#leadership • Tenneson Woolf

January 12, 2017

Radical Inner Journey

When I position my work, most often, it is something to do with leadership. “Transforming the Way We Lead.” “Participative Leadership.” “The Inner and Outer of Evolutionary Leadership.” When not spoken explicitly, leadership is still implicitly embedded in the title. “The Art of Hosting.” “The Art of Humans Being.” “The Art of Meaningful Conversations.” “The Art of Capacity Building.” I love the variety.

The definition of leadership I most use goes back to my Berkana lineage. “A leader is anyone who wants to help.” That’s broader than a “C” level title. It’s more than the person that sits at the front of the room or the head of the table. It’s more than the person who controls the budget. And there are lots of people that want to help, right. Lots of us that want to do good. Lots of us that want to create better teams, meetings, products, processes, organizations, and communities.

Within all of that, the part of leadership that most interests me is the radical inner journey. There is a lot of “out there” stuff that we give attention to. Important, yes. Of course. And often, giving full attention and resources at the expense of the inner work. The radical inner journey is the one that requires presencing. The one that requires honesty with self. The one that requires (sometimes demands) humility and vulnerability. It is that part of leadership that acknowledges how common and prevalent it is to project from the inner state (consciously or not) an outer reality. In this way, leadership is very personal, sounding like therapy. It is. But I don’t think of myself as a therapist. It also sounds like spirituality, doesn’t it. It is, though I don’t think of myself as a spiritual director either.

I’m just keenly aware that this radical inner journey is directly connected to capacity to lead. And it feels silly to deny that. And I’m aware that because it sounds so much like therapy and spiritual direction, how often radical inner journey has been dismissed as a distraction from the “real” leadership that needs to happen. It isn’t. Nor is it with the group, the group daring to take a radical inner journey also. Being able to ask questions together, and sit in the silence that some questions require is massively important. To have the ability to let go of deeply entrained obsessions for speed and efficiency — that’s some important leadership, and the kind that I’m most interested in. Probably, because I continue to learn about it myself. Because it comes from an inner exploration.

Leaders get stuff done. True. And awesome, isn’t it. Leaders help teams get stuff done. That’s true to, and awesome. Leaders create message and narrative. Great. All true. I love being part of this. Without a clarity that comes from inner radical journey, that leadership might even still be very successful. I suppose that is good. It’s just clear to me, however, that my contribution to good leadership, and my commitment feels much more fulfilling in this realm of inner radical journey.

Wow, that felt good to say.

July 25, 2016

American Politics as Reality TV

Warning — it’s a bit of a rant.

The American presidential election process continues. It goes on. And on. And on. And on. It’s a two year process that started feeling like bad reality TV quite a long time ago. Drama. Name-calling. Hyperbole. Grandstanding. Partial truths masqueraded as whole truths. Spin. Spin. Attack. Argh! There is little that is attractively compelling to me. Participating feels more obligatory, like cleaning somebody elses’ mess in the kitchen. It’s needed. Just not much fun and a bit unfair. I still watch, trying to understand and make sense of it, including some of the Republican Convention last week, and likely some of the Democratic Convention this week. They both feel like a circus — they have my curiosity, but are really a bit creepy.

I have three things I’ve noticed about the process in the last months, one of them this weekend. In the recent months, it is that the behavior in the process feels very adolescent. Adolescence run amuck. This is very much the Donald Trump phenomenon. “I don’t like what you said about me — I’ll strip you of credibility.” It’s aggressive. It’s pouty. “I don’t like what I’m hearing — I’ll speak more loudly (yell) to drown out voices.” It just reminds me of a neighbor’s teenaged son from many years ago that was all bravado in appearance, but everyone knew that insecurity was what laid beneath that persona.

Let’s pretend this is true — adolescence run amuck — for a moment. The problem for me isn’t that one person is acting this way. That’s Donald. The Donald. So be it. The kicker for me is that people are buying it. To watch the frothiness, the doting by the masses for the adolescence that exists in both U.S. political parties — that says something scary about the system and culture of people that we are all living in (well beyond the presidential election process). Eldering please. Just a bit more, please. Grow it up a bit.

My second observation is, I suppose, a commentary from Democratic VP Elect, Tim Kaine. I saw a brief clip where he and Hillary Clinton were being interviewed. One of those Sunday morning news programs. I didn’t know much about Kaine and wanted to see how he carried himself. The interviewer asked Hillary Clinton how she felt about what she was being labeled by Donald Trump. “Crooked Hillary” was the reference. To be clear, I suspect the label fits in some ways. As it likely does for Trump. Or for anyone. There is more maturing to acknowledge, or search for the way in which any of us are crooked. OK, tone it down — not completely honest. The honesty of that is far more helpful than the jacked up reciprocated denial. Sheesh!

Clinton responded with something quite strategic — “I want to talk about the issues.” Good for her. It was political strategy. But it was Tim Kaine’s remark that made me laugh in it’s “get to the point” quality. He described how Hillary Clinton was doing a good job of letting that water / insults run off of her back. But then he added, “for most of us we stopped name calling in the fifth grade.” Good for Kaine. And maybe that is what good VPs, seconds, are supposed to do, so as to preserve dignity of the person who will hold the office of president. Name calling, though entertaining, I suppose (adolescent reality TV) isn’t truth-telling, even when it comes from a person running for the office of president. Makes me think this election will be remembered as the tabloid election — a peek at the absurd is sufficient, but I really came to the store for some milk and essential groceries.

