Unlocking Workplace Harmony with Bowen Systems Theory featuring Kendall Wallace (Ep. #102)

Wendy:

Welcome to Building Better Managers. I am your host, Wendy Hansen, and I am delighted to have you with me today to learn from some wonderful guests who are going to share their information and their brilliance and their experiences around management and leadership and building great teams in organizations. I am also the co-founder of New Level Work, so check us out, newlevelwork.com. Thanks for tuning in.

Greetings everyone. I hope you're enjoying the beginning of summer. For some of you at different times in the world, it looks a little bit different, but I hope it means slowing down the action a bit wherever you are. We need to have a little reprieve once in a while. On Building Better Managers, we want to share insights and perspectives that you can percolate and see how it fits into your life and the life of your organization. And first, have you gone on to the newlevelwork.com website? We have a coach bot, which is complimentary, and if you have a coaching question, you can go on there and ask that question. And it's the accumulation of knowledge from our library and from our coaches. If you look under resources, you'll find it there. And I think it's a wonderful tool that you can go on and look at as we develop more AI related tools at New Level Work for the future.

And one thing we do at New Level Work is we use a concept, a metaphor called the dance floor and the balcony. On the floor, all the work is happening. You can't always see if you're a manager and you're down there and you're doing the work and you're next to people, you can't see what's happening on the other side. But you can go up to the balcony and think strategically and have more time for reflection. And also bring a member of your team up there with you to look down and see, what can we do here? How can we strategize? So we have a very interesting guest today who's going to talk to us about Bowen Systems Theory and how it applies to the workplace. So let me tell you a little bit about my guest today, Kendall Wallace. Kendall Wallace is a master at creating meaningful experiences that make you feel more alive, connected with yourself, nature, and with one another.

She creates movie-like magical moments, not only on screen, but in real life. After reading, Eat, Pray, Love, she traveled the world by herself for two years. I love that story, Kendall. For the past decade, she has thrown herself into personal growth. She created a thriving career in tech at Meta before it abruptly came to an end. Now she designs bucket list corporate offsite that not only create magical experiences, but also create safety and honesty in the workplace. Having helped over a thousand people, across 75 groups in improving communication, uncovering blind spots, minimizing recovery time between breakdowns, defining work-life balance, and making decisions more in alignment with what moves them in order to become more highly effective communicators and happier people. And gosh, that's what we need at work. We need people that are happier because then they will be more productive. In addition, she's an EFT practitioner and uses this in her coaching, helping people psychologically reprogram their subconscious. She now lives on the North Shore of Oahu.

Kendall:

Oahu.

Wendy:

Oahu, thank you. Having been inspired to improve her surf skills and live Blue Crush dreams. So it's interesting to go from what her experience has been and what she has done to really looking at Bowen's Theory today. So welcome Kendall. Happy to have you on the show.

Kendall:

Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here, Wendy.

Wendy:

So tell us, how does a theory from a psychologist in the sixties translate to how people work together today? Please explain for many people that might not be familiar with Bowen's theory, I was not. And tell us how then you integrate it into how we look at work and relationships.

Kendall:

Absolutely. So Murray Bowen in the 60s came up with basically the Bowen Theory. And what it talks about is that your family of origin, aka, the family you grew up in basically has certain characteristics that form who you are. And those characteristics get translated into the family you create as well as into your work family. And I know some people are touchy with that term, but the point is that you spend so much time with people you work with, that inevitably there is a system, a family system if you will, but there is a system at play that really impacts how you behave. And I'll actually tell you... I'll back up a second and actually tell you I got into this in the first place because I think it helps lend a little bit of credibility to my background. And you mentioned in my background, having worked in big tech before it abruptly came to an end.

Well, the truth around that is that I was fired for not being a good teammate. And what's interesting about that experience... I bring that up because it's interesting because once that happened, I took a good hard look in the mirror and I noticed something. I noticed that there were things at play in my behavior that I was playing out in the workplace that were from an earlier part of my life. And what I mean by that is there was this pattern of not getting along with very strong women. And it came from a place of, okay, there was a strong woman that wanted my research to just support her path and the vision she had set out. And it really made me feel not heard, seen or valued. And what I saw from that is I was really playing out. I was projecting on her my own mother, who had made me feel not seen, heard and valued in certain circumstances where it was her way or the highway.

