The PA student wellness talk went great! 42 or so junior colleagues engaged with me and my badly designed PowerPoint for ninety minutes and I had the BEST time! I realized this morning that for the youngest of them (about half the class), the pandemic hit during high school and the beginning of college. It reminds me of The Fourth Turning and how significantly the intersection of phase of life with momentous human events influences our world views. This summer I was challenged to address the impact of generational differences on organizational culture in a corporate wellness talk, and I started to see age and generation as another form of diversity.
“Respect and challenge the hierarchy,” occurred to me for students this year. We elders (some very elder indeed) still run things, and our experience and wisdom matter. We also have much to learn from our juniors, from their fresh and diverse perspectives. If we can all lead, from any chair, by humble and confident example, our professional culture will progress toward stronger inclusiveness and mutual respect.
I continue to seek conversation and connection with both conservative and progressive friends around politics. But I want to go deeper than news headlines and the loudest arguments. I want to know what core goals and values we share, to start walking together to see where our paths diverge. Where are our shared destinations, and why do you choose 90/94 while I choose Lake Shore Drive? What are the dis/advantages of each, what are the trade-offs?
I am really starting to miss more long form posting here, how fascinating! We are 60% through this daily blogging challenge. Many thanks to all who have followed along (Hi Mick and Donna!), and welcome to any new friends! Now let’s see how much love we can find across difference:
Keep your antennae tuned for those who would divide us to serve their own purposes. This is NOT our better nature. Resist them and stay connected!
2. You and I disagree on this today. That may not necessarily be the case in the future. We can keep our minds open to change, without shame or judgement.
3. You don’t believe everything I believe. But let us not let that stop us from staying curious and connecting anyway. May we see light in each other no matter what.
4. The holidays can challenge our patience and resilience to triggers. *deep breath* May we stand firmly in love and ties of respect and shared history to get us through gratefully.
5. Our biases come honestly or not, we inherit many and form others organically. It’s a human thing. But let us hold them loosely and let them go to connect to one another.
6. Today and all days, may our differences feel softer, less threatening, and approachable with openness, light, and optimism for connection.
7. How wonderfully diverse we all are! How boring the world would be if we were all the same! May we appreciate and celebrate every spectrum!
8. To my friends who vote differently and sit with me over a meal or coffee to discuss–thank you. Our persistent and resilient connection gives me hope for our future.
9. I love you because we share important things in common. And the places where we differ teach me, make me better. Because of our love.
10. One deep breath can be the difference between a connecting moment and a destructive one. Let our breath give us the space to make the connecting choice.
11. Humility Curiosity Empathy Kindness Generosity — Is there any theme of love note NOT founded on these?
12. These fun music mash-ups like AC/DC-BeeGees — If we can so easily and artfullly blend divergent melodic creations, why not try with our policy ideas? We are a creative species, no?
When and where is it safe for you to disagree strongly and still maintain healthy relationship?
My friend and I had a brief text exchange recently. Me: “…I wonder when they will start profiling East Asians on the street. My kids and I all live in target cities. It’s less and less