OK, on to the third point, which is less of a rant. I’ve been thinking and writing a fair amount lately about emergence. For sake of today, to say that emergence is what arises when parts of a system interact. It is a quality that the system possesses, but not the parts (or far less of it in the parts). I wonder, does the system that is American Politics — or more broadly, American culture, or western culture — arise as a systemic property that has the parts acting in ways they wouldn’t otherwise? I suspect so. Donald Trump is more accusatory. Hillary Clinton is more boisterous. News reporters inflame difference and guffaw. Voters numb ourselves, watching more blathering — and expecting it — because it is more entertaining than last nights baseball game or ridiculous summer block-buster release that is really a crappy movie.

The system possesses the quality that none of the individuals are responsible for by themselves. I think this is true. It’s not completely clear to me how it is true in more subtle ways.

Maturing. I believe this is what is called for in all of us. As individuals. As nations. As a planetary community. Less jumping in to the fray, which perhaps I’ve done here today — more deliberate pause and stillness, which might just be the most helpful thing we can do. More real encounter with gardens and forests, lakes and oceans — less Pokemon Go glued to the virtual.

OK, rant complete. It doesn’t happen that often — and I wouldn’t want it to. But sometimes, it’s a must in the company of friends, no?

July 13, 2016

It’s About Time

I think about time a lot. The time that I have meetings during the day. The 10 minutes of time that I have before some of those meetings. The time that I take after those meetings to follow up. The time that I have to get more done than there is seemingly time for. The time that I want to walk my dog, or be in my garden. There always seems to be some part of my brain that is chunking out time.

I’d like to think about time less. I’d like to feel less “driven” by the clocks on my computer, my stove, my microwave oven, my phone. I’d like to feel more spacious. Less pressured. I’d like to feel less rushed — a quality that can often become habit when thinking so much about time. Time seems to be in the middle of all of this.

For much of 2015 I got to be an official mentor with my friend Jessica Riehl, completing her thesis for her graduate program. Her final project was a focus on time that started with recognition of the pattern that many people experience — not having enough time and how to adapt to that. Though efficiency with time interests me, what feels more powerful and intriguing to me is becoming more aware of the relationship with time that any of us have. With awareness comes choice — so the thinking goes. With choice comes different behavior and practice.

Jessica and I created an exercise that included some fill-in-the-blank statements using post-it notes, one for each person for each question.

Time is a _____. Or, Time is _____.
The hardest thing about time is _____.
The easiest thing about time is _____.
The reason I don’t have time to _____ (something you like to do) is because _____.
If I could change one thing about time it would be _____.

Then we had people talk about their responses. It was revealing. It was really interesting. For me, because our respective relationships (thinking, beliefs, practices) with time really impact who we are and what we are as human beings. Individually and collectively. If I feel that I’m always “short on time” I build my life around that. A timeless wandering walk that could be the afternoon becomes 20 minutes to the end of the block and back.

Fast forward from that time with Jessica. Earlier this week I was in a conversation with another good friend and colleague, Tatiana Glad, visiting from Amsterdam. I love Tatiana for her incredibly quick brain and big heart. Over breakfast, I asked Tatiana about her practice with simple things like email and texts. “If someone texts you, by when do you feel you are responding late?” Of course it depends on who is texting and what the topic is. But what I was trying to surface with her, and learn from, was more of the nuancing of relationship with time. For me, texts are more immediate. I feel that I want to respond within the hour. However, with email, unless urgent (again by project or person), I typically will respond within a couple of days. I don’t want to treat the randomness of email as being my priority todo list — that never ends and often can displace all of the available space for my creative project work.

It was a fun conversation with reaching implication about a simple, simple thing. Yes, corny as it sounds, it’s about time that more of us start talking about time and our relationship to it. To remember the ways that this human construct, clock time, has come to shape our very conception of reality, often, without much of our awareness.

It’s about time.

June 9, 2016

Ceremony, Ancestors, and Aspen

Aspen at Willow Heights 2

In the last week I have been able to learn much with two important and good friends. I’ve learned about ceremony, ritual, ancestors, and aspen.

Chronologically, the first friend was with Kinde Nebeker, who hosted a day-long Medicine Walk up Big Cottonwood Canyon in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, seen above. The aspen are budding at this time of year at that elevation, about 8,500 feet. Just as Kinde’s work, that includes rites of passage, is budding into a more full presence. The medicine walk included a deliberateness of threshold crossing, setting an intention, going solo the bulk of the day, returning to share some of what I and the others learned, and to be witnessed. I love how she held space for a deeper letting go.

The second friend was Quanita Roberson, who came to Utah to host QT with me. QT very much connects to the letting go that I experienced with Kinde. There is one point in the process with Quanita when we created ceremony to let go of that which doesn’t serve us. It included fire, burning a symbol of that which we don’t need, and a grief canal, a passage to get to the work of releasing. I love the way that Quanita talked about ceremony and working with the ancestors. “The thing about ritual is that you don’t have to believe it or know how it works for it to work. The act of choosing to participate is enough.” She then added, from one of her teachers, the West African Dagara Elder, Malidoma Some, “The ancestors in the west are the most unemployed ancestors in the world.”

I don’t know how all of that invisible work works. But I have the feeling that we did indeed employ some of them in the last week.