Project 52: Week 13 (2/19/24)

A reflection on friendship ... and reaching agreements.

"It is one thing to express solidarity with our brothers and sisters, but a very different thing to walk alongside and serve them. "

“Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her voice, brothers and sisters all.” [FT, 8]

“We have the space we need for co-responsibility in creating and putting into place new processes and changes. Let us take an active part in renewing and supporting our troubled societies. Today we have a great opportunity to express our innate sense of fraternity, to be Good Samaritans who bear the pain of other people’s troubles rather than fomenting greater hatred and resentment.” [FT, 77]

To learn more about Fratelli Tutti, please click here.

Source: as quoted in Kate Fowler's Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship - Top Quotes from Pope Francis' Latest Encyclical, the Blog Coordinator for the Catholic Apostolate Center. She received her Master's in Leadership for the New Evangelization from the Augustine Institute.

We are delighted to continue with a year-long offering as part of our public conversation regarding Career Services, including "How we might ...." weave job search/career, life/inspiration, and learning journeys. ~ Gerald Doyle.

Welcome to Week 13

Reaching agreement - invitations from Steve Dalton

One of the challenges and opportunities of our participants' Tri Cosain career journeys is always reaching an agreement on the next career phase.  This conclusion often means accepting paid employment, but it also can mean agreeing to join in an entrepreneurial venture or other endeavor or enterprise with others. In his book The Job Closer, we find that Steve Dalton makes valuable offerings and invitations in this context. Dalton’s ways are surely not the only ways here, but we find them a valuable touchstone for many of our participants.

Dalton touches on several stages of the “getting to yes.”

Thanks for the interview. Dalton insists that interviewees should promptly thank their interviewers, recognize their commitment and energy, point out things of value that arose in the conversation, and express continuing interest in the role or relationship under discussion. In this way, the conversation, what we would call a Conversation of Inquiry, continues, and the candidate does their best to remain top of mind with the interviewer in a kind, compassionate, and creative way.

Reaching out ahead of a decision message. Suppose the interviewee is still being considered for the role. In that case, Dalton invites seeking to keep the conversation alive, create a space to learn more, negotiate the best possible deal, and take the time and space to make a quality decision. Hie invites trying to get an indication of the time at which one can expect a response. He then suggests contacting the interviewer before the promised moment to re-express interest and check if anything else is needed. This approach, Dalton says, creates the best conditions to continue the conversation and has the best chance of avoiding a situation where the candidate doesn't hear back and is left hanging and agonizing.

A pre-negotiation call (PNC). If an offer is coming, he would like to ask for a telephone call (not by email) to ask clarifying questions about the elements of the offer. The point is not to negotiate in this call but to identify points that might be arranged.

The negotiation call. Having learned the potential points of negotiation, I want to find out the best deal available in this call. Dalton recommends Getting to Yes as a negotiation guidebook by Fisher and Ury. Dalton suggests constantly negotiating an offer in a spirit of co-creation and win-win. He asks why someone would hire us to advance their interests if we are unwilling to advance our own.

A “Sleep On It” exercise when receiving an offer. With a final offer in hand, Dalton suggests sleeping on the offer for two nights. On the first night, he suggests imagining and embodying the idea of accepting the offer and sensing how that feels. On the second night, he suggests imagining the opposite: how declining would feel. He advocates writing down the logical pros and cons of the offer, as much as anything, to get them out in the open and “out of our heads” so we can also engage positively in our emotional, intuitive, and embodied reactions. Without ignoring the rational, we admire and endorse Dalton’s embrace of multiple “ways of knowing” about what will make us feel happy and fulfilled over the long term in this new role or working context.

Accepting an offer. If we accept an offer, Dalton invites us to do so warmly in the context of building a productive relationship for the future and especially to promptly connect and share the good news with any of the people who might have helped us and advocated for us along the way.

Responding to a negative result. If we are turned down, Dalton invites us to always be polite and appreciative of the chance to explore the opportunity. We can see if feedback is available that will permit growth and learning. We can do our best to maintain the relationship, paying tribute to the good things about the organization and the time and energy the person or people involved have offered.

Turning down an offer. Suppose we want to turn down an offer. In that case, we can also be kind and appreciative but also be prepared to offer our reasons, as much as possible, making it clear to the offeror that the reasons are compelling to go in the chosen direction. Dalton calls these “irreconcilable differences” - sharing with the offeror reasons they will have to agree they cannot or have already decided not to overcome.

