Communication Strategy for Organizational Leadership and Relationships: Liberating Structures

Abstract

Communication is human life itself. Because of the information technologies we have nowadays, the communication process is adoptively complex and getting even more complex at an accelerated pace. Understanding how we can make communication better is the key to the individual and organizational well-being, which leaders should prioritize to perform and produce good outcomes and impacts in the society. This chapter tries to introduce social workers to some of the strategies leaders can use for organizational and individual development. After discussing theoretical aspects, Liberating Structures will be introduced as a very practical toolset. I have the experience of working with community social workers in the community of Japan, and my work has been related to the empowerment of social workers’ skills to better communicate with community members and other professionals and often among peers and staff members. Based on my experience, I showcase examples of Liberating Structures’ practical usages.

1. Introduction

1.1 Japanese contexts

Japan’s social systems very much focus on a rapidly aging society. The population started and kept declining after the peak of 2008, and the population pyramid is base-shaped [1], suggesting that fewer young generations need to support the retired. Building or rebuilding the community to accommodate the daily lives of the older adult whose kins do not live together or close to them is critical. We have a well-developed public system to provide older adults with welfare services for long-term care insurance. The problem is its sustainability because of the shrinking population, especially those who pay taxes. The national government pushes community inclusiveness providing community members with comprehensive care. Comprehensive care is mutually exchanged among community members. All members can be a provider and benefiter of the care [2].

It is said that the Japanese values ties within close relationships such as family. We tend to have clear boundaries of “Uchi” (meaning insiders) and “Soto” (meaning outsiders). We appreciate family ties, of which the negative side is independence from the outsider [3]. This aspect makes the Japanese think being not independent is a shame and can cause social isolation when individuals in need do not live with or close to other family members. The family is nowadays nuclear, and generations within a family tend to live in separate locations. With this background, the need for public long-term care services is increasing [4], while the market for private eldercare services is also expanding.

On the other hand, Japanese culture is based on farming, in which mutual support was necessary to sustain the business, such as the management of water and land in the community [3]. Many neighborhood communities are used to or still have good supporting systems on such a base in the culture. Community members take care of each other on a daily base. However, such communities are aging and losing their support systems.

Regaining or gaining capacities for managing mutual support systems in the community is needed, considering the financial backgrounds and societal changes.

1.2 Social work in the community

The macro perspective comes down to social work practices. In Japan, social work is majorly driven by the public sector. “Social worker” in Japan is usually a nationally qualified social worker (“Shakaifukushishi” in Japanese) or mental health and welfare worker (“Seishinhokenfukushishi”) [5]. However, qualifications are not always required. Social workers are also called different names depending on the workplace, such as “life counselor” (“Seikatsusoudainin”) in the eldercare facilities and “medical social worker” (“Iryo” social worker) in hospitals.

1.3 Fields of social workers in Japan

Major employees of social workers in Japan are hospitals or clinics and private medical or welfare companies who contract with local governments to support the management of their long-term care welfare services as subsidiaries.

Social workers, with or without the public qualification, play roles in the delivery processes of long-term care welfare services provided in the community. Although the data is limited to those with the public qualification, about 40% of social workers work for the eldercare facilities, and 14% work for medical care facilities [6]. The data suggests that many social workers play important roles as life counselors in the more general term in Japan.

1.4 What do Japanese social workers do?

Life counselors provide consultation and support services to the older adults with disabilities, and their families. Those clients are users of eldercare homes, daycare services, and other long-term care welfare facilities. Specifically, they serve as the point of contact for the facility, receiving consultation from the users and their families, performing procedures for admission and discharge from the facility, and communicating and coordinating with the relevant authorities. They are sometimes called “support counselors,” and their job description is the same as that of life counselors.

I used to work with social workers in the community. Many are staff members of the companies contracted with the local government. Social workers are responsible for a particular serving area that is geographically determined. The zoning is based on middle schools, which are areas for individuals to live their daily lives.

