H O L O G R A P H I C R E P A T T E R N I N G J O U R N A L M A Y 2 0 0 3

ReVisioning the Workplace - Voices from the South Bronx
By Michelle Bongiorno and the Staff of Highbridge Community Life Center

In the February 2003 issue of the HR Journal, (Vol. 9, Issue 1), the article “HR Offers Hope in the South Bronx” gave an overview of pioneering efforts to integrate HR into the very fabric of Highbridge Community Life Center. HCLC is a large community-based social service organization in the South Bronx, one of the most economically depressed boroughs in New York City. In this article we will look at the change in the organizational environment and the staff themselves.

Kenya DeRosa with two boys

An organization’s philosophy, approach and program direction is most often decided at the management level. This is the case at Highbridge Community Life Center. The inspiration and vision to bring HR into the Family Service division at Highbridge came from Didi Madden, the Family Services Program Director. Didi saw the shortcomings of using only psychotherapy and family case management with families of Highbridge and saw the possibilities that HR opened. (See February 2003 issue). Once that decision was made, the staff needed to be brought on board with HR. Taking HR into HCLC brought Family Services staff face to face with a new paradigm. In the following paragraphs, staff members of Family Services, who are trained in HR, talk about their experience of HR in the workplace. They speak of the changes they see in the organizational environment and changes within themselves.

Didi: The foundation of relationship among us as staff is what allows us to build the necessary foundation of relationship with our clients. It’s from this foundation of relationship that change can take place within the families we serve. The staff we had when we first introduced HR were here to do a job. There was little focus on growing or learning. They cared about the families they worked with, but felt ineffective. They blamed the clients or the amount of paperwork for their ineffectiveness. The staff were very fearful people. They barricaded themselves against their fear. The residents of Highbridge that we work with do the same. When staff and client are both barricaded against their own feeling response to life, this maintains a distance that prevents effective work from happening. HR asked for a new level of openness and self-reflection within the staff and this challenged their very defended stance.

Michelle: Following the decision to bring HR to Highbridge, the staff were oriented as a group to HR. Everyone also experienced at least one individual HR session so they could have a direct experience of HR. The agency provided the staff with the opportunity for the full HR training. There was little awareness in staff of the gift they were being offered. Staff had the choice whether or not to learn HR. Eight agreed to take the seminars, but this came more from a place of wanting to please than out of any desire or commitment to learn and use HR. As they entered the seminars, HR threatened the very defences that had become an essential part of their survival while working in a neighbourhood like Highbridge. They were equally defended against each other. HR showed little resemblance to the work or approaches they knew or used with clients and they could not even conceive of using HR with their clients. Following the seminars the staff went into a place of quiet resistance and ambivalence around HR. The expectations for the period following the seminars had not been identified clearly enough for this first round of seminars, so little happened in terms of applying what they had learned in the seminars. After months of no movement, Kenya DeRosa (HR practitioner and HR teacher in training) and I were hired to work part-time providing direct HR service to clients and staff. I had a clear vision of the HR project I wanted to create in a neighbourhood like Highbridge and it was client-centred. I had to very quickly reorient myself as it became clear that staff were going to be a primary place where transformation would be needed before HR could really begin moving out in an empowering way to clients.

Case planners were required to be present for HR sessions that Kenya or I did with their clients. A relationship with HR began to grow as they observed the receptivity of their clients. Of the 90 families served in the department, only a small percentage could receive HR sessions so all family case planners did not have direct exposure to the HR work with clients. The place where all staff in Family Services interfaced directly with HR was in a weekly staff HR session that everyone was required to attend. The staff sessions provided an opportunity to educate and orient the staff to the process of HR and to reorient them from a problem-centred to a strength-centred approach when working with families. The first year was an exercise in faith and unwavering perseverance for Kenya and myself.

Kenya de Rosa: When I first came to Highbridge there was almost no interaction between the staff. They seemed to each be in their own little world, although they were all sharing a large office space together. It seemed like there was no meaningful connection between them. The office environment was filled with a lot of anxiety, which is also what you find in the Highbridge neighbourhood. The anxiety was so pervasive throughout the staff. Everyone seemed walled off from each other. With certain staff it felt like a wall of hate. It was a challenge having to face the staff each week with openness, having to be the pioneer bringing in a work like HR and sticking with it. It touched all my own feelings of not being welcomed, feeling hated and rejected.

Didi: Some staff entered into the weekly HR sessions with increasing openness. Others silently resisted. HR gently but persistently identified the patterns that were holding the department in limitation, and in that process supported a new level of openness to grow.

