This module addresses vulnerability as a barrier to exercising one’s rights. Participants explore multiple sides of vulnerability including the fear of making a mistake, potentially letting their co-workers down, or the fear of stepping into more visible demonstrations of leadership. By discussing the benefits of vulnerability and its alternative shame, participants will explore how choosing vulnerability creates the conditions for accountability and contributes to the success of the co-op.
The module allows participants to decide how their personal growth and development can be a resource for the co-op. By practicing accountability and vulnerability at work, individual and cooperative integrity can develop. Integrity in one’s actions and decisions as a business contribute to a business’ cooperative advantage.
Future iterations or continuations of this module could include polarity management, diagnosing a system of accountability and/or a system of blame.
Materials
Markers
Flip chart paper or board
Pens
Paper or journals
Essential Questions
What are ways I can be accountable to people in our cooperative?
What structures and processes support accountability?
How can we use accountability to determine how well our co-op is meeting our needs?
Essential Learnings
Accountability is putting cooperative values into action through exercising your co-op’s rights and responsibilities.
I can act with integrity even if I do not accomplish my goal.
Failure can be a part of the growth and innovation cycle.
I am willing to embrace vulnerability as an antidote to shame.
Vulnerability is not just showing others my failures, vulnerability can also include allowing others to see my talents.
I am willing to challenge myself to grow so that I can support the co-op and the co-op can support us collectively to meet our member needs.
I can name at least 3 structures and/or process that create accountability and at least one way to improve organizational accountability.
4 Pillars
Teaming: Understanding expectations of individuals and groups and what socio-emotional barriers might prevent someone from successfully working together.
Accountable Empowerment: Creating the conditions for workers to step into more responsibility or trust other with more responsibility. Turning mistakes in learning opportunities through making amends.
3 Concepts
Linkage: Connecting one’s individual behaviors as a worker to the success of the co-op. Expanding behaviors at work to include how a worker handles challenges and adversity.
Co-op Rights and Responsibilities
Justice and Rule of Law: Understanding that it is a worker’s right to hold others accountable for their actions and that this creates conditions for healthy teams.
Democratic Member Control and Self Responsibility: Understanding how workers, managers, and the board can hold each other accountable
Agenda
Welcome everyone into the space and thank them for their participation. Review & Recommit to Public Agreements.
Check in Question
In pairs, ask participants to share on the following question:
Share a time where you tried your best to accomplish a task at work and it did not go the way you hoped. What did you do? How did you tell your co-workers and/or managers?
The facilitator can share a 30-45 second example from their own experience to model the direction. Take at least 2-3 share outs.
Activity
Today we are going to talk about accountability. Write the following definition on the board.
Accountability: “Taking ownership for behaviors including making amends”
This definition comes from Brené Brown. Brown is an experiential research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work where she studies vulnerability, courage, and worthiness.
What are some examples of being accountable for our actions?
Why do you think making amends is part of accountability?
What are some examples of how someone can make amends?
As a cooperative business who or what are we accountable to?
Prompt for:
ICA Principles
Our cooperative Rights and Responsibilities
Member needs
Co-workers and managers
These are all examples of boundaries that we have decided are important enough to collectively agree too.
Display the following definition.
Boundaries are simply what’s okay and what’s not okay in a given context (Brown, 2015)
What are some examples of important boundaries in our business?
Possible Answers:
At a grocery store, what’s okay is taking the time to talk to with customer.
What is not okay is having a 30-minute discussion with a friend who stops in at the store while other customers are waiting.
What’s not okay is doing something illegal in the workplace.
What’s okay is alerting supervisors of those actions.
Why is having boundaries important in a business?
Possible Answers:
Having boundaries can prevent anger, hate, and resentment from arising when people experience things that are not okay with them.
The more boundaries one has, the more room there is for compassion, and compassion breeds the creation of healthy boundaries (Brown, 2015).
Draw the following diagram on the board.
Accountability means we each have a responsibility to live out our values because we are all connected to each other through the mutual interests of the business.
What are ways we can be accountable to the ICA Principles, our co-op’s rights and responsibilities, member needs, and our co-workers and managers?
Prompt for:
Stepping up for more responsibility
Giving feedback including appreciations and opportunities to change
Making amends
Evolve our systems and processes for the better
Even when we want to be accountable, stepping up for more responsibility with the potential for failure or trusting people with more responsibility can be really challenging. It requires vulnerability and it might require us to face shame.
We know that people might have different understandings about what these words mean. To help everyone get on the same page let’s brainstorm the definitions of vulnerability, shame, and integrity.
Write the following three words on the board leaving room for participants to write below each word.
