Leadermorphosis Episode 89: Ted Rau on parallels between Relationship Anarchy and self-management

Leadermorphosis Episode 89: Ted Rau on parallels between Relationship Anarchy and self-management

Lisa: Ted, welcome to the podcast again. Nice to have you. Thank you for joining me.

Ted: Thank you for having me.

Lisa: We’re so polite. So I’m someone who’s really interested in this topic of relationships. And I think this kind of world of new ways of working, so-called new ways of working is so much about relationships, and I think rethinking how we think about relationships. I’ve been interested for some time in exploring the realms of polyamory and kind of the beyond the world of monogamous relationships, what wisdom is out there? And then I put this tweet out into the world that I think it would be interesting to talk about this topic in relation to self-management and new ways of working. And you reply and say, “Huh, I actually happen to have some lived experience of this topic,” which is really fun because you’re someone that I really respect in terms of your knowledge about self-management and sociocracy. So why don’t you say something about what to you was interesting about having a conversation about this topic?

Ted: Well, let me first say that it’s not something you talk about all the time at all, actually. So had it not been you or only a very small handful of people instead of you, I would probably wouldn’t have responded. But then again, when I think of the two topics of self-management and polyamory, kind of chosen forms of relating to each other, then it’s just to me, so much the same thing that it just sounds super fun and nerdy to talk about.

Lisa: Yeah, what would you say if we, and I think also we’re going to unpack some of the different terms, you know, I’m a complete newbie to this world, but what would you say if we start to unpack some of the comparisons, you know, what? What has polyamory and that kind of world to do with self-management? What are the kind of parallels would you say?

Ted: So the main thing that comes up for me is that we choose what roles we’re playing for each other, right? And in traditional organizations, there would be, this is the boss, and you are working under that person. So those are very clear roles that come delivered by the system. Basically, that’s what it is. And then you have two choices, you follow it or you don’t. But there’s not much, not much nuance in between. And the same is true for a typical husband and wife relationship, right? This is the way to be in a relationship. That’s the only way to be in a relationship, and that’s about the end of it. And the only thing you can choose is to be on the way there, or to do something completely different.

So now what happens then, in polyamory or in relationship anarchy, and depending on how people define all these things, is that you can choose what kind of relationship you have with somebody, and they’re not mutually exclusive, right? You can have a relationship that is of a particular kind with somebody and with somebody else, like you choose all your individual relationships, just like you can choose and define all the roles in a self-managed organization, if it’s role-based, so it’s like an unbundling of relationships, right? Of like an unbundling of the main roles into whatever you want to create, and then the whole thing choice-based, right? Because you’re choosing it in a mutually consensual way, with all the transparency and all of that that we also see in new forms of work, and that way, yeah, it just adds a whole level of choice and nuances to the system that people didn’t have before.

Lisa: Yeah, I guess that’s like a bit of an interesting overview. And it occurs to me now that maybe, if we back up a little bit, could you say something about, like, what? What is your experience with relationship anarchy? I mean, first of all, that’s a term that I love and, and would love to hear a bit more about. But what is your experience with this and, and how do you bring that to also your work life?

Ted: Well, the first thing is, I typically don’t, well, I mean, I’ve been in open relationships, you know, all the different terms, and I’m not huge on the terms, honestly. So to me, it’s more a matter of mindset and practice than about what particular term now fits the best. But I’ve been in open relationships for, I don’t know, years, maybe seven-ish years, something like that. I feel like I’ve kind of done all the variations there are, you know, like, not only of open relationships, but also, you know, I’ve been married for a long time, and that was pre-transition. For those who don’t know, I gender transitioned, so, like, five or six years ago. So that, of course, also throws a whole other dimension on this whole thing of having to renegotiate all of the relationships in the first place, but what was the original question here?

Oh, yeah. So I am currently in two relationships. One of them is brand new, and that’s super fun, and one of them is with the person that I live with also. So it’s all the different layers raising children together and all of that. I’m also separated from the other parent of my kids, but the person only lives the other parent only lives maybe 300 feet away from me. So there’s a lot of kind of being in each other’s lives still. So it’s not the, you know, the separation wasn’t the end of a relationship. Now, it’s a different form of relationship, but still a relationship of some kind. And that’s another thing that’s kind of cool in this whole sphere, that it’s not all you know, it’s not just about your sexual relationships. It’s about all the relationships, all choosing all of them and shaping all of them.

And back then. So to me, my journey into the whole thing was that actually my ex suggested it. And, yeah, that must have been seven years ago, and then that relationship ended a few years later. But then the relationship that it started during that time is now like basically started as an as an open relationship, or polyamorous relationship, and just remain that way always. That was a little bit of the messy history.

