"Designing Workplaces of Safety & Trust" with Alla Weinberg
In this episode I talk with Alla Weinberg. Alla is my business partner, and we are the co-founders of Spoke & Wheel.
Alla is an executive leadership coach and I am a conflict transformation catalyst and educator, and together we are the workplace relationship experts.
We started our company a year ago right after Alla's first visit to Fractal Friends.
In this conversation we talk about our vision of a future of work, where people are excited about the work they get to do and nourished by the people they get to work with. We talk about how teams, companies and organizations are constantly a balance between the interdependent polarities of power and love, and how they become generative when they can strike a balance between being productive and effective, on one hand, and inspire a sense of connection and belonging, on the other.
We talk about Alla's new book A Culture of Safety and consider the essential ingredients for creating a safe and trusting team. And practical strategies for leaders to create and transform culture. And we talk about complex systems theory, spirituality and crochet.
This episode fits nicely into season three of Fractal Friends by sharing practical and inspirational ways to transform culture and work together to build a world that works for all of us while being effective & productive and while caring for one another.
Spoke & Wheel Resources
We believe great work relationships drive great companies.
We build loving leaders, trusting teams, and cultures of safety through remote training, coaching, and facilitation.
Here is Alla’s first episode on Fractal Friends: "Transforming Workplace Cultures" with Alla Weinberg
Order your copy of A Culture of Safety by Alla Weinberg. Coming out in mid-November 2020.
Follow Spoke & Wheel on Social Media:
Watch (Listen) to this episode on YouTube.
Subtitles included!
Power & Love
The following is a rough lineage of the concepts of Power and Love, as the fundamental drives for all living things.
Paul Tillich
Paul Tillich was a German-American theologian. In his book Love, Power and Justice, Tillich defined love and power as follows:
“Tillich defines power as “the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity.” So power in this sense is the drive to achieve one’s purpose, to get one’s job done, to grow. He defines love as “the drive towards the unity of the separated.” So love in this sense is the drive to reconnect and make whole that which has become or appears fragmented.” (From: “An Introduction to Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change” by REOS Partners)
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. King’s doctoral dissertation at Boston University was "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman." His most famous quote on Power and love is as follows:
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Adam Kahane: “Power and Love: A theory and practice of social change”
Adam Kehane
Kehane’s book Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change is a powerful window into how Tillich’s concepts of power and love
Duncan Autrey (Spoke & Wheel)
Here is Duncan’s writings on power and love: “The Dynamic Balance of Power & Love”
In our work at Spoke & Wheel we use these definitions of Power and Love:
Power is the drive to act, to achieve a life-affirming purpose and realize an impact on the world.
Love is the drive to integrate and unite with each other in service of what the world needs.
Spokes and Wheels
“The Spoked Wheel” by Mark Nepo from The Book of Awakening
“What we reach for may be different, but what makes us reach for it, is the same.
Imagine that each of us is a spoke in an Infinite Wheel, and, though each spoke is essential to keeping the Wheel whole, no two spokes are the same. The rim of that Wheel is our living sense of community, family, and relationship, but the common hub where all the spokes join is the one centre where all souls meet. So, as I move out into the world, I live out my uniqueness, but when I dare to look into my core, I come upon the one common centre where all lives begin. In that centre, we are all one and the same. In this way, we live out the paradox of being both unique and the same. For mysteriously and powerfully, when I look deep enough into you, I find me, and when you dare to hear my fear in the recess of your heart, you recognize it as your secret that you thought no one else knew. And that unexpected wholeness that is more than each of us, but common to all – that moment of unity is the atom of God.” Read More
Tao Te Ching: chapter 11 by Lao Tzu
Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.(translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)
Other Resources
Here are resources about things that came up in this conversation.
Teamistry Podcast
Teamistry is an Atlassian podcast that looks past the front page headlines to discover the incredible untold stories of teams behind the scenes who joined together to do what could never be done alone. Here are the episodes that I reference in the episode:
Related Fractal Friends Episodes:
Here is a collection of Fractal Friends episodes that are of particular interest to my work at Spoke and Wheel.
Spoke & Wheel Episodes
Music
The song in this episode is “You Are Always Held” by Joyous Dawn