Vulnerability
Shame
Integrity
Ask participants to write how they define each word on the group brainstorm. After giving the group about 5 minutes to write their own answers, reveal Brené Brown’s definition for each word. Facilitate a discussion using participant answers and the following questions.
Vulnerability: The willingness to show up and be seen.
What impression do you think people usually have about vulnerability?
Does vulnerability always risk exposure?
What are other examples of vulnerability?
Possible Answers:
Agreeing to take on a responsibility that you don’t yet know how to do
Sometimes people are afraid of being seen doing a great job. What is your reaction to this quote by Marianne Williamson from the book A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles?
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”
What comes up for you when you hear this quote?
Sometimes people are afraid to be seen making a mistake. Does accountability mean that people can’t make mistakes?
Draw the following diagram on the board.
To be accountable means making commitments and following through. Vulnerability is one of the pre-conditions of accountability. We have to be willing to show up to take responsibility for a task. We have to do this without knowing what the outcome will be.
Why do you think more accountability produces more trust?
Prompt for:
If someone accomplishes their goal, we are more likely to trust them to a similar action in the future.
If someone does not accomplish their goal, but apologizes and learns from it, we can still trust that they will do things differently in the future and are likely to give them a second chance.
So, whether or not someone accomplishes their goal, as long as they are accountable, more trust will be built.
Interestingly, trust is one of the most important pre-conditions for vulnerability. The more someone trusts the people around them, the more willing they will be to risk being seen by others. This creates a reinforcing cycle of accountability. When people are more accountable to one another, their teams function better. Individuals on the team might become more willing to be vulnerable and grow trust in themselves or their co-workers. As the team grows, they can reachers deeper levels of trust.
Have you seen/not seen any examples of this in your business?
How can accountability to other people in the business help you and/or the business grow?
What can happens if someone feels like they have to hide a mistake they’ve made?
Prompt for:
They might feel shame
Display the following definition:
Shame: The fear that we are unworthy of connection (Brown 2015)
What is the difference between shame and guilt?
Guilt is “I did something bad” (action based)
Shame is “I am bad” (Identity based)
What have you seen happen when people feel shame? Do they tend to reach out or isolate?
Prompt for:
Shame often isolates people.
What effect do you think shame has on accountability?
Prompt for:
It has an opposite effect. The more shame someone has the less willing they are to take ownership for the behaviors or make amends.
Add the following items to your diagram on the board.
Vulnerability is the antidote to shame. Being willing to be seen, even in failure and mistakes, helps us realize that we are still worthy of connection, even if we did not succeed in our goal.
How do you feel about vulnerability showing up in the workplace?
Possible Answers:
It makes me uncomfortable
It makes me a little nervous
I understand how being vulnerable can help the co-op
Affirm participants’ answers and remind them that this range of emotions is normal.
There is assumption in most ordinary organizations, that personal life and work life must remain completely separate. The ordinary organization reinforces the belief that imperfection, vulnerability, and shame must stay far away from the workplace.
In a worker-owned co-op, both the personal and the professional are valued. Experiences in the business can provide an opportunity for growth and development for the business as well as the people who make it up.
When you share or act in a vulnerable way, how would you want your colleagues to respond?
Possible Answers:
Say I trust you
Say thank you
Ask what support I need
Bridgewater Financial is the world’s best performing hedge fund. They are also known for their deliberately developmental culture. The CEO, Ray Dalio, asks his employees “Do you worry about how good you are -- or about how fast you are learning?”
What do you think of this quote? What are the advantages of focusing on how fast workers are learning?
Possible Answers:
Overcome business dilemmas easier
Work through perceived personal limitations that may be affecting your work
Turn mistakes in future profits
Find out the root causes of problems
Any disadvantages?
How have you been able to learn quickly in your co-op?
There is one last definition to introduce:
Integrity: Choosing courage over comfort. Choosing what is right over what’s fast, fun, or easy. (Brown 2015).
Where do you see the integrity fitting into this system map?
Possible Answers:
Integrity is the result of practicing accountability, vulnerability, and trust
The more one flows with the reinforcing loop, the more integrous their behaviors
Individual Writing Reflection
Take a moment to reflect on your own level of integrity at work. Where would you like to be more courageous? What is one fast, fun, or easy habit you might need to let go of?
Conclusion
Popcorn share outs from the writing exercise and capture any important takeaways on chart paper.
References/Facilitator Resources
Brown, B. (2015). Rising strong. New York: Spiegel & Grau.
Kegan, R., Lahey, L. L., Miller, M. L., Fleming, A., & Helsing, D. (2016). An everyone culture: Becoming a deliberately developmental organization. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.
Williamson, M. (2012). A return to love: reflections on the principles of A course in miracles. New York: HarperPerennial.