Lisa: Yeah, to me, I like this thread that you introduced, of of kind of choice and also sort of unbundling, as you said, like the sort of relationship norms that we kind of inherit in the sort of standard paradigm. And I see like a big parallel there between kind of relationships in our personal life and also what we sort of enter into when we start to navigate working in a more self-managed way that suddenly I don’t have to subscribe to kind of one traditional job description, but that I might take on many different roles, and I might be much more conscious and and really talk about and negotiate my different relationships, rather than assuming that they’re kind of fixed, or, you know, top down, it’s sort of an opportunity to really create something a bit more tailor made, I guess, would you agree?

Ted: Yes, totally. And then in addition to that, it’s also that it that once one shakes off all those norms and the pre-set relationships, it’s, at the same time, an opportunity to step out of all the colonized mindset around all of those things. You know, the whole concept that somehow one is owned, especially women, are owned as soon as they’re married, on all of that stuff, or just in general, I guess I was thinking about that.

I was mentioning earlier, that I got to meet the husband of my new partner, and it was just, you know, it’s interesting all the things that were going through my head while I was driving there, because I didn’t really have a lot of anxiety about it at all. Like, really, it was almost like a non-deal for me. But then I was kind of also thinking, like, yeah, like, what should I be thinking right now? Because I wasn’t really thinking much, you know, just driving and kind of just looking forward to meeting this person, but, and then I was thinking, what should I be thinking? Well, I should be thinking like, you know, what does one say in this in this moment? Does one say thank you for letting me sleep with your wife? Like, no, that’s nonsense, because that’s the process of thinking, you know, that’s just totally but it’s funny how that layer is still there.

You know, I can tell you what I should be thinking. I’m not thinking it, but I do know what I’m supposed to think. So that was a funny thing of like, No, there’s no thank you. There’s no, there is no, there’s really nothing, but just meeting that person and saying, “Okay, now we get to meet,” you know, so all the layers of shoulds and cans and whatever they’re just yeah, one really has to shed those. And that’s that’s such a huge liberation, right?

Whenever I’ve met people who just opened their relationships, typically, this liberating energy for them is just huge, and it often seems to translate into other areas of their lives, that they’re like, whoa. Now I’ve opened my relationship like, let’s see what else I can do. You know, because if I can do that, I can do anything. Now I’m really free. And of course, you know, 100% free obviously, is not really a thing, but stepping into that place of choice is just as liberating as it is for people to start self-management, really?

Lisa: Yeah, I love this idea of like a colonized mindset, and the kind of colonized and sort of patriarchal history of of a construct like marriage, for example, and and the parallel of like an employed mindset, right? And the whole thing that employees are human resources, and they’re sort of assets owned by the organization. And I think it takes some time for us to unlearn that, that dynamic, right, that mindset of being employed. And. You know, even, even if, let’s say I’m in an organization and the CEO declares, okay, we’re going to be self-managing now, or we’re going to try sociocracy or whatever, there’s so much kind of embodied baggage of me being employed to unlearn that I’m so used to deferring to my manager, blaming my manager for things, it’s kind of comfortable and convenient to do that, and not sort of taking full responsibility or accountability for certain things. And so there’s, I see that there’s both a great liberation when that gets kind of challenged, and also, I think it can be sort of confronting or scary, like, now, if I can really choose, like, what does that mean, and and how do, how am I going to be now? So I don’t know if, if you had that experience, also when, when you first started to explore being in an open relationship, if there was also a sort of shadow side to the liberation, or a sort of a learning curve, or a sort of vulnerability in that.

Ted: Well, I mean, there’s several things here. One is that one can’t show you away from difficult conversations anymore. You have to have the conversations, right? Otherwise the whole thing falls flat. You know, how do you talk to somebody about, like, “Wait, like, Who else do you sleep with?” You know? So that we can figure out a level of risk here, for example. So that’s, you know, that’s not an everyday conversation that one typically has.

But another thing is also around accepting one’s own limits. So many people start out with thinking like, “Yay, now I can do, you know, now everything, like, everything can be mine,” you know, kind of a thing. And that’s, there’s a parallel there in self-management that I see teams quite often overburden themselves, or kind of just starting too many things, like, as a very simple thing, starting too many circles in the beginning, because now you can do anything you want, right?

And, yeah, of course you could, in theory, date any person that is willing to date you, and you’re probably not going to have time. And all that is that, that joke that polyamory is is some something for people with a scheduling kink, it’s just so incredibly accurate. It’s ridiculous how much scheduling basically rules everything. So, yeah, there’s scheduling. There’s also bandwidth, you know, like, for example, I noticed in myself that I that I’m I’m just really satiated overall, kind of on the people, on the people end of things in my life, I’m very satiated just the thought of having to get to know somebody say, “God, that seems like a lot of work. I’m not really up for that right now.” So the satiation is, is a thing that carries over.

