Dialogue: What does a Relateful Culture look like in practice?

Fabiola, Annabeth, and Dara speak plainly about what it's like to work in the grand living experiment that is The Relateful Company: a highly decentralized, global, self-organizing system organizing a lot of people to do an awesome mission, in relationship with the modern economy, while living up to the values of truth and love.

Transcript:

Fabiola Romero: I am with Annabeth and Dara and we are here to offer a little peak: 

What is it like to work for The Relateful Company? 

What is it that we do here when we are not in the actual facilitation of the sessions?

We care a lot and we talk a lot about improving your relationships, improving our relationships.

It's something that, for me, I've always felt in the company that if there was a human being created out of what we do, it would become The Relateful Company. There is a full on embodiment of what we do and what we do in the sessions that's also how we relate and treat each other behind… let's say behind the curtains. I don't think there are curtains, but I think that's what we do. We do care about each other. And there are a ton of resources, and ways of improving myself.

Annabeth Novitzki: It's gonna be pretty easy for me to hit what I think is awesome about how our company culture works. But I wanna make sure we also hit our weaknesses, like where this is also a struggle for us. Yeah. 

Fabiola Romero: What are the challenges? 

Annabeth Novitzki: Yeah. Hmm. Dara where are you at?

Dara Harmon: What working for The Relateful Company does for me is it's a place of experiment and inspiration for how organizations can work. So I take my experience with this organization that is 

highly decentralized 

global 

and is really pushing the boundaries of hierarchical leadership and what that looks like...

and I use it as inspiration for my work that is not with The Relateful Company. I find being part of this team just really inspiring and it impacts how I show up in other places.

Annabeth Novitzki: I think it would matter to people that we kind of share what our other work experience is, if y'all are down for that. Just to give everybody a reference point. I come from like largely nonprofit. I've basically only worked for university's churches and myself, so I have basically no reference for kind of the corporate realm type of jobs.

But I know both of you do. 

Fabiola Romero: Yes. I've worked as a teacher in schools ages ago, and universities, and now I work for the corporate world and I've been doing that on and off for the last 15 years. This is something that most of the facilitators on the platform, most of us have other jobs other than facilitating.

Dara Harmon: Yeah. Like you Fabiola I'm in the corporate world too, but I have a long history of learning and development, sales, management and executive leadership. That's my background. 

Fabiola Romero: Mm, mm-hmm. Yeah. And to talking about background, I'd like to touch on what is the background of The Relateful Company?

What is our lineage? How did we land here? 

Annabeth Novitzki: As it applies to company culture, the two kind of simplest reference points for how the company is attempted to be structured is the books "An Everyone Culture: (Becoming) a Deliberately Developmental Organization." And the other book is " Reinventing Organizations." So talking about kind of growing into a Teal organization. If you are onboarding to this company, it's recommended that you read one of those. I've read both of them and found them extremely powerful. 

Fabiola Romero: Yes. We had a meeting yesterday, it's called "All Hearts," and we do that every month.

There was somebody talking about how ancient this is what we do here. We sit together and we look into what's happening inside of us and we share that. We do that not only in sessions, we do that in our meetings. There's a lot that goes on in our staff meetings that have to do exactly with where we are, how we are, and it has the same importance as "we need to do this and this and that task."

"These are the new rules for these or that." There's space for all of that, which it's something that... sometimes I'm in meetings in the other places I work at, and I think while we are talking about these machines, we're talking about all of these equipment and I don't know how people are.

I don't know what's going on in their lives and something is missing.

And I love how here that's not my experience. I feel quite complete. I feel seen. This is how the practice is evolving. This is what we're doing, and this is how I feel. 

Dara Harmon: Yeah, similar to how we might be in a circle, right? There's what's actually happening right now, like what's happening with the business and our overall business health and the retention of facilitators and overall happiness. So we're paying attention to what's happening. And I also like y'all have mentioned, feel really invited to also be with the meta of what's going on for me, I can bring things forward that I don't always get to bring forward. And similar to circling, having the ability to notice what it's like to be on a team, taking on projects as part of a team and then being able to be with what that experience is like is just transformational, you know, because we can't really do it in all aspects. I'm not totally sure that I would want every organization that I work with to be like The Relateful Company.

