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April 2008 Enewsletter
In this month’s Enote:
Holding Environments, By Michael Kroth It’s Not The Dream, By Nan S. Russell
Holding Environments, By Michael Kroth
Not long ago I happened upon a photo of myself and 26 other young men and women. We were standing around an antique car, women in vests and pants, men in plaid (plaid!) pants and vests, smiling up into a camera high off the ground. It was a picture of the UNM Collegiate Singers, circa 1973 or 74.
The Collegiate Singers were to me what William Kahn calls a “holding environment” within organizations.
It’s a long and dreary story, but the upshot is that I had moved home from school to live in Albuquerque after seeing my first serious love marry another friend of mine. I had been living on a fast track to trouble in Topeka, Kansas. I had felt stupid for letting her get away, stopped going to classes in deference to the late nights I was spending crying over spilt milk, and finally dropped out of school. I was devastated and convinced I had lost the one true love of my life by being an idiot.
What do you do when everything falls apart? In my case, I moved home to live with mom and dad.
Even though my folks were the special people then that they are to this day, I couldn’t have been lonelier. Somewhere along the way I had started smoking and I remember hanging out at Dennys (where you could get a refillable cup of coffee for a dime) every night until two or three o’clock in the morning. I would smoke and drink coffee – drag after drag, cup after cup – for hours and play a little game with myself. I bet myself that I could find a personal link with anyone who happened to sit next to me. The association could be a mutual friend, relative, school, anything, and of course I always could. Now I realize that I was desperate to find any kind of connection with other human beings.
What else do you do when everything falls apart? I went back to school.
I needed to meet people. I began to take theater classes at the University of New Mexico. One day another student suggested I try out for a new swing choir called The Collegiate Singers. Not being much of a singer I couldn’t believe I would be accepted. I was and it changed my life.
Kahn says that holding environments at work occur when people in the organization experience anxiety - potentially disabling - and therefore need a place where they can be safe. Some kinds of crisis, he says, trigger anger, despair, fear, or anxiety – strong emotions – and workers cannot then function lucidly or well. In those settings people are shored up by others who calm them, understand them, and help them until they can right themselves and move on.
Several conditions facilitate holding environments, Kahn believes. One is trust. A person in need must move toward those who might help and yet that person may be the least likely to entrust others with his or her life. In some ways it becomes a dance, the players tentatively stepping onto the dance floor with one gingerly handing over the next move to the other, assessing the care in which he or she is held as they head off together, and then relaxing into the music of the moment.
Other conditions of holding environments are availability and competence. Holding environments need members who are physically and emotionally available and who have the competence to create them. Those in need can then experience intense emotion safely because they can depend on others.
Still another condition is positive experience. Holding environments are more likely to last when they create positive experiences and results for those involved. “The positive experience of holding is the pleasure and meaning of helping others find their ways, of caring for and regenerating others during difficult moments, of being, above all, used well in the service of others’ growth,” Kahn says.
These safety nets, as he calls them, allow people in the organization to successfully find their way through unclear, difficult, and emotionally challenging times.
In these times of uncertainty I believe holding environments are needed more than ever. Although the world would make us into machines which react formulaically we are, rather, human beings who respond uniquely and emotionally to the world which surrounds us. We are not objects - pieces to be moved around as if on a chess board - but people with hopes and dreams and disappointments and, at times, despair.
Sometimes we just…need…to…be…held. It might be an emotional or a physical embrace. It might be a kind word or a someone to cry with. It might be a collegiate show choir.
The Collegiate Singers did change my life. Holding the picture frame it was hard to imagine that the glass separating my touch from the photo symbolized the 35 years distancing me from that uplifting – holding - experience. The time I spent in the Collegiate Singers was so transformational because it became a milieu not only of healing but of generativity. We were like a big, loving family without the responsibilities of family life.
Matt Gary, Dave Zellhoefer (Zell), and I used to serenade girls we liked in three part harmony in the middle of the night. Tim Steider sang at my wedding to the next love of my life, Lana (over 30 years later and still married). Matt, Zell, Tim and I were all in the tenor section, but we loved hanging around the altos and sopranos. We had fun, singing all over the state, and, like Kahn suggests, for me it was a place I could feel enveloped with love, metaphorically held up by dozens of hands when otherwise I might have drowned.
In a way, a holding environment is like a Petri dish where a healthy culture can be developed. It’s the container, a place where healing can incubate and grow strong. Do you have supportive containers in your organization? Are you a leader who provides a medium for healthy, caring safety nets?
I think we all need holding environments all the time, but there are times in our lives when they are particularly important. In the workplace people often feel alone, and when budget cuts hit and shake your world, or your company is being purchased by a vile competitor, or you just found out your spouse is seriously ill it sometimes seems too much just to come to work every day. That is when we need each other the most.
Kahn, W. A. (2001) Holding Environments at Work. Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences. 37 (3). 260-279. —————————————————————————————— I hope you will forward this e-note to friends and colleagues and I encourage reprints. Please e-mail michael@michaelkroth.com if you would like to reprint Michael's articles. We'll review and when approved send an attribution to include.
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©Copyright 2008, Michael Kroth, All Rights Reserved |
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Michael Kroth PO Box 9557 Boise, Idaho 83707 505-450-4248 michael@michaelkroth.com www.michaelkroth.com |
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Michael Kroth, Ph.D. |