You are complicit in the patterns you enact in relationship with others.

Here's what unhelpful patterns might look like

THEY: are disrespectful in conversation in meetings

YOU: say nothing, quietly accumulating stress until you vent to someone you trust

...or...

THEY: ask you to pick up the pieces of someones else's mess

YOU: say yes; you want to please

And each time the pattern plays out it is reinforced.

Patterns Repeat

With every repeated response you train your co-creators in the system that their contribution is acceptable.

Think of a child's mobile hanging above the cot - it is a system of connected parts that exhibits homeostasis. It has innate steady state.

Want to change the system? Easy, poke it.

It doesn't matter where.

Create an external force and watch change ripple, with diminishing energy, throughout the entire system. Run an experiment by showing up differently, responding differently, and watch the impact that has on the system.

You will learn something.

Be your own external force

Experiment with changing your programmed response.

It's doesn't matter too much how. Respond differently.

THEY: are disrespectful in conversation in meetings

YOU: Call them in, in private after the meeting.

...or...

THEY: ask you to pick up the pieces of someones else's mess

YOU: say no, not this time. It doesn't scale. This capability needs to be grown.

Systems

You are both agents within a system, operating under the constraints and rules of the system. Your experience of people in the system will be different outside of the system.

Make it about behaviours, not people- because behaviours can be changed. This keeps it from being personal. You don't have to make people be wrong.

It's about how you are in relationship with the other person, in the context of the system.

TL;DR;

• You get to induce change and disrupt the unhelpful patterns you co-create

• Making it about behaviours, in the context of the system, create space for change.

• You get to figure out what 'safe' looks like - where and when, and what support or permission you need, to 'poke' the system.