There was some other thing but that I can’t think of right now. I guess maybe it had near it has to do with, yeah, here’s another thing, and that’s being clear about what you’re about for yourself, like taking care, taking good care of oneself. So for example, let’s say, let’s say I’m in this happy multiple relationships. But then there happens to be a weekend where everybody is busy and I’m not, you know, everybody is taken care of, and I’m not, because that is when feelings of jealousy or feelings of like, “Wait, what about me,” kind of stuff come up. And I think it’s hard to be in that space if you’re in a comparative mindset, right? If you’re comparing, like, “What do others like, this whole fairness thing, right? What is fair” and which is also a big deal in self-management, right? The whole fairness thing is such a slippery slope.

So the question is, what do I want? And really being in touch with that, right? Because if I’m leading the life that I want, I am totally happy to have a weekend just for myself, but if I’m thinking of it in a scarcity mindset of now everybody has something that I don’t have, I’m just going to be very unhappy. So how am I generally okay as a person? And then all the rest is extra, but I have to make sure that I’m generally okay, otherwise, when one gets clingy and and generous and all of those things, and that’s no fun at all.

Lisa: That’s so interesting, because I guess that’s there’s quite an onus there, on some degree of self-development, right? And some kind of sense of self-worth, separate to my relationships, which I also see a parallel, I think, in self-management, that it can be kind of confronting for people in terms of their identity. You know, if I used to be a manager and now I don’t have that kind of top-down power, then it can be a bit like, “Oh, what’s my value? Now, if I’m not sort of providing answers or rescuing saving the day, or, you know, how do I add value? Then who? Am I? What’s my worth?” So I think that’s that’s a kind of interesting parallel to like that self-management requires some some introspection, I guess, about like, what, what are my needs? And how can I be more communicative about those rather than relying on sort of top-down systems and structures, which can be as comforting, I guess, as they can be constraining, because there’s some safety in them, I guess, some certainty, perhaps, and when we take those away or replace them, then it can be, I think, a little bit vulnerable, of like, okay, so now I need to create clarity for myself, or I need to sort of decide for myself what my role is going to be. I need to have more difficult conversations. I mean, that’s something that I’m interested to hear more about. You know, as someone who is a sociocracy practitioner and someone who knows a lot about like, non-violent communication and things like that, you know, has that been helpful in having those kinds of so-called difficult conversations when navigating your sort of open relationships?

Ted: Yeah, for sure, I guess. And with that, I guess part of it is just having the clarity of what’s the topic at hand here, without getting pulled into too many, too many directions. I’m thinking of one particular situation where there was four of us talking. We were all kind of connected in different ways. So the four of us talking and really trying hard to just in a clean way, stay on that topic and figure that out together. What we had to figure out together? Yeah. So that helps.

I’ve also used Socratic tools just for simple, for simple agreement making. What are the different dimensions when you open your relationship? What other things you need to talk about, yeah, so agreement making is certainly a skill that is very useful, though I have to say that I use it very, very lightly, like there’s hardly any agreements. I think I’m not sure we have any standing agreements right now. Kind of might live in partner, and I don’t think we do. Maybe I should check on that, but I don’t think we do. Yeah, because it’s all basically just transparency and trust at this point. Yeah, because that’s really served us, served as the best. I don’t think I could even put something in words right now that would be, there would not be any added value in putting anything in words. I think it’s also clear that it’s that it’s pretty obvious.

One other thing that I want to bring up that is kind of related to this kind of the self-care, or like knowing your own worth, is, I think, how you said it, or something like that, is also knowing about kind of the worth not fully sure I like the word, but I’m going to use it of a relationship like, you know, if somebody is in two relationships, how do you hold up your belief that they’re here with you right now because they want to be maybe, let’s say the other person is less available, right? Is it now that really you kind of the placeholder, and as soon as the other person became available, that’s where they would go. That’s a rough one. I mean, if that’s a dynamic, that is rough. But I also am aware that I am very conscious of what, the of what the, what the good things are that I want in each of the relationships, right? So what? And there, there are strengths there, that one that are just unique to that relationship. Don’t even want to make it a comparative statement of like, there’s certain conversations that I want to have in one of the particular relationships, because I know it’s going to be good and and I guess all of them to me have to do in like, for me, what’s important is, is personal growth is really learning. So I want to be in relationships to learn and to kind of develop together, because one cannot do it so well alone.

But I think many people get to that question of, “Why am I in a relationship with you? Like, what’s the, what’s the what’s the purpose?” Basically, that what it boils down to again. And I think that’s quite cool, because very similar to the self-management world, as soon as you are working in a choice-based system, on a consent-based system, you have to know why you’re there. And the same happens with relationships, right? It’s not just because it’s your workplace. It’s not just because we’ve married and we live together. We have to know a little bit more about it now. So that’s really interesting. And yeah, just all the connections between kind of clarity within ourselves, being okay within ourselves, having clarity of what we want somewhere, making sure we get that, you know, being co-responsible for getting that. Because, let’s say, one of the relationships kind of gets, I don’t know to put a label on it boring and I’m not learning in it anymore. Then do I just walk away? Or do work on it, like all of all of those questions, so all very related questions to self-management too.