In 2016, their job description was changed with the need to rebuild the community’s capacities. Although the previous responsibilities included coordination of the services, and they were required to collaborate with other organizations to orchestrate resources to benefit insured clients efficiently and effectively, they now are responsible for facilitating community capacity building. It is a huge additional component that requires them to communicate more and better with professional and community organizations. The community usually has its organizational systems with small committees for child welfare, eldercare, security, natural disaster mitigation, etc. Older communities face the challenges of sustaining the system because fewer younger participate in activities, while newly developed communities face the challenges of building such systems. Those organizational systems are enhancers most times, but they can hinder (re)building community capacities. Hospitals and clinics, and private care providers for the medical and long-term care services in the community are important resources, and their participation in the community capacity building is critical. However, the hierarchy between medicine and welfare can be a hurdle toward the goal.

1.5 Importance of organizational development in social work

While I attended social workers’ challenges in facilitating community capacity building, I realized that the internal capacity was also being developed. The whole process was new to the organization, and it was very important for social workers to share their experiences and lessons learned. The center’s director for community comprehensive care services was keen on such needs among staff members. He invited me to such meetings of the sharing, and I occasionally supported meetings. Though it is anecdotal, those internal communication processes secured by the director’s leadership enhanced the organizational development and social workers’ performances in the community.

In the 2020 spring, the COVID-19 pandemic started challenging our resilience. For many organizations in social work in Japan and other countries, there must be very challenging moments.

When we are flexible and creative, we become resilient and even better under such supposedly bad situations. Organizational performances heavily depend on how well members communicate with each other, affecting flexibility. Being creative requires diversity. From the future perspective, the leader in social work should be even more concerned about the importance of internal communication processes with their quality of diversity.

This chapter focuses on internal and organizational communication processes and their relationship with the leadership in social work. The concept and tool I introduce will apply to the context across organizations. However, the effects of the enhanced organizational capacity with the base of internal communication processes will cascade to the serving community.

2. Understanding communication from the standpoint of complexity science

2.1 Complexity science

Complexity science is originally derived from the natural sciences of biology and physics and has no single original theory to explain it. It has been applied in the social sciences to address problems and issues in human society. We are also surrounded by many complex systems, such as traffic jams, stock and futures trading, etc. An organization composed of multiple individuals is a social complex system [7].

In modern society, we benefit from information and logistics technologies, which not only connect the world and allow us to be informed about events such as natural and human disasters in distant countries but also affect our lives in many ways. Almost all systems in this modern society are connected, creating a huge complex system as a whole. There are several characteristics of a complex system. However, the most important ones are having a specific origin, having a regularity even though the way it spreads is difficult to understand, and interacting with the surrounding external systems and other systems that exist alongside it [7].

2.2 Revisiting commutation processes

Most human activities are communication. We live our lives with others, and “relating” is communication, exchanging information in all its forms. Shannon and Weaver’s most fundamental theory of communication frames and explains the essence of communication [8].

The sender sends a message with an intention. The receiver of the information receives it through a filter of interpretation. Noise exists in the process of transmission and reception, and when the intention at the time of transmission is expressed, it becomes something different from its original form (symbolization). The receiver’s interpretation deciphers it, but there is a twist. Furthermore, the receiver becomes an information transmitter that provides feedback based on interpretation. It may seem like a simple exchange of information, but in fact, various factors are involved, and it is not easy for the sender’s intentions to arrive at the receiver’s side as it is.

The term “butterfly effect” is used to express a slight change in the state of a dynamic system that causes the system’s subsequent state to be significantly different from what it would have been without the slight change [9]. Also, in the communication process, a small element can greatly change the outcome. For example, is there someone you know or a friend of yours who somehow makes you feel more energized when you talk with him or her? In communicating with that person, there may be expressions present in the information provider, which lead to good interpretations. For example, a terrific caregiver professional I know practices “hand-holding.” As the term implies, it is a light touch of the hand on the other’s shoulder when listening to a story. It is an expression of caring. Others may include sitting so that you are facing diagonally rather than face to face in the consultation process, smiling a little when you greet someone and other casual gestures that can make a big difference.

3. Leadership styles, communication, and psychological safety

3.1 Leadership styles and performance

Leadership styles matter the organizational performance. Fiedler (1996) argues that effective leadership is critical for the success or failure of a group, organization, or country [10]. For organizations to become capable enough to cope with the increasing volatility and turbulence of the external environment, leaders should be trained and equipped with the necessary skills [11, 12, 13]. It is very applicable to the ever-changing circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and effective leadership is indeed needed.

In the area of management, the relationship between leadership styles and performance has been plentifully discussed [14, 15]. The study’s results are that the democratic and participative leadership styles tend to yield more success for the organization [16].

