Creator of Culture: Alright, Lance Eaton, it’s great to see you. I think there’s a lot of nuggets and wisdom to be gained on getting together today. This topic is so deep on so many different levels, but from everyone’s perspective, things might look a little different and some things might be a little more important to some than others. You have a really unique perspective. Before getting into your thoughts on culture and kind of pinpointing some passionate areas for you… Can you just give a little background of yourself? What you’re passionate about, and where you’ve been?
Mr. Lance Eaton: Sure, thank you for having here. And thank you for that question. So I think for me, I come from thinking about culture or my experiences is often feeling both in and outside of culture or an outside of certain cultures. As somebody who grew up in middle class America… Actually, it was an interesting role reversal when my mother was the bread winner and my father is the caretaker, learning about the differences in that and how that creates different reactions and people from what was traditional coupled with just throughout my experience being in situations where I was outside, my father wanted us to play sports, I did not, at least at that point, have much interest in sports. So being around people that were really in it and part of it, but also being somebody that did not want to be there and just didn’t function or have the same interests about what we were doing. I played football for six years, and I can still say I’ve never watched a game, even the ones that was bad or playing in, so I think for me, that is heavy with me, other life experiences for a while…
Right out of college, I was working at a place where I worked with a lot of Christian fundamentalists. And at the time, I had my… Where I was… Spiritually was around agnostic. I definitely am not Christian fundamentalist, nor have I ever been. And so a very, very different space and the impact of that, of when you have conversations with people around you, what you feel is what they call the “Overton Window” , what is the agreeable or the acceptable range of things to talk about, and I knew it was evident in that space, like the people around me is Overton Window, their culture of what was appropriate or not appropriate, or ways of talking was fundamentally different from mine.
I knew… I could feel it sometimes or joke like you could always feel the wrath of God’s conversation like right here, and that’s overdoing it, but that was clearly an aspect there, and so I think some of these experiences of both finding myself on some levels. It’s easy to look into culture at large and see representations of myself, it’s really easy to see a variety of demographics that reflect me, but there were… I think in hindsight, although they were challenging at times, had experiences that also had me not at the center of the center of spaces, and that’s carried with me a lot, just throughout my different experiences.
So I worked… It was a website editor at this company. I moved into working in residential programs with troubled adolescence, and that gave me a mother lens about again, they give my own experience as adolescents and the challenges many of us face there, always feeling outside until we don’t… And then without going into too much, I moved from there into academia, teaching as a part-time instructor at many different institutions, and again there as an outsider, as somebody who was teaching a lot. And in about five or six years, I taught over 80 courses. And if you’re like, if you’re a full-time… If you’re a full-time tenure track professor, you’re teaching maybe eight courses a year, and I’m like, I was doing that a semester, I mean, and being very… Being an outsider in that space too, because while higher ed exists entirely dependent on adjuncts there, it’s often been framed as like they have the migrant workers of Higher Ed in the sense that they do really move around their seasonal work, there’s no commitment from…
Or there’s a very little commitment, so a lot of these things shaped me, and thinking about what culture is work culture is the idea that in many of these situations where my life and the cultures that I’m not embedded in there, and IT… And where were culture began, it was hard to really feel those lines were definitive or even clear, and so it was very hard not for me to feel in multiple cultures at work, in any space that I was. And I think that’s an interesting thing, because I’ll give an example of what I mean by this. Because I was teaching, because I worked part-time at all these places, I didn’t have health insurance, so in order to have half insurance, I was continuing to work overnight on a residential program, so I would be working awake overnight, and then I would be teaching in the morning and I may not be teaching for a few hours, so I would have to drive somewhere, take a two-hour nap to refresh and then go and teach, and there’s no way I can easily compartmentalize that so that I am perfectly ready and going or not feeling like the brunt of these systems and these different work cultures along with my need to actually sleep as I can be…
Yeah, take it. Right, right. But the only way you can take care of… It’s just interesting that I have the only way I could take care of myself is by having these jobs to pay these bills, so it’s this really complex mix, and I’ve thought about that a lot as I’ve moved into… I currently now have worked full-time in higher education, more as an advisor to faculty and in different parts of organizations around how they think about learning, how they think about engagement, but I would say when I think about all of this, I think these are things that have been formative and just how I approach it or how we think about it in the context of learning, in the context of a theme that I leave, in the context of how I work with others or early… I hope I continually keep that in mind.
Creator of Culture: Well, first, thanks for sharing that, some of the personal experiences and growing up in first places of being a part of a group where maybe the boundaries were unwritten, but you could really feel them… That’s interesting because it’s almost like there’s natural cultures, and then there’s ones that are created and developed, and it seems like there, based on your experiences personally, professionally, you get these little tidbits or where do you go… And it shapes you to a certain extent. So when we ask the question, What does culture mean to you? What would you say?
