Connections : How vibrant are your social network roots?

It was Groucho Marx who said, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.” I must confess, at times, I too feel like sending similar resignation letter to many of my Whatsapp groups (Note to self : Limit to 20!).  In my core / essence as a connector (not a networker!), I value people and as a coach connecting them to their world of purpose and meaning. I do have long, serendipitous and meaningful conversations, mutually uplifting, with many in the same groups in a 1on1 or small group settings using the same platform – which I call as connections. Hence, I was ruminating on how to tell the strength and vibrancy of one’s social connections - the roots of a human tree in the garden social network that we each call our community – online or off in real life (“IRL” as my teenager types!)

To start off, we both need to agree what “Vibrancy” means in this context! Small favour – Indulge me in a quick Gestalt-type coaching experiment to help establish the building block of connections or relationship as we see it.

Take a look at this picture below and reflect on your experience (reactions/ emotions/ thoughts) that comes up upon seeing them. What "word" comes to you when you see each of the two images? Do they create a same or similar experience in you? (Do share your thoughts in comments below - Appreciated)

 (Images courtesy: Kalpana Manikantan, my graphic designer spouse)

In our professional or personal relationship with others or in any context like work-life, customer relations etc, there seems to emerge a duality of transactional and relational way of approaching results - marketing/selling activities reflect this. A networker is transactional while a connector is relational+plus.  As humans, we express this duality in our habits and practices, be it at work or in “real” life. As an engineer, I can confirm that the quantity and quality of black and white colour halves above are same in each of the circles and yet the aesthetic/imagery it evokes may be different in each of us ( thus diversity crystalizing into polarity in large sample dataset of human groups?). So easier way to dive into questions like :

1. What is this picture go to do with Vibrancy?
2. How does one measure our social connections are vibrant?
3. Or any others? (and just to please Simon Sinek, I am assuming we asked “Why connections should be vibrant”? and answered with “Da… for results or outcomes of course!”)

is by looking at vibrancy thru the lens of a real-life challenge - Agree?

WhatsApp group and Polarity Management

Of late, apart from some government regulations threatening group admins with imprisonment, due to messaging rules and policing, social sharing in my whatsapp group wasn’t free-flowing among its members. The issue, simply put, messages some members posted thinking they were appropriate and relevant to the group was contested and policed by others in this moderator-free social sharing forum of whatsapp groups for that topic. With many back and forth “flooding” the smartness of my phone also caused some productive members to leave the group resulting in what I perceived as loss of my network vibrancy. So I had to contemplate on the pain point and a potential intelligent solution.

Serendipitously, I was recently connected to a systemic coach via my mentor (Say hi Ramesh Sreedharan and Priya Ramesh!) to get help on a team coaching pickle I was dealing with then, who had pointed me to this concept called Polarity management.

Some complex problems simply do not have "solutions." The key to being an effective leader is being able to recognize and manage such problems

---- Barry Johnson of Polarity Partnerships.

Without going into the gory details, I learnt using polarity management technique that the vibrancy of the group connections can get diminished due to unproductive choices in the Freedom of messaging continuum (Flexibility vs Control polarity). Such choices or “weeds”, in turn wilts some individual trees (to exit the group) and impacts the beauty of our network garden (turns a Vibrant/Learning group to a time-wasting one)! 

As any gardener will tell, if a weed starts to grow, try to pull it out at its root– it gets rid of the one weed, and gives your lawn more time to adjust. Strong grass chokes out weeds, and beautiful garden comes not just from a new landscape, but also from maintenance.

Periodic changes like "self-moderation" guidelines on whatsapp group messaging or other tech-rescues are necessary, but they are not transformative or self-sustaining and hence not sufficient. Wonder how other ecosystems solve this? I turned to my twitter network for ideas. @BrainPickings answered with a poem which is excerpted as  

“I learned how trees communicate, the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing. They don’t use words, but they can be said to love."

Perhaps taking cue from nature and the observations of a book "The Secret Life of Trees: The Astonishing Science of What Trees Feel and How They Communicate ", which tells “A tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it.” I rediscovered that I can be only as powerful as the community (satsang? or Success Teams as Barbara Sher puts it), that surrounds me!

So, what’s our action plan for this issue? Should I call the whatsapp group members who exited or live with sub-optimal exchanges or try to polarity-manage them? What does our internal tree-doctor say as to how to restore vibrancy of my network?

Inclusiveness: Include and Transcend Poles

Repeat the same gestalt-type coaching experiment above for these two sets of pictures. (Extra credit : For two sets of images which are variants of the first two sets shown above, do reflect on your “word” for each set and experience)

Surely, duality exists in nature and grows quickly into diversity or multiplicity. It is a natural thing, just as weeds are nature in garden.  It is our desire and vision for an outcome ( landscaping) that makes us see them as unwanted and forget the unity in that diversity (“advaita”). Reframing like work-life balance to life-harmony are partial answers perhaps. Like the five blind man and the elephant story, a Facebook positing from my coach Prasad Kaipa nudged me to realize the higher “TRUTH” among what is “TRUE” from many perspectives depending on our vantage point.

The Truth is realized in an instant; the Act is practiced step by step.----Zen saying.

It dawned on me that realization is only the first step. Actualization is done in this moment and the one after that, and the next one, and so on.

I invite you to share what “Vibrancy” means for you in your social connections as a SMART goal. Perhaps you might agree that Vibrancy is a function of Inclusiveness and it results in Aliveness discussed in my new year blog!

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Would love to hear from you to make my network and coaching practice vibrant.