Katie Churchman (0:05):Hello, and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. From the boardroom to the living room, we believe relationship matters. Hello. I’m your host, Katie Churchman. And in this episode, Marita Fridchon is deep diving into the fourth principle of relationship systems intelligence. Relationship systems are naturally intelligent, generative, and creative. This principle allows us to view any change or disturbance as an ally, while trusting the team entitys resourcefulness to find its own answers. Conflict and chaos are seen as signals and messages by the team entity to co create from, rather than react to something new thats trying to happen. The more RSI a team has, the more collectively intelligent, generative, and creative it can be, paving the way for increased performance. These relationship system qualities remain present regardless of circumstances, circumstances even in disturbance and breakdown, like during a global pandemic. So without further ado, I give you Marita Fritron, talking about relationship systems and how they’re naturally intelligent, generative, and creative.

Katie Churchman (1:21):We’re on our fourth principle of relationship systems, intelligence. Relationship systems are naturally intelligent, generative, and creative.

Marita Fridjhon (1:29):That’s the difficult one, huh?

Katie Churchman (1:31):Why do you say that?

Marita Fridjhon (1:33):Well, because if you look at systems in breakdown and in the moment that people experience it, it doesn’t feel generative, intelligent. It feels sucky.

Katie Churchman (1:44):So how can we lean into this principle more? Because I agree with you, sometimes it definitely doesn’t feel intelligent, generative, or creative.

Marita Fridjhon (1:53):I think that it is one of the most challenging principles. Every time that we used to have it as a cornerstone before we evolved to the principles. And every time we talk about that, when somebody has just lost somebody to Covid, or when somebody has just been laid off because of COVID in those moments when we have our own personal experience of what is happening in our own life system and the systems around us, it’s very difficult to see anything intelligent, generative and creative about it, because in that moment, there is something about the system that we are in that is falling apart. And so there is breakdown. And I think that it is difficult for us because we are in that moment of that now, and from that place, it doesn’t feel like that. And again, its one of those places where its okay to not be okay. When we talking about generative intelligence, we are thinking a little bit more of the bigger picture as well. So if we just look at Covid and its impact in 2020, most of the calls that I’ve been on recently is because it’s going towards year end. It’s sort of a retrospective of what happened in this year. And while Covid was devastating and continues to be devastating. And the livestock intake and what it’s costing us economically and people losing their. I mean, all the breakdown pieces we can see. There also is something else emerging in response to it that we are recreating things from. If you just think about some of the social construct that now is being built via Zoom, it’s not the same as in person, but what we have is a little bit more of a. Of a personal touch. Somebody’s cat jumps on the desk and there’s a moment of, oh, that’s who you are. You’ve got a cat. Even in a corporate call or a kid walks into the room and the mom or dad had to say, go away. But you can actually say, no, introduce your kid to me. Those things would not have happened unless the system on one level had to break down. So it does require from us to take a meta view. It does not force us to not feel that in that moment in time, it is terrible. We hate it and forget about generative, creative and whole. So again, it’s at both end. But if we begin to look at that meta view in terms of what is happening around climate change, if we look at what’s happening in communities globally and how they leverage and cooperate, what they discover, so there’s something there that our task then is to how do we continue to build from that which has been created or we were forced to create from. So that was a lot, but this is the most complex one, I think, for all of us to work with.

Katie Churchman (5:17):Yeah, it really is, actually, because, as you say, we’ve been forced to adapt this year. And it was a lot of pressure, it was a lot of stress. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t struggled in some way this year. And we found new ways of working. I mean, whole companies have virtualized their businesses. And sometimes we are at our most creative when we’re pushed to an edge. I think someone was telling me that the most amazing music comes out of challenging times, whereas when life is easy, you don’t get good music.