Mr. Lance Eaton: A really good question. I think I might just step back a little. I’m thinking about what you said as a whole, and I think that idea of natural cultures, if I were to push a little bit, I might think of it as more inherited cultures, and that’s not necessarily the same thing as natural, and the reason I think about it that way is at times, throughout history, and I should frame this with my water, my degrees in history, so I have this framework of looking at things through that lens is at different times, decisions were made and became part of the culture. In the United States, we made certain decisions or people made certain decisions that have long downstream effects, sometimes those were really good, like the idea of developing Urals as our own patient and breaking away from any land where you can look at a couple hundred years later, and say, Okay, we think this was a good idea, we’re pretty… We’re pretty sure, but that was a set of decisions people made in… From that we created the United States culture, but there’s also other decisions that were made that also had these more pernicious long-term effects about how we view and think about and just what feels natural.
And so a good example of that is when decisions were made within the colonies of who gets to be an indentured servant and who gets to be a slave, and how that had the snowball effect to today, we see some of the consequences in that of how… Really, how we see and engage in different people or understand or frame problems big and small through either individual or cultural or ethnic racial lenses, and so I think that’s a piece for me is always trying to balance, when I think about culture is it’s both… It’s hard to really think about culture without thinking of it across time and those numerous forces to kind of create what feels natural, coupled with the experiential piece of how we as individuals are capturing or experiencing the different messages, both evident and sublet. So there’s lots of evident ways we see this in how we construct our roads, we drive on the right side of the road, England doesn’t… And that’s a cultural thing, and those are found in decisions long ago, and at the same time, like where we choose to walk on roads or drive on roads, it becomes a little bit more of our individual influences.
I think when I look at that idea of what does culture mean to me, I think in the individual, I think it is this strong interplay with history coupled with a meaning making that is both at times empowering and resistant, thinking about the experiences that I spoke to, when I was in that work environment that had a very particular culture, I was making a decision to be there, and I was also trying to understand… We have a special guest to parents, Madame Hing to say, sorry about the pleasures of Zoom and doubt is this idea of the tension between the individual and the culture, I think I saw it in this experience of at work, in this particular work environment that I had to think about it in this way, I could completely judge everybody around me and say like This is… They’re the ones that are wrong, I could internalize and be like, I’m the one that’s wrong, and first of all, just frame that and right and wrong, it’s a problem, it… But I could also recognize, and I think this is one of the things I really appreciated was like I got to understand and appreciate fundamental evangelical Christians in a way that I don’t think in any other context I would.
And so to me, I think culture is at its best when it’s helping us to humanize one another and to recognize we have different experiences that lead us down different paths, but we can still be in a room together trying to learn and understand how that cultural force works on us as individuals. because it Abydos, none of us get away from culture because it’s language, it’s movement, it’s relations, and all of those, we absorb three years before we actually have language to even challenge your question or think about…
Creator of Culture: You bring up a couple of really interesting points, If I could kind of recap and please correct me if I misunderstood, this concept of a natural culture being that it might not be by choice, it’s something that’s inherited and that you grew up in, you’re around and you could be constantly reminded of it, sometimes chosen, sometimes not chosen. And then there’s this creator speak where it’s designed and designed with these things you talk about how the healthy environment where we’re humanizing and building up and figuring out with everyone’s experiences with the natural culture, so to speak, how does that interplay? And it gets the point that you have talked about over the years is, and recently over the past week, is the concept of a healthy tension and growing culture. I was wondering if you go into that a little bit and explain… What do you mean by that?