Lisa: Yeah, definitely. There was a good Harvard Business Review article I read some time ago where it was talking about, he was saying, like, micro moves in relationships, and how we tend to perceive work relationships as either good or bad, and the the good ones, we sort of take for granted that they’ll always be good, and the bad ones, we kind of assume that we can’t do anything about them. You know, I might have that colleague that I don’t really get on with, or I don’t really trust, or the manager that whatever. And this article was saying that it’s, it’s always possible to for the good ones to deteriorate and for the bad ones to be restored. Like, in any moment, I can choose to have a conversation and upgrade that relationship if I want to, if I want to be co-responsible for that.

So we really like this idea of like in self-management, I think it’s a real kind of new learning area that we don’t learn really in school or in typical workplaces, which is talking about the relationship. You know, having a conversation that’s about the relationship. So with with my colleague, talking about, you know, how, how can we have a better relationship? You know, especially if it’s like someone that I, you know, let’s say someone who likes to talk a lot and share a lot of things about their personal lives, but I’m someone who’s maybe more reserved, or, you know, I don’t naturally do that. I tend to be a bit more shy or private. So how can we make that work together, given that we want to have a good relationship and trust each other, and that we have different needs or different personalities, and I think that’s such an interesting conversation to have, and sounds in the sort of traditional paradigm of work, even to use the word relationship in the traditional paradigm for is sort of weird. You know, people like, “What do you mean?” People like, “What do you mean? Like a romantic relationship in the workplace?” Like “No, relationship between US colleagues, you know that that’s a thing that we can talk about.” It’s not it’s something that we can work on, rather than something that’s like, outside of our control. I think that is kind of a paradigm shift in itself.

Ted: Yeah, and that goes to a topic that I also was thinking about when I was thinking about this conversation, and that’s very related to the article you quoted about just the impact of choices that we make, because both at work and in any other relationship, we’re all we’re all in an interdependent system, right? So whatever you do, even if, like, it’s that dance of, I can choose whatever I want to do, and there will be consequences, there will be impact, and that is also my responsibility to some extent, right?

So, and drawing those lines like, What? What? How much of a responsibility in a work relationship or in any other relationship, how much of that is my responsibility. My partner actually always says, like, every in a relationship, everybody is 100% responsible. That’s, that’s just such a good line. And that, to me, that just, yeah, it’s, it is a good line. I think about that a lot of just, okay, everybody is 100% responsible all of the time, and that’s very true at work as well. And, you know, it’s interesting, I’m using this the slogan is playing in my head a little bit here and there, about people ask for power and self-management, right? And what they get as a responsibility.

Lisa: Yeah.

Ted: That’s just not what they expect, you know, like, “I want to have a say,” and then it’s like, “Oh, yeah, okay, now you have a say, you know? How does that feel?” Like? And, yeah, it’s very similar there, right? People want all the freedom, but all of a sudden, when that comes with having to be responsible for the impact of your choices, it doesn’t sound so appealing anymore, or at least one is going to discern more what one is going to do and and how one does it. So.

Lisa: It sort of reminds me of like one of the first, my first forays into the world of polyamory, funnily enough, was reading a book by Neil Strauss, who wrote the book, “The Game,” do you know it? It was sort of about pick-up artists and that whole world kind of controversial. It was a journalist studying that world, and then 10 years later, having studied pickup artists and sort of incorporated their techniques from NLP and various other things, and being able to this guy, was able to pick up any woman he wanted, you know, but by the end of it, was quite unhappy, and realized that he had a kind of love and sex addiction, and although he’d found this woman that he really loved, he couldn’t sort of commit to her, and it was causing a lot of stress in their relationship.

So 10 years later, he wrote a book called “The Truth,” which was about him taking, taking steps to kind of go on this learning journey of, okay, what’s my what can I do here, you know, and he was trying to confront, you know, is, is monogamy, you know, an an outdated idea? Are we meant to be polyamorous? You know, is this a sort of colonial institution? That’s not how we’re wired. And so he did this big journalistic exploration into relationships. And so he first he tried abstinence, and he abstained from relationships and sets completely. Then he kind of went all the other way and and started experimenting in open relationships. So he sort of, I think he put some adverts out there and recruited some some women and to have a relationship with him. And then he discovered that, contrary to what he thought, because he thought maybe if I have an open relationship, it’ll be really free, and I won’t feel so constrained, and I won’t upset my partner, because I won’t be cheating. I’ll be in an open relationship. But he discovered that being in an open relationship was a lot of work, and that there was a lot to navigate, and, you know, that it still required a lot of personal responsibility and kind of communication and all of these things.

