Job 1: To Be A Noticer

Once upon a time, I grew up in a family that was very oriented to jobs. Because it was expected that everyone would help. The kids. The grownups. We were all to pitch in. That’s what family did.

What family did at Canadian Thanksgiving, was travel 250 miles from Edmonton, Alberta to Kerrobert, Saskatchewan. Edmonton is where I lived with my mom and my sister. Edmonton was also home to Auntie Di and Uncle Frank, and their two kids / my cousins. Edmonton was home to Uncle John and Auntie Mary Lynne. There were a few others that would make the trip from time to time. Family by friendship, which felt as thick as blood. Kerrobert was where Grandma and Grandpa lived, parents to my mom, Di, and John. A small home in a small town (in the picture above, that’s boy-child me celebrating my birthday, and young Auntie Di on the side — on a Thanksgiving Weekend likely in the mid 70s). Granny and Grampa’s home had a ping pong table in the basement, a yard in which we could play games, and enough floor space for all of us to sprawl out in a puppy pile sleep over.

A family job at Thanksgiving was to wash and wax everyone’s cars. We were prepping the cars for the winter. Some people washed. Some waxed on. Some waxed off. Some did the interior detailing. My job was often to clean the hubcaps and bumpers with an SOS pad and get them good and shiny (back when chrome was a thing on cars). We bundled up warm — Octobers in Saskatchewan can be nippy. We took pride in the work. We got the job done.

Fast forward to now, I still relate to having jobs. The wood still needs to be chopped. The meals need to be prepared. The dishes need to be done. The jobs, however, have changed. I’m really interested in the job of being a good noticer, participating in observing and becoming aware about what is really going on in the world. In the world in front of me. In the world in front of me that is connected to the broader world. The inner world and the outer world. In teams. In communities. In families. Being a thoughtful observer is a job, so that on occasion, we can evolve these many layers of world to more understanding — I relate to this.

One of the ways that I do the job of noticing is that I blog, and I enjoy reading others blogs. My noticing. Their noticing. Shawna Lemay is one of those, who I’ve mentioned before. I love her tagline, “You are required to make something beautiful.” It’s a job.

Shawna’s post earlier this week was about why she blogs (excerpted below). She wrote of “persistences.” With each that I read, I took an extra in-breath of delight in her description. She was writing a version of awareness in blogging that I really relate to. I blog mostly, because I like to notice things. I like the feeling. I like to make sense of things. I like to pay attention to the mystery within which I live. Blogging helps me to do that.

Enjoy these below, from Shawna, on why she keeps blogging.

  • I persist because when I keep my eye out for things to share, I find things that feed into the rest of my writing, and that, frankly, make my life richer. I sit with them a bit longer than I would if I were merely scrolling through my Facebook or Twitter feed. I mull more because I blog.
  • I persist because I’m kind of addicted to this kind of writing. The kind where you open up a new blog post window and just start typing and hoping.
  • I persist because I never really know what my next post is going to be. And I want to find out.
  • I persist because I’m so vain and I love my photographs, and I want to put them somewhere nice, of my own making.
  • I persist because the only reason I dust the surfaces of the tables in my house is so that I can take photos for my blog.
  • I persist because I really do believe that we’re all required to make something beautiful and some days this is my attempt.

Blogs can be messy, which is why I’ve always liked them. They’re written on the fly in between part-time work, side-hustles, running the eternal errands, reading books, conversations with friends, cleaning the house, making dinner, and the so-called “real” writing. 

Job 1: To Be A Noticer. And to dare to bring that forward in the essential humanness of encountering each other with our noticing.

Job 1A: Don’t forget the hubcaps and bumpers.

Less SWOT, More SCOPE

 

Six of us sat around a conference room table. It wasn’t one of those huge tables, thankfully. I’m all for ample space to spread out. However, I’m more for close enough proximity to be in each others’ orbits. So that we can lean in and learn in.

Learning is what we were doing. The six of us. Four who would be continuing to host and co-lead two more days of retreat. Two more days after my colleague, Quanita Roberson, and I left. We’d just hosted them through three days.

There was planning among us. There was clarifying. This was a kind of handoff. And it was deliberate that Quanita and I had set up much connectional experience for staff group of 25 in the three days we had with them. Thankfully, just like it is with table size, I’m all for good planning and strategizing. I’m more for the close enough connection, the genuine shared orbiting, that leads to qualitatively and quantitatively better plans and strategies.

“We’ll do a SWOT analysis,” one said. It’s a common reference for a business planning and strategizing tool that goes back to the 1970s. Widely used. Enough to almost not be updated to a next layer of nuancing. “Strengths. Weaknesses. Opportunities. Threats.” I know there is more to the model. There always is. I know there is more to the acronym. There always. is.

I bristled a bit at the first reference. It’s the “threats” part that scrapes something inside of me. But, I just let it go. It’s only a word. However, when it was spoken a second time and another person at our small table asked for clarity, and subsequently, showed some itchiness with “threat,” it got all of us to thinking about some alternative framing that might make more sense for our group. The framing is needed to guide the conversations and the learning. That’s great. SWOT just connotes a little too much military, and frankly, too much unchecked masculine.

So, Quanita and I each took a turn at playing SWOT into something a bit more appropriate and energizing for this group. What we came up with, in the end spoken by Quanita, was SCOPE.