Mr. Lance Eaton: Sure, thank you. One of the thought, just in this, I almost wonder if I… Again, I probably overthink where it’s because I’m a nerd, but I almost wonder if the terminology is maybe even passive culture versus active culture, so passive being kind of that… What kind of comes to us and is just embody versus that, which we’re actually really thinking about in shaping, and actually that leads into this idea of tension and culture, and I think that’s a lot of what we’re dealing with around the tension is that which is passive that we’ve just absorbed. And sometimes there are pieces of culture that we want to absolutely hold on to, there’s parts of our legacy and they want that that We want to on to, but there’s other parts of that. Again, those downstream effects have effects and they’re not necessarily useful… Do we need to hold on to them? And I’ll give a great example around this is when I work with faculty, one way I try to have a conversation is, we all think of the traditional classroom, that is… That is a culture, the sage on the stage, he… And it was a typically, when he stands up and he lacks his poetic about his pristine knowledge in the students, they are absorbed and they take notes and they just like…
It’s this perfect transfer. You have this transference. Now we have questions about how much that actually really happened in the past, but let’s pretend it’s real, we know that that is how we’ve come to understand learning in the past, but does that mean we have to stick with that, especially as we come to understand things like universal design for learning, and think about things like accessibility, I… Again, is this is one of those areas where I think a lot about in my own experience of… I’m dyslexic, but I’m dyslexic when it comes to hearing. So dyslexia is a language processing issue, and so it’s not just reading, also hearing, and if I’m not in a good audio environment, I can have a lot of trouble. I’m also a good listener, and that those things seem attention, but they’re not, because I have to actively constantly listen, which means I may not have to take notes in a class, I may be able to be done, and I did this plenty in my class, like I could be doing, but I could still be absorbing, and that wasn’t always understood, so to me, the right there is the tension of who I was as an individual and what worked for me for learning versus what was the traditionally accepted and trying to negotiate that, I lucked out and I’ve learned, but I’ve learned the language to explain and share that whenever I’m in the classroom and as a student, but I think that’s a lot of the things is like, how do we address or shift those things, because so much about an active culture is the idea that we’re trying to do something which entails change or it entails kind of pushing, and that tension is supposed to be there because we are rubbing things or tearing things apart or pushing things together, or we would just say.
I think that’s an important piece. And then the other part is within that, because we are these different people embedded in different cultures, so my framework would be worn in any one of us are in many different cultures, there’s the family life culture, and that’s informed by lots of things, there’s… Our work culture, there’s… Our social culture, I think doubly so especially now that we have these digital devices where we’re in conversations in any digital spaces that also carry all sorts of expectations and demands and stuff like that, so any time we’re together, we have all of that in us, and those are pieces that are going to bubble up, those are pieces that are going to be there, even when we’re trying to aim for an organizational goal or for team goal. Those things don’t go away. I think the Pandemic is a good example where
Creator of Culture: I just was thinking about that, what kind of hardships and intention and really bringing stuff to light.
Mr. Lance Eaton: And I think particularly for a lot of my friends and colleagues, particularly those who were parents and they’re at home, that the ones that were lucky enough to be able to work from home, the ones that didn’t lose their job or didn’t have to be out there risking their lives in their family’s lives, which is again, all other sorts of tensions, but they’ll speak to this one in particular, how do you be a professional when your kid is screaming in the background because their kids stressed out, because we’re all stressed out, and that’s its own… What I appreciate about that is just the fact that it got more attention than is realized because that kid is probably screaming in many different ways that the parent is aware about and nobody else is, which means they come to work, they’re trying to do their work. They’re trying to be engaged in that space, but they also know somewhere in the background their kid is screaming, maybe it’s at the pre-school, maybe it’s at school, whatever that kid is screaming about, that’s a problem that that parent has to address and also be a professional and so I think that’s also what I think about in terms of those tensions and being aware of and validating them as real, because I think sometimes we’re not supposed to bring our full selves to places, and I don’t know that that’s possible for at least for me, I don’t think that’s possible.
Creator of Culture: And this definitely carries over for sure. And when you mentioned that, Lance, about healthy tension, intention in general, my brain goes is, “Well, you need that for growth for maturity as a culture”, as a mature set of operating ways of operating and so forth, so I know without that … And healthy tension, if things are with no tension, there’s really no expanding, no growing now. There’s a concept about that in skill development, going just beyond your skill where you’re at that little bending and twisting of practice over and over, get you better, it builds up the baseline a little bit higher, I think it’s the same thing with growing a culture in a place where there’s the tension of other cultures and other situations that are conflicting with one that’s maybe trying to be designed in a workplace culture, but there’s also shaping it, having the tension for growth of that architected culture in whatever area. And can you talk about just maybe from your experience, is just the growth aspect of that healthy tension and why no tension is not good.