Marita Fridjhon (5:48):Yeah. It’s so interesting because, you know, the other thing that you just talked about, how the workplace changed completely in that everybody now in such vast majority of countries are working from home. And you and I recently just. I shared with you. What I’ll share now as well, is that in the latest Deloitte research, where they every year do research amongst something like 360 plus companies globally, and they interview leadership about the challenges that they experienced that year in their corporations. And this year, 73 percent of all managers and leaders agreed that the single biggest challenge that they faced was the loss of a sense of belonging of their employees. 93percent. It was the single biggest agreement on a challenge that Deloitte came up with, I think, ever. 93 percent agree that the single biggest challenge for 2021 is how to create a sense of belonging within corporations. So if we unpackage that a little bit, I think one of the things that I can see there that’s good is that we talk about relationship matters, and part of what happens is that in the corporate world, there’s a lot actually. There is more social construct than we realize. There is not only the team that you’re working with, but there is somebody that you see in the. At the coffee station and you say hi to and you walk back. All of that has lost. Now there is a very stressful situation at home, and there’s a recreation of something that needs to happen there because it also is a challenge for families and for marriages. So there is a. Forcing us in that loss of belonging is forcing us to look at, really look at relationship for the first time corporately, with that kind of focus that we ever had. So now the question really is to my employee, what needs to change in our relationship together so that you will feel more of a sense of belonging. That is not something that was paramount in the corporate world. We’re not quite sure how to solve that yet. But what we also do know is that in the. I mentioned to you in an earlier chat that what we see now when we are on Zoom, we have a much more personal experience of our corporate colleagues because we’re sitting on Zoom, but a kid will burst into the room, and in the office, it would have been inappropriate or whatever, but now there is. I can see the CEO okaying a child and sort of asking them to come back later, so. Or a cat jumps on the desk. That allows us a deeper sense of knowing who my professional colleague is. It’s a little bit more intimate relationship. So those are the good things. How do we build on that?

Katie Churchman (9:11):It’s so interesting you say that because maybe there was systemically a need for understanding our colleagues at this deeper level.

Marita Fridjhon (9:20):Yes, I think so. I think that there’s, in corporate, there is a. And I know that I’m generalizing hugely. So of course, it was not true for everybody. But in corporate, there is often you don’t bring your personal stuff into the office. Well, now that’s not so easy anymore, because the personal stuff is on the screen a lot of the time. Even if I try to not have it, there yeah.

Katie Churchman (9:46):And I think it’s nice to meet people with these universal themes in the background, because now that the scary CEO has the same issues with their dog or their kid that you do.

Marita Fridjhon (9:57):Exactly. It’s a great equalizer to some extent.

Katie Churchman (10:01):Yeah.

Marita Fridjhon (10:01):Yeah. An old client of mine who, from a general relational perspective, is not somebody that she doesn’t work in. Tech, prominent position, leadership role. But she has a team that is handling her tech, but now she’s working at home, and her kids are homeschooled. So I, out of the blue, received a call from her a couple of weeks ago, and she said that, can she have a quick chat with me? There happened to be a day where it was okay. And I go, well, call me. She called me, and she talked about how she is tearing her hair out because her kids need to be homeschooled, and the schedules that they have is terrible because she needs to help them with Zoom and different things like that, and she’s out of her depth. So there’s a lot of frustration. And as we’re talking, her daughter, I think, I don’t know, eight, nine year old walks in, taps her mom, and her mom says, no, wait, I’m in a call. And I said, no, let me meet your daughter. And the kid leaned over mom’s shoulder, and I said, how are you? And what’s happening? And I asked her the question and said, so how’s it going with homeschool? She dropped her head up, and she said, I really feel bad for mom. She’s struggling. It’s really hard on her. I told her to take a break. We’re gonna be okay. So there was kids saying, I told her, we take a break, we’re gonna be okay. The kid actually knows more, but it. About what needs to happen on the tech side than mom does. But there is a. It was a huge edge from the cross to be able to say to her daughter, okay, show me how to do it, and how. So it’s. It forces a whole different role of leadership in the family as well. So there was. And that was a very intimate piece that under other circumstances, would never, never have been experiencing it.

Katie Churchman (12:06):Yes. I guess in many ways, it’s forced us to be more creative with our relationships in terms of how we see people, because, as you say, the kids now are the experts when it comes to tech.

Marita Fridjhon (12:16):Yes.

Katie Churchman (12:17):And when it comes to our colleagues, we’re seeing them in all these different lights. And, yeah, maybe it’s taking us to sort of a 2.0 of these relationships that were before and maybe quite one dimensional.