And I love my mother, but to see this play out where that kind of rejection of making me feel so small made me not be good at collaborating. To see that play out in real time made me be like, "Oh wow, there's something here at play." And what's interesting is secondarily what I saw was once I started reading articles about Bowen Theory... there's this amazing Harvard Business Review article called Ghost in the Executive Suite. And it really started to open my mind, oh wait, here are these list of other executives that are playing out their own kind of past in the workplace. And I was like, "Okay, this isn't just me." And in that article it talked about Bowen Theory. And so then I have been a student at the Bowen Center for Family for the past two years, really deep diving into how this plays out. And specifically it plays out in a number of different ways.

The other thing that I saw based on my experience was where there was a conflict between me and someone else, and the manager themselves in that scenario interjected and basically became a part of the conflict and took sides. And I think that what's super interesting around that is Bowen talks about the concept of triangles, and he talks about how triangles inevitably happen, but especially from a managerial or coach perspective, the ideal route is to not get involved, but rather coach the two people to sort it out themselves or create the opportunity for group discussion around it. And so it's just fascinating. The more I've doven into the different concepts, the more I do see it play out because in the end, we are just a system at play.

Wendy:

Yes, thank you for your authenticity of sharing your story. I think that's really helpful because I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that. And the fact that you were told you weren't a team player and then you went back and you've tried to figure out why this was happening and why you were doing... it must have felt familiar, right? What got you thinking about this?

Kendall:

Yeah, absolutely right. I mean, it's really trying to understand. Let's be real, if something like that happens in your livelihood is, well, for lack of a better explanation, taken away for the way you behave, I mean, you better become self-aware so you don't repeat the pattern or what are we doing? And I think what's super fascinating is sure, the result can be a firing, but in a lot of cases what happens is people switch teams, there's conflict, they don't want to iron it out, they don't want to talk about it. And that really relates to the concept that Bowen talks about of emotional distance, that whenever there's tension in a relationship, basically it creates emotional distance and then potentially emotional cutoff, which is just really cutting the person off being like, "Ugh, they just don't listen to me. They just don't understand." Which I think is probably a related sentiment that all of us have felt at one point or another.

And what's very fascinating too is there's this other aspect. Within the Bowen Theory, there's actually eight different concepts. And another one that I think is very, very much plays out in the workplace is your sibling position. So here's another story I'll use just myself as an example. In wanting to feel seen, heard and valued, in wanting to feel good about the work I'm doing, I used to have this kind of look at me like, "Hey, hey, what I'm saying is a value here, why aren't you listening?" A little bit of that. And it's fascinating because I'm the youngest. How often do you think that played out in a family system where it's like, "Hey, hey, don't forget about me. I have something value to offer here." And I think what's very important is when we comport ourselves... These things are at play whether we like it or not.

And what Bowen Theory allows us to do is begin to create self-awareness, begin to have these gut check moments of like, "Okay, so how is my sibling position actually impacting me and how I'm operating on this team?" And what's interesting as myself as someone who does offsites, I think not everybody wants to share that, raise their hand and share that immediately. But what can be of a lot of value is as a group, as a team during an offsite creating an exercise for a journaling exercise around this, where everybody just takes a moment to actually evaluate it and create some self-awareness for themselves. And then sure, if anybody wants to popcorn share and put up their hand and share, great, that adds value. But it's not necessary. And it's really important, I believe personally because I experienced it, but it's super important, especially if you're in a leadership role, especially if you're a manager, to have these gut check moments to create self-awareness for yourself based on your family of origin and how it might be playing out today.

Wendy:

Very interesting. And for those that are listening, managers and leaders, and they're hearing this, and a lot of people probably are familiar with generally family systems work and how that works. [inaudible 00:14:01], a lot of people have gone through [inaudible 00:14:02]. It's a lot about systems and looking at how a system works together. But if I'm listening to this as a manager and maybe I'm the middle child in a family, what kind of reflection should I be doing to see if that is playing out in any of my relationships? Whether wherever I am in the lineup of the family, please give us a little bit more on that of what people can do to be introspective. They're not at an offsite, they're by themselves, but they're listening to this now and they want to sit down and make sure that they're not getting set up for something that's not going to be successful.