Fabiola Romero: Right.

Dara Harmon: But I definitely know that being part of The Relateful Company allows me to expose more of how I relate to work and leadership and my other roles in a way that I think definitely benefit me and I think benefit the people I work with and the organizations I work for. 

Fabiola Romero: And this is again, how I feel, it's like walking the talk, it's not only that we're offering this to participants, it's exactly what we do also when we are not just facilitating.

We do listen to each other. Annabeth you were talking about what are the challenges? One, for me, it's the complexity, the sheer amount of information that it's there. And the sheer amount of opportunities, like "where do I go?" "How much do I get involved?" It took me a while to get the hang of, oh, I actually can be involved as much as I want really. There's, there's nothing mandatory. Of course there are rules and, but it just makes quite a lot of sense to me. And, and then it's incredible to me how much, I don't know. How many channels in our virtual office I've never been in like, oh, this person is working in that project, and I have no idea what that is.

I also love the fact that I can be in, if I have a busy month in August, I can just make myself unavailable. Or two months, or three months, I can make myself unavailable and come back. Or I can only do one session per week, or I can only do this. It's just the freedom. Freedom. It's interesting that I first started it as a challenge because it still is for me, but at the same time, it's the resources and the freedom that I have. It's so easy. It makes it easy to be here. There's an ease to it. 

Yeah. 

Annabeth Novitzki: Mm. I wanna, I wanna speak to like in all other jobs that I've had, including my self-employment I have felt, and it's never been taught to me this way, but I have deeply felt like emotions are unprofessional. Like, if I have any emotions related to my job,

I need to deal with those alone on my time, and like when you mentioned the All Hearts meetings, Fabiola I'm like, how often do I cry in those?

Like, I cried yesterday in our All Hearts meeting. For me, one of the most key resources that we have is in our Slack threads, the Connecting thread. And this is where, at any time, day or night, any of us who live all over the world so it does happen day and night,

can just post a celebration or a struggle. I remember one time I posted a struggle. I was falling down an emotional hole. I posted it on the Connecting thread, and within an hour and a half, three of the world's most powerful women were on a Zoom call with me. And were with me for like 90 minutes, and I felt so much better.

Or like, as I've been going through this... we had a deeply sad death in my family and the amount of support that I've gotten from my coworkers 

Fabiola Romero: mm-hmm. 

Annabeth Novitzki: I've worked at churches and I haven't felt like I could really actually bring my joys and my sorrows. Completely. And there's this way where like, I think the belief of keeping emotions out of companies, that it's distracting, it's unprofessional, it's a waste of time, but what we discover is when they're not met, they kind of sideways fuse their way into kind of trying to like, "well, we need a rule about so-and-so."

And the bottom line is like, I just don't feel appreciated. So I'm trying to create a company structure. Well, why don't we just sit here and appreciate each other for 10 minutes? Then we don't need to create a policy. 

Yeah. 

And so when we're actually truly with what's here emotionally, it it blossoms and we're able to be with it and then we're able to get more shit done.

Fabiola Romero: Absolutely. There are two things that come to me when you talk about that. I remember years ago there was this trend in companies where we would say, "we are family." I haven't heard that anymore for a couple of years or even more, because people would become sour or ironic about that.

Then one person I was working with once told me, "We are not family. Everybody has families and we come here to work". And like, yeah, that sounds more like what we do. It was great to have that clarity. It's like, oh my God, great.

That's, that's clear to me that that's what it feels like actually. But then being in The Relateful Company, I just... I feel really, really close to people here, you know, and then I'm thinking maybe we're family and then it like, okay. I haven't gotten to a complete answer there, but, you know, I live in Switzerland and Annabeth has been in my place, you know, she lives in Austin, and I would have her anytime, and she knows it, you know.

I think Kedar is coming also, like other people are so welcome. It's true. It's just, it's what happens. And not with everybody, but... I meet a lot of the facilitators on the platform leading with them in sessions. And then we kind of fall in love with each other, and then we need to meet somehow. And that's what happens.