Marita Fridjhon (12:27):I think so. And I also think that if you think about so, we know that there is huge increase in divorce in certain countries, because I think that there’s a load that now is on partners to work differently, where there was a clearer distinction between we go to work and then we come back and we have some time together, or you go to work, I stay at home, or whatever that was. Well, all of that has changed. And to now be at work in the same environment is a huge challenge. It’s a total redefinition of roles, and that’s stressful. I talked with my dental technician yesterday when I was having cleaning done, and she talked about, and I said, how do you guys work with homeschooling kids? And she talked about how she and her husband came to an arrangement where he used to work from home. So now they need to both work from home and she’s. So how does it work? So they worked it out that she will work in the dental office two days a week and he’s at home, but looking at the kids mostly not doing so much work, and then she’s at home for two days and he really has got nothing to do with the kids, he can get his work done. So it forced a very different creative, collaborative parenting structure between the two of them that actually keeps them separated in a certain kind of way that is a little bit of the old model, but that has them experience a very different co sharing and parenting and supporting one another.

Katie Churchman (14:01):So another example of how it’s forced a different way of seeing people actually has to do with height. So quite a few of my clients who are smaller have found that it’s been a massive leveler. I’m sure you’ve read the stats around if you’re six foot or taller, you’re on average much more likely to earn more money over a career than someone who’s five foot four or shorter. And people who are small have found it to be a real advantage being on Zoom or webex or teams because it’s an equalizer. Again, exactly.

Marita Fridjhon (14:33):I agree. So can you begin to see that when we go to the meta view, we can see how the system is forcing us to adapt, recreate and evolve in different ways? That’s the piece that we talk about when we say that systems are naturally creative, generative and intelligent. We just need to be able to look at the bigger view of systems and honor my own personal experience in the moment of breakdown and then begin to look. But how is it actually evolving me? How is it growing me? So the other place that we hear that is people like me, that I’m an extroverted introvert. So I’m introvert, but put me in front of an audience or put me in a con. I talk a lot of, but I’m an introvert. And somehow, although there’s zoom fatigue, but there’s less fatigue because on zoom, when I’m in a course room or in person with people, there’s a much stronger demand for contact, whether it’s eye contact or whether it’s in a conversation. For Zoom, it’s a little bit more distanced, although it still is intimate. So there’s something about that. I think introverts actually do a little bit of better than their extroverted partners.

Katie Churchman (15:56):I’m exactly the same. And what I find is that now the coffee breaks, when I’m doing, say, a six hour session, the coffee breaks on chats. They’re actually just time for me to reconnect with myself and be quiet and then come back.

Marita Fridjhon (16:10):Yes. Yes. So that’s interesting, because one of the other things that we see a lot is that the personal care habits, we just had some of that show up on all faculty call, year end call, we are looking at, what are some of the things that you are proud of that got created from this pandemic? And one of the themes were that there was an increase in specific, smaller pieces of self care, like you talking about coffee break now is, for me, in a silent time in front of a classroom. A coffee break was not a break. It put us all back into conversation with all of us. But how do we actually then create from these things? When breakdown happens, there’s an emergence of something different that actually is an evolution.

Katie Churchman (17:01):Yeah. I guess my final question to you then is sort of in line with what I was talking to Floyd about around myth change. And sometimes there’s this pull to go back to the old way, and then we’re undoing all that learning and that intelligence and creativity that’s come from this year. How can we stop ourselves from that pull backwards?

Marita Fridjhon (17:21):That’s a really good question, Katie. I think that there is, and again, it’s the thing that shows up as a theme in our talks, is that I do have to give myself a chance to grief. I need to grieve the fact that there is so much that I miss from not being in front of a course room in person or from not being in the office with my colleagues and all that, that I need to be able to grieve the loss of that before I can accept. And if I don’t grieve it, I will keep on trying to go back to it. So when I try to go back, it’s probably because I haven’t allowed myself to let it go and to grieve that it’s no longer there. It may come back, but it will come back in a different way. So I think it’s that again, it’s take a step back before I step forward. And that’s the process. It’s a figure eight process. There are days when it’s like, oh, thank goodness, it’s like this. And there are other days when I go, I wish it was allow that moment of grief. Just don’t park everything there. Allow it to not be okay, and then go to, but what is it that I have now that I can celebrate? But if you talk about myth change, myth change cannot happen unless I also allow myself to grieve what I’ve lost.

