I am going to be offline next week. I am heading to a silent retreat (my first one) in California with a teacher, Adyashanti, whom I have found to be particularly inspiring.

“These retreats are for serious seekers of eternal truth. They are an opportunity to put your separateness on hold and discover the liberating truth of what you are. Be forewarned, these retreats could be disruptive to your beliefs and disorienting to your ego. Welcome to the world of spiritual enlightenment.” ~Adyashanti

See you on the flip side…

Contracts and agreement fields are also at play in our personal relationships. Usually “negotiated” over time without direct conversation or overt acknowledgment, they nonetheless can assist in creating social and interpersonal ease and satisfaction. We hopefully understand what to expect of others and what is expected of us in our interactions.

Some examples:

1. with person A, a really close and intimate friend, the unstated contract might “read”:
* We talk on the phone at least once a week
* We both take responsibility for initiating these calls
* We keep each other up to date on all the important events in
our lives
* We include each other in life passages like birthdays and holidays
* We trust each other implicitly and count on each others’ support
* We bring to each other our most intimate concerns
* If we have issues or difficulties with each other, we bring them directly to each other

2. With a more casual friend, the unspoken contract might be something like:
* We usually see each other once every month or two… a movie, a walk, a cup of tea
* We talk about our lives, but don’t necessarily open up our deepest vulnerabilities
* We don’t have expectations of each other beyond this, and no clear intention to develop more

We build relational agreement fields out of inferences that we make from the signals and behavior of the other. Rarely discussed, we usually don’t think about these expectations unless there is suddenly behavior that contradicts or violates the norms.

For example, I failed to contact a friend of mine about the birth of our grandson. He’s someone to whom I have been fairly close over the years, but I don’t hold the relationship with the same expectations as the example of person “A” above. Three weeks after the birth, my friend called me feeling hurt because he had heard about the birth from someone else rather than receiving a call or e-mail from me.

In his understanding of our “contract,” I had not treated him like he expected of a “good friend.” I love this man, and fortunately, he came forward with his feelings. Our dialogue initiated a positive shift in our relational agreement field.

All too often in these situations, the offended party will independently “renegotiate” the relationship contract by simply withdrawing and lowering their expectations going forward.

Because most social contracts are not explicitly discussed, they are prone to misunderstandings, differing or conflicting expectations, even breakdowns and betrayals.

A considerable percentage of upset in relationships is a result of crossed expectations, where someone feels let down or betrayed when an agreement (often unspoken, and one that may exist only in their mind) has been broken.

It’s important to acknowledge that relationship contracts also have elements that are quite unconscious (and sometimes not very functional).

Here’s a classic example of an unconscious contract, not uncommon in long-term intimate relationships:
partner A:
“I have difficulty taking responsibility for my own life, and I will rely on your strength and wisdom to make it through. I will depend on you for this, and will be angry when you don’t provide it. But I will also resent my loss of sovereignty, and be angry with you for providing what I implicitly invite.”

partner B:
“I will take care of you. Your happiness is my responsibility and job. I will feel noble and worthy, and not have to deal with my own insecurities and lack of worth. I will judge you and feel superior, and get frustrated if you fail to take my good advice and foil my need to feel worthy by taking care of you. I subtly undermine your efforts to take responsibility because I depend on my job as caretaker.”

But even when relationships don’t carry such powerful unconscious elements, it’s very beneficial to bring more conscious attention to our agreement fields. You might think of having periodic relationship check-ins or tune-ups once a year with each person. Routine preventative maintenance for relationships, like with cars, helps prevent breakdowns and costly major repairs.

Today’s practice:
List three important social relationships whose contracts you would like to explore today.:

Relationship #1___________

Relationship #2___________

Relationship #3___________

For each one, ask the following questions. You might want to take a few notes.

1. What is our “contract?” What do I expect of them? What do they expect of me?
2. Have I ever experienced them breaking our agreement field?
3. Have they ever shared feelings that I somehow violated our agreement field?
4. Am I fully comfortable with the current set of expectations?
Is there anything I would like to consciously renegotiate?
5. Is our agreement field sufficiently clear? Would it be useful to have a direct conversation with this person about our relationship and our expectations of each other?

Our current practice>>>
For each significant context and relationship (work & personal) with which you engage today, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What is the nature of our contract, stated or implied?
2. How clear are our expectations of each other?
3. Have there been insecurities, frustrations, mis-steps, inefficiencies,
or breakdowns, or due to differing expectations?
4. How comfortable am I with the current nature of our agreement field?
5. Are there areas I might like to clear up or renegotiate?

Adapted from the practices of Robert Gass.

All our relationships have unspoken agreements– informal expectations around the forms and nature of our interactions.
These go far beyond the bounds of potentially explicit expectations about roles, responsibilities, and outcomes.

We enter relationships with certain expectations around how the others should act.

Unless these are deliberately negotiated and made explicit in advance, we sometimes end up holding each other to standards of behavior we never signed up for.

In our working relationships, I want to make a very strong case for explicit rules of engagement: values and standards for behavior for organizations, teams, boards, supervisory relationships, etc.

In the absence of explicit behavioral standards, people may feel hurt, angry, even violated or betrayed by the behavior of another—who may have had no idea that they had failed to meet some unstated behavioral standard. Our behavioral standards are usually rooted in a lifetime of personal and cultural experiences.

