Category Archives: leadership

Tombstone Words

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Update, my friends:  My application for moderator training with Better Angels was accepted!  AND, they may let me help with workshops both in Illinois, where I live, and Colorado, my home state!  Woo hoooooooo!  So much good work going on in this organization, please take a look!

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This post is a three-part thought experiment.  Take some time with this one, maybe–sit up straight, take some deep breaths, and see where it takes you!  I invite you to write down your answers to the questions with a pen and paper.  And then please share in the comments how it lands!  Please know that I write purely out of curiosity and a deep desire for exploration and connection, and not out of judgment or an attempt at ‘pimping,’ as we used to call it in med school, when teachers asked us questions just to see us squirm and fail.

I credit my life coach and a new friend and mentor for instigating this post, and the ongoing conversations both in my own head and with others that I absolutely cannot wait to have as a result!  The thread that connects the experiments is this:  How do I show up in my life, and how do I feel about it?

 

Experiment 1

Imagine you’re at an awards ceremony; it’s the end of 2019.

You’re being honored and given an award for something.

You’re at the party, wandering amongst the guests/everyone present, listening to what people are saying about you.

They do not see you; but you will be present to receive the award later–you are not dead.

Who is there?  How have they organized themselves?  What is the vibe in the room?

What are people admiring about you?  What are the words they’re using as they speak about you?

What are their facial expressions, posture, and gestures as they describe you and their relationships with you?

…What else do you notice?

What is the name of this award, and why are you the recipient?

How do you feel doing this exercise?

What emotions/thoughts/memories does it bring up for you?

 

Experiment 2

Now it’s your funeral or memorial service.  Ask yourself the same questions as above, but in this similar and yet very different setting.

How are people dressed? How do they look like they feel?

Do they know how you want to be remembered and/or honored in death?

Who would be there if it happened today?  What about five years ago?  Ten years from now?

Now imagine that the three most frequent words uttered about you at this event will appear on your tombstone.  Which words would you like those to be?  Which do you think your funeral attendees will give you?  How easy or hard is it for you to imagine the latter, and how close to your own wishes are they likely to be, today, five years ago, or ten years from now?

 

Experiment 3

Now, imagine a different set of people attending the events above.

These are your opponents, adversaries, and enemies.  They are your inescapable work colleagues, direct reports, bosses, and your estranged family members.  They are also the people you see regularly on your commute, the homeless people you pass on the street, servers at your favorite restaurants, and people who work at your grocery store.  They are your kids’ former teachers, the customer service representatives at Comcast or United Airlines, your postal carrier, and the workers who collect your trash.  What would all of these people say about you at your awards ceremony and at your funeral?

I did the first exercise with my coach a few weeks ago; it was powerful, enlightening, and grounding.  The second and third experiments occurred to me today, and I will consider them, chew on them, in the coming weeks.

So…  How was it?

A Community of Champions

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Spoiler Alert:  Big Bang Theory Series Finale!

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When was the last time you felt totally safe, at work, to address the central relational challenges that hold you and your team back from your best performance?

How often at work can you really assess and evaluate your own interpersonal skills, their impact on those around you, and on the organization as a whole?

How much time and energy do your teams waste being stymied by relational issues, stuck in redundant, dysfunctional power struggles up and down the organizational hierarchy?

How do you feel in your body just reading these questions?  Perhaps tense and frustrated?

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We, the eight participants and two faculty members of Leading Organizations to Health Cohort 11, reported palpable heaviness upon convening for our second training retreat last Tuesday.  Despite the Colorado spring bursting with blooms, wildlife, and vast clear blue skies, dark clouds hung over our collective consciousness, each for our own reasons.  Throughout the week we shared stories of successes, challenges, conflicts, power and powerlessness.  We practiced appreciative inquiry and relational coordination, and explored the insidious impact of unearned privilege.  We spent three days in intense skills training, supporting one another through viscerally gnarly role plays and open, honest feedback about how we impact the group.

In the midst of all this deep work, we also shared meals, walks, a horseback ride, and life stories around a fire pit and drippy s’mores.  As we debriefed around the circle on the last day, something had shifted:  overall we now felt refueled and energized.  The air buzzed with the anticipation of learners on the verge of integrating our emerging skills, excited to bring it all home to practice.  The clouds had parted.  We will keep in touch through peer coaching groups—our newly established, intense-support network.  In my heart, I feel we are really becoming a family.

 

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I headed to the mountains straight from the session, for 24 hours of processing and decompression (and more washi tape card-making).  More and more I marveled at what a rare opportunity I have in LOH, to be led and learn to lead in this relationship-centered way.  For these ten months I am immersed in a professional learning lab, experimenting with different ways of speaking, acting, and being, safe among fellow professionals also grappling with this skill set.  It just does not get any better than this!

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On my way down from the mountains, I listened to an interview with Bonnie St. John on Ozan Varol’s podcast, Famous Failures.  She is the first African-American to win medals in Winter Paralympic competition as a ski racer; she is a lower extremity amputee.  She is also an author, an entrepreneur, and a former member of the Clinton administration.  Her story is inspiring, please take a listen!  At the end of the interview she describes asking a former coach about how he built champions.  He said he never built individual champions; rather, he built communities of champions.  You can only push one person so far, he said; but an allied group of people will hold one another up, push each other harder, make each other better, take one another farther.