Katie Churchman (18:40):Yeah.

Katie Churchman (18:41):So I guess it’s kind of stepping away from that toxic positivity that’s coming up and being all, wow, yay. Isn’t this year amazing? Because it’s not been, let’s be honest. But some things have been created and hopefully will stay with us into years to come.

Marita Fridjhon (18:57):And that’s why I think that so much of the, if you really are thinking in terms of our own vertical development and what is it that in our own beingness is important, I think it really is important for us to take a look at what is it that we have lost this year and to grieve it, to name it and to grieve it. And only until we’ve done that, can we then go in, what did we create from it and then be a choice? What are the habits and practices that I now want to put in place in order to sustain that which is new and working for me actually better? So I think it’s part of the period, whichever religion or holiday practice people are in, there is a pause. And I think it’s really useful to look at what was not okay this year and to grieve, because there’s a lot of real, there’s a lot of death, there’s a lot of loss on the personal, on the financial and the economic, on the spiritual. We cannot talk that away. And for some of us, depending on what the loss was, it will take longer to question, and then there will become a time that is okay. And here’s what came from it. I was on the call earlier with somebody who lost a parent earlier in the year and a lot of grief. But there also was the. Since she was involved very heavily in the care of the final years, there actually was a lot of her life in her environment that actually reflected the dying parent in the pictures of parents behind in the. I mean, the parent was very present. And eight, nine months after the death, she is sitting in a new room where the parents are not so present anymore. And there’s a blank wall behind her. No longer the pictures of the parents and no longer. Not that they are gone, they just live somewhere else. And she can now talk about how she’s excited about a life that now feels like it really is hers, that she can live so. But it takes. It takes time. It doesn’t mean that the grief is over, but. So from that, to get back to our principle, from that bigger principle, that systems are naturally generative, creative and intelligent, and it needs to break down. It cannot evolve unless something go down, go away, come back in another form. It’s that specific moment of now, when we are in that breakdown, that we’ve got to give ourselves a chance to grieve it and to be angry about it and to be okay with not being okay. It’s easier to do that when we can trust that somewhere else on a larger scale, there is something good that may come out of it.

Katie Churchman (22:06):I don’t think I realized, going into this conversation, actually, that this principle is by far the hardest to lean into.

Marita Fridjhon (22:13):Yes, it is.

Katie Churchman (22:14):Yeah.

Marita Fridjhon (22:15):Yes, it is. And I can think of, if I think of some of the politics that’s going on globally and I think of some of that, it’s very difficult to keep that bigger view. But it also is part of what motivates us to be agents for change.

Katie Churchman (22:34):Yeah. Thank you so much, Marita. This was, as always, a naturally intelligent, generative and creative conversation with you, and I can’t wait to share this with everyone.

Marita Fridjhon (22:46):Thank you, Katie.

Katie Churchman (22:47):Thank you, Marita. Take care.

Katie Churchman (22:50):Thanks to Marita for that deep dive into our fourth principle of RSI. Relationship systems are naturally intelligent, generative and creative. My key takeaways are as follows. When we go to the metaview, we can see that system is forcing us to adapt, recreate and evolve in different ways. However, we also need to honour our own personal experience during breakdown. It’s important to grieve breakdown and be okay with not being okay before looking to the bigger picture for answers. When we can accept and integrate this principle into our lives, it enables us to lean into the third entity of our team, organizations and families and trust its inherent creativity and intelligence. Weve got two more episodes left of this season, but dont worry, we will be back for a third season later this year, and we would love to hear from you. So look out for a LinkedIn post on the CRR Global feed next week where you can share your thoughts and comments about the podcast and requests for season three. In the meantime, make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. And for more resources, articles, and information about AUSP courses, do check out crrglobal.com. From the boardroom to the living room, we believe relationship matters.