Category: General Learning

One simple comment that I heard in January from a friend continues to reprioritize how I am thinking about all of my event and meeting designs.

It was Phil Cass, former CEO of four related health organizations in Columbus, Ohio that shared, “Unless the inner changes, the inner state of the leader, there is not much that changes or sticks in the outer programs. The programs come and go, each with their value. But there is no getting around the need for inner change.”

A few simple paragraphs that I’m rereading in Pema Chodron’s book, “Living Beautifully With Uncertainty and Change” are providing the most simple narrative I can find for entering that inner change. They are about relating to the impermanent. Try these:

• “…as a way of relating to the impermanent, ever-shifting nature of our life experience, as a way of using our everyday experience to wake up, perk up, lighten up, and be more loving and conscious of other beings.”
• “…it’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught. Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation.”
• “…the fixed identity is the cause of our suffering. Looking deeper, we could say that the real cause of suffering is not being able to tolerate uncertainty — and thinking that it’s perfectly sane, perfectly normal, to deny the fundamental groundlessness of being human.”
• “We keep trying to get away from the fundamental ambiguity of being human, and we can’t. We can’t escape it any more that we can escape change, any more than we can escape death.”

I want all of my events to touch some of this level. Even the ones in which I feel nervous because the time is short. Even in the ones in which I feel pressure to be very smart and “deliver” a lot of information. Even in the ones in which I suspect the participants will view a focus on impermanence as a distraction from the real work.

Here’s how I’m experimenting with some of that design. I include a question about mystery or the unknown. “Do you believe there is inherent mystery (uncertainty, unknowables) in the work you are doing? What is that?”

Though I would value digging in to those mysteries, even that isn’t necessary. Just acknowledging that there is mystery, and that this perception is shared, is enough to begin loosening up the inner worlds. And then, the rest of the meeting feels more honest, real, and useful.

Phil’s simple comment is changing how I personally show up, not just the agenda, which I suppose is the point.

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I like the way the single tea candle on my desk casts shadows in the early morning. The sun has not even thought of rising yet. It is a time of day when I’m settling in to write for an hour.

The candle sits at the center of a necklace of hematite, doubled over to make it a bracelet. The candle shines above, below, and through the gaps in the hematite beads. It creates a sunflower with about forty sunflower petals. A vibrant, moving flower.

Beauty moves me.

Sunflower of Shadows

A friend recently invited me to share with him books and articles that I felt were important and that have influenced my thinking and my heart. He wanted recommendations, which is flattering to me.

I get asked that question a fair number of times. Many of us do. Most of us have many great recommendations, right.

I wanted to start my friend with one that gets closer to the core. I chose Pema Chodron’s Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change.

In the book, Pema includes a quote from the American dancer and choreographer, Agnes de Mille. Agnes’ father was Hollywood director William C. deMille.

“Living is a form of not being sure,
not knowing what next or how.
The moment you know how,
you begin to die a little.
The artist never entirely knows.
We guess.
We may be wrong,
but we take leap after leap in the dark.”

“Not being sure” is something we all must face along the way. Sometimes in the small things, like not being sure what is for dinner. Sometimes in the larger things, like not being sure about what one’s purpose really is, or how to encounter major shifts in life.

“Not being sure” is at the core of being awake.

During the last three years my partner Teresa Posakony has been studying the impact of trauma. So as to create trauma-informed education. Trauma-informed group process design. She tells me that for many people, following an experience of trauma, in which there is a full reaction (shock, fear, physical and emotional wound, etc.) it takes something similar to the initial trauma by only five percent to trigger a significant amount the full and initial emotion. Yikes!

Teresa further tells me that for many people, the body has a way of storing the experience. The shock. The fear. The hurt. They all become stored in one’s body and mind, and often in a way that is not visible to us. Most of us tend to want to avoid feeling those things again, so we create, quite naturally, behaviors that will prevent it. Barriers. Protectors. Limits. And sometimes unhelpful or harmful actions.

Here is a simple example that I have lived.
When I was in my young teens, I was on a trip with my mom and several of her friends, a group of about a dozen. On this trip we were all staying overnight in a hotel. I had brought with me a cribbage board so that we could play. The cribbage board was a present given to me for my birthday a few months prior. On a coffee table in the middle of the room, sat my cribbage board. Along with a plate of cheese and crackers and some sliced sausage. Fun snacks that we were all enjoying. Most of our group was gathered around that table enjoying each others’ company. One of my mom’s friends, my friend too, had a knife on the table and pretended to stab my new cribbage board. I didn’t like that idea, though he was only joking. “Hey, that’s my crib board. Don’t!” I said as I impulsively reached to grab my board. Unfortunately, I reached right into the path of the knife. This friend sliced the top of my finger, nearly cutting off the tip.

Nobody meant harm. My finger was stitched and healed soon. There remains only a slight scar.

Now, however, forty years later, I remain noticeably fearful of knives. Butcher knives in particular, just like the one my mom’s friend held in that hotel room. Not debilitating. I use knives. I cook. I chop. I whittle sticks. I pare using my wonderful opposable thumb. None of that is the problem. But when I recall that experience with my cribbage board, to this day, I wince with pain and a kind of fear and avoidance. My shoulders become very tight. I can’t seem to help gritting my teeth, and turning my head away so that I might not see that memory.

Five percent similarity. Lots of trigger.

I shared this story on the weekend while working with a team of a dozen good leaders at Grinnell, Iowa’s United Church of Christ Congregational. My point of sharing the story, though I winced through the telling of it, was to point to the five percent similarity required to trigger reactions. This church’s really fantastic pastor, Cameron Barr, had just facilitated the group in creating and mapping a twenty year history of their congregation. Those twenty years included some trauma and significant difficulty including a serious accident for a pastor, needing to dismiss several previous pastors, a period of significant debt recovery, and confusingly diminished set of church programs. Cameron was pointing out that though the current circumstances resemble past circumstances they are not at all the same. Be aware of the trigger. There isn’t need to respond with the same 100% that occurred at various points in those twenty years.

Groups also have trauma. Groups also protect, naturally. Groups also trigger.

Bringing awareness to that dynamic — five percent similarity that creates a fully triggered emotional trauma — is a really helpful step of leadership.