So it was sort of an interesting journey. And by the end, he sort of somehow integrate, I think he goes back to his original partner, having integrated everything he’d learned from the world of polyamory and stuff. But to me, it was so interesting this it challenged that idea, which, as he said, is kind of parallel, I think, to people in the self-management world thinking like I think about recruitment. For example, when you try and recruit people into a self-managing company. And you say, you know, “We don’t have managers here” and so on. And people interviewing for that role think, “Oh, great, that sounds amazing. I can’t wait for that.” And yet, it’s sort of hard to describe to them what that’s going to be like in reality, that it’s also going to be challenging and require a lot of personal development from them. And like you said, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and it’s hard sometimes to convey that. I think people get a bit of a shock to the system when they experience that for the first time. So I think it’s really valuable and interesting to talk about that.

Ted: Yeah, so people are warned, yeah.

Lisa: I’m thinking also about, I think I’ve shared with you before that my partner and I so I’m in a monogamous relationship, but I am really inspired by sort of exploring more intentionality in our relationship also. And I was inspired by this blog that friend and colleague of mine, Alana Irving, wrote about applying like Agile and Scrum to your relationship and having a relationship retrospective and like for us, that’s been really helpful having having this container, which, when I describe it to some of my friends, sounds a bit strange, a bit sort of trite, and maybe like overly structured, but to us, has been really useful, like having a framework that we can use and go and go to a nice park and sit down together and talk about the last few months and how our relationship is doing, and what we’d like to give each other feedback on, what we’d like to appreciate each other for any requests that we have.

And I really like that the there’s something magic about that kind of container that allows us to be it’s a bit like what you were saying before about connecting to the worth of the relationship and the purpose of the relationship, also that that, rather than, I think, what we because, like, I was having a phone call with my friend the other night where she was saying, “No one, no one teaches us how to be in relationships like, I wish we learned that at school.” She was saying, because it’s really challenging, especially now, like my friend and I, for example, are in our like, mid-30s, and, you know, people are experiencing big life milestones and mental health struggles and so on. And it’s it’s hard to navigate that when you haven’t learned anything about relationships besides what Hollywood tells you, you know. So I think some of the tools that we learn in the world of self-management and that we share and write about, I think, are so valuable in the world of personal relationships as well, where it can make such a difference to have like intentionality and and some some knowledge of like, you know, listening skills, or, you know, feedback in a way that’s not sort of imposing something on someone like, I think there’s this interesting kind of two-way learning system right between, like, the world of personal relationship and the world of work relationships. Yeah, what do you think?

Ted: Yeah, I mean the the learning from from self-management, as you said, the retrospective, that’s a great we’re not creating intentional containers. It’s a great thing. Another thing that comes up, and that kind of goes back to what you were asking earlier, about how much does, does, knowing about sociocracy and facilitation and all of that. How, how much does it help in having difficult conversations? And in one case, in this one area, I know that just knowing about facilitation has helped me generally in life, but it also applies there. It’s just that if somebody says no, you know, like some something is not working for them, that that is not the end of the conversation. That is the beginning of a conversation, just like one would say an objection is the beginning of an exploration and of learning, because they might be saying no on something that can totally be tweaked, you know.

So, yeah, to kind of lean in when somebody says no. So that’s something that I definitely learned at work before I learned it in relationships. So that kind of gets carried, carried into that domain. Can’t think of a brilliant example, except for one that so a little bit of a struggle of just how to, how to manage sleep, like, what if I, you know, spend time with somebody, and then then I come back super tired that I know is, is a little bit of a trigger point, especially for people who have kids, and then, you know, the person is finally back home, but they’re totally fried because they spend too much time within the lover, and then, then it goes into the shared, you know, then it’s on the in the shared domain, basically because it’s fine to give each other time off. But then, if you’re not there, when you’re actually there, then it starts to kind of bleed into the share time, I know, but that can easily be, I mean, one can imagine two ways of having the conversation. One is full of accusations and kind of like, you know, you can go out if you’re so tired, kind of a thing. And the other one is to just hear that no as well when you’re that tired. It doesn’t work for me, and now it’s a constructive conversation, just like we would treat an objection. So that’s, there’s, there’s something to learn there about just making agreements in a space where somebody actually says no to something them and that that it’s not the end of the world right away.

But I guess maybe that’s also easier to work in a learn in a work context, because in a in a personal context, people often attach a lot of or even more they over. They kind of overburdened the context even more, right? If somebody tells you no, you think like they don’t love you anymore, right? If my co-worker doesn’t love me anymore, it’s not that horrible, though. It might also go really deep. If that person doesn’t value me in my work and who I am, kind of a stuff, someone can always blow it out of proportions. But, you know, people learning to stay, kind of stay more on the topic, instead of going to this broad, everything is bad and you don’t like me kind of a thing. So that’s a that’s a useful thing, that’s a useful thing to learn. I think.

Lisa: Yeah, that’s so true. My partner is someone who is really good at saying no. He’s really good at being boundaried, and I’m sort of the opposite. I’m a people pleaser, so I’m trying to learn how to say no more in life. So I think I was attracted to that in him, but it’s sort of a source of a clash between us, often also, because on the one hand, I really respect his ability to say no, and on the other hand, sometimes I experience it as a bit rigid or selfish, even sometimes. And for him, it’s just baffling that I could say yes to something that I don’t really want to say yes to, or that I could be so, you know, push down my own needs to one side so easily.