We hope you can see and agree that Dalton’s suggestions, while practical and down-to-earth, are also highly compatible with a principled, faith-based approach to creating shared value through a path of creativity and service.

We recommend reading Dalton's book The Job Closer in its entirety.  The points summarized above are primarily drawn from Chapter 8 of the 2021 digital edition.

As ever, I stand ready to accompany you on your Tri Cosain career journey, exploring and leading up to, including, and through significant decision points.

Please be invited to Week 13 of our year-long series of installments, introducing our framework perspective Tri Cosain, Irish Gaelic for three pathways: inspiration, learning, and career.

I'm keen, as always, to accompany you and to be your partner in this exploration as you craft your individualized approach to exploring career options on the way to one or many rewarding career stages.

Please be invited to Week 13 of our year-long series of installments, introducing our framework perspective Tri Cosain, Irish Gaelic for three pathways: inspiration, learning, and career.

We are pleased to accompany you on this journey.

Monday, 19 February 2024

Gerald Doyle

P.S. Click here to read Project: Week 12 (2/6/24)

P.P.S. Please be invited to read one of my favorite magazines:

Doyle's note:

A closing reflection: On Friendship

"The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one's self to others." ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

• Earlier today, for another project, I listened to several adults (mid-20s through their 60s) who were pursuing their undergraduate and graduate studies to advance their career and life trajectories for their children/grandchildren. At critical moments, they shared that they had either no (or a single) close friend to call upon for an emergency situation.
• Reflecting on their stories, I was given to recall Eric Klineberg's Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago.

Through a combination of years of fieldwork, extensive interviews, and archival research, Klinenberg uncovers how a number of surprising and unsettling forms of social breakdown—including the literal and social isolation of seniors, the institutional abandonment of poor neighborhoods, and the retrenchment of public assistance programs—contributed to the high fatality rates. The human catastrophe, he argues, cannot simply be blamed on the failures of any particular individuals or organizations. For when hundreds of people die behind locked doors and sealed windows, out of contact with friends, family, community groups, and public agencies, everyone is implicated in their demise. As Klinenberg demonstrates in this incisive and gripping account of the contemporary urban condition, the widening cracks in the social foundations of American cities that the 1995 Chicago heat wave made visible have by no means subsided as the temperatures returned to normal. The forces that affected Chicago so disastrously remain in play in America’s cities, and we ignore them at our peril.

And that led me to Elizabeth Gilbert's April 2023 article, "Americans more than ever have no friends."

"According to the May 2021 American Perspectives Survey of over 2,000 adults, 12% of Americans report having no friends, up from under 3% in the 1990s."

"Humans evolved to live in small groups — not just with blood-related kin, but with friends. Friends worked together to secure resources, seek justice, and protect each other.  The more cooperative and supportive the group was, the more likely it was to survive and pass on its bond-seeking genes. The result is that we are wired to want close, enduring friendships."

source: BigThink

Doyle's concluding thought:

• As we reflect on today's Career Accompaniment: Week 13, and, how we might "reach agreement" and "Get to Yes," I have spent much of the day in prayer, reflection, and conversation thinking about how might we -- and how I might -- reach out to others in accompaniment to build and renew friendships, to check in on acquaintances, be present to strangers (and those with whom we might even have adversarial relationships) and heal/forgive others with whom have deep rifts in our relationships.
• How might we cultivate friendships -- and good work?
• This certainly must be part of any Yes that we get to as part of the "common good."

Tri Cosain materials are developed with my colleague and friend of 40+ years, Scott Downs.

Copyright Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle, 2023/24

Residing in Chicago, Gerald Doyle provides ministry placement research and consulting for Career Services at the Catholic Theological Union ( Herbert Quinde and Christina Zaker ) and career services and coaching to students, families, and community members at Wolcott College Preparatory High School. He advises several tech companies, including Upkey ( Amir Badr ) and GetSet Learning ( Eva Prokop ); he has also joined TSI - Transforming Solutions, Inc. ( Dan Feely )in their Higher Education and Career Services practice.

Scott  Downs, a former investment banker, management consultant, and entrepreneur, now works as an Agile coach, seeking to call forward great leaders and great organizations based on great cultures. He is a consultant with Expleo Group and is an associate of the TrustTemenos Leadership Academy.

Scott and Gerald are co-founders of Tri Cosain, a practice that weaves inspiration, learning, and career for leadership in life and work. Gerald and Scott co-authored 9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work, Conversations of Inquiry, and several other volumes in the Tri Cosain series. Their work embraces equity, inclusion, diversity, and well-being as foundations for personal leadership.