Echoes at the Bottom of the U

A follow-up to “The Mirror of Others,” through the lens of Otto Scharmer’s Theory U.

When we talk about feedback we need to realize that it is easy to collect but difficult to hear. Otto Scharmer´s Theory U give one explanation to why this is. We don’t create change by downloading more feedback and opinions into the same frame, but we can create change if we dare to descend below our usual defenses. This is where Theory U comes in with its open mind, open heart, open will. If we dare to open up the mind, heart and will we can receive and then return with something genuinely new.

In Week 4 we placed ourselves between two mirrors, one that gives a reflection of how you see yourself and one that reflects how others experience you. When looking at Theory U we see that it asks us to go one step further, it challenges us to let go of the identity you are defending inside those two mirrors, so that you can let come a little bit more true way of showing up. The turning point in the U is what Scharmer calls presencing, this is the quiet state at the bottom of the U where you are no longer proving, fixing, or performing. Here you have opened up your mind, heart and will, and you are listening for what wants to emerge in the relationship, in the project, in you.

Today I had an experience that showed a great example of this in practice. I had a meeting with a production manager for the construction of a new parking building at the new hospital project I am currently working with. This production manager has a long history with certain ways of working and creating a time plan for the construction. I work with the IT department and had the need of showing him the actions we need to do to finalize the IT system in the building before the testing of all systems. The reason for this was that in his time plan we had two days to do the work that we need to plan seven weeks ahead! You can easily see that this meeting had a high risk of creating a conflict and potentially ending really badly. However, this production manager listened very actively and with curiosity he opened his mind to my message, then he opened his heart by not starting to defend himself or his time plan and lastly he opened his will and was ready to enter our needs into his time plan, this was the “let go”. The key moment was when a colleague of mine that was also in the meeting, said with a lot of empathy that we understand the pressure they have to keep the schedule, and that we were not adding our actions to stop or disrupt the construction in any way, but rather to have a dialogue about it and work for the interest of both parties. This was the “let come”, a new way of thinking together and working together for a mutual benefit that we then worked into the time plan.

You don’t “win”, you co-sense and co-shape.

Become a paid subscriber to join the community.

Below we take a look at how this reads through the Inner Development Goals, you will get a Micro-U exercise you can run this week and also a small reflection prompt you can use to work with and improve your self-reflection.