Among mainly case studies that provide evidence for the relationship between leadership and performance in general (for example, [17, 18, 19]), Thorlindsson (1987) conducted an empirical study that assessed the impact of leadership on performance in the context of Icelandic fishing ships [19]. Analyses of the study data over three years revealed that the captains’ leadership qualities accounted for 35–49% of the variation in the catch of crews. Pointing out the limited empirical evidence of leadership and organizational performance, Ogbonna and Harris (2013) examined the relationship between the leadership style and organizational performance with mediating effects on organizational culture among the middle and large companies in the United Kingdom. They analyzed survey data from 322 key informants who knew various tactical and strategic activities of their companies and found that the associations between the leadership style and the organizational performance were all mediated by some form of organizational culture. They also pointed out that among all of the leadership styles that were indirectly significantly associated with the organizational performance, instrumental leadership styles that focus on exchange [20] were negatively related. In contrast, supportive and participative leadership styles were positively related.

Looking at the area close to social work, the empirical evidence of leadership styles is limited but exists in the management of eldercare homes. Donoghue and Castle (2009) examined the relationship between eldercare home administration (NHA) leadership styles and caregiver turn- over from 2900 eldercare homes [21]. They found that the NHAs’ leadership style that heard and acted upon their employees’ voices (i.g., consensus manager) was associated with the lowest turnover levels. In contrast, the other that did not communicate with their employees about decision making or expectations (i.g., share-holder manager) was associated with the highest turnover levels [21]. Adding the aspect of directors of eldercare homes (DONs) along with NHAs, Castle and Decker (2011) assessed how the top eldercare home management leadership styles were related to the care quality and other performance indices [22]. Their findings showed that a consensus manager leadership style was strongly associated with better quality.

As the research on leadership styles suggests, it would say that leadership styles that are supportive and participative with bi-directional communication processes, including listening and acting upon the employee’s or follower’s voice, can yield better organizational performance.

3.2 Psychological safety in the organization

3.2.1 Definition

Psychological safety is one of the important qualities of organizational communication processes, and it is related to the organizational culture that the previous research has focused on (for example, [22]).

Psychological safety is built by the seminal work by Schein and Bennis (1965) [23] on organizational change. They defined it as the extent to which individuals feel secure and confident in their ability to manage changes. Following researchers have explored the concept of psychological safety in work settings. Kahn (1990) renewed its focus by redefining psychological safety as an individual’s perceptions as to whether he or she is comfortable showing and employing himself or herself without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career ([24] p708). He argued that people are more likely to feel psychologically safe when they have trusting and supportive interpersonal relationships with colleagues [24]. Edmondson (1999) proposed psychological safety as a team-level climate and definition of the “shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking” [25].

3.2.2 What psychological safety provides the organization

Newman et al. (2017) conducted a literature review on psychological safety and identified 62 empirical studies focusing on the outcomes of psychological safety at different levels of analysis [26]. Their review showed the body of evidence on the relationship with organizational communication processes.

At the individual and team levels, it was found that psychological safety was related to greater knowledge sharing among team members [27, 28, 29, 30] and reporting of treatment errors, and more interpersonal communication [31, 32]. Psychological safety within couple relationships and teams has been identified its relationship with more voicing behavior among employees [33, 34, 35, 36] and a reduction in silence behaviors [37].

Research has shown positive associations between employee perceptions of psychological safety and learning behaviors at both the individual [38] and team levels [39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44]. Meta-analyses conducted by Sanner and Bunderson (2013) [45] found the correlation between team psychological safety and team learning to be 0.42 (95% CI = 0.05–0.85).

Beyond organizational communication processes, early empirical work on psychological safety has shown the association of psychological safety with learning and performance outcomes (for example, [25]). More recent studies have shown its direct and strong influence on performance at the individual [46] and team levels [47], indirect influence through facilitating learning behavior at both the individual [48, 49] and team level [25, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54]. Meta-analyses conducted by Sanner and Bunderson (2013) found the indirect effect of psychological safety on team performance through team learning to be 0.17 (95% CI = 0.14–0.20) [45].