For example:
* A team leader fails to solicit someone’s opinion
* Someone speaks to another in a way that the other experiences
as harsh or aggressive voice
* A colleague fails to inform us of something and we feel left out of
the loop
* Someone unconsciously uses language that another experiences
as racist or sexist
* A colleague feels rejected and hurt when we fail to include them in
a meeting to which they expected to be invited
* We find out that a team member spoke of some difficulty they
were having with us, without coming to us directly

Please go back now, and re-look at the various contexts and relationships you have been examining these past few days. Can you find examples of difficulties in relationships that may have been indicators of unstated and/or differing behavioral expectations?

Practice Variation for Today:
Make a special effort today to be tracking how unstated behavioral expectations may be at play in your various work contexts and relationships.

The Practice>>>

For each significant work context and work relationship with which you engage today, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What is the nature of our contract, stated or implied?
2. How clear are our expectations of each other?
3. Have there been insecurities, frustrations, mis-steps, inefficiencies,
or breakdowns, due to differing expectations?
4. How comfortable am I with the current nature of our agreement field?
5. Are there areas I might like to clear up or renegotiate?

Adapted from the practices of Robert Gass.

Photo: MANPREET ROMANA / AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Activists in New Delhi demonstrate against the entry of U.S. retailer Wal-Mart into the Indian market.

Photo: IAN WALDIE / GETTY IMAGES

A protester stands near mounted police during a protest against the visit of U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney in Sydney, Australia.

Photo: Majid Saeedi/GETTY IMAGES

An Iranian cleric walks past an anti-American mural on the wall of the former U.S. embassy in Tehran.

Photo: LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Greek police drag a demonstrator into custody during a student protest in Athens.

The Past In Light Of The Present
Knowing Better Now

When we look back at the past, knowing what we know now, we often find it difficult to understand how we made the mistakes we made. This is because once we learn new information, it is nearly impossible to reenter the headspace we were in before we learned that information. And so we look back at parents who spanked their kids, for example, and wonder how they could have thought that was a good idea. Similarly, our personal pasts are full of mistakes we can’t believe we made. We did things then that we would never do now, and this is precisely because we have information now that we didn’t have, or weren’t able to access, then.

From ideas about how to raise children to how to treat the environment, our collective human past sometimes reads like a document on what not to do. In many ways, this is exactly as it should be. We learn from living and having experiences. It is from these past actions that we garnered the information that guides us to live differently now. Just so, in our personal lives, we probably had to have a few unsuccessful relationships or jobs, learning about our negative tendencies through them, in order to gain the wisdom we have now.

In order to live more peacefully with the past, it helps to remember that once we know better, we tend to do better. Prior to knowing, we generally do our best, and while it’s true that from the perspective of the present, our best doesn’t always seem good enough, we can at least give our past selves the benefit of the doubt. We did our best with what knowledge we had. Beyond this, we serve the greater good most effectively by not dwelling on the past, instead reigning our energy and knowledge into our present actions. It is here, in this moment, that we create our reality and ourselves anew, with our current knowledge and information.

From the DailyOM

Let’s begin doing some field research today…

Over the course of the day you will find yourself in a variety of different work contexts.
You will be collaborating within a number of different relationships.
Let’s take what we’ve been learning about contracting, and see to what degree
these contexts and relationships rest upon a foundation of clear, mutually
agreed-upon expectations.

The Practice>>>

For each significant work context and work relationship with which you engage today, ask yourself the following 5 questions:

1. What is the nature of our contract, stated or implied?
2. How clear are our expectations of each other?
3. Have there been insecurities, frustrations, mis-steps, inefficiencies or
breakdowns due to differing expectations?
4. How comfortable am I with the current nature of our agreement field?
5. Are there areas I might like to clear up or renegotiate?

In order to really engage with this intriguing (and possibly unsettling) practice:
* write these questions down where you can easily see them over the course of
the day
* use whatever kinds of reminders (sticky notes, etc.) seem to help you stay
focused on practice
* take a few notes over the course of the day—there’s a lot to be tracking and
integrating here

Adapted from the practices of Robert Gass.

PRIMO MODEL

Goals are not: events, activities or tasks.

Effective goals follow the PRIMO criteria in order to maximize the likelihood of success:

Precise:
Specific and clear as to what, when & how
Everyone looking at this goal will come away with the same
understanding of what is to be accomplished.

Realistic:
Sets the right balance between a stretch goal that inspires high
performance, and something do-able given available resources,
control over variables, authority, etc.

Inspiring:
Connects to the vision. Those who are responsible for doing the
work feel motivated. The potential results are worth the effort and
resources it takes.

Measurable:
Criteria for success are clear. Defines quantities and/or qualities
with concrete measures or sensory experience. When the time
comes to evaluate whether or not the goal has been achieved, all
involved will be able to share a similar assessment.

Outcome-focused:
Not just an activity, but establishes a defined target of what will
actually be different in the world.

Examples: Unclear Goals vs. PRIMO Goals

Unclear Goals:

1. Increase our number of members
2. Research our donors past patterns of giving
3. Improve communication between the campaign & development
departments
4. Reorganize our management structure

PRIMO Goals:

1. Add 1200 qualified new members by December 31 of this year.
2. Increase donations by 20% by analyzing our donors’ past 5 years of giving, focusing on key criteria to optimize future campaigns.
3. Campaign and development departments co-create a fund-raising program where they jointly commit to a revenue increase of ____ by year-end.
4. Increase efficiency in decision-making, effective communication and programmatic coordination by creating an aligned and empowered executive leadership team.

Adapted from the practices of Robert Gass.