Hierarchy and Humility
To work with teams is to work with hierarchy. What do I mean by hierarchy? I mean the explicit or implicit, conscious or unconscious, ranking of people according to their status or authority in the group. As a team coach, it is vital for me to be aware of the hierarchies I can see and to know that there are hierarchies I can’t see. As a team coach I need to support hierarchy as well as raising my own and the team’s awareness of how hierarchy is operating. Whatever a team’s job in the world, they are helped or hindered by the power dynamics of hierarchy.
Spot the hierarchy
The hierarchies I can see are many. They are either written on an organisation chart or observable by taking note of how people act with each other, for example
- Official position in the organisational structure – who is whose boss?
- Expertise – who is given more credit for knowing what to do?
- Airtime – who takes the airtime and who does not?
- Listening – who gets heard out and who gets interrupted?
- Influence – who has the power to change people’s minds or move others to action?
Sometimes I can link the observable power dynamics above to factors such as gender, class, language, accent, caste, skin colour, body shape, geography, length of service, function in the organisation, relationship with the founders. Sometimes it doesn’t quite track. Each organisation has a legacy, a culture and a current context that creates a unique set of power dynamics. One team I know gives more influence to long servers, another to new joiners. One team I know gives more power to European members, another to American members. In one team I know it is hard for female members to be heard but that’s not so in another team.
The hierarchies I can’t see are also many. I can’t see the dynamics that I create in the team because of my own identity. I can’t see the way that my own life experience and socialisation affects my behaviour. How do my whiteness, my accent, my education, my gender, my relationship with the paying client, my training, my language, my habits of relating, the way I give and take power, impact the room? I know that, as a facilitator of the team, I create power dynamics that I am not aware of. All I can do is try to witness my own behaviour and be curious about the impact.
Supporting Hierarchy
Hierarchy is useful. A healthy hierarchy supports role clarity, performance, teamwork and effectiveness. A healthy hierarchy can create psychological safety and bring out the best of the different strengths in the team. As a team coach, my paying client is often the team leader and that person is often the one with most at stake and with the highest risk of shame in the development process. After all, shouldn’t they have got it ‘right’ and not need help from me? The process of development for the whole team cannot be successful without trust between me and the client. As I work with the leader I want to support their leadership and the official power structure of the team as well as help them see the way hierarchy is operating.
Raising Awareness of Hierarchy
Hierarchy is useful and it can also have a cost. It can squash contribution, it can hide truths, it can damage team member’s sense of safety and self-esteem and it can hinder performance. When we don’t see the way hierarchy works in a team, we don’t have a choice about that cost. So it’s also my job, within the consultant/client relationship, to raise awareness of how power is working in the team. Who seems to be in the ‘in-group’ and who is ‘out’? Is the leader and the group aware of this? What do they choose to do with their awareness?
Humility
All of this has to be done with huge does of humility. I cannot know the experience of each team member so humility involves not assuming. I cannot know how my observations might trigger defensiveness – and they nearly always do if I’m onto something important. I cannot know my own part in the power dynamics so I must be open to hearing about my own impact. These conversations are not easy and, if they go well, it’s because of the trust that clients have built with each other and with me. I need to let go of getting things right in order to step into conversations about power and hierarchy. I need to focus instead on being real, flawed, courageous and open to learning something I don’t want to hear. I confess I don’t always feel resilient or safe enough to go there but with the help of teachers, supervisors, therapists and peers, I’m working on it.
I want to credit the faculty and participants on the Gestalt International Study Center’s Program “The Humility Project” for my nascent learning about systemic racism and white privilege.
