Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks in-side, awakens.
Carl Gustav Jung

What Does It Take To Create a Real Learning Organization?

The key to youth development is adult development. And just as it is the case with youth, the key to adult development is creating a responsive environment where adults can spend time over time attending to their own learning, and their own personal and professional growth, while fostering that same growth in the youth they serve. Sounds simple enough. Why then is a comprehensive adult development plan so difficult to implement in most public benefiti organizations, and especially youth development organizations?

One reason for this may be an all too familiar tendency on the part of many organizations either to minimize, or deny completely, the existence of certain implicit tensions, and apparent contradictions, within their environments. These tensions include: how to allocate effectively limited amounts of time and money to direct and indirect services; how to draw workable boundaries around what is personal, private and public, and how to maintain a cohesive cohort of adults in an organization while at the same time creating a collaborative environment in which youth might thrive. The tendency to gloss over such tensions as these, although sometimes effective in the short-term, may be one of the central factors contributing to adult burnout reported by many organizations dedicated to developing youth.

The tensions embedded in these seeming contradictions, which might also be called polarities, also speak to the challenge of providing direct services to youth and at the same time looking at the long-term needs of the organization in terms of building on cognitive skills, emotional clarity and on the organizational capacity already present. Ignoring these ever-present, and often conflicting tensions, not only invites mediocrity into the picture, but at times will dampen or completely eliminate the possibility for significant cognitive, emotional, moral and motivational development in both adults or youth.

One important way we human beings grow and learn is by pushing against oppositional forces in our environments. Whether it be an infant pushing against gravity to satisfy a primal urge to stand and walk, or an adolescent pushing against the limits of her community and culture in an attempt to create her unique identity, or an adult committed to sustaining the deeply held values of his culture, they all exist in an atmosphere filled with polarities and potential barriers that they must attend to in order to continue to mature, i.e., to grow and learn. In addition, since many of these same inherent tensions exist between and among youth and adults in our schools and other organizations, this same charged atmosphere can become a powerful avenue for learning, but only if and when they are made explicit and conscious.

One organization that has attempted to take on this issue of polarities and tensions directly is HOMEBASE, a youth development program and charter high school in Alameda, California. This article is an attempt to articulate some of the practices that have emerged as a result of deep inquiry into the nature and value of these polarities. Specifically, this article will address how one practice, which the organization calls Adult Reflection, has evolved into a central component for fostering youth development by attending to the learning needs of the adults serving those youth.

Through this rigorous dialogue practice the adults at HOMEBASE gain keener insight into their thinking processes, which in turn leads to greater emotional clarity and then more purposeful actions. Through this process of reflecting deeply and honestly about their experiences working with the youth and each other, these adults are also creating an environment that affords them the opportunity to stay in touch with their passion for their work – a passion for the excellence they strive to bring to their work with the youth every day. But first some context.

Intentional Evolution: Is it Necessary?

What has evolved into HOMEBASE, which now serves some one hundred fifty youth, began as a small youth development program, The HOME Project. HOME, as it was called, was initiated by a group of eighteen youth and two adults to explore two seemingly simple questions – what moves people to action, and specifically what moves youth into action? Even though it has evolved dramatically from that humble beginning into the rather complex organization it is now, it still grapples with these two questions every day. Although it has yet to come to any conclusions around these questions, HOME has begun to surface and articulate some of the underlying dynamics that serve to motivate youth into effective action.

If we were to look at HOME’s questions about moving into action linguistically, we might come to the conclusion that what moves people to act is emotion. Quite literally the word emotion means “to move outward”. In a sense then what we call emotions are outward expressions of deeper, and usually quite complex, feelings. But such a conclusion seems insufficient. No doubt we all have seen emotions expressed in ways that have not been particularly motivating. Indeed, some emotional expressions lead to a sense of being stuck, or worse a kind of downward spiral with an attending feeling of paralysis.