That is exactly how I experience LOH—my best self is challenged and called forth in the most loving and professional way.  We hold space for all our struggles, allowing the learnings (epiphanies, in my experience!) to emerge.  It is deeply and literally inspiring.  Though I already do so much of this inner work on my own, there is a profound and unparalleled synergy from learning in this group—we serve as one another’s pit crew for the journey toward our better selves at work and in life.

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Nobody succeeds alone.  In the series finale of The Big Bang Theory (my favorite TV show of all time, which I missed while at LOH!), Sheldon (the obliviously self-centered genius) finally realizes this.  During his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he acknowledges his sudden and profound appreciation for his family and friends, crediting his success to their unconditional love and support, and recognizing them in front of an international audience.  LOH made this finale even more meaningful to me than it already would have been.

It is always through the struggles that we grow.  When struggle together, any and all successes are amplified exponentially.  My nine new friends will make me immeasurably more successful, both professionally and personally, than I would ever be without them.  God bless them all, and may the work we do together ripple out for the benefit of all whose lives we touch.

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Training My Better Angels

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First, Happy Mother’s Day to all!

So friends, what do the Better Angels of your nature feel like?  What do they do, how do they speak and act, especially when encountering those with opposing political views to yours?

A New Tribe

Yesterday I attended a skills workshop run by Better Angels, an organization I have admired for a while.  Their stated mission:

Better Angels is a citizens’ organization uniting red and blue Americans in a working alliance to depolarize America

  • We try to understand the other side’s point of view, even if we don’t agree with it
  • We engage those we disagree with, looking for common ground and ways to work together
  • We support principles that bring us together rather than divide us

On the garden level of a Lutheran church on a drizzly afternoon, we sat quietly in a big circle of folding chairs.  I noticed one black woman, one other Asian woman, and everybody else was white.  Most of us were at least Gen Xers; I estimated maybe one third were Baby Boomers.  It seemed about equal numbers of men and women.  Among the 30 or so participants, 6 of us identified as ‘red-leaning.’  The moderators set a clear and firm expectation that we all respect one another, and especially attended to those in the political minority.  As the facilitator explained the objectives and skills, people listened attentively.  Expressions and postures demonstrated eager engagement.  A sincere and almost sad, desperate longing for bipartisan connection permeated the air.

We were all there to practice listening skills to help one another feel heard.  Speaking skills would also be taught, to facilitate ourselves being heard by our counterparts.  Though I felt confident in these skills already, I looked forward to strengthening them in a new group setting.  When I saw we would do role plays I got super excited!  The method, designed by family therapist Bill Doherty, was brilliant—we paired with a same-color partner, and took turns playing blue and red, challenging ourselves to resist judgment, stay open, tune in to our own and each other’s whole presence, and imagine the minds of ‘the other side,’ inviting all of our whole selves to connect.  The central objective was to create an atmosphere of openness, non-judgment, and balanced, mutual engagement.

The Spark

Even before the activities started I thought, “I want to learn how to lead this.  I want to participate, to contribute in a bigger way.”  So when they invited us to stay afterward if we were interested in moderator training, I practically leapt out of my seat.  Turns out you have to apply—no problem—and good, they have standards, yay!  Once accepted, you complete about 15 hours of online training and a Zoom call with established moderators.  Then you commit to moderating three workshops in the coming year.  Woo hoooooooooo!  There are only 8 moderators in all of Illinois, all from north of I-80.  Better Angels holds firm a 50/50 ratio between red and blue volunteers, and disproportionally more blue folks apply, so I may have ‘competition.’  That’s okay—we’re truly all on the same team here!

Ready, Set, Wait–I’ Got This.

When I got home and opened the application, I hesitated a moment.  They seek, first and foremost, volunteers experienced in group facilitation.  Yikes, I don’t have that, I thought.  And yet I felt intrinsically comfortable in that group setting, imagining myself co-leading with relaxed confidence and grace.  Huh, interesting.  I own this communication skill set, as well as the ability to teach it—I feel eminently qualified for this role.  Where did I get that?

Part of the application required a condensed resume, so I pulled up my CV.  Maybe I’ll find something in here to make the case that despite my lack of group facilitation experience, I’m still qualified, I hoped.  I laughed out loud when I realized, I have been facilitating groups for ten years now—every month with my medical students, discussing topics like professionalism, medical errors, burnout, difficult patients, and interacting with industry, among others.  I’ve also conducted workshops teaching motivational interviewing, the quintessential skill set in open and honest dialogue!  In all of these settings it’s my job to make the environment safe for candid discussion, to model non-judgment and open, honest questions.  I lead role plays in which people take on both patient and provider roles to practice empathy for their counterparts.  I have written on this blog multiple times about how much I learn every time I meet with these groups.  No wonder I felt so at ease in the workshop yesterday, I’ve been doing this—training my and others’ Better Angels—for a decade already, and I did not even realize it.  How cosmic.

So my application is submitted!  I should hear in 15 days.

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Friends, would you consider joining this group?  What are you curious about?  What makes you hesitate?  Who in your circles would be great at this work, and will you share this information with them?

Thank you for reading, and wish me luck!