It was the first time I’d met Sally. She was one of more than 20 Edcore staff I was interviewing, collecting their shared story, the pieces to a complex problem they wanted resolved. Sally offered her trust. She was a manager, a leader at the center of our process, at the center of the complex problem we were working to resolve. About an hour into the interview, Sally began to relax into our discussion and said: “I want to admit something to you. Only one other person here knows this about me, but it influences how I feel about what we’re doing. About five years ago we made some major changes to resolve a related problem. On the first few days after we started using the new process, I noticed I was feeling agitation when I got home. Then, after a week, one evening I found myself sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, breathing into a brown paper bag; I was having an anxiety attack”.
Sally’s story is a neon sign reminder to me that: Problems begin with how people feel, and that problem resolution is about resolving how people feel. Our fuel, our motive force to act, is in the vitality of our emotional experience. It’s hard for me to think of a motive, an action that I have taken, that is entirely free of emotional influence. When we act, we act to resolve our emotions. We act to fulfill an exciting possibility, to relieve our stress, anxiety or anger, to respond to compassionate concern. We act to relieve the stresses and concerns of others, or to help fulfill the hopes and desires of others. As much as we know the world from our logos, from our rational understanding, I believe we know the world more, at least more intimately, from our emotions, and from the stories that give them meaning.
I see our stories as our combined narrative-emotional understanding of the world. I believe our stories are the source of most of our emotional experience, our relational experiences with others and our universe. This is how I arrive at: Problem Resolution is Story Resolution. Resolving a problem involves resolving our relationship with our narratives, involves resolving the emotions our stories stimulate within us, and involves resolving the incongruence between our stories and our experiences. I believe that we resolve our story driven emotions by changing our stories, by changing our relationship with our stories, or by changing our external circumstances to align with our stories. Even with highly technical problems, I’ve come to believe that when I ignore the human experience, I ignore the problem.
Resolution to the Edcore problem involved all of the above; changes to their story, to their relationship with their story, and to their physical processes and infrastructure. Sally was core to our resolution. And she needed relief, resolution, to stresses from past changes. After we talked about her bag-breathing experience she began to laugh. When Sally’s supervisor, Georgette, later came into the room, Sally shared her experience again with both of us. Georgette contributed with compassion. She empathized with Sally, telling her how overwhelmed she had also felt during their previous changes.
After a week, Sally’s bag-on-kitchen-floor story had become an open metaphor. It was opened by Sally, with the kind support of Georgette, no longer a source of stress, but a reminder to attend to grace and support under pressures of change. Their gift was a priceless contribution toward our problem resolution, the resolution of stresses from past changes and hindering emotions. To celebrate Sally’s courage, and Georgette’s kindness, for their gift to their colleagues, my wife and I wanted to solidify their metaphor in physical form. We created symbolic emergency kits (see image), for Sally and Georgette. I presented them at their year-end staff meeting. Both hung their physical metaphors on their office walls, symbols of mutual support, and comic outlet for difficult times to come.
Later, after the changes were settled into place, I visited Edcore when Georgette was retiring. Georgette told me that the newly hired supervisor asked her for an emergency kit like hers. Georgette said she told the new supervisor: “Yes, they are helpful. And I hope that you’ll earn one someday”.
(Names changed to protect privacy)