So if it is insufficient to say that emotions cause people to act, what would be closer to the mark? Our experiences from working with adults involved in this deep inquiry and dialogue of Adult Reflection over these past three years leads us to believe that we are better served by looking at the dynamic interplay between thinking and feeling, and how this seeming polarity may be the best indicator of how some people are able to become effective “change agents” in their communities.

As touched upon earlier, if we were to look at how individuals develop from infancy to old age there are some marked differences between and among each developmental cluster. There are indeed striking differences between how children and adults perceive their worlds. And yet in healthy individuals there are some important similarities as well. One of these similarities involves engaging in problem solving, or another way of saying it, cultivating curiosity. In one sense it can be said that a healthy person – child, youth or adult - attends to the world by looking on each day as an invitation to solve problems as they emerge, or to look more deeply at the seemingly obvious and ask pointed questions about their experiences. This capacity in children is inextricably tied to the process of acquiring language skillsii. Nevertheless, such curiosity begins to see these problems to be solved not just as problems per se, but as portals to deeper self understanding and opportunities for connecting with others equally intent on placing their mark on the world.

As adults begin to better understand how they perceive the world, and how their thinking processes either create opportunities for evolving curiosity and growth, or premature certainty and rigidity, they are then in a much better position to have a positive impact on the youth they are working with. Another way to say this is that our perceptions (our thoughts) inform our feelings. And it is our capacity to name our emotions clearly and definitely in the moment that allows us to take purposeful and effective action. From this vantage point there is nothing soft about feelings. Emotions, bridled by thoughtfulness and intentionality - by reflection - become as potent as any combustible fuel on the planet.

THE PROCESS OF REFLECTION

The process of reflection is infinite.    Avatamsaka Sutra

How Does Transformational Learning Occur?

Reflection itself is all about bending, or actually a kind of “bending back” in the way that light bends back through a mirror. When we reflect, we bend back on our experiences and our learning. This looping back and learning about our learning (or as it is sometimes called, “double loop learning”) is a vital element in getting new experiences to stick. When this learning encompasses both powerful emotional experiences as well as rational insights into those emotions, then the learning has an irreversible, sticky quality to it.

In HOMEBASE the adults engage in this process of looking deeply at their experiences with youth and with other adults – their humiliating failures as well as their spectacular successes, and even at times their spectacular failures and accidental successes. They do this within a safe, albeit at times uncomfortable, container consisting of two and a half hour bi-weekly meetings in Adult Reflection. By design there is very little formal structure to these “reflections”. They begin with a “check in” when each member of the group has the opportunity to put their voices in the room and give everyone some idea about how they currently are doing/thinking/feeling. Every reflection ends with “acknowledgements” when anyone who chooses to do so publicly appreciates and acknowledges someone in the group – thanking them for a contribution they may have made to that person’s growth, or acknowledging them for a courageous act they witnessed in the work. The rest of the time is devoted to whatever themes, concerns or questions emerge within the reflection timeiii.

When thinking about reflecting the metaphor of light may be a useful one here. The process of reflection - the way it is meant here - is a highly engaging one in which tremendous emotional energy is unleashed at times. But not only is this light of rational and emotional insight emitted at times during these two and a half hour sessions, there is also at times considerable heat. The emotional heat generated through the direct communication in Adult Reflection is often the result of a certain amount of friction, a rubbing up against old patterns of thinking and feeling. These patterns are well entrenched, difficult to divert, and reemerge easily. The Sanskrit language has a word for this kind of friction, tapasy, which means “friction which produces beneficial heat that burns off impurities”.iv

When adults choose to move into this crucible called Adult Reflection, they are making a conscious choice to discover powerful emotional and rational facets to themselves that they may not have been aware of before. And when they return to their work with the youth they find themselves in a better position to hold the essential tension that youth need to grow in an intentional way.