In addition to performance, the evidence on the association between the employee’s perceived psychological safety and their organizations and creativity [55, 56], both creative thinking and risk-taking at the team level [57], innovation in R&D teams [58, 59], manufacturing process innovation performance [59, 60], knowledge creation [61], team performance mediated by the sharing knowledge [62]. Referring to the study result of no evidence for the psychological safety leading to higher levels of critical thinking within teams [63], Newman et al. [26] suggest that psychological safety may influence performance outcomes through promoting social exchange between the employee and organization, and enhancing the extent to which the employee identifies with the organization [46, 47, 64].

3.2.3 Leadership that provides the organization with psychological safety

Evidence on the effect of supportive leadership behaviors on work outcomes through psychological safety has been accumulated. For example, empirical studies showed that some properties of leaders, such as inclusiveness [33, 55], support [65], trustworthiness [66], openness [34], and behavioral integrity [57], strongly influenced the employee’s perceived psychological safety, and drove the behavioral outcomes such as employees’ voicing behaviors, involvement in creative work, job performance and engagement. At the team level, employees’ collective perceptions of support and coaching forwarded by the team leader [25, 41], leader inclusiveness [51, 67], trust in the leader [47, 48], and the leader’s behavioral integrity [31] have been found to develop psychological safety facilitating team learning behaviors, team performance, engagement in quality improvement work, and reduction in errors among team members.

Research has established the evidence that leaders valuing participation, people, and production use couple discovery rather than group-based discovery methods [44, 68], and an improvement orientation management style [69] are more likely to provide high levels of psychological safety.

The mechanisms of the relationship between supportive leadership behaviors and psychological safety have been referenced in social learning theory [70]. The explanation is that leaders play model roles to employees/followers by listening, forwarding support, and providing clear and consistent directions to them, which makes them feel safe to take risks and engage in honest communication [38, 51, 71, 72]. The other (for example, [47]) pushes the social exchange theory; when followers are supported by the leader, they will reciprocate with supportive behaviors themselves, which secures the psychologically safe environment of the entire team. Newman et al. [26] argue that it is likely that the effects will be stronger and more enduring when psychological safety is built through employee/follower’s learning of leaders’ behaviors, rather than them being displayed at points of exchanging certain behaviors with leaders.

3.2.4 Points to make

So far, I have shared enough scientific evidence for the important roles of communication processes that can be facilitated by the leadership style. Leadership styles strongly affect outcomes in direct and indirect manners, fostering and hampering, for example, a creative and innovative organizational environment with psychological safety. I emphasize leadership styles are displayed and realized only through the leader’s behaviors that are mostly organizational communication processes.

On the other hand, leaders’ personalities matter, and not all leaders have personal properties such as traits and skillsets yet to secure the quality of organizational communication processes. To overcome such obstacles, I introduce the tool for enhancing quality organizational communication processes, e.g., Liberating Structures.

4. Liberating structures

As mentioned, the remaining part of this chapter will be devoted to introducing the specific tool that helps leaders in social work equip communication processes for a better organizational environment and performance that is Liberating Structures (L.S.s) [73].

4.1 L.S. Overview

Although we want to be better in daily performances as a member of social organizations, including private or public, we are not good at making changes. We are in the loop of “habits,” and it is difficult for us to escape from it. Habitual practices in the organization, which are being followed by the majority of members, are thought that there is no other way even though there are other ways. One of the typical habitual practice examples is the communication style. On the public occasion, we commonly use five styles of communication, which are presentations, managed discussions, status updates, brainstorming, and open discussions) (Figure 1) [74].

Figure 1.

Big 5 conventional micro-structures. (Source: Lispmanowicz and McCandless, 2020 [74]).

They point out the unintended consequences of following the conventional styles include exclusion, suffocation, unjust participation with over-or under-controls and inability to yield ideas for next steps and the future. Those styles often limit space for good ideas to emerge, be shared, merged, and refined. Thus, they will never produce creativity and innovations. We tend to blindly practice the styles because they are thought to be the only way, although they get frustrated with the consequences. Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2020) point out that huge costs are spent working the way in efforts to fix the problems, which actually creates or exacerbates them [74].

To make real changes in organizations, which are sustainable and habitual with good causes, all levels of individuals should be involved. Involvement means not only participation but engagement as change agents, which requires change methods everybody can use, and those methods should be routinely used in daily living [74].

Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2020) suggest the importance of paying attention to “microstructures” of communication styles, which matter to the quality of communication processes, which are the essence of L.S.

