I recently sat down with long time friend, psychologist, adventurer, and long-time student, Dr Jean Cooper, to chat about the unseen forces that influence people, teams, and organisations.
Jean’s work is rooted in the pioneering legacy of the Tavistock Institute, where he learned to turn the magnifying glass inward, using himself as an instrument to detect, contain, and work with the often-unbearable dynamics playing out below the surface. He believes that only by acknowledging our own blind spots can we begin to tune into what’s really happening in the room.
It’s a conversation about what meetings reveal, what we’re really defending against, and how we might begin to engage more honestly, with our work, and with each other.
Reflections
My initial invitation to Jean, to do my first interview podcast, was in response to a comment Jean made on an article I had written about too many meetings.
“Thanks Barrie! A very valuable and pragmatic approach to the problem of too many meetings!! I think that meetings are often a collective social defence mechanism against the anxiety created by the project: if we are all here together in the same room, we may provide ourselves with some comfort that we are not as isolated as we feel. The problem is that anxiety goes up after wasted meeting-time, because now everyone is behind schedule. So then we feel the urge to meet again to defend against this anxiety, and so the cycle continues..”
While I know Jean well, I was intimidated by his thoughts and observations, and had to do a lottle studying on his approach and where he was coming from, in order to prep for the conversation. Never-the-less it was a great conversation, and I left seeing meetings differently forever.
As you’ll hear when you listen, there’s far more going on in a meeting than what’s on the agenda. Once you bravely move below the water-line of a meeting, there are all sorts of interesting and useful-to-identify dynamics at play.
If you’ve got the 43 minutes required, I suspect you’ll not only want to learn more, you may even give Jean a call and get him in for a chat.
If you’d like to learn more about Jean, or grab his contact details, tap here.
The Meeting is Dead, Long Live the Meeting
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