In keeping with the developmental perspective to learning mentioned earlier, there is a deeply held belief within the organization that true transformational learning occurs for the most part within charged environments. Learning is present when synapses are firing and when there is an “edge of your seat” quality to the moment. So by choosing to sustain deep inquiries into their own thinking and feeling during Adult Reflection - by staying on the edge of their own seats - the adults can model for the youth what is needed for them to initiate deeper inquiry among themselves. This does not mean mimicking what happens in Adult Reflection, but it does mean creating structures of their own that are developmentally appropriate, yet equally compelling. This “cascade effect” ensures that learning becomes opportunistic, occurring in any situation and at any place within the organization. The adults hold this belief with the confidence that comes not only from direct personal experience, but also from a shared experience which is itself intentional having been bent back, having been reflected back, on itself.

For example, one adult member of HOMEBASE who is the co-director of the charter high school was on the staff for about a year before he became a part of Adult Reflection. Prior to becoming involved in Adult Reflection he had heard some general comments about what took place in those sessions, and was simultaneously both curious and skeptical. He was particularly unnerved by what he perceived as a blurring between what is personal and what is professional. In his previous job, involving youth in an outdoor, outward-bound sort of setting, clear lines were drawn. Work was work, business was business, and one’s personal life was somehow distinct from these other two categories.

One important insight he has garnered from his own dialogue process within Adult Reflection is that when he is most professional in his work with youth and adults at HOMEBASE, his work is intensely personal, while at times it is also glaringly public. These deep inquiries into the nature of his work, and his role, with youth have allowed him to develop the ability to question directly his assumptions, and the assumptions of his colleagues, about the divisions and distinctions they hold between the personal and the professional. And being keenly aware of the fact that youth have a remarkable capacity to know when an adult is “faking it”, these questions have led him into even deeper explorations into what true authenticity means, and how important it is for him to “show up” authentically for the youth he works with every day.

While these inquiries have made it possible for him to discard many assumptions, his experiences in Adult Reflection allow him to hold tenaciously to one assumption – that all the adults in the organization are doing their dead level best to have a positive impact on the youth they work with. If they are not having that kind of positive impact, then it is their shared responsibility to uncover whatever obstacles are in the way preventing them from having the kind of intentional interactions with youth that lead to true transformational learning. Without these shared experiences, and especially without the ritual of ending with acknowledgements and appreciations in Adult Reflection, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for him to hold this assumption of positive intent as the inevitable daily crises emerge in his work with the youth in HOMEBASE.


DIRECTIONS IN THE WORKPLACE

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes.    Marcel Proust

Where Does Learning End and Therapy Begin?

On the surface it is easy to blur the distinction between Adult Reflection as it is practiced at HOMEBASE, and group therapy, which is not at all appropriate in a work setting. The similarities include a facilitator with a background in counseling psychology and experienced in group therapy processes, a focus on emotions, and how they can be an obstacle for effective functioning in the world and regular meetings with well-established rituals not unlike some of the rituals that are part of many therapeutic settings. One key distinction here between Adult Reflection and therapy, though, involves purpose.

The purpose of therapy is to assist an individual, or a group of individuals, in an emotional healing process so that they might become healthier, happier and more effective in their daily lives. The purpose of Adult Reflection is to focus on the work the adults are engaged in at HOMEBASE, and create a responsive environment for them to further and deepen their learning, and in doing so create an environment responsive to the needs of the youth in the organization.v

Additionally, in some ways the processes within HOMEBASE and Adult Reflection are a polar opposite of the therapeutic models, which generally hold that insight precedes action. Adult Reflection on the other hand is in alignment with the practices of the rest of the organization in its belief that action precedes insight. In a sense this is a do-learn approach. It invites risk and the ever-present possibility for failure. And, as the founding director of HOME once described it, this action-reflection approach often has the quality of “knitting a sweater while you are wearing it”.

For the adults in HOMEBASE it is crucial for them to move into purposeful action – informed by their experiences in the work and in Adult Reflection over time – and then to loop back again later to inquire more deeply into the impact of those actions. If they were to use an insight-action framework in their interactions with the youth, by the time they had gained sufficient insight from which to take action with some certainty of success, the adults would have lost the urgency, the drama, of the moment. Urgency and drama are wellsprings of opportunity for impacting youth. This is not to say that the adults act blindly. Their learning about what works and what does not is constant. But without a certain amount of risk in the moment, the interactions with the youth become merely simulations and lose the frictional heat that many adolescents crave to satisfy their own developmental needs.