They point out that the requirements for small-scale changes are similar to the requirements for large-scale systemic changes. The caseworker who wants to improve the quality of care for the client, the manager who wants to improve department performance, the teacher who wants to engage students, the doctor who wants to improve teamwork, and so on, all need and are benefitted from methods that are very simple, quickly learned, easy to use, and endlessly adaptable. They listed the key attributes for such methods include, 1) versatile (being useful in many different situations, regardless of a person’s profession, position, culture, or purpose), 2) easy to learn (requiring no extensive training), 3) expert-less (requiring only a few minutes to introduce), 4) results-focused (generating tangible results so quickly that people will sustain the effort), 5) rapid cycles (being short enough to fit in the existing cycles of work and to be repeated quickly to improve results, 6) multi-scale (being useable with varied group sizes for everyday tasks, projects, or strategy and goal setting, and 7) enjoyable (having participants experience working together as pleasurable and satisfying rather than the usual drudgery).

Equipped with those features, L.S.s are the simple change methods that everybody can use to improve or change the way work supposedly gets done. There are 33 structures in which everybody is included and invited to participate in shaping the group’s shared future (Figure 2). The detailed descriptions of 33 structures are freely and publicly available [75]. Because most L.S.s take only 10 to 30 minutes, they can be used for daily communication processes, including meetings in the organization.

Figure 2.

33 L.S. menus. (Source: Lipmanowicz and McCandless, 2020 [74]).

4.2 Theories behind L.S.s: complexity science

L.S.s have been developed from the founders’ deep interests in complexity science theories [76]. They took close looks into living how those theories could inform the nature and functioning of human organizations. Quo and McCandless (2020) explained the organizational life using metaphors (Figure 3). They argue that we need to take an ecological metaphor rather than a machine metaphor to understand the organization’s life. The machine metaphor is the one we have believed since we got machines in the time of the industrial revolution. It explains that a good organization is supposed to work like a clock. A system is made of interconnected reliable parts (people, functions, and systems), directed and controlled from the top, and designed to produce predictable results. However, organizations are not machines but complex living systems that behave and evolve like ecosystems.

Figure 3.

Comparison of machine and ecosystem metaphors: Images. (Source: Fisher and McCandless, 2020 [76]).

Figure 4, which was modified based on the idea by the complexity science scholars [77], presents how to organize activities based on a more conventional machine metaphor and on a complexity-theory-based ecosystem metaphor [76].

Figure 4.

Comparison of the machine and ecosystem metaphors: how to organize activities. (Source: Fisher and McCandless, 2020 [76]).

4.3 Microstructures

While being easy to understand from the theoretical standpoint, it will pose a question in the practical aspect. That is how organizational members are supposed to manage their operations, make decisions, solve problems, manage people, and so on with such a worldview.

The L.S. founders originally collected methods that allowed people to routinely use to manage in a complex way rather than manage in a mechanistic way [76]. As they accumulated collections, they started simplifying the approach, not requiring the understanding of the complexity theory and terms to use the methods [76].

Such processes of simplifying the methods yielded the aforementioned micro-structural elements. There are five elements of microstructures, and they are the following [73].

1. Invitations: They are tightly connected to the purpose of each L.S., but they leave all participants fully in control to generate responses and contents.

2. How participation is distributed: No artificial and preset limit is imposed on the number of participants. All of the affected individuals will be included and get equal time and opportunity to contribute.

3. How groups are configured: Most L.S.s are done with small groups in a parallel manner, and the cycle of sharing results and moving forward rapidly follows.

4. Sequence of steps and timing: Work is composed of blocks logically sequenced to achieve the purpose of the selected L.S.

5. How space is arranged: This element defines how the space is shaped, modified, or adapted based on what is needed to best implement the selected L.S.

For example, one of the most basic L.S.s “1–2–4-All” is best designed to generate and exchange many ideas from group members in a short period of time. It can be used as an alternative to brainstorming and status reports and is often used within other L.S.s. Taking it as an example, micro-structural elements are like the following [76].

1. Invitation: A question asking for ideas or proposals about an issue (e.g., What opportunities do you see for making progress on this challenge? What ideas or actions do you recommend? What questions do you have?)

