over here, Lewin is thinking about the subjective experience of the soldier.
One of his first papers was about seeing the world through the eyes of the field, of being in the war and how everything took on a different meaning. That got him into believing that human experience is highly subjective and that we construct it. If you look at a hole in the ground as a soldier, you think of it very differently than if you’re a civilian walking down the road and see a hole. The soldier thinks, “I could jump in that hole, and maybe I should.” So it’s a whole different way of being that comes out of the field of being in that war, which is a different field than civilians are in. Here’s my own freehand version of Lewin’s application of topography. Lewin was a multidisciplinary thinker. He took the physical sciences and applied them to understanding human beings. He used physics and topography. A lot of what he thought about in terms of the minority experience was the restrictions and boundaries—where you could go, what you had access to. As a Jewish male in post-World War I Germany, he certainly faced a hostile legal system, much like African Americans have experienced in the United States.
If there was trouble, the last thing you wanted was the police to show up because that would make things worse. You had to deal with it yourself if you were a minority. Another inspiration for me in this type of thinking is Howard Thurman, who was the pastor of Martin Luther King Jr. He writes quite elegantly about Jesus being a minority and having no legal rights. The people of Israel at that time had no legal rights. A Roman soldier or citizen could kill you, and the police wouldn’t help. In fact, it was likely the police would be the ones doing the killing. This experience spreads through most of human history—the minority experience. Lewin got his Ph.D. at the University of Berlin but could not become a tenured professor because it was against the rules. He could only live in certain parts of the country, and not the best parts. No Jewish male, and certainly no woman, had the right to own land. One of the dilemmas they faced when trying to escape the rise of Nazism was that they didn’t own what they were producing from, so it wasn’t easy for them to raise cash.
Most of the Jewish population couldn’t just get up and leave. Lewin rose as high as he could in the army, becoming a lieutenant in the Kaiser’s army during World War I, which was as far as a Jewish male was allowed to go. He faced all kinds of restrictions and institutional racism that was overt and got worse instead of better. He got to the US as a refugee scholar, but the US was not welcoming to the Jewish population from Germany. It was very difficult to get in. He had already been lecturing here. If he didn’t have sponsors, he wouldn’t have gotten in, even though he had a Ph.D. and money. He could never get his mother here, despite trying many times, and she eventually died in a Nazi gas chamber. The minority experience was quite real for Lewin.
Here’s Mel Brooks with his high anxiety. Lewin knew that anxiety, which was characteristic of the Jewish experience, was a function of the environment they were in. This is characteristic of the minority experience. Of course, you have high anxiety in a culture controlled by others who are hostile to you. This puts you into what he called the marginal space. If you’re in a culture where you’re not part of the majority or the people in power, then you’re likely to be ambivalent about your own identity. You’ll have mixed feelings about your own ethnicity or whatever group you belong to. This holds for gender as well. You’ll want to be part of the majority to succeed and have wealth and stability, and you’ll be torn between the two. You’ll have doubts about your own identity and wonder if people’s reactions are due to racism or other reasons. This leads to all kinds of uncertainty and reactivity. It’s easy for the majority to be defensive, saying things like, “I’m not racist; I don’t see color.” The whole system creates issues and is unhealthy. I think it’s time we changed it once and for all, and Lewin showed the way.
He would say that the behavior of a person is a function of their personality. Yes, this person may have more anxiety and could see a psychiatrist. But if you’re a minority, you’re likely to have anxiety, uncertainty, confusion, or self-doubt. All of that won’t get fixed by therapy; it will get fixed by changing the environment and creating equality. This is a small, informal audience. If you want to say anything, please feel free. If we talk too much, I might go back to just talking for a while, but I plan to chat for about 20 more minutes and then have a conversation. Don’t be shy.
