This is the second in a series of articles on organisational development. You can read the previous one about the training I went for with Tong Yee’s staff, Debra.
First off, a caveat.
This was in no way endorsed or sponsored by Tong Yee, or his company at And. Secondly, I will refrain from describing the exercises that were done in the training, so it preserves a fresh level of newness that allows you to experience the best of the training.
Thirdly, I’m human. I’m not an Organisational Development (OD) expert, and I definitely don’t know all the concepts as well as I should. That said, any fault here is still mine.
That said, the intent of this piece is to share what I learnt from his Level 1 and 2 lessons, which I attended in May and November 2024.
Because if you are honest, you’ve probably heard of someone recommending Yee’s courses to you. They talk about their experience, how they cried, how they established such a strong connection during the training, and you’re thinking,
Are you for real?
Crying?
What’s this, a soap drama? Isn’t this another one of those boring classroom training sessions where the instructor just talks on, and on, and you get some rest from the chaos in the office?
No, it isn’t.
With this article, I hope it shares a deeper idea of what you would get from his lessons, to ensure that you (or your company) would be paying for the right thing.
Because yes, there are fancy snacks and tea there, but there are better ways to spend 5 days.
Let’s start.
Why you go
I walked into the room, located in the cavernous basement of Tong Yee’s family home. I wasn’t sure where to sit or who to talk to. You always know this feeling. You enter a room, and you’re immediately sussing out who’s a friend, and who’s someone you want to avoid.
As humans, we make these decisions so quickly that we often don’t pause to think,
How are we making these decisions?
But the more important question to ask is,
how are they making those decisions?
Yee immediately highlighted (or ‘named’, as he likes to say) this phenomenon of how we are accepted, or ejected from these systems.
You might be part of a leadership team that’s implementing a new idea. But you’re wondering,
Why can’t we understand what the executives are thinking?
Why don’t they do what we want them to do? Why is there so much resistance?
It’s about boundaries, and how we hold boundaries to:
- Protect what’s inside you and helps you to feel safe,
- Allow what’s outside to come in, at a pace which we can control.
Boundaries? Isn’t this quite a simple concept? If you’ve been in the self-development space for a while, you would have heard of this concept through people like Dr Henry Cloud, who wrote the bestselling book ‘Boundaries’.
But what’s different through Yee is how you apply it.
Whilst people like Cloud talk about how you need to be clear of your boundaries, and hold them, Yee teaches more about how you can be better aware of the boundaries of others, and to recognise how best to move past their boundaries, so that you can get effective work done.
When do you know you’re faced with a boundary? The person starts reacting in a way that’s not what you would expect.
Being willing and intentional in moving past these boundaries can bring growth.
And here, our immediate Singaporean response is,
How?
How do you move past a person’s resistance so that they can do what you want?
And no, it’s not manipulation, though it can sometimes be seen that way.
Play with the energy
This is where things start getting more esoteric.
When I refer to energy, I’m not talking about Rhonda Bryne, ‘feel the energy’, and manifest the energy.
Rather it’s about where you feel there is life. It can be a meeting, and you slowly feel that as you push across an idea, the energy (or reception) in the room dies. Or you’re in a relationship, and you slowly feel less energy (or excitement) than before.
To better sum this up, I will share a work situation that I’ve been struggling with.
Despite owning a content agency in Singapore, I’ve never been formally trained in design. What I do know of design is limited to the work I’ve done for various clients, and rapidly implementing what they have asked me to do. Whether it be publishing books, or designing annual reports on a budget, it’s just been learning on the job.
Over the past few months, our designers have not been happy. They reflect, amongst many other things, that,
I don’t know what I want.
It’s not clear what I’m asking for.
It’s confusing.
Despite me constantly trying to sell more and more clients, our designers have not had the design vision – which I’m supposed to provide.
I wanted them to have more of a vision for themselves, but they reflected to me that I should be the one demonstrating the vision.
I was meeting the boundary of the team.
This was where Yee’s teaching gave me better language to understand what I was dealing with.
Using the work on archetypes by Moore and Gillette, Yee further explains what these different archetypes look like.
I was bringing much of the Jester energy, which was focused on flexibility, ideas, and the future. But my team needed stability and reliability.
And they weren’t getting that from me.
After the course with Yee, I had a better idea of what to change.
I needed to bring more stability to the team, and play according to the energy they wanted and needed.
So I hopped on a plane to Indonesia, to meet with the other designers.
Over the three days there, I didn’t just focus on the ideas I had. Instead I created a space where they could share honestly what they needed from me and the company.
What do I want, what do we need?
Here the distinction is in terms of balancing:
- What do I want?
- What do we need?
Often conflicts happen when we are able to see the tensions between these two opposing desires, and end up pushing one, ahead of the other.
In recognising how best to move a team, it starts from the basics.
None of this I’ve written is new in any way. You’ve probably encountered them in some shape or form over the past few years in your personal development journey.
What Yee does is to present them in a visceral way that helps you to not only know it at a head level, but to feel it in your heart, and for it to seep into your gut.
You start to have greater trust over your gut instincts, rather than just relying on the logical mind and the emotional heart.
Let me close with this story.
What do you really want?
As I was walking home alone on the second last night, tired, and close to tears after some painful experiences were relived, I found myself, strangely lifted.
For the first time in a long time, I had a clearer sense of what I wanted, and to trust that desire. Growing up, I learnt to subjugate my desires for what my family needed of me.
To be a scholar, a top student, and a full-time working professional.
All of that are important.
But I also had to balance that with what I wanted for my own life.
And within the safe confines of Yee’s training, I had learnt to trust again the beauty of desire. I had learnt for a long time to kill my own selfish desire to serve others, and that desire was a bad thing to have.
But now, whilst I didn’t have all the answers on how to get what I wanted, I learnt to trust what I wanted, and to slowly trust again people around me, who could help that desire come to life.