Kendall:

Well, one of the first things that Bowen has us do honestly, is look at your family diagram, which looks like a family tree and begin to understand this concept of triangles. A triangle is basically you have your essential triangle that's you and your parents, but then whenever there's two other people in the family... basically in my family that I grew up in, family of five, there's nine, there's nine different triangles, all these relationships. So I think beginning to look at that and seeing the patterns. I think what's super fascinating and what Bowen talks about, and this part blew my mind, is that if you go back as many generations as you can that you have knowledge of, and I went back for, and I don't know anything before that, but there is a predictability to how people operate. And what's fascinating is the people who study with Bowen while he was alive, they could predict basically who would be the under-performer versus over-performer in the family system with something like 70% accuracy from just seeing the family tree.

And what's very fascinating around that is Bowen studied schizophrenia, that's what he studied, to initially come up with this concept. And in studying schizophrenia, he basically saw where parents put a lot of emphasis on this child that was beginning to present symptoms. And the more emphasis they put on, the worse the symptoms became. And what's really fascinating there too, I think there's a lesson almost in under-performance, over-performance. Let's see what we can borrow, I think, which isn't a far stretch, but the more emphasis we place on this under-performer on the team, they're problematic, they're problematic. It doesn't acknowledge how the over-performers or how the system itself may be contributing to that under-performance. So I think that's also an interesting thing to see is when looking at someone's family diagram, you may see, okay, here's a crazy cousin who didn't quite perform at a normal level. And he goes in and talks about that as almost like jail being drug addicts, that type of characteristics.

But if you look at the system, how is how they were treated or how is the parental experience contributing to that? Perhaps there was too much emphasis that just kept it going, which I think is... it's a very fascinating aspect to really just begin to question. I'm not saying every under-performer is... sure there's going to be some challenges for that, but I think the best question we can ask ourselves is how is the system contributing to that and how can we alter the system and maybe alter also the behavior of the over-performer that's compensating for the under-performer to actually create a more balanced system?

Wendy:

Interesting concept of how a manager would stand back and do this. In a family, you can call a thing a thing a little bit more. You're the youngest, you're the oldest, and people will know that, but I don't think you use that kind language when you're at work. And do you have that information as a manager or are people being... they're thinking about this themselves, but how does a manager use this information to be able to be better at working with their team?

Kendall:

I think first of all... well, three things actually. First of all, just really important for the manager to be aware of this at play so that when they see behavioral challenges in any of their reports, they can ask themselves, "Okay, what's going on for this person?" Or, "What in their upbringing may be contributing to this way that they're navigating conflict or this way that they're engaging as a team member?" That's number one. I think number two is when you're a manager trying to navigate potential conflict or resolve an issue challenge between two people. I think that what I've learned about group dynamics as I've gone full force into this area is these one-on-one conversations is he said, just perpetuates, he said, she said, versus getting everybody in a room together and actually being like, "What is playing out here?" Actually maybe even having an honest conversation of like, "What is this conflict with so-and-so? What is that actually bringing up for you?" Maybe creating that journaling exercise and then actually bringing the parties together for that discussion because we want to reach a place of resolution. We want to reach a place...

The one-off conversations just seem to perpetuate a lot of the, he said, she said, and also create a situation where the manager is more on the inside of the triangle as opposed to the outside where a coach should be.

Wendy:

And how do you see... It sounds to me that this leans a little bit more into therapy than coaching. So what's your response to that? Because I always look at therapy, if I have to explain it to somebody, very simply is in therapy you're looking back, what caused you to be how you are? What were some of the factors that came out there? And in coaching, we look at where someone is and we look at where do you want to go? And it's not as important of where were you before? How did it get to this place? So tell me a little bit about how that integrates when you use that as a coach.

Kendall:

I think you're right. I mean, if you have to pick a lane, this is more in the psychology therapy area than coaching because we are looking at the past. However, what I've noticed as a coach and as someone who's been coached is that we have these subconscious beliefs that we need to get ahold of and understand and bring into self-awareness in order to not have them play out to the degree that they are. So I personally believe that as a manager, asking a question of like, "How did you come up with how you manage conflict in the workplace?" And then looking back to those earlier experiences is actually part of it. It's part of it. It's just to acknowledge what is, and then you can create from there, even in my EFT practice and really helping people.

Wendy:

Explain EFT just briefly to people that might not know what it is.