That’s Lewin’s famous formula. At the bottom, I love this type of thinking. I think it’s totally accurate. Minority problems are, in fact, majority problems. The imbalance in the system hurts everybody. Some people don’t realize that, and it hurts some people more than others in terms of opportunity and safety. But it hurts everybody. What you have to do to live with it if you’re in power also hurts you. It’s confusing—am I racist or not? All that stuff goes on in everybody in a system like this. Lewin’s methods, action research, work best when the strategy comes from the people facing the problems. There’s no prescription for now; just do this, and you’ll fix it. Take this pill. There’s this cycle of planning, acting, sometimes acting and then fact-finding to see if it worked, and then planning again. This is the way to go.
Underlying Lewin’s work is group dynamics, which he coined with Margaret Mead when they were doing food habits studies for the US government. He created many graphs like this in and outside of the industry. The US government wanted families to use food differently during World War II. They wanted the best food to go to the soldiers. They put up billboards, had radio ads, and lectured women, who they concluded were key to eating habits in households. They had very little effect. So they asked Lewin for help. He usually had a control group that was lectured at with the best possible lecturer, and another group that would be lectured at but then talk among themselves and come up with their own versions of possible solutions. Those people would implement. The left-hand bar shows this. The right-hand bar shows the effect of lecturing at people—they’re passive, not engaged, and isolated. If you get people to talk to each other, they come up with solutions, and things get better. Most change management today doesn’t do this; they try to sell change and are lousy at implementation because they aren’t getting local people to solve their own issues and come up with their own experiments.
Field theory is important. Systems want to stay the same, so if you try to shove in a solution, it just increases the tension in the system, eroding any gains. You can’t change people’s biases about ethnicity by lecturing and shaming them. It won’t work. They’ll feel angry and think you’re part of the problem. You have to form a relationship with the people you’re trying to influence and let them think for themselves and talk among themselves. If you push it on them, they’ll fight back. Lewin was asked to address racism and minority relationships on numerous occasions. This is one of my favorite pictures of Lewin.
According to Morrow’s biography of Lewin, the man on the left is Frank Simpson, an African-American who hired Lewin for this work. The photographer in Morrow’s book also mixed up Bradford and Binny. My dad, who knew these guys, caught this. This might really be Binny and Bradford. But with these errors, I wonder if this is really Frank Simpson, the man who hired them. Some things are lost to history. Leah Goldfein also ended up with a doctorate and wrote her own books about action research in education. This picture comes from the Connecticut workshop where the state of Connecticut tried to address racial tension and brought in Lewin. They ran workshops that led to the birth of the T-group, a methodology my father and I still use frequently. I’m running them online now, which I don’t think Lewin would approve of.
Leah Goldfein. Is she Jewish or a person of color?
That’s a great question because it gets us back to the social construction of reality, which includes the social construction of race. It’s hard to tell from this picture, and I don’t know for sure.
The categorization of Leah according to modern society is unknown. There was a woman at this workshop who first asked to listen to the debrief and then said, “That’s not how I see it.” I’ve always been curious about her ethnicity, but all I know is she had the audacity to insert herself into the process, which led to the creation of the T-group method.
Yes, T-group.
Yes, it was that they started realizing that having the participants talk about the process was useful.
My information is that she was a black woman, as this conference was between blacks and Jews.
There was a person in charge, representatives, and the freedom of the laissez-faire style. You need to act if you’re in charge and allow people to influence. Lewin did boys’ group studies with after-school groups of boys and some girls, 11-year-olds, for 2 or 3 years. They did these studies repeatedly. One thing that was notable was that when the leader left the room without saying anything, the boys in the authoritarian group would start fighting and stop working. It was chaos. In the laissez-faire group, the boys would stop working and fight. Only the democratic group kept working and hardly noticed if the leader left because they owned the task. That’s how leadership should work.
