Role Nausea, or How to Not Get Sucked Under
Last month, I wrote about systems, emergence, and specifically, what comes up in a system when cleaning your parents’ house. (Answer: shocking amounts of…everything. ) But the end is in sight! While it has been a traumatic summer on the clearing-out front, I’m starting to see floor space and shelves and categorical groupings. I’m starting to not dread opening the front door of the house. This is hard-won progress, but progress I’m happy to see.
A woman stands next to a large gorilla
Erin with Her Summer Gorilla, which Is Much Worse than a Monkey
I can hear some of you asking, “Erin, was this your monkey?” That is an excellent point, one I’ve returned to often. While cleaning this house out is not my gorilla (and it has been a gorilla, not simply a monkey), I did pick it up. My philosophy is this: I either clean it out now or I clean it out in the midst of grief. Having watched others try to do this same balancing act, I opted for doing this now. First, I could get some help from my parents, especially in having them tell me what they wanted to do with certain items (that slide collection, the old texts, and so on). Secondly, and yes, this is a bit awful, but I wanted my parents to see just how bad they’d let things get. I wanted them to see that I would just handle this required more time, effort, and sweat equity than they imagined.
To tie this back to coaching, my summer gorilla leads leads me to what I have pondered for the last month: relationships, roles, and what to do when tired of and overwhelmed by a role. So, this month, this almost August, I’m writing to work through these questions:
What are the roles in my system?
How am I playing into these systemic roles?
How do I step out of one role and into another?
ROLES
Returning to Organization, Relationship, and System Coaching (ORSC) principles, we arrive here:
Relationship systems rely on roles for their organization and execution of functions. Roles belong to the system, not to the individuals that inhabit the system.
As I consider my summer of rage cleaning, I’m reminded that our families are our first systems. Personally, I have a “typical” American family: a mother, a father, myself, and my younger brother. I am both the eldest child and only daughter, meaning that my brother is the youngest as well as the only son. Both birth order and gender play into the family roles we occupy, both then and now.
As I near 50, my role in my family is shifting. I’m hyperconscious that my parents are aging, and I try to think about what and when help might look like for them. This wasn’t always my role. When I was younger, I was more drama and trauma, less steady and considerate. I abandoned a biochemistry major to study English literature and then join the Peace Corps. My brother, on the other hand, stuck with that science major and went on to become an equine veterinarian, just like our father. He has his own equine veterinary practice now, though he will look at one of my dogs when I ask (and bring Chinese food). Of their children, I doubt that either parent ever thought that I’d have stepped in to manage the family veterinary practice for a bit or now spend summers up north. That wasn’t an option they ever saw happening.
Just as families do, organizations and teams have roles, too. Leader. Fixer. Communicator. Follower. Questioner. Avoider. Philosophizer. When someone joins the organization or team, the system shifts slightly. People may retain the roles they had occupied, adding or shedding new aspects of new or vacated roles, they might step into new roles altogether, or they might exit the team. Systems, be they familial or organizational, are not static.
As I write this post, working through what is coming up in me as well as my system, I realize that even here, I’m dancing in and out of different roles. Sometimes I’m the participant, then I electric slide into coaching, then quickstep through teaching on my way back to writing about my role in my family system. I acknowledge this, knowing that it may complicate the issues, but I’ll make every attempt to be clear.
ROLE NAUSEA AND ROLE UNDERTOW
A nauseated woman; she is sick from the role she is playing in a system
Erin, with Role Nausea
Have you ever gone to a state fair or carnival and had a funnel cake only to spend the rest of the afternoon feeling queasy and awful? That feeling is nausea. As humans, we can have role nausea, a feeling of unease and discomfort when we’ve played a particular role for too long.
I recognize myself in this description of role nausea. From my perspective, my role in my family system has been that of responsible, caretaker, and doer of awful chores. I don’t know what my brother feels that his role might be, meaning that this is likely a question I should ask him. Role nausea happens when we spend too much time in assumptions and expectations, never leaning in to discover what else might be there. For all I know, he might be tired of his role in our family system, too.
Role undertow is what happens when you’re afraid of being sucked under. I recognize myself here, too, mainly in all of the sturm und drang that the summer of rage cleaning has created. Cleaning a house out for two months has left me overwhelmed, like I am nothing but the person trying to get this gorilla caged. If I were to continue this work for much longer, it could consume me.
Woman experiencing role undertow from all of the things her system is pushing on her. The woman is supported by a life ring.
Role Undertow
TOOLS
Let’s go back to the ORSC principle with which we started: Relationship systems rely on roles for their organization and execution of functions. When you’re working with systems, teams, organizations, or even individuals, a way forward is to empower team members to share the load and lean into the system for solutions.In other words, coach the members to ask the system for help! There is no need for them to feel pressured to have all of the answers and to try and do this on your own. Invite them to step into the African proverb of “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.”
One of my incredibly wise clients once said this: “As individuals or as people playing roles within a system, we cannot fail forward unless we first have safety.” I’ve listed several tools in this section, all of which I have used with organizations and teams as they work to fail forward. Even better, I’m using them in my own system.