Strengths — This matches the “S” from SWOT. It’s important to pay attention to the gifts that we already have. To work with some clarity about strengths already present. Notice again, it’s less about winning, which was some of the prevailing disposition in the 70s. Culture on the whole, I’d like to think has evolved to a more generalized awareness of essential collaboration. That’s what complexity and complex times require of us. The bridging statement is that collaboration always wins. And, some attention to gifts is a foundational appreciative approach, inviting just a bit more discipline to what is working and what is possible.

Challenges — I know, it’s not that different than weaknesses. And, I know, there is maturity in being able to speak without fear the weakness we have individually and collectively. Great. However, challenges just have a bit of a different tone. All have challenges. It’s not that we have them that matters. It’s how we lean into them, how we learn our way into those challenges that matters. Sounds rather Gandolf-like, doesn’t it. “’I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’”

Opportunities — This also matches up with the “O” in SWOT. I would suggest that an improved healthiness in this orientation is less about opportunities to exploit — eek, yes, this was, albeit unintentional at one time, part of the model. It’s an ugly side to business planning, nested within some rather unchallenged assumptions of entitlement. But, hey, back to paying attention to what is arising. Opportunities are important. They are a call to imagination. They are a call to creative thinking. They are a call to wondering together. More of that, yes. Less exploitation.

Pitfalls — This is the key shift from SWOT. Threat is too loaded. It activates lizard brain, the one that protects with fight or flight. In contemporary learning about brain science and trauma, I’m aware that lizard brain, and threats, are what shut us down. They take our brains offline, reduced down to the impulse power of survival only. Pitfalls is a bit different. Pitfals are again a part of the human experience, individually and collectively. It’s a different orientation, isn’t it, to ask about pitfalls rather than threats. The first leads to, “yah, let’s figure this out.” The latter leads more to “on guard, strike.”

Evolutionary Action — This is the new one, offered initially by Quanita as “social responsibility.” There’s juice in this isn’t there. Attention to social responsibility shifts us from the era that, well, frankly, was oriented to, “if you can do it, then do it.” Without regard for the broader or long term picture. Think environmental pollution. Think unchecked financial policy. Think addictive programming. Evolutionary action calls us all to the next layers of context, the broader contexts in which we live that are oriented to shared accountability as human beings, and as systems of people. It is not “win at all cost.” It is “what is right-relationed.”

So, here’s to an itchiness. From one person round a small conference table. Who dared to ask a clarifying question. That lead to some creative thinking. That lead to some evolved orientation. Words, words, words. Of course they are just words. And acronyms. But words shape what we are able to see and what we orient our energy and our planning and our strategies toward.

Less SWOT. More SCOPE.

Yearning

 

Today begins a new series I’m co-hosting, of online classes on The Circle Way. Two new groups of 14 participants. One in the morning (Pacific Time). One in the afternoon (Pacific Time). This means that today starts the fifth and sixth groups that Amanda Fenton and I have taught / hosted / offered in this format, beginning in 2018.

Each class runs two hours. Each class meets weekly, and runs four times. They are fun. In part because they are a convening. Yes, some teaching. Yes, some communing. Yes, some encountering each other. And because they are online, using Zoom and Basecamp, the group is deliciously geographically spread. This time around, it’s Canada, Denmark, USA, Bermuda, Netherlands, and France.

Getting in the room is an important step today. It’s true of face-to-face gatherings, isn’t it. The first step. Helping to remove some of the hesitations, nervousness, and barriers. It’s even more true of virtual gatherings (which, thanks to Zoom, is actually a form of face-to-face). Getting started. Feeling the connection of the group. Leaning in to what is possible in the learning and in our journey together. Seeing who is in for the ride together.

So, how do you do that?

I’m excited that the first layer of check-in with this group will be a question about yearning. What is some of the yearning that brings you to this online class together?

Expressions of yearning are one of the thickest ways that I know to help people arrive and begin to feel the connection of the group. We could choose other questions. For example, even the basics of your name and your position. Those also create an awareness with one another. There is just less skin in the game for that. It’s pretty standard and expected stuff.

When asked what you yearn for, that requires digging a bit deeper. It requires some searching of what matters to you. It requires some vulnerability. It requires some disclosure. It’s longing. All of these, are added peeks into who we are. Sometimes, so that we can see ourselves. Sometimes so that we can see each other. Sometimes so that we can see the sharedness found in the expressions that we each speak. It’s not a short cut, but yearning does create some accelerated weave of the group.

Yearning can be a big circle, easily five minutes per person, or longer. Today won’t be that. It will be more of the one minute version, which is surprisingly a lot. Enough to bring the energy that can carry us through the four weeks together.

Beginnings matter. That’s what my teachers have often told me. Beginnings are particularly fulfilling, I find, when there is deliberateness in building connective tissue among us. Yearning — well, that’s just one of the great ways in. Simple question that invites thoughtful attention and contribution to the whole.

Here we go.

The Fundamental Ambiguity of Being Human — Pema Chodron

Wads

Thank you Pema Chodron, teacher of my teacher. This excerpt below, and the book that it comes from, are never far from me. Reminding me of balance and beauty and impermanence while standing next to something that is never the same twice.

We keep trying
to get away
from the fundamental ambiguity
of being human,
and we can’t.

We can’t escape it
anymore than we can escape change,
anymore than we can escape death.

It’s your fixed identity that is crumbling.

The real cause of suffering
is not being able
to tolerate uncertainty —
and thinking
that it is perfectly sane,
perfectly normal,
to deny
the fundamental groundlessness
of being human.

Pema Chodron
Living Beautifully With Uncertainty & Change