The social construction of reality is a wonderful concept. This is a quick overview. My father used to draw this all the time. He would say, look, you’re born with an open mind and absorb the environment you’re in. We work on emotional intelligence, so we want people to realize they felt and expressed emotions fully as babies. By adulthood, it’s more complicated. We are reflections of our starting environments, but we can recognize that and not be trapped. If I were born in Greece in 500 BC, I would have spoken Greek and thought like the people around me. That’s true for every human being. You absorb what you’re born into, and later you might think it’s the only reality, which is a severe limitation. We can change how we look at things. Leaders need to be allowed to be in charge. It’s possible to change beliefs and behaviors, but individuals have to get there on their own. You can’t manipulate them into it. They have to talk out loud and even say hard things while dealing with their peers. If you try to teach people not to be prejudiced by shaming them, it won’t be effective. I trust this process more. It’s not merely rational; it’s irrational. If people trust you and each other, they’ll be influenced. If they don’t, they’ll reject it. It’s much more likely through mutual exploration with peers. Lewin’s research shows that letting people talk among themselves is more powerful than individual training or education. Stereotypes and prejudice are flawed theories, and people can get there if given the chance.
This is from Lewin on reeducation. If all you do is lecture and moralize, people may start to feel guilty, leading to stress.
That’s the superego coming into play and battling with the ego. Even though individuals may hold prejudiced beliefs—whether it be racism, sexism, or any other ism—they may feel guilty about it, but this will only increase their stress, as Lewin predicted. Eventually, when they’re upset, they might even act out worse behaviors. If you want people to come to their own beliefs about facts, they need to do their own thinking. You can have a process that helps the majority arrive at a new understanding of facts. This idea comes from my friend, Rodney Coates, and other scholars who assert that race is a social construct.
In 1492, the papacy declared that everyone outside of Europe needed to be converted, and if necessary, conquered, claiming it would be better for them to be dead than to remain pagans. This belief system conveniently supported the people holding those beliefs. According to National Geographic, my father sent in our DNA, which revealed that we were part of a tribe in northern Kenya. Climate change forced our ancestors to move north, where they faced colder conditions and less sunlight, eventually becoming pale and culturally more aggressive. This historical context should remain just that—history—and not continue as a current social dilemma.
Lewin’s methods were applied by the State Department to Germany and Japan after World War II. These methods can be executed on a large scale. Lewin clearly stated in his papers before he died that you can’t force Germany to be democratic by using totalitarian methods; doing so would only teach them to be totalitarian. You have to go in as friends and let the German people think about solutions themselves. He also pointed out that the US had no right to act superior, given its treatment of African Americans and Native Americans. We need to go in humbly and help people solve their own problems.
This is a little-known picture of Kurt Lewin and my father in the Millennium Falcon on their way to stop the Death Star. I include it because my father was, and still is, an activist fighting totalitarianism in the United States. Back in 1962, when he was a minister in Wausau, Wisconsin, the all-white community expressed concerns about black people moving in, fearing it would lower their property values. They asked my father to speak at a meeting, and he told them that the real problem was a white problem. He suggested setting up a committee to help African Americans move in, as that would improve the community and align with Christian values. He was always outspoken about civil rights, a stance supported by my grandparents.
My father performed gay weddings in the 60s and 70s, well before it was widely accepted. I am committed to continuing this legacy of making the world a better place. I’ve learned a lot about Lewin, and I’d like to share some sources for further reading.
Here’s a book I just wrote, which applies Friedman and Lewin’s theories to understanding the life of a Malaysian businessman. I believe there is great synergy between Edwin Friedman’s family systems approach and Kurt Lewin’s approach. This is the first time I’ve combined them in a book. This book was just published today by Taylor and Francis, and it will be available for pre-order soon.
Now, let’s open the floor for discussion. We have about ten more minutes officially, but I’m not in any rush. Thoughts? Comments?
Julie. Hi.
Pam.
All right. Gilmore. Mary. Boone. Hi, Mary. Hi. How about everyone turns on their cameras, unless you’re in an awkward position or something.