Hubert McCabe MSW, Psychotherapist: When HR first came to Highbridge the group struggled with their non-coherence. Yet even in that struggle, HR allowed for a sense of community to be built that wouldn’t have come any other way. We could have talked about it as much as we wanted and it still wouldn’t have existed. HR paved the road for community to be built. HR allowed that to happen. It had never happened before. Even in the midst of resistance, community grew. HR allows for a supportive community; it encourages it and fosters it. When you have community in place, a lot of other work can naturally progress.

Megan Bourne, Case Manager: It was often painful being in the initial staff sessions. It brought up so much fear in everyone just to be there. As time went by, whether people wanted to or not, they softened to HR. It began to feel safer. I could see us all changing. We were getting a little easier on each other and with each other. There was a lot of internal change going on but we had a hard time verbalizing it. We may have stuck to some of our old ways at that time but they didn’t have the same power.

Michelle: The guarded places within staff had never before been so openly named in the work setting. Now they were being looked at weekly in the group HR sessions—gently but openly. Negative beliefs and attitudes about clients, emotions of fear and anger, hopelessness and anxiety—just the naming of these issues caused awareness to grow, and the environment began to change. The sessions were required for all and this was a wise decision that bore great fruit. The HR sessions were a time to come together when even those with silent resistance were shown respect and understanding. Most of our clients are mandated to receive preventive services, so they often show signs of similar resistance. They may not want to be present, but as relationship grows with the Family Services staff, a softening happens. The staff sessions provided an opportunity to model how we meet a resistant client without judgment. Each staff person opened to HR at their own pace and in their own way. A foundation of personal relationship was being built between the staff and the HR process during this first year.

Lakisha Hunter, Administrative Assistant: I’m the type of person that procrastinates a lot. I don’t make decisions. I like to watch and evaluate. With me it’s been helpful to meet weekly for HR. You have to throw it in my face before I can grab it. There have honestly been a lot of changes.

Kenya: I have seen such a big change in the overall work environment. Now there’s such openness. There’s a feeling of ‘family’ amongst the staff. We’re using a process that really creates change and transformation in people. Staff experience the results, they use HR on their clients, they’ve seen the shifts that can happen. There is so much more joy and true bonding between staff. In the beginning to talk about anything personal was so challenging. Now it’s amazing the depths that we can go to in our staff HR sessions. People feel safe being really truthful and admitting what they are experiencing. Sessions that were painful to be in are now profound.

Diane Forrest, CSW, Associate Director of Family Services, Psychotherapist:
I see more awareness in the staff and a willingness to look at the work that we do. We are not afraid to look at the obstacles and the blocks that keep us from going where we want to go with the work.

Didi: It was held that HR was something we were going to use, not only with clients but also with staff, so change was a necessary part of the job. Over time there were a few staff who couldn’t or wouldn’t move with the positive change that was happening. They exited. New staff were hired who reflected the higher level of coherence in the department and who were more willing to move into relationship. Expectations were clear when new staff were hired, that HR was one of the tools that would be used for staff development, as well as one of the services case planners would offer families they worked with. For the most part, our present staff is more open and willing to learn and grow.

Michelle: A sense of safety is growing within Family Services. We continue to be in process but the change is already profound. Dr. Bruce Lipton teaches that a living organism cannot be in a state of protection and growth at the same time. In an environment like the South Bronx the atmosphere is charged with the tension of fear. Homes, the streets, schools, hospitals— none of these places feel safe. Clients and staff are constantly moving into survival responses. Real and lasting growth or change can happen for our families when a sense of safety is created internally and, when possible, externally. The same is true for staff. HR offers many different ways for fear and anxiety to be reduced and for these vulnerable areas to be approached safely. The increased sense of safety can be seen in many ways.

Didi: I see many changes. The meeting of staff is more real. Staff are better able to talk about their work in a meaningful way, better able to identify their responses or feelings and for the most part they are all more willing to do so. There’s been a reduction in the need to appear perfect or the need to appear like they “have it all together.” There is less of a need to hide thoughts or feelings. When places of imperfection are acknowledged there is much less sense of embarrassment or sense of being blamed. HR gives us the ability to move into helping staff deal with the real feeling responses that come up in the work setting instead of saying “you need to move into this with your therapist.” This more traditional way separates the feeling response from the work setting. HR allows us to cross that boundary. HR is here to help us respond to staff. As a result there is more engagement between us as staff. With greater engaging, a foundation of relationship is built—and our clients benefit.