Mr. Lance Eaton Sure. So it comes in, there’s several different lines of thought, I think the idea of no tension being not good, I think that that’s true because how do you not have people together… How do you not have people together trying to do things with different motivations in their note tension? I find that, to me that’s really a big line, but I think there’s a bit of extra Tring that’s going on, or there’s a bit of paving over to not have tension feels like I don’t… That seems wrong. I think also the absence of tension in this context of growing is appropriate to highlight because obviously it is hard for her to be… For there to be new ideas, for there to be something different in a world and where there is intention, and I say that because for many organizations, because we’re in a capitalist system, it’s driven by competitions, driven by how do we move, how do we continue to compete how do we continue to offer products in an ever-changing environment that without those things… I don’t want to make it sound drastic like, Oh, you’re lost, but you lose a certain edge, you lose certain opportunities as an organization on the individual, and that concept of kind of growth and learning, I think you nailed it really well in that concept of really creating that or at the Goldilocks effect, you want something that’s outside their reach, but you don’t want something that is down the road, you don’t want something that’s impossible, and that even finding that is going to different…
So again, there’s more tension there of working with individuals and figuring out where exactly is there a happy medium where exactly is something that pushes them to grow, and then one further piece of this that I think is, again, is a valid thing that I’ve certainly seen and thought about is, I have the… I have the… I guess the piece I was going to say is motivation and thinking about what that looks like, and that it looks like different things to different people, because I… Again, I am very lucky to be able to work at an environment that I’m really excited about that are just by the fact that I’m there, are rewarding and therefore help motivate me to want to do the best I can, but the reality is there’s many people who are working for a paycheck because work isn’t their full culture, their full identity, their full identity is fly fishing on the weekend, spending time with family, earning enough money so they can go on their vacations and visit different places or the like. And so you have… I put these up as like… I don’t want to put these up as completely contrasting items or contrasting entities, I think it’s more of a continuum, but that’s another tension to be working through it, to be thinking about, so ultimately we’re all there for a paycheck, but some of us have the benefit to be really engaged in it.
And some of us are, we have the skills and we’re there because we want the paycheck, but there’s an end to that, they’re not necessarily going to be enthusiastic or whatnot, so realizing that might also mean to think about it… I don’t want to say different reward systems, but different engagement systems, different methods of motivating and helping them grow in ways that are useful for the organization and hopefully have some value to that individual
Creator of Culture: Very interesting, I think you bring up a couple of good points, and I want to make sure I capture this and they kind of recap it, is one to grow and have that tension and requires a little bit beyond the capability, so to speak, of whatever that development of that skill or that operating as so and so, but there needs to be some motivation to go there to do that, and that’s definitely a discussion for at different site what it takes to motivate and that be a pretty important aspect of building culture. One thing you… One thing you mentioned too is you talked about a continuum, and just to kind of finish off our awesome discussion, it’s not, but it’s great. This is the good stuff. But you talk about culture as a moving goal, it’s forming warming, it’s a process, and people need to be motivated, but also it’s somewhat understanding, people understanding the process and getting there. How important is that? Just, if you can at least sum up our conversation with that topic… What are your thoughts?
Mr. Lance Eaton: I think the thing that came to mind as I was here, you reflect back, some of our… Or priming for this, we think of culture as just kind of a… Almost as a static thing. But it’s a very rich ecosystem, and within those ecosystems in that ecosystem, every piece has its part to play, and anything off in those pieces have these ricochet, and I think the thing we sometimes forget is It’s an ecosystem with people and… To make this a little more, probably a little more ridiculous, those people themselves are ecosystems, all the different cultures they are part of, so to be a little ridiculous, it’s ecosystems of ecosystems, and I think that is… It’s incredibly challenging, but also fascinating to be thinking of it or looking at it through that lens, in having that… To better, again, in pulling it back to the individual, better understand how people are there, how they’re bringing that full system into those spaces, and I think if we can recognize that we can validate that I see you as a person with the multiplicity of things. I think we create a space that is more valuable to our culture, to our work communities in the life, it helps to make it just not another cog in the wheel, because nobody likes feeling like they are just there to feed the machine, we all have this richness going on that sometimes in the pursuit of goals that we also need to do as work and work culture as we sometimes stumble over recognizing that value of the inherent value of that individual.
Creator of Culture: Yeah, no doubt. 100% agree. And just to sum up, talking about the many cultures within the cultures, the own individuals personal, maybe you have a natural culture and their experiences that makes up who they are and what they’re dealing with outside of a work culture reminds me of many, many different Venn Diagram that has 18 circles that are overlapping and then one big circle of what the work culture is, but then the big circle could be in a different circumstance, like their life culture or the community culture, so there’s a lot of overlapping the in understanding that and recognizing that and certainly the process.
Well, Lance, this has been great. Love to continue this conversation. Thank you so much, this is… we touched the tip of the iceberg what…
Mr. Lance Eaton: Absolutely, my pleasure, I thank you.
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Mr. Lance Eaton, is a writer, educator, instructional designer and social media consultant based out of Arlington, Massachusetts. He has earned degrees in History, Criminal Justice, American Studies, Public Administration, and Instructional Design. He is currently working on his PhD in Higher Education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Lance’s writing has been published in local newspapers, trade magazines, academic journals, books, and encyclopedias. He has been an active producer of content on the internet for over 15 years including his blog, and YouTube channel, and various other contributions as far back as Geocities. Lance has substantial experience working with youth, nonprofit organizations, higher education, and online organizations.