So I think it’s an interesting skill. I wonder, like, what your experience was with that, like learning and also thinking about people listening, because I know that people struggle often with this, when they start to do consent decision making, for example, and and this sort of dance of inviting objections and listening to them without sort of shutting them down and at the same time object, you know, objecting to something when it’s going to do harm or move us backwards, rather than if it’s not my personal preference. So there is this sort of subtlety of like being in that space, and I wonder, like, what your experience was with that?

Ted: Yeah, one thing that comes up for me around that is the sometimes people see, especially when they know they see consent decision making as as kind of just that culmination point of making a decision, and they don’t see that it’s a whole culture around it that is required. It, to make it a good like, to make it easy to object, and to like all of the things, to make it kind of a holistically healthy situation. And then the consent moment, for some people is kind of the seal the deal kind of moment, and now I’m gonna hold you accountable. You know, if I can get you to consent, then we can be done with this conversation. And that’s just not, that’s just a very kind of reductionist way of looking at it, because, and that’s something that’s interesting, that’s that goes the other way for self-management can learn from polyamory or from interpersonal relationships, is that consent is an ongoing thing. Just because you consented five me five minutes ago does not mean that you’re now all in on everything that we, you know, thought we had just agreed upon.

So it’s really more of a mindset than it is a process. I mean, yes, you know, I’m big into processes, because I think practices, especially in work context and kind of more formalized context, are really useful. And I dislike when people cut corners and just declare things a mindset, and then they’re done with it, because that’s often an easy way out. That said, if you know how to do your processes and you follow your processes, especially when things are hard, it is also really important to remember that at the same time, consent is a mindset thing. So seeking, seeking alignment, and watching out for red flags and kind of actively soliciting if there is something becomes more a question of, how do you relate to other people and to other things in general? And then it becomes a process of just staying, staying tuned in, of is that person still in? You know, for example, I have a work example here somebody. I heard a story yesterday where somebody was really, basically the person left the team, big drama. But then I asked a little bit more about what had led up to that, and it turned out the person was never really fully in. They had officially now, they had said yes, but somehow it was clear to everybody that it’s not a real Yes, and that should have been brought up, right? I mean, it was like, wait, if somebody, if somebody consents, but everything tells you that they haven’t really consented, even though you might have sealed the deal, you know, it doesn’t mean that now you can build all kind of things on it.

So what am I saying here? I’m saying that to me, what is the most important thing, is sensing and tuning into a situation and understanding what the what the forces at play are and how they all flow together. Because ultimately, if it doesn’t flow, it’s not going to work. So there has to be enough flow to it, whether people formally consented or not is kind of then secondary, but there has to be enough flow and healthy flow in the system so that it all works. And I’m not even sure whether I talked about relationships or sales management now, because it’s literally the same in both areas. I think.

Lisa: Yeah, that’s so true. I’m thinking also about a I saw a great kind of flow chart. No pun intended, that Mickey Cash done made, which was about being in flow, in in a work context. But it also applies to any context, really, and that if you kind of get out of flow, if you sort of sense, like a disruption, or there’s something, you know, interfering with the channel or something, you know that then you could go to feedback, or you could go to, like, conflict, engagement, like talking about that, you know. And a lot of the arrows in this flow chart are like, is there trust? If yes, then proceed to this. If no, then go to this, you know, kind of thing and and if, and if you try all those things, there still no trust. It’s like, okay, exit and figure out something else. Don’t make a decision on top of that, or don’t continue on top of that, because something needs to happen.

But I think it’s such a good kind of distillation, this idea of consent as a an ongoing thing, and as a mindset like I’m thinking about yesterday, I said to my partner, we have this sort of implicit agreement that I take care of the laundry and he takes care of the dishes. He likes doing the dishes, and so I’ve taken to sort of leaving them in the sink, and then he kind of does them towards the end of the day. But then I started to have this feeling like, is he getting annoyed with me that I’m leaving them in the sink? Is that inconsiderate? So I checked in. I’ve done it a couple of times where I said, like, “I just want to check again. Is it still okay with you that I do that?” And he’s like, “Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. I like, doing dishes.” And I was like, “Okay, then I’m just going to relate to you that it’s fine, unless you tell me otherwise, and if you have an issue with it, that you’ll bring it up. Is that okay?” And he was like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Okay, great.”

And I do that in in work as well, that I’ve learned that if I have this little grain of doubt about something we agreed to, or if I could sort of sense that maybe someone said yes to something or consented to something. And now I’m not so sure if they’re still on board that it’s better to check in and say, like, you know, “You still up for this? Is this still okay? Is this still a yes, like, a whole hearted Yes, or are you having some doubts, like, can we talk about it?” And that’s really valuable, and also valuable for me, because, as I said, I have this tendency to say yes when I shouldn’t really have said yes, and I’m learning to be better at listening for in myself. Is it a yes, or is it a kind of compliant Yes?

