This year I launched a YouTube channel called ‘Rollin’ Different’ and has become a place for me to post my novice song-writing skills and short bits of wisdom related to creativity and a heart-led life. A recent post confronts the challenging truth that if we aren’t willing to shift old patterns, they will come calling and force the shift onto us in a more uncomfortable way. I’ve run into so many walls in my own life as I tried to avoid looking at, and then breaking, old patterns. My hope is this wisdom might be a good catalyst for others in this moment.
Regional & Rural Services
King County’s Director of Regional & Rural Services, Joan Lee, hired me to bring her leadership team back together in 2023, the first time they had come together in person following the pandemic. Since then, I have continued to support them to create more reflective time together to face some uncomfortable realities as many of them start to consider retirement and how to grow the next generation of leadership. Specifically, I have helped Joan challenge older assumptions she carried about herself and her own leadership, which has been food and inspiration for her team.
“Lisa Fitzhugh came with outstanding recommendations from a colleague at the County. Over the last few years, she has supported our leadership team into a more generative, integrated and productive collaboration. She has also coached challenged me to think differently about my approach. We collaborated on a learning map process to incisively pinpoint the most profitable area for me to grow around related to my own leadership development. The whole team stronger, and I have moved to a place of more authentic transparency. I am so grateful for Lisa’s clarity and conviction in the leadership she has drawn out of me and our leadership team members.”
-Joan Lee, Director of Regional & Rural Services, King County DNRP
Immunity to Change
Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey at Harvard’s Graduate School for Education have developed potent learning tools to help leaders shift from old behaviors and step into new ones. Most of my work with leaders incorporates at least a few of these tools, in particular their Immunity to Change Map. This map is designed to articulate a primary ‘learning edge’ for an individual as well as the undermining patterns, fears and beliefs—their immunity to change--that hold them back from growth and evolution.
Kegan and Lahey share their extensive organizational development research in several publications including An Everyone Culture: Becoming A Deliberately Developmental Organization and Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization.
For a good summary of their approach and its impacts, see this overview about their work from Harvard’s website.
My Ted Talk: Creativity as a Pathway home
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Link to Video
Bushwhacking a Trail Home
This essay is a pithy summary of several ways to find more personal agency and power. “To choose to act in a new way that is not supported by the old software in our brains is a highly creative act. If I am used to attuning exclusively to the outside world and meeting other people’s needs before my own–because that’s the language of my subconscious programming–my choice to attune first to my own needs makes me an agent of creativity and personal power.”
From my Youtube Channel: Tending the Storms Inside
VIDEO FROM YOUTUBE CHANNEL: Just what is it that I'm trying to say here, by gosh? There's just no other way out, but ‘in.’ So find 100 ways to get still. And love everything that emerges. There may be some interesting characters wanting more breathing room. Meet Slim. He’s shown up before. And he shows up again towards the end. He's gracious enough to let the feminine lead.
Making a Better Circus
The Transformative Power of Classical Music
With almost 17 million plays, this talk brings me to tears each and every time. Conductor Benjamin Zander has been teaching people how to listen to classical music for many decades. The way he engages the audience in this talk gets the highest marks. Worth every minute of your time for your own inspiration about what it is to be human.
https://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_the_transformative_power_of_classical_music
Find Me Here
Escape From Your Own Alcatraz
A post from my YouTube channel Rollin’ Different. Recognizing I always had the key to unlock the 'jail cell' of my own difficulties. The world I have lived in comes from the ideas & beliefs I hold onto, contributed to by the ideas & beliefs of the world around me, internalized by me and my need for safety and for fitting in. So I Invite us all to see that the key to let us out into a much wider, more creative existence sits quietly but certainly in our pockets. Check and see!
The Unmaking of Heresy
King County Transit
Creative Ground was hired by King County Transit’s Design & Construction Division to help remedy an incoherent leadership team and a disjointed culture amongst its engineers and project managers. The culture that its new Manager Pete Melin stepped into was dominated by petty politics, blame lack of accountability, all too common within deep bureaucracies. We interviewed a select group of staff, offered a written organizational culture assessment and suggested several recommendations to rebuild the senior team and develop better practices of communication across the Division. We implemented most of the recommendations over several months, the culture started to improve through better communication and some changes in leadership.
“We worked with Lisa over several productive months when I took over a section of Metro Transit that was struggling with trust and communication issues. Lisa is an insightful, compassionate truth teller who will provide you valuable feedback and tools. She truly cares yet she’ll tell you what she sees, not necessarily what you want to hear. If you are willing to acknowledge the true state of affairs, and buy into a collaborative plan, you’ll not be disappointed. From organizational development, to executive coaching, or anywhere in between, Lisa provides a positive view of leadership, staff, or organizational challenges and an achievable path to improvement.”
–Peter Melin, previous Manager, King County Transit Design & Construction
Adventure on the High Seas
This essay was based on a vivid and disturbing dream. It describes a large ship of adolescents trying to sail into a fierce storm, unable to harness the power of their collective courage and creativity to save themselves. It speaks to what’s needed for any team to assemble well and survive such times.
A Fool's Errand
Relational Intelligence
A summary of the skills required to ‘up’ our relational resilience. Skills such as listening infused with curiosity, refraining from the need to be right, expressing authentic gratitude, patience to allow problems to unfurl in their own timing, making the “intangibles” visible, and taking responsibility for our fragile egos.
An Act of Imagination
During the pandemic we had different experiences of the lockdowns, the virus, and other people’s choices. I encourage people to consider that we are, each of us, afraid of different things. So if something scary is happening ‘out there,’ it’s important that some people hold less fear, otherwise the collective nervous system would collapse under the strain.
Margaret Wheatley
Margaret Wheatley is a titan in the organizational development field. Whenever I initiate a leadership coaching program with someone, they will often ask me for a few primary sources to consider as they head into their learning journey. My goal is to share the articles, approaches or wisdom keepers that best align with how they see the world in this moment.
Margaret’s books are a foundational resource and her influence has been global. Her book Who Do We Choose to Be: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity has been an especially valuable resource in my learning library.
King County PSB
King County’s Office of Performance, Strategy & Budget had collected three years of employee survey data showing a large disparity in results between men and women. Creative Ground was hired to figure out what was going on and develop a roadmap to address it. My work with them started with a full assessment of the culture based on interviews with over 70 staff. The assessment showed a consistent challenge with how one of the agency directors managed women, in particular, and ongoing tensions within the senior leadership team. We built out a year-long plan to shift the inequities and by the end of our engagement, surveys showed a marked change in people’s perception of safety and equity in their workplace.
“Our agency hired Lisa to help design and facilitate a process to improve our workplace culture. Lisa’s creativity, grace, energy and belief in a more inclusive work environment allowed our leadership team and staff to increase our mutual respect, deepen our interpersonal connections, and explore difficult topics. Through her expert facilitation, guided self-examination, and creative story-telling, our office grew more cohesive and trusting with new norms and patterns of behavior. I, and many others, have been profoundly changed through our interactions with her and her ideas. Our leadership team as a whole is more responsive, open and willing to tackle difficult interpersonal and power dynamics that previously would have been ignored. Rarely has a consulting experience changed so much with such lasting impact.”
–Michael Jacobson, Deputy Director, King County Office of Performance, Strategy & Budget