Where are you? Well, Gilmore, when I saw the announcement for this webinar, I was really excited and registered right away. I heard about it from a colleague of mine.
Eileen?
No, not Eileen. Bastien. She’s an [occupation]. I was looking forward to it because the title “Deep Dive” caught my eye. I thought we were going to go deeply into Lewin and how it relates to racism.
Was this deep enough?
No, it wasn’t. It was rather elementary, actually. Anyone who has read “The Practical Theorist” would have already known everything you covered. I came with higher expectations.
That’s well, we could have a further conversation that would pursue your interests. If you think I have information to offer you. I don’t assume most people have read “The Practical Theorist” or been involved in the field.
Even your password to get in was “force field.” Oh my goodness. I came with high expectations, and they were not met. But what you did was adequate.
Thanks.
That’s my take on it.
Where would you want to go deeper?
If you’re going for a deep dive, I would want to see more about his experimentation, the students he mentored, and the legacy he left. I was looking for more.
So you don’t mean going deeper into the Connecticut workshop?
No, not specifically.
Like an hour just on that?
No.
So I’m trying to understand what you mean. I’d be guessing right now if I tried to meet your needs without more information.
I recommend you hear from others as well, to get a full range of perspectives.
I wonder if it would be helpful to look at Lewin’s ideas about teaching democracy, as we need it politically, racially, and in corporations. Employee-owned companies are working to build democracy in the workplace. Places like Praxis Consulting are focusing on this. Kegan’s work with adult development and vertical development all point to the need to build democratic structures. What are we doing to teach this? Lewin knew this, T-group knows this, but there’s no single place for people to learn how to create a democracy.
The passage has been corrected for clarity, coherence, and grammar. Additionally, some parts were rephrased for improved readability.
Okay. Well, I was looking at—I mean, we hear about dialogic, we hear about participative, we hear about all of the gamut and the skills and the processes. But when you sit down with someone, I’ve been working with corporate governance for 20 years, with one company, doing a case study, working to finish a book. There are very few people who understand the work it takes to create a democracy. You get things like resistance to change. You get this resistance. But the way to overcome resistance to change is to engage the people in solving their own problems, I think.
Exactly. You said that today, but that’s also teaching democracy. It is because as soon as I want to solve the problem, you become the sandpaper on my idea.
Mhm.
And T-group shows us how to work it out.
Yes.
The “everyone company” is one of the few places where people can see it in action, but it’s still not teaching it.
Mhm.
It’s also a way of teaching values and vertical development, because your sandpaper on my idea helps me grow.
Mhm. So, Cecile, do you think… I think what I am doing with my life is teaching democracy in organizations and fighting for it outside the organizations.
And I believe you. I believe you. The problem is, I’m not sure that your audience understands. And I’m not sure that… I mean, this was part of my draw. Since I was a very young child, equality has been my thing.
And I’m not sure that I know how to teach democracy, but it’s what drew me to organizational development. I recognize in your presentation a kind of richness and perspective, in a sense, as a grandchild of Lewin. And as someone who has also developed your own theoretical base. Coming from what Argentine and Pam were saying, without knowing how to do it, we can’t really put equality at the macro level. We tried in this country. If Lewin had lived, if we had more of that… When I look at my whole undergraduate experience marching and the whole kit and caboodle… Do I believe that we’re doing what we’re doing now in this country? I mean, I feel like Rip Van Winkle.
Yes. Maybe a nightmare.
Maybe what Argentine and Pam wanted was a workshop that just applied Lewin to current politics and social unrest.
That’s true for me. When I read your announcement of this workshop, it was like a light bulb lit up. Here’s a resource—tried and true historical perspective, evidence. People are clamoring to try and create democracies in the workplace. My city here in Redmond, Washington, is working on that through the city council, and most of the members are white. People are emphasizing the need for a multicultural perspective and facilitators. We don’t want just a quick and dirty training to check a box; we want depth. So, Argentine, your idea grabbed me because organizations and individuals are hungering for depth and breadth. How many of us really understand democracy? I’ve been lulled into thinking I know what it is until the unrest surfaced so much in these last few months. I’ll get off my soapbox now.