Ted: And isn’t amazing? The tall order of all of that, I know the tall order of you have to know yourself really, really well. You have to be really, really tuned in with yourself in order to tune in with other people. It’s just, I find it mind blowing. Whenever I sit with that of just like, really, that’s what we’re doing that’s so hard, that is so hard, and yet, you know, yet, human beings have related to each other for a long time, so we are good at it. But, boy, it’s also not without its challenges, I guess. But really, the my main point here is that in order to be in healthy relationships, having that first step of being in healthy relationship with ourselves, it’s just so easy to skip over and it just always it just I was thinking about that last week of just how many times in my life I’ve kind of skipped over something that I sense, something that I knew was wrong, but something that I knew wouldn’t work, something where I was like, “Really, I’m not sure about that.” So you know that little grain of doubt that you were, that you were talking about, how many times I’ve just kind of dismissed it, and how it’s simply not worth it. It is not worth it. So I guess we all have to become better at using, like, Mickey’s flowchart on, you know, like, make it, make it like a habit always to be in that constant sensing relationship with ourselves and the world.

Lisa: Yeah, I’ve started to think about it as, like, if I really have this mindset that we’re all this interdependence thing, and I’m in relationship with all these different people in my different collaborations. And therefore, if I have this grain of doubt, or if I have something a sense, even if I can’t articulate it, or I can’t back it up with some kind of rational data or something that that’s valuable information to bring to the relationship, to the group, to the team, or to that person that I’m collaborating with, trying to trust that more. That worst case scenario, I bring it up, and I say, “I don’t know if this is relevant, but I’m just sort of feeling this thing.” And maybe they say, “Oh, that’s weird. I’m not really feeling that. Okay, maybe we don’t need to do anything about it.” But usually something happens. If I bring it up, like a conversation happens, and maybe someone else says, “Yeah, I’ve also been thinking that,” or “That’s really great that you said that, because I’ve been wondering, something seems a bit off with you. So let’s talk about that.” Or, you know, so when you start to see, you know, these work constellations as relationships, as sort of network of relationships, then you start to value those things more, I think, both in yourself and bringing them up, and also sort of being curious about other people’s, you know, what’s going on for them under the surface, and sort of asking about that and listening for that. And then you have kind of completely different conversations.

Ted: Yeah. And then that connects to just how scary it is to say things if you don’t even know whether, if it takes a lot of courage, if you just have this little niggle to say that out loud. So then it goes back to, how do you collectively create enough trust and Enough, enough, just Yeah, I guess psychological safety, so that, so that can happen again, a tall order on all of it, and to yeah again, discern what might be useful, because, of course, we don’t want to turn workplaces into self-help groups. So one needs to discern what is relevant to the system here, and what is just something I just learned about myself, which might be interesting to share, but typically maybe not, depends on, of course, how much space you have and how much you want to share. So back to that again.

Lisa: Yeah, exactly which sort of circles back to that thing you said before, about like the purpose of the relationship, you know? So if the purpose of the relationship is that we have enough trust in order to achieve this goal or whatever, then that might help me decide whether or not it’s relevant that I share this or don’t share that. And in a personal relationship, it might be more that, you know, we’re the purpose is really that we grow at a deep level as individuals in our capacity to trust and love each other. And then it might be more relevant that I share something else. There. Else there. So it’s, yeah, I think this purpose thing is really key, and choice as well, coming back to that kind of theme as well.

Ted: By the way, one thing that I forgot, I think that I want to be sure said, although it might be obvious, maybe it’s not, is that one of the choices that we can make, you know, like in a self-managed organization, we can choose to just have one big role that is just within one, whatever unit circle, whatever we might call it, but and at the same time, it can be a choice to just be in a monogamous relationship, and that’s that, because that’s what is good for you right now, and that’s that’s it. So just how choice really means all of the choices, right? And that’s yeah, just often gets forgotten. So just thought I’d throw that in there here too.

Lisa: Yeah, I really like that. It’s a bit like, I think I’ve also come to a similar conclusion with hierarchy, that sometimes in self-managing organizations, people can be so freaked out by anything that resembles hierarchy, and I’ve come to arrive at a way of looking at it, as you know, if we choose to have hierarchy somewhere, you know, if I really want someone that, if I want to, if we want to agree that that person has decision making, authority over something, or if I want a little bit more, something akin to line management or something, if we choose that, and I choose that, and you choose that, we can send to that, then I really think that that’s okay, because it’s chosen, which I think is different compared to traditional top-down hierarchy, which is sort of, you know, inherited. It’s not chosen, and it tend, it tends to be, you know, that you just sort of accept it, you know, it’s sort of it is how it is. So I think sometimes people get a bit stuck in, “Oh, we’re not allowed to be hierarchical,” you know. “And it has to be self-managed, and we all have to be responsible for everything.” But actually, I think, to be in a healthy self-managed system is, is, is choosing. And that might mean that we choose to, in some places, have some what might look like quite traditional hierarchy, because if it’s chosen, it’s such a different quality to, you know, to not choosing. If that makes sense.