Kendall:

Sure. EFT stands for emotional freedom technique and it's... many know it as tapping. And so tapping is where we explore a challenge or something that has a lot of emotional weight. Basically we store our emotions in our body, and many people know this, this can lead dis-ease, disease, but it's important to emotionally process. This is what creates those fight or flight moments. Sometimes when we're in meetings or when we lose our... can't talk, there's different bodily reaction somatically that we can't ignore. And so what happens is in an EFT session is we really tap through how the words relate to the sensations in our body. And so we emotionally process those emotions and clear them out so that they're not ruling us. So what's important though in those moments is yes, there may be these challenges that occurred in the past couple of years, but more than likely they date back to early experiences.

And it's funny because I definitely resisted for so long, "Oh, this doesn't all relate to childhood. Come on, come on." But a large degree of how we do comport ourselves does. I mean, I just led an offsite about a month ago with a manager, I would say in his mid-50s, very experienced, great leader. And one of the challenges though that I noticed was he had a really hard time keeping his team accountable, saying the hard thing, actually communicating honestly, that doesn't work for one person's behavior that was actually impacting the whole group. Now, where do you think that came from? His resistance to doing that, you think that type of avoidance of conflict doesn't come from nowhere. We're not born with that. It's something that is a, okay, this is a way of navigating conflict, the avoidance of it or the skirting around the issue that dates back to people we live with.

Wendy:

So true. Well, this is an interesting perspective and I think for people to think about this personally of how it might impact them, and they can check out the Bowen Theory so they learn a little bit more. And we have about five, six minutes left. And let's switch gears to something more fun, because what you do is a lot of fun and you do it in Hawaii, and you were talking about what the Hawaiian can teach corporate America. So why don't we start there? Tell me a little bit about that.

Kendall:

Sure thing. And just to transition too with... I mean, I'm passionate about teams really having the healthiest relationships possible because we spend so much time with people we work with, we might as well have the best relationships possible. And so we do that by cleaning up communication or evaluating the team dynamics that are not serving us as well as creating deep and meaningful connection. And so that's my shtick in life, is to create these experiences. And yes, I do them in Hawaii as well as elsewhere. To answer your question, what Hawaiian culture can really offer is, well, a few things. First of all, we have this expression here. I'm sure you know of aloha. Yes, love, but it's aloha [foreign language 00:27:49]. So aloha [foreign language 00:27:51] is love of the land. Aloha [foreign language 00:27:54] is love of universe or God. And aloha [foreign language 00:27:58] is aloha of your brethren.

And there's two things that I think are really important as it relates to corporate America. Number one is aloha [foreign language 00:28:11] is a love of the land. It's a love of that witch provides for you, that which enables you to live. And in corporate America, the paycheck is allowing you to live. So it's really creating-

Wendy:

And the company is allowing you to live, so that-

Kendall:

That's what I mean, exactly right. That's exactly right. So it's making sure that with integrity, that it's creating aloha spirit in that organization. It's really having a respect for that which provides for you, and that also can be translated to aloha [foreign language 00:28:56], aloha to your brethren, to the people you work with. In Hawaiian culture, there's the breath of aloha where you put your noses together much like the Maoris have in New Zealand, and you inhale and take a breath and exhale. And you can't do that with someone you're in conflict with. You actually can't. You need to clean up the conflict before you can do that. And I think that's such a lesson. How often do we walk on eggshells or try to pretend nothing's bothering us and have two people pretending as opposed to just being honest, authentic, cleaning it up, clean up muck so that we can actually truly feel connected and truly enjoy where we work. It's vital. Otherwise, again, what are we doing?

We're here on this planet I think in a lot of ways to create meaningful experiences and to have a good time. So why make ourselves miserable when there's the opportunity to create more alignment, more connectedness and more aloha?

Wendy:

And I love the aloha of the company because I think we lose track of that. We think of alohas, I do, thinking taking care of the earth and everything that when we're doing that, but we need to take care of the companies we work for and respect them because they're the ones, as you say, that are giving us that paycheck and our brethren, the people that we work with. So I think it's a wonderful concept that we can take in and think, make sure that we're doing this a little bit more. And I know one of the ways that you reach through on all this is by doing offsites because we know that when people can be together physically and be involved in some fun activities, it really brings folks together. And we've had to do a lot of that virtually lately in the past few years. But for those that can do that very, very briefly, give us an idea of what's a highlight activity that you would do in a retreat? So we can get a little bit of an idea of what that looks like.