Okay.
Well, that’s helpful to me. I think a conversation that just applies the principles to current events is maybe what you were looking for, Pam. My intention is to share methods that will apply to any events and all societies. I intentionally didn’t focus solely on current politics and racism in the US but wanted to discuss what would help change all that.
Well, I understand that, Gil—the breadth of what you’re talking about—but I’m saying there’s a current need and hunger.
Right.
Yes, I agree.
Now, the best thing I know about politics is to vote and to fight for the mail voting system and so on.
But I don’t think you need to talk about the politics. I think you need to get the information out there. Build the fields, and they will come. That’s kind of how I think about it.
Okay. Unmute me again.
Thank you, ma’am.
No problem. Well, how about others that haven’t spoken? This is Gloria.
Go ahead.
Sorry, we were kind of talking over you.
Okay, so for me, I was expecting more of a focused interview with Lewin and racism as well. But what I got was also helpful because the way that I am integrating and metabolizing what you presented is a meta-view—an overarching framework that can be applied in multiple conversations. I agree that what Lewin has presented is something needed now. Having been part of your father’s trajectory and knowing the academic solutions that used to be available are no longer available, they’re only available through people like us in OD who care to keep that tradition going. I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. I don’t know if that’s your work to do specifically, but I certainly see a lot of opportunity to apply these practices and theories in communities, organizations, and nations. I think that may be speaking to where some of the hunger is. But I also want to echo that I got the meta frame as well, and I appreciate what you’ve presented today.
Thank you. I hope to spread it more and figure out how to be useful in social change. I watch my own city struggle, and I try my best to become part of something changing. It’s not easy.
Of things quickly. Um, Gil, my interest in participating in this is quite specific. As someone who is considered unconventional, I am passionate about educating people on the history of Organizational Development (OD) and Lewin’s contributions in the current climate. I am particularly interested, now more than ever, in helping people understand the connections between OD as a field, and Lewin specifically, with race relations, inclusion issues, and so on.
From what I observed today, I believe you did a commendable job. I would rate your performance quite highly, as I thought you presented well, better than I would have done myself. However, I must admit that I didn’t learn anything new from what you shared. But, to be fair, you couldn’t have known what I was hoping for or expecting, so I won’t hold that against you.
Thank you for your effort and hard work. As an action researcher, I find myself wondering if Lewin would be pleased to hear the accolades he receives for his progressive thinking and some of his conclusions.
I would prefer something more in-depth and substantial. For me, a deep dive would involve a discussion about some of the real, documented challenges and issues that were encountered and wrestled with as the work progressed. I don’t want to be in a position where I’m just saying, “Kurt Lewin, a white man, was ahead of his time, one of the first in the field, addressing these issues, responsible for this and that conference, and drawing conclusions about democracy.” To me, that’s inadequate in the current climate. As a white man, it’s insufficient to make such statements.
I want to acknowledge the complexity and difficulty of the work rather than simply saying, “There was once a white man who was wonderful and somehow rose above all the challenges we’re dealing with now.”
So, yes, that would be a subpar presentation if anyone did that. If that’s what I did, I apologize. I don’t think that was the case.
That was not about you.
You know, that would be a paraphrase. I wouldn’t want to say that again.
What do you mean?
Well, the notion that Lewin was a white man who once came up with wonderful things—that’s, to me, an oversimplification.