 What you mentioned Annabeth that possibility of and I've seen it many times, that people can jump in and say, "I'm in a challenging space. Can somebody please be with me?" Somebody always comes up, somebody always, always comes up. It's an incredible resource in that way.

And also I, I'm not sure how much revealing this is, but I love the free stuff. I just love the how much free stuff there is here. Just for example, there are the people that are doing the coaching trainings and then they have to practice, and then they look for people to practice with. And I'm always doing those.

I love them and I get so much support, you know. It's the volunteer work. There's quite a lot of volunteer work here that, and there's a lot of credit for, for volunteer, the volunteer hours that we do, et cetera.

It's just an infinitely generous place to be at.

Dara Harmon: One thing that's with me as we're talking about this is it's really synchronous Fabiola that you reached out to ask to have this conversation because just this past week, I was participating in a four day immersion. And it's a little vulnerable to share. But even on the second day of the immersion, when I was having a conversation with our leadership team for that immersion, something I said to them is, I'm not sure I'm a cultural fit for this organization.

Fabiola Romero: Hmm. 

Dara Harmon: And ironically, this is one of the only places where I could say that directly to my boss, quote unquote "boss," 

and be held in it. And not need to fear for my position. And be met with openness and willingness to explore what's coming up for me in that. And it feels just like really good to have a moment with y'all to really feel that. Yeah, and be in the exploration here in hearing your reflections on the company culture.

Fabiola Romero: The fact that, you know, this is something I wanted to do. I said, "oh, I want to do a video on company culture and I want to do it with two other people." I thought of you and yesterday I said, "Can you guys be here?"

And here we are. Again, it's the things, just, they happen. They, they happen. When there is a work on connection and the way we relate to each other.

Annabeth Novitzki: I'm inspired to hit some of the things that are more challenging. Two things that I'm aware of right now are, 

One,

Fabiola you mentioned that we do a lot of volunteer time and we're not a funded company. And there's not a ton of money at this point to go around. We don't get paid that much to do sessions compared to what most facilitators are earning at their actual jobs even the paid sessions are equivalent to volunteer time, basically. But we're kind of like doing a lot and growing a lot. And what ends up happening is that there aren't a bunch of salaried employees to just take care of all the things.

So much of it is like somebody cares enough to try to do a thing, and some things fall through, so compared to kind of a more common company structure, it can feel really messy. It can feel like things fall apart a lot. And then also in the lack of clarity realm: the way that potential leadership for projects is shared does mean that it's not always clear who's in charge of this project. "To what extent can I just dive in?" Because the general concept is if you see a place for improvement, make a proposal, you own it, lead it. Lead the solution.

But it's not always clear if somebody has already owned this realm. And then if you make a proposal and then it's like, oh, there's a contradiction, you kind of like discover that. Or sometimes I see solutions and I'm like, "I don't care enough to propose it because it's not worth my volunteer time to solve it."

 So there's realms of confusion that are relatively common at this company that I think are less common at other companies where roles are very clear. At least who's supposed to be doing what.

Whether or not they do it is a different story, but who's supposed to be doing it, I think is more clear at other companies. 

Fabiola Romero: Yes. And also at the beginning I was confused about how much is proposed and is dropped as well. Which I kind of also love. It's things that are proposed, 

are tried out, 

and "nope that doesn't work." It's, "we tried it, we let it go."

And we do need other jobs. We just do.

Annabeth Novitzki: This is not a high earning line of work, but it it can be incredibly inspirational.

Fabiola Romero: Exactly. And it does make me so effective in other things that I do. Because of the trainings I've taken also in the company. I don't know how indirect that is. I find it very direct 

It makes me more effective at what I do and how I relate to people at my other job as, and makes me more successful as well.

Dara Harmon: I really am resonating a lot with what you just said Fabiola about this making me more successful in other areas. There's really something here. I started practicing relatefulness almost four years ago now.

And in that timeframe my life has really changed a lot. By virtue of the practice and by virtue of growing in my capacity to hold complexity, which is the things that we need to do and where I want to go and how I feel about it and how other people feel about it.

And as an organization, we're holding all those things. 