Diane Forrest uses HR with a student

Vanessa Diaz, MSW, Senior Case Planner:
There are still different levels of active participation within the weekly HR staff sessions. But it doesn’t matter, everyone is there and actively listening. HR gives us a way of identifying what is really happening. With HR it feels safe to do that. HR also moves us safely through whatever it is that is blocking our way so we can continue doing our jobs. We feel empowered and on the same page with everyone else. We’re working together rather than alone. Having one hour in our group HR sessions each week to identify what is happening and then be able to do something about it—it’s a relief.

Hubert: The experience of being in Highbridge, where this sort of thinking and work is what they want you to do, is incredibly liberating and invigorating. They expect you to use your creative talents to your fullest potential. They don’t want you just to do the bare minimum, or even an average job. They don’t even want you to do a good job based on textbook ideas of what a good job is. They want you to do a good job based on cutting edge kind of thinking, reworking the whole idea of what a good job is. It’s incredibly scary to be on that kind of line, to know that you’re always pushing the envelope. This is where I think HR really comes in. I’m allowed to go to that place in a supportive environment.

Didi: HR offers us alternative ways to deal with problems. In the environment of many agencies, third party discussions, gossip, destroying people’s reputations, attacking, huffing and puffing and walking out, throwing tantrums—these become acceptable and even expected behaviours. That kind of environment is not safe for staff. We don’t have that at Highbridge. It’s not that we don’t have it at all. We do. But it’s at a very benign level compared to other places. Here we recognize those behaviours as destructive. They reflect our noncoherence. We are a staff that can at least acknowledge together that we don’t want to do those things. HR offers us a new possibility for what is acceptable. When problems surface in an HR session to be looked at and dealt with, dancing is the acceptable behaviour. Laughing is the acceptable behaviour. Putting on coloured glasses and changing your perspective and seeing it with new eyes is the acceptable behaviour. These modalities are used to change resonance with our non-coherent behaviours. We can let go and play or look silly in front of each other. That makes us very different from other agencies.

Hubert: As we move to a higher state of coherence we’re dealing with tougher cases. Not only are we attracting staff members who are willing to take those risks, but we’re also attracting clients who are much worse. Because of where we’re going as a department, we’re more willing to take the extra step and move in much closer to the client. As we do this, more of the underlying problems come to light. There’s not as much surface stuff as we were working with even a year and a half ago. This is incredibly challenging because it moves us into the real work. We stop treating the symptoms and start looking more at causes.

As we meet these clients it’s so easy for the staff to move into a secondary trauma response—feeling traumatized just hearing the clients’ stories. HR can move in and provide support at those times. The staff doesn’t become traumatized. We can provide the level of caring and support that these families need. HR is there for them and HR is there for us. The hopelessness that comes up in many of our families can easily be transferred into our staff. We don’t have to suffer these feelings.

Michelle: HR has helped staff become more aware of their own inner state. They are more likely now to notice when they are activated, disembodied, anxious or needing an energy constriction release. And they are empowered to do something about it for the benefit of our clients.

Kenya: Clients here can definitely be challenging. HR offers a way to deal with that. Clients are handling intense issues in their lives and our own issues can become so activated in the presence of these clients. I find myself with certain clients having a hard time focusing as I go into a session. I will note the need to do an HR session before seeing that client again. How do people do this type of work without the support of a process like HR?

Vanessa: One of the biggest things that I’ve learned from the HR process is that I don’t have to judge the way I’m feeling. It’s only a pattern; it’s not good or bad. This is a big thing for me. If it’s a day when I don’t feel like dealing with anything at work, I can do a session to change that. In my job position I work under the Administration for Children’s Services. It’s possible to feel like we are monitoring people’s lives and it can become very judgmental. HR helps me to move away from all that judgment and see the person before me. HR has helped me distinguish the behaviour from the person. Just being able to make that distinction is important.

Since I’ve learned HR, I don’t invest so much time judging my co-workers. I also have a big thing with authority figures. It has been the story of my life to think they are incompetent. HR has definitely helped with that. I thought I was going to get fired when I started here. I have a lot of problems with transitions. Being able to receive HR sessions when I first came here helped me with the transition and understanding why I was feeling the way I was feeling. It was just some old patterns where I needed to shift my resonance.

Megan: I often think about Vanessa’s first few months at Highbridge. She was going through all those behaviours. I thought it was hopeless. I had judgments, but I offered to do an HR session with her. I could watch and see how quickly she was able to move through all of that. It was just gone.

