I’m a man on a mission, and I want your help. Over the past 5 years, I’ve been testing and refining a process that grew out of research I did for my dissertation on the emotional dynamics in groups and I think the time has come to spread the word.

For the last 10 years, I’ve been obsessed with finding reliable ways to convert all the energy wasted in fear, confusion, doubt, and conflict into actual forward progress on important goals.

I see it time and again: groups that get excited about a potential project that could transform their work only to see it lost in the urgent-unimportant firefighting of day-to-day work; individuals that kill a great idea with a thousand little doubts that keep them from even taking the first step; teams of people who care deeply about the work they are doing, but that trod along, living with petty conflicts and tensions rather than connecting at the level of meaning that really energizes their work.

Of course, I’m not the only one who has noticed this. There are armies of coaches and facilitators out there, all deeply committed to helping teams and individuals reach their full potential. But here’s the dirty little secret: most of us are struggling to figure it out, too. There are a lot of people doing really good work – but not realizing the level of success they know is possible.

Most of us make a huge mistake: we only look at the surface – looking for “best practices” or the latest management fad to fix all our problems.

I decided to take a radically different approach, one based on American Pragmatism and a practical approach to the scientific method. In short, the strategy is Aim > Act > Reflect > Repeat – building a learning process into the process itself. I read everything I could on culture change, organizational development, facilitation, strategic planning, etc. and combined it with reflections on the literally hundreds of groups and individuals I’ve worked with over the years. I kept looking for the consistent themes and the deep patterns to really understand what was going on.

The first thing I noticed was that there was a whole dimension to the experience of work that was almost completely absent from most of the debate; what I will call the energy dynamics of work. It struck me that the most common reason most plans failed was because there simply wasn’t the energy (not staff or money – but energy) available to tackle the tasks that needed to get done. Sometimes the energy was frittered away in unimportant “busywork.” Sometimes it was redirected into petty squabbles and conflicts. And often the overwhelming fears or doubts around the work transfixed people in place, like deer caught in the headlights.

This led to me to the First Law of Emotional Dynamics. Just like the First Law of Thermal Dynamics, in a closed system emotional energy cannot be created or destroyed – only transformed. Emotional energy can either come out as productive work moving you towards important goals OR it gets redirected into fear/self-doubt, conflict, or obsessive-compulsive behaviour. In other words, there is the same amount of raw potential in the group and the energy is going to get spent one way or another, the only question is how.

So my team began to put together a system from the ground up that was based on the First Law of Emotional Dynamics, attempting to understand not just ‘what’ to do, but when, why, and how to do it to be successful. The system incorporates many features that will be familiar to anyone who has worked with a coach or facilitator – learning from actual experience, looking forward to what is possible, creating a concrete action plan, and using accountability systems to keep you honest – but we put these pieces together in a comprehensive, integrated system based on a grounded understanding of what it really takes to keep moving forward.

So, now I’m a man on a mission. I want to spread the word far and wide. I’m going on tour around the US (to start), looking for opportunities to demonstrate how the process works – either in a short, interactive workshops (that we call “Finding the Sweet Spot”) or, for those willing to dive in, the whole 3 month process that starts with a one-day Jump Start workshop.

If you live in the following areas – or know someone who does – and would like to host a presentation or have a group of people interested in using the system, click here to let me know.

• Upper Midwest (Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison)
• Pacific Northwest (Seattle)
• Mid-Atlantic (Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia)
• Southern California (Los Angeles)

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