But I wouldn’t rely solely on your presentation in my attempts to educate. I do talk about Lewin and reference some of the things you discussed, and maybe I might include other aspects as well. However, I don’t know enough about what he truly wrestled with. He was an action researcher first, wasn’t he? But I need evidence, and I’m not challenging you directly; I’m challenging myself as well. I’m putting this out there because, as a white man, I’m constantly thinking about what more I can do that I haven’t been doing up until now? And I and to point to white people who are involved without somehow understanding myself and being able to communicate some of the some of their some of what some of the more more the complexity of the work that just that for me that that’s that’s inadequate. But but but but I’m not asking you to to take that on. I’m maybe I’m just using you as my sounding board as I ask myself what it is that I have to go away and learn from this.
To me, I’d want to do what Pam was saying: get a mixture of people together and have them try to figure out what they think is happening and come up with their own solutions. He didn’t exactly say that, Pam, but it should represent the community. And that is what Lewin did. So, I speak of him as a model, not as a eulogy or something, but rather to show that this approach works. Let’s do it now. What’s your problem? Well, get the people affected by that problem together, have them think collectively, come up with solutions, and implement them. Things will improve. It won’t always be easy. Anyway, all I’m trying to convey is that there is a way. It’s not just something that somebody made up; there’s careful, uh, validation behind it.
Um, and what we’re doing…
Anyway, I appreciate you saying at the end that you’re just sort of thinking out loud, trying to ponder your own way of relating to people around issues like this. I think that’s part of what you said. I’m a little confused whether you thought that mostly this was just sort of praising Lewin as a past figure. If so, I’m disappointed because that’s not what I was aiming to do.
Philip Gill I.
I think that in many ways you need to take a bow. Just looking at the generative discussion that we’ve had here. Thanks. The seed that you planted. Yes. Nobody just said, oh, thank you Gill. Goodbye. Uh, I mean, we are in for the count.
Yeah, I’ll admit that if I had known my audience would be so well educated in Lewin, I might have cut some of what I just did.
All right. All right.
And we were also a diverse group. I can’t tell you how many.
Zoom.
Calls I’ve had that we have not been diverse in age in all many, many different features that we bring to the table. And I think that’s a gift that you’ve drawn, that you’ve drawn us, but that we’ve kept at it, that we’re really interested in your topic.
We’re still here, and you generated ideas from us that we can use similarly.
Yeah. Cool. Thanks. Agreed.
Agreed. I just thought of a crazy metaphor. Even Triple A’s old maps can get you from one city to another. In terms of Lewin, he provides context and a schematic that can be built upon. But I saw his credibility in the work he did after World War Two. That thing you showed about what he did with Japan and Germany was impressive.
He influenced that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s as significant as you can get regarding social change—a whole nation changing.
Mhm.
I’d love it if we had a Marshall Plan for the United States. That would be fine with me if we approached it that seriously. If we got everyone across the spectrum involved and ended poverty. If there isn’t a root cause to many of the problems we have, it’s the social inequities in our system. I would love that. And there’s a model for it. But we need the right political will and representation. Maybe we’ll see improvement around that in November.
Send a copy of your book to Joe.
Yeah, well, he’s on it, I think. But yeah, I’d love for him to have a copy of my book. Anyway, so Jules and Paula. Yeah. George.
Joseph, I’m wondering if what I’m hearing is that when people heard “Deep Dive,” there was perhaps, um, or at least I can see this, and I’m hearing this thread of the difference between a theoretical summary and then clarification about the application, especially in this context. For me, maybe I’m just hearing it that way because I’m projecting, but I’m also hungry for that. Where are these principles showing up? What fights for civil rights right now are happening where these principles are showing up and yielding results? It is so complex because it’s a self-as-change-instrument process. It’s not a process of othering and staying so theoretical. Right.
One thing you have to do is connect, and that’s what Lewin always did. His first step was to go in and ensure, to the best of his ability, that people didn’t think he considered himself better than they were.
So, I wonder if maybe a request—I mean, what I would be interested in is, let’s say I got off this call and thought, “All right, I believe you. I think this could work. Now what do I do? Do I hire you? Tell me a story. I want some case studies.”