Hubert: We’re no longer so many people working next to each other, but we’re working with each other. It’s becoming more and more acknowledged that HR is really something that we should be doing with each other. That’s where we’re really moving, seeing what we can do to support each other. I’ve had pretty amazing experiences. Once I was simply stopped by a co-worker and asked to pause, just because I was running up and down the stairs. With HR it’s not necessary to do a 45-minute session. That kind of pause and centering pointed out by a co-worker created a shift in me. I was in the process of getting overwhelmed. She just kindly pointed out, “The client will be down there in a minute. Take a second to pause and come into yourself.” She didn’t need to stop and say that, but she was aware of my heightened state and was able to tap in and say, “Hold on a minute,” and I freely accepted it. This is an example of the way in which we’re becoming a place of community, a place of give and take.

Didi: In other work settings, running up and down the stairs, Hubert might be seen as the go-getter, someone who is really in charge and on the run. There are places where rushing from one thing to another would be seen as excellence or working hard. Here we recognize that as being disoriented or not being centred or not being grounded. And most importantly we recognize that it’s not good for our clients. We are learning to stop each other and support each other in these ways—for the sake of our clients. HR has helped us to shift our idea of what constitutes a good staff person. Reworking these ideas is very important. When staff can land in who they are, then the clients can land in who they are.

 

LuzMaria Rodriguez uses touch as a modality in an HR session

Diane: In addition to my own clients, I have supervisory responsibility for over 20 different clients who are working with the interns. I find that very challenging. I can’t hold all of that and be at peace. I do something for myself with HR every morning. It can be an intention, or I go to the 5-element chart to see what I need or I might do a longer session. It grounds me and helps me be less anxious about what lies ahead in the day.

Vanessa: With HR I feel that I’m a lot more in control. I can use HR before meeting with a client to be more present, more coherent. When I’m present, feeling calm and in control, I see my clients are then a lot more stable in accepting what’s happening in their lives. When some of the issues and patterns that my clients are facing are very much related to my patterns and issues, I can actually pinpoint my body’s biofeedback and realize I should do some HR before I see them. And I do it. Everything falls into place. It doesn’t make sense that I don’t do HR more often. We’re not all the way there, but we’re getting there.

Diane: I use HR with the university intern students in supervision when they are anxiously talking about their work. I can see the anxiety in their posture and hear it in their voice. I stop and ask them to identify the felt body sense and then we do modalities. I’ve seen remarkable changes in some of them. When we do this they are much more grounded and more attuned to what we are talking about. They notice the change within themselves. It’s like the static is gone.

Didi: The team of administrators for the agency also has an HR session before our weekly meeting now. We’re in a very stressful time. There are threats of budget cuts. There’s been a lot of worry in terms of how we are going to maintain the staff and the programs that we have. It’s moved from a very fear-based environment among the administrators since starting HR, to a sense of being together in this—of not having to do it alone. We’re no longer getting locked into the worry, but are able to focus on the possibilities—what can be done. It’s actually a pleasure to come together now. We all dreaded those meetings before. We’d get sick to our stomachs. We’d know the other administrators were eyeing the bottom line and trying to figure out how they could be fair and also protect their own program staff. The need to protect our territory is now gone. We can focus on the agency as a whole. On the administrative level the response to HR has been very positive.

Megan: There’s a lot of hopelessness in this neighbourhood. I work almost entirely with Latino women. They are all in very difficult situations. They are here illegally. They have financial problems. Their kids have problems in school, their days are filled with struggle and it feels very hopeless for them. As they use HR I hear in their language that they are opening to the idea of “possibilities.” When I first met HR, I had an immediate sense of the power of HR and how transforming HR could be. But when it came time for me to learn HR, it touched a place in me of: “It’s wonderful, but I can never be this powerful. I can’t do this!” I moved through that. Now I want my clients to see that I’m not the only person who can do HR. I empower all of my clients to use the modalities they learn in their sessions. They don’t have to stay in their apartments and feel horrible; they can do something for themselves. Each week I encourage them to incorporate a new modality into their lives or actively use other parts of the HR process. This gives them the experience that they can do something for themselves. The potential is endless for what HR could do in an organization like this!

Didi: We continue as a staff to build personal coherence and coherence in our work community, exploring more effective ways of using HR to support the families of Highbridge. At a later time we look forward to highlighting some of the incredible changes experienced by our parents and children and exploring the ever-expanding applications of HR in a social service system that desperately needs the vision of HR.

Michelle Bongiorno can be contacted at 845-436-9257.

Didi Madden can be contacted at 718-410-6744.