Ted: Yeah, but started a few years ago, we were running out of time, and a decision absolutely needed to be made, so somebody who was not me proposed that I I’m gonna, like, “Ted is gonna decide,” and everybody consented to that, you know, within like 10 seconds, decision was made that I’m the sole decider on this whole thing. You know, it did consent, but it was not my preference. I was just like, “Wait quickly, just now.” So everybody just was fairly relieved, which is another interesting thing, right, of just, how can you remain in a place of choice, given given all of the mainstream kind of mindset stuff that happens. So that’s a whole other ball of yarn, right? Both in relationships and in and at work. Just how can you tell apart what, what you’re conditioned in and what are you actively choosing, especially when it goes like, when it’s just like in the hierarchy example, and I’m thinking about relationship when it’s kind of running exactly in alignment with what the expectation is like.

For example, I talked to a colleague a few years back. She was choosing, although kind of her career was taking off, she was choosing to only work part time, although everyone, everybody wanted her full time, you know, because of kids and she sought me out, actually, to tell me she wanted to make sure I know that it’s chosen, that she’s not just doing it because her husband or whoever expects it, but it was actively chosen. This is how she wants to live her life. And I was just like, “Okay, cool, thank you.” It is, it does. It was good to know, you know, because I wasn’t sure from the outside, because it just looked so traditional. But it’s chosen. Then, of course, I did walk away from that conversation thinking, how chosen can such a thing be? How chosen can it be? But then again, if she’s telling me that, yeah, now I’m gonna take it at face value, but it was like such a I mean, that’s just like all the other can you choose to to not have power right now? From our original topic, I don’t know.

Lisa: Yeah, it does make me also think about, you know, younger generations now, who is who is so much more educated in so many such a much wider buffet of choices than than I was aware of, we know when I was growing up, for example. So that’s an interesting dynamic. You know, do you choose something different because you’re aware that there are choices compared to if you’re not aware that they’re there?

Ted: And how much choice are humans made for? You know, as you were saying earlier in the book that you were referring to, that the person was actually not so happy with having all of the choices. We know that’s a thing too. Maybe some people actually quite content limiting their choices and not having to think about it anymore.

Lisa: Yeah, I’m a very indecisive person. So that’s why monogamous relationship.

Ted: Want to know that there is some some back door, some somewhere.

Lisa: Yeah, so I guess in kind of wrapping up like, what would you like to leave listeners with in terms of, you know, this topic, and would you really hope that they get from this conversation?

Ted: Well, I guess going back to choice says choice is all of the choices. You know. I mean, I, I don’t hold polyamory, kind of as one of my main identities. Some people do. I don’t at all. It’s not, it’s it’s interesting, but it’s only mildly interesting to me, honestly, because I think it’s such a such a no brainer, once you’ve arrived in that mindset that there isn’t so much to talk about that isn’t already obvious. But so I guess what I want to say with that is, I don’t have any investment in the world being into relationship energy. I know it is. It is on the rise, like, if you look at numbers, it’s quite wild, actually, how much it’s on the rise. So we might be surprised by how soon it’s just normal. But yeah, just for listeners, I guess to maybe sit with that, that would be an interesting question of, How much am I in choice with what I do, knowing that maybe 100% choice outside of how we’ve been conditioned is impossible. But is it chosen, or is it just because it is the way it is?

Lisa: Thank you so much to Ted again for having that conversation. I really enjoyed it. It’s so fun when I can have a conversation with someone that’s sort of flowing, and because I know Ted quite well, and Ted’s been on the podcast before, it’s just really easy to talk to Ted. And I so appreciate all of the wisdom and lived experience that Ted brings. If you want to learn more about Ted’s work and about sociocracy, I’ve put some links in the show notes. There are some great books out there. The sociocracy for all website is fantastic. It’s a real treasure trove of resources. So do check it out. Check out their events as well the sociocracy conference and various events that they have throughout the year. They’re worth following on LinkedIn and on their website newsletter, because they’re always doing great stuff.

I’ve also shared some links to some various like articles and podcasts that I’ve come across and Ted’s come across and that we sort of jammed on in a Google doc before we had this conversation. So if you’re interested in learning a bit more about some of the threads that we weaved in this conversation, then then have a look at those. Thank you, as always, for listening. If you have a moment, please take some time to rate this episode, to review it, to give it some stars. That helps people discover it helps spread these ideas, makes the podcast more visible. Remember, you can follow us on social media. We are at lean Morphosis on Twitter. If you have any thoughts or questions or reflections, we’d love to hear them, and I hope you’ll tune in for another episode soon. Have a great week.