If you had a particular issue you were trying to tackle, I’d talk to you about it from my perspective. I mean, that’s all.
It’s, um. Mhm.
That’s the best thing I know how to do—kick around ideas. So, I’ll, you know, I have two more of these deep dives, and the reason I called them that is because the first one I did was more of an overview. I touched on minority issues, for instance. I think maybe you were in that one, Jules, and I’m not sure. I just knew there was a lot more I could delve into on that subject. So, I think what I’m partially hearing is a desire for almost a case study of a current dilemma conversation, without necessarily having answers or anything. But…
So, yeah. I just want to say I’m appreciative of everyone here for what you’ve brought up. It’s really insightful. I’m appreciating the possibility of seeing some real-life stories of this being applied and the outcomes it generates, and how that’s different from other approaches we’re seeing. I keep hearing words like “creating a democracy,” and that’s so evident. But what does that mean in practice?
Do you see any of this in the work we just did in the manufacturing plant? Yes? Okay. So you just spent two and a half weeks with my brother and me, working with T-groups and people learning how to relate to each other across functions and levels. It wasn’t specific to race, but there was a lot of interaction among diverse people, and tensions were cleared up.
I’m glad you can see the connection between this and that, because I think that’s what Lewin was so good at—helping people move beyond being experts and forcing solutions, guiding them to figure things out for themselves with some structure.
Uh, Jill, may I come in?
Of course.
Yeah. So, hello from India. I was watching the proceedings, and there are a couple of levels at which I could comment, but I’d like to share a recent reading. I read it for a different purpose, and it’s a work by Chris Argyris. He has a book called Organizational Learning, and I forget the title of the chapter where he visited the Tavistock Institute for its 50th anniversary. Reflecting on that event, he attributed something to Lewin that I’d like to bring to this group.
Argyris noted that the group assembled became very defensive of their own theoretical positions. He reflected on why that might be and how Lewin recognized that such defensiveness might arise in his own advancement of the force field theory. Argyris mentioned this as stemming from a lack of a meta-theory, essentially a theory about how to build a theory, which is something Lewin did well. Lewin presented his force field theory as a meta-theory.
So, I saw most of the contributions here post your presentation, Jill, as people wanting to know how to proceed from here. It struck me as more like a change implementation theory, whereas perhaps Lewin comes in as someone who presents a change process theory. I don’t know if I’m getting it right, but this is my reflection from the conversation.
Well, I think Lewin did both. I think he was doing more of the meta-theory than addressing individual situations. So, do you think I’m following you, Joseph?
I guess so, yeah.
You guess so, Joseph?
I think what you’re offering us is a piece of OD (Organizational Development). Many people aren’t terrifically interested in vertical development, but there is something called construct awareness where you become very aware of what you’re constructing. It’s at a very high level of awareness. It’s not only knowing what to do but knowing how to do it, understanding the steps and the thinking required to implement it. These are different skills and levels of development. What you’re bringing us is an extremely strong light on the topic.
When you recall Argyris’ reference, please share it, because I think this is a critical need in our time. It’s going to become more important, especially with our remote learning, as we become less relational. One way we learn about the construct of the construct is through conversation, and we’re just not doing that in the same way. That’s a great learning you’ve given us. Thank you.
And just one more angle to that: time is a structure. Given all that Jill could bring to this, I guess we’ve been a bit unfair to him regarding the depth of the dive. At the same time, we were honest enough to express our individual hunger for learning. And I think that, to me, is the energy I take back from this.
Right? I do.
By the way, I intend to. One of the things I have scheduled is really around force field theory and its application. I didn’t call it that; I called it “Planned Change.” That’s another one of these webinars. If I had just labeled it “Force Field Theory,” I’m not confident anyone would show up or know what it was. So, “Planned Change” at least seems more accessible. That is my intention with that. I’m enjoying this conversation, and I think it could go further. I’d certainly be willing to just have an open conversation at some point, instead of even calling it a webinar.