2. How participation is distributed: Everyone is given equal time and opportunity to participate.

3. How groups are configured: individual, pairs, groups of four, and the whole group in the order

4. Sequence of steps and timing: 1) the time for silent self-reflection on a shared challenge or issue, which is framed as a question, 2) the time for generating and sharing ideas in pairs, 3) the time for sharing ideas from pairs in foursomes, and 4) the time when each group shares one important idea with all and meanings/conclusions are recorded.

5. How space is arranged and materials needed: 4 chairs per table or groups of 4 chairs with no tables at all, notepads to record observations and insights.

4.4 Case study and examples

This section, following the introduction to the essence of L.S.s, will exemplify its usages through a few case studies and actual use examples. You may not think that they are necessarily considered internal communication processes within an organization. However, I hope that they should give you better pictures of how to use particular L.S.s. I do not provide the readers with detailed descriptions of each L.S. while suggesting you refer to the available resources.

Four provided fictional and non-fictional examples are contextualized in Japan, and the settings are where Japanese social workers are working toward rebuilding the community.

4.4.1 The setting

The description here is fictionally based on the real situation where I was involved.

Imagine the “center” is responsible for welfare services in a particular geographic area. The center chief who is a social worker himself leads the center, and the staff members include two social workers and a nurse, and two administrative staff members who deal with paperwork for the public procedures. The center’s responsibilities include 1) the management of the cases of individuals with long-term care needs, who usually use public services to some extent, and 2) the community organization work, which involves developing relationships with individual residents, community organizations, and other community resources such as medical clinics and hospitals, private or non-profit welfare service providers and so on. While staff members need to set and attend various meetings to develop collaborative relationships with outside organizations across the serving community, being understaffed is a chronic condition. The center chief does feel the lack of information sharing, but he does not want the staff members to sacrifice their roles in private life.

The following is a brief description of 4 possible issues of communication processes that the center face and the possible L.S.s use to resolve them.

Example 1

Issue: With the difference in professional backgrounds, there is a huge perception gap of community organization work among staff members. Because staff members actually do not know well what they are doing, particularly as community organization work done outside the office, some staff members feel that they take the uneven workload. Staff members need to first know and share what the other members are doing as part of their responsibilities, and to have time to think about how community organization work is really what they as the center need to do.

Possible L.S. use: In this case, for the first part of sharing what they do like the role in the center, one of the best fits is “Troika Consulting.” It allows staff members to share their thoughts, feelings, and concerns about their own daily work. Using Troika Consulting, feelings and deep thoughts can be voiced with coaching-like support from colleagues. The invitation may be famed by questions like “How do you feel about your daily work and what is the burning issue recently?”

The second part of sharing the value and goal of community organization can be achievable by “Celebrity Interview.” The social worker takes the celebrity role (interviewee), and the center chief can interview him/her. The interviewer (the center chief) asks a series of questions to reveal the value felt by the interviewee (the social worker). After finishing a “Celebrity Interview,” the other staff members, as if they are press members, can ask additional questions. Then they can reflect on what they thought and felt about what was told by the social worker. This process can be done by “1-2-4-ALL” if the number of participants is large. The communication process is composed of a few L.S.s.

Example 2.

Issue: Some of the key individuals in younger generations who do not perceive the aging of the community as what they need to deal with are not motivated enough to participate in collaborative community works, and the social worker wants to get them involved.

Possible L.S. use: This is a non-fictional example. The L.S. actually used was “Experiential Fishbowl.” Having the leaders from the local community and representatives from various related organizations gather together, we (the center staff members and I in the team) invited them with asking a question, “How would you like to spend your last days?”

As part of the half-day workshop, the social workers who led the “Experiential Fishbowl” session asked a neighborhood association leader, a daycare facility nurse, a doctor of the local clinic, a welfare commissioner, and the social worker to be in the fishbowl, and to them to discuss their own ideas regarding the question (invitation) among them in the fishbowl while other participants surrounded them in the fishbowl. Diverse opinions were expressed, and the conversation did not stop, though, but after all of the individuals inside the fishbowl expressed their ideas and thoughts for about 15 minutes, the other participants surrounding them were given a chance to pose questions and express their ideas and thoughts. Talking about death is not usual, but no one can avoid it, and the communication dynamics were very energizing and promoted the community building for a good life and good death. A participating health care professional mentioned, “It was very good to hear real voices and an opportunity to get to know each other’s thoughts. I realize the importance of having time to think together” (Figures 5 and 6).