CONCLUSION

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.    Aristotle

Where are the greatest opportunities for future inquiry?

Like any interesting inquiry, this one takes us back to it's origin. We began this particular one with a question about why adult development is such a difficult process to implement in many organizations. And we conclude with the notion of just how much risk there is in true transformational learning. Such learning only comes about in an environment that is immediately responsive to its learners, that is highly adaptable and opportunistic. And for such learning to have a permanent, “sticky” quality, it must occur in both the cognitive and affective facets of each individual – youth or adult. A tall order.

However, there are still more questions than answers about why this structure of Adult Reflection seems to be so vital to the organization’s overall effectiveness. One sliver of light, or at least a promising inkling worth pursuing, is that it has become apparent that the adults are now able to speak to each other much more directly through their shared experiences in these reflections. This capacity for directly encountering others minimizes the likelihood for misunderstandings and erroneous assumptions, as well as the inherent destructiveness of ex parte conversations and gossip.vi This directness is modeled and mirrored for the youth, who are then better able to more directly encounter each other in the course of the day. And, as was mentioned at the outset, although there seems to be indications that the adults in HOMEBASE, are feeling nurtured almost as much as the youth, there are still questions about why there seems to be a noticeable lack of burnout among the adults.

Another tentative conclusion is that Adult Reflection may be an emotional anchor that allows for sustained learning even in the chaos of the knitting mentioned previously. Without a touchstone to return to regularly, innovation can be cognitively challenging and emotionally draining. This can lead to confusion on the cognitive level and, on the emotional level, a hesitancy to capitalize on the opportunities that emerge from the daily drama in the work with youth. With Adult Reflection as part of their work lives, the adults seem to be better able to model and mirror the direct communication that comes from rational and emotional clarity.

Mirroring, however, is a complex developmental issue worthy of its own discussion. Suffice it to say that from a developmental perspective, what goes on in the work with youth (when the learning from Adult Reflection is present in that work) is not at all unlike what transpires when a mother is spoon feeding her child. As the mother puts the spoon in front of the child’s face, she opens her own mouth, as if she is feeding as well. The child then mirrors her mother, and as their relationship deepens, she learns, she grows and she flourishes. For a developmentalist, it is all the same.

i There is a move afoot to use the term “public benefit” as opposed to “non-profit” in an attempt to define such organizations in terms of what they are and what they provide to the community rather than what they are not, and what they do not produce for society. As you can see, we are making our small contribution to the cause.

ii Although recent research by two professors from Dartmouth College seems to indicate that our human brains are “wired” for language at a much earlier age than previously thought – at about five months. See Holowka and Petitto’s work, “Left Hemisphere Cerebral Specialization for Babies While Babbling”, reported in Science, vol. 297 - http://www.sciencemag.org:80/cgi/reprint/297/5586/1515

iii Although by design there is very little formal, or overt, structure to Adult Reflection, over the course of the seven years that it has been occurring a number of important themes have emerged as each new group forms annually. Many of the principles found in dialogue, e.g., listening to your own listening, asking clarifying questions, creating agreements and a shared pool of meaning, are also employed. In addition the facilitator pays careful attention to sustaining an environment emotionally charged enough to allow these themes to emerge. A companion article to this one involving a more thorough discussion of the practices within Adult Reflection is in process.

iv I am indebted to Robert Alter for exposing me to this word “tapasya” in his book, The Transformative Power of Crisis (HarperCollins 2000).

v See Motivating Humans, by Martin Ford. He discusses the primary factors for human motivation. A “responsive environment” is one of those factors.

vi One valuable agreement that came about as a result of Adult Reflection is one in which there are no binding third party conversations. Members of HOME are free to say what they will about any other member outside that person’s presence. They cannot, however, insist that such conversations be confidential. The most likely response usually is, “Why not speak to that person directly either in the work, or during Adult Reflection?” Since that agreement was made several years ago, the amount of gossip plummeted faster than the NASDAQ average at the end of the last century.