Kendall:

Sure. And just so you know, my offsites are two days typically, and right now I have a bonus where it's actually an additional day specifically for people in conflict because once they do activities like ice baths together as well as some honest conversations, it can be pretty powerful. Not everything requires an ice bath though, but that is definitely out of the box. And I also do virtual offsites, but to give you an example, a crowd pleasing activity in a lot of what I do is I work with a lot of product teams and with tech companies and specifically there's an activity called orienteering. The idea too, by the way, is to get outside as much as possible because it's really important to be able to have the natural serotonin from sunlight be able to create a very memorable experience. And teams will basically get clues, almost like a scavenger hunt. And what's been very fascinating too is to pit certain teams against each other inadvertently, where the mission is actually to really create harmony and for everybody to finish.

But inadvertently, some teams start competing as they do naturally in organizations when they're naturally competing for resources. And so what's really fun then is to compliment this really enjoyable scavenger hunt with a really rich debrief too, on how the team is operating. And that's been a real winner, not only for the fun of the activity, but the richness of the debrief. And on top of that, there's different activities. I don't want to spoil too much, but it can involve, not necessarily trust falls, but there is one activity that's with a blindfold. Talking about communication and creating trust. All these things are, I'm like... the way I think about designing and structuring everything is number one, looking at the challenge the team is having. And number two, how to keep it fresh. I think a lot of distributed teams struggle with the fact that a lot of these offsites seem kind of stale or it's kind of repetitive or it's like an escape room and then people leave with, "That was fun, but how does that further us as a team?" And so each of the-

Wendy:

All in the debrief.

Kendall:

It's all in the debrief, and it's all in really structuring too, the experience for awe like, "Okay, if we're going to have a fun experience, let's actually make it fun. Not some checkbox that people check that be like, 'Yep, we did a fun activity.' No, we're going to make it like, 'Oh, this is so fun.' And by the way, you forgot that you were with your teammates." And one of the ways I've done that is sunrise hikes here in Hawaii having surf lessons, and then people will see turtle pops up next to you. It's about creating magic.

Wendy:

Lots of things to be able to debrief after to learn from, and then hopefully take all those lessons back to your workplace to say, "Boy, when we were on the scavenger hunt out in the woods looking for things, what did we notice about each other that we could use at work?" So thank you. It's great food for thought.

Kendall:

Thank you.

Wendy:

And I'd love you to share, if people want to get more information about this, Kendall, what's the best way for them to find it?

Kendall:

It's to DM me on my Instagram, Kendall Wallace 123. And actually, if any of you are interested in how to keep your offsites fresh, I am giving out my playbook. So just DM me that you want offsite playbook, the word offsite playbook, and Wendy, and then I will make sure to DM you that back and be able to provide that. And that's a whole list of all my exercises, how I structure the entire offsite, how to keep costs low, how to really create connection, the whole thing. So happy to give that to your listeners.

Wendy:

Can they also find you on LinkedIn?

Kendall:

You can, yes. You can absolutely DM me there as well.

Wendy:

Good, good. That seems to be where most of our people that are listening to the podcast and where this will be out there will be on LinkedIn, so.

Kendall:

All right., sounds good.

Wendy:

Well, thank you, Kendall. This has been really enlightening to hear about Bowen Theory and family systems and how it relates to work, and then how we can go out and have some playtime and be able to look at the lessons from that and bring that back to work, because I know that's really where the juice is in a lot of things that we do. So thank you for being with us today. Thank you all for listening. I think there's so much we have to learn and we need to always be coming from a different perspective because if we get stuck in thinking the same way all the time, we're just going to come up with the same results. And sometimes we don't want that. We need to change things up because the only thing we know that's constant in this world right now is change.

So thank you for tuning into Building Better Managers. Please go on to newlevelwork.com and see what you can find there. We have some very interesting things for you to see and our programs so that you can really build your manager and leadership skills and really raise the level of productivity in your company and also happiness and people working together. So thank you all for being with us today. Have a wonderful day. Thank you for joining us today. For more information show notes and any downloads from today's podcast, please visit newlevelwork.com. We would also be so appreciative if you'd write a review, go on to newlevelwork.com/review and you can write a review on your favorite podcast app. It makes a big difference because we want to really grow managers and leaders around the world, and we need your help. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.

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