By virtue of that, like you mentioned, you know, other people tap me on the shoulder for projects like that. That are impacting topics that are a lot more concrete than maybe what we're looking at in The Relateful Company, which is a practice.

A practice is pretty concrete, but you know, topics like housing affordability or racial inequity, like these are the types of things that I'm working on outside of The Relateful Company, and I think that people notice that I must be swimming in something all the time, some kind of complexity holding. I do credit a lot of my ability to work with people in the way that I do to being part of this team.

Fabiola Romero: Yeah.

Dara Harmon: I feel really shy having said that. 

Annabeth Novitzki: Yeah?

Dara Harmon: Yeah. 

Annabeth Novitzki: My guess is, like admitting how kind of awesome and powerful you are? 

Dara Harmon: I just really imagine that all of us on the team, like I don't know that people know the lives that people in this organization are touching.

I just think that we're having a huge impact. I think we're having a huge impact and it's hard for me to start first with myself, 

but I'm like, "yeah, it's, it's pretty crazy." You know, when I think about like where I was four years ago, the work I was doing to today, it's startling.

Yeah. 

Fabiola Romero: Absolutely. I'm thinking about for example, the post that Annabeth did. "Oh, I just had a loss in my family. It's very painful. I'd like to..." and the way it was structured I thought "I'm going to use that, you know, for something that I need to do somewhere else."

Annabeth Novitzki: Oh?

Fabiola Romero: Oh yeah, totally. And for example I remember one of our facilitators yesterday in the All Hearts said, "I love Jordan how you did this. You know, the way we are launching, you know, The Relateful Company and, and how you assign this and that, and how you ask for help and how you are resourcing all of this.

It's an inspiration for me because I have this project at work and I'm going to use that." This is something that has happened to me several times. Because there are experts in this company. And then people use those skills and it gets registered. And then I, I, it's just, and then I'm like, "wow, this is great."

Or, or people that are in marketing or parents, you know? How this is not going to profoundly affect the way you parent your children? 

Dara Harmon: Yeah. Like what a cool thing that we have the opportunity to work for a company that inspires us to be better or more capable or more inspiring to others.

Like it's really crazy work gets to sit on that same.... 

Fabiola Romero: It's the little nuances. 

Dara Harmon: Mm-hmm. 

Fabiola Romero: I find myself in my work, "I don't want to do that because..." and then somebody here in The Relateful Company does something that, "Wow, but the way he's approaching this, this way, I could do it that way."

This happens to me often.

Annabeth Novitzki: It's reminding of a me of a story I had totally forgotten. I used to teach piano to one of the law professors at UT Austin. And one week she was like, "I just wanna let you know that the way you said so and so to me last week, like the way you said it to me, made me change the way that I was choosing to interact with my students.

And I, and I tried it with my students and this really cool thing happened! I've been teaching for, I don't know, maybe two decades," and she's like, "I've never cracked that kind of a thing open with my students. So thank you so much."

Fabiola Romero: Wow. 

Dara Harmon: Yeah. It makes me think about another facilitator on our team, James Dial. Yeah, he works for a major corporation in the US and he was about to leave and they were like, they, they made a position for him to stay, because of how he relates to people. I think that everyone probably has the story like this on our team.

 It's really cool. It's not just the practice of relatefulness, it's also being able to be relateful in our work context and see how that actually works to be able to bring it out into "the real world," quote unquote.

Fabiola Romero: Yeah, I've brought that several times. People, I noticed that in meetings, "Fabiola, you explain it." Or if we have a complaint and there's something kind of challenging to say to somebody, 

"Fabiola you do it." You know? You know? I find it a compliment. I have so much fun with this. Most of the times. 

In my system, I feel it gets built in. 

Being aware of myself and what is it that I'm feeling? And how do I express that?

And do it in a way that it's human. Do it in a way that is human being with other humans as well. I am human. You are human. Let's talk about this. It's challenging, sure. And saying that. Yeah. And I think this is going to happen more and more that this keeps spilling over from the company culture to the other culture, to the more global culture. Yeah. 

Thank you Dara, Annabeth.

Annabeth Novitzki: My pleasure. 

Dara Harmon: Thank you.