TRANSFORMATIONAL QUESTIONS
Personally, I always start with questions. They are the foundation of so much of my work. But in this instance, I need to take a hard look at myself, my behavior, and how I have contributed to my role in my family system. So while I generally ask others questions, this time, I’m asking them of myself. Here are some examples:
What do I get out of playing this role?
How do I want to feel about being in this position?
What is the intent behind my words or actions?
What do I want to be different?
What am I curious about trying? What am I willing to do?
What assumptions or expectations exist for this role? How do they align with my thinking?
How do I want to be in this moment?
What is a different way of looking at this system? At my role? (This new stance or new way of looking at situations is the exact reason I chose Linda Nickell’s photo of the back of a sunflower for this month’s post.)
While these are excellent questions for me, do you also see how deep, transformational questions could be of service to an organization and its people? It is not often that people take time for questions such as these, particularly with regards to their role. By doing so, new avenues of reflection, action, and even accountability begin to open up.
ALLIANCES, NOW MORE THAN EVER
It should come as no surprise that coaches have coaches. (And if we do not, we most definitely should. This falls under the category of “drink our own champagne,” but more than that, we need coaching, too. We can only be of service to others if we have first been of service to ourselves.) This year, particularly this summer, alliances have come up time and again. I’ve built alliances with new organizations and new clients, and I’ve asked other coaches the question, “What
Designing an alliance is something good coaches do at the beginning of any engagement. Alliances lay good foundations, provide guidance about what is and is not acceptable, and bring forth how a team sees itself. Alliances, however, are not “set it and forget it,” to quote Ron Popeil. They are not to be created and then abandoned. Good alliances, much like the roles within a system, expand and shift along with the people in that system. Here are some questions I use to start the process:
What does this system need in order to thrive?
How do we want to be when things are difficult?
What does “the best of us” look like for this organization or pair?
As I said earlier, I’ve had countless conversations this summer with individual clients and systems about the need for a good alliance, and not once did anyone respond with, “Oh, but we tried that.” Strong, functional alliances require regular maintenance. Check in on them and provide tune-ups as often as necessary.
And yes, once I’m back in Texas, I need to sit down and have a conversation with my brother.
Blank organizational coaching metaskill wheel. There are eight blank wedges.
Blank ORSC MetaSkill Wheel
METASKILLS
Metaskills can be thought of as an attitude, stance, philosophy—that “come from” place in coaching. As organizational coaches, metaskills are a tool that we use most every day. This can be done as simply as asking “What metaskill are you practicing today?”
I’ve included a blank metaskill wheel here, giving an idea of how an organization or team might create its own wheel. They can label the wedges with metaskills that are meaningful to them. Metaskills such as “curiosity” or “listening” are common, but I’ve also seen teams use “Bruno Mars” or “voracious” on wedges with great success. People then select a wedge that is meaningful to them and changes they want to make happen, or the team selects a wedge that they want to practice. Regardless, the work is powerful, and systems thrive as they begin to practice that metaskill.
When working with metaskills, I start by asking myself this question: What do I want to invoke within me so that I can evoke something else in this system? This helps me to stand fully in that moment with the people or organization, committing myself to the spirit of the work. And yes—metaskills can be part of the alliance conversation! (I’ll remember this in future family conversations, too.)
TYING IT ALL TOGETHER
How I do this work informs my future. That work is sometimes as a coach, sometimes as a daughter, as a sister, as a friend, but I must be mindful of my roles in systems. We all must be. To tie my thinking back to the RSI principle of “Systems rely on roles for their organization and execution of function,” I’ve landed here: because my system relies on me in one capacity or another, it is imperative that I stand in responsibility, to lean into the system as an empowered member. Only from there will the system function in a healthy manner, serving its members as well as itself.
GRATITUDE AND CLOSING NOTES
I would not be where I am today on this topic without the support of these people.
Michelle Plasz did some very deep listening on this topic and encouraged me to ask some hard questions of myself. Few are lucky to have friends willing to do that, but she is and I am grateful.
Marita Fridjhon, author of Creating Intelligent Teams and the CEO of CRR Global (the company that created the Organizational, Relationship, and Systems Coaching series), has always been supportive of my writing, generous with her ongoing feedback, and encouragement.
Heather Foster of Star Street Creative created the visuals for this month’s work. (Heather made that fantastic icon of me you see on the accompanying Mural board–it even includes my necklace! And glasses! And she dresses like me!) I’m good with words, but she helps me to think clearly and creatively about what I want to do with my work. She creates visual resonance and helps me to share it with others.
As they are every month, the image used for this blog post was captured by Linda Nickell. Connect with her on Instagram as @coznlinda, or join in on Wednesday evenings for her Happiness Hour. Details, upcoming presentations, and links to past recordings can be found on her site. You can also find her on YouTube.
Lastly, you might remember that I’m trying something new this year: setting themes for each month as I work through various aspects of coaching. These themes will generally include a blog post, facilitation and teaching plans, learning outcomes, practice exercises, a Mural board image, graphics, and questions that I work with while coaching. Some months might be richer than others, but the intent is to produce monthly content that will help other coaches to deepen their own systems’ work. This month, you’ll find a PDF of a Mural board on this concept and some graphics related to this work and to help you work with emergence in a system. To receive access to this material, subscribe to this site.