Figure 5.

“Experiential Fishbowl” at the community gathering.

Figure 6.

Ideas shared with a foursome in “1-2-4-ALL”.

Example 3.

Issue: The social workers think that there must be local resources that have not been captured in the community. They want to expand the list of local resources at various levels because they think recognizing even small-scaled activities by residents and making links will promote supporting systems in the community.

Possible L.S. use: “1-2-4-ALL” the simplest and most basic L.S. can be used with an invitation like “Please introduce each other’s current activities.” Pairs or foursomes of people who are not normally acquainted with each other are usually recommended for “1-2-4-ALL,” and this is very applicable for this case. The invitation can be enhanced by an additional question like “Are there any similarities or similarities?” Foursomes might be asked to make a list of what they heard from each other, and those lists will be merged with the entire group.

Example 4.

Issue: Communities can learn much from each other, and the center wants to set up an environment in which the communities can effectively learn from each other.

Possible L.S. use: It is true that neighboring local communities do not interact with each other enough to know what other communities are doing. Sadly, though but it is very reasonable as the lack of communication can happen within a much organization. However, as the social worker thought, there should be a quality of learning when they interact and communicate with each other.

This example is another real story, and the actual work was done. We invited community leaders from several communities to a community gathering. They share concerns about the aging of members and the lack of supporters of sustainable community initiatives. At the session with a diverse group of participants, using “1-2-4-ALL,” we invited them to pull “Ideas to reduce the number of older adults who are isolated in their homes.” With these invitations, many described what they were actually doing and provided concrete ideas. Those shared and exchanged ideas and information of actual practices were also taken by many as “souvenirs of innovations.” We saw many participants motivated by confirming each other’s efforts. Participants from the medical and welfare professions were in the session, and they responded to what they heard, “I admire community members who voluntarily support other older members on daily basis efforts and innovations and what they are doing is innovative with full of wisdom.”

I introduced very basic and simple uses of L.S.s here, and there are plenty more. Each of the 33 L.S.s covers a range of purposes, from spreading ideas to developing strategies. Users choose which L.S. they use based on particular purposes. In addition, users string them again based on purposes. Strings make L.S.s more powerful and provide alternatives to address any challenge of complex problems that groups tend to neglect by making the challenge workable and possible to be solved in shorter times. It may be difficult to structure strings at the very beginning, but as users get accustomed, the possibility can be clearly seen.

Once starting to use L.S.s, users will see its full of potential. It is possible to include and engage everybody and give everyone the opportunity to contribute. L.S.s will make users surprised to see results emerge at a better level than expected and to feel enthusiasm. Another strength is that implementation follows, which truly makes us possible to work in complex systems. As uses are accumulated in the organization, shared experience produces more possibility and confidence in each other, which leads to more innovation. To that point, going back to conventional microstructures (communicating with each other via “Big 5”) will never be an option.

A language is a tool for how communicating. We had known only “Big 5” conventional microstructures as the tools of how to organizationally communicate, but now we have 33 more of that tools that provide us with full of potential. The saying “Use it or lose it” to become a fluent speaker of languages is very applicable to the communication microstructure L.S.s.

4.4.2 Final reflection of L.S. and leadership in relation to psychological safety

The research on leadership styles suggests that leadership styles that are supportive and participative with bi-directional communication processes, including listening and acting upon the employee’s or follower’s voice, can yield better organizational performance. Previous research accumulated evidence on the effect of supportive leadership behaviors on work outcomes through psychological safety.

Although there is no discussion on psychological safety in the context of L.S. uses, to my knowledge, it can be theoretically explained that L.S.s can produce or increase psychological safety because L.S.s can enhance the participation of everybody in very small to large groups by allowing us to be mindful of soft- and hard- microstructures and thus promote flat, just and sound relationships with supposedly high psychological safety. This aspect will call for future empirical research.

L.S.s can help leaders become more effective in organizational communication even though they are naturally not good communicators. Making L.S.s the official language will give the organization possibility of better teamwork and performance. It will require leadership to make it happen. Social work is human care, and the involved organization should be humane to function effectively. Thus, leaders in social work should be mindful of making their leading organization sound with good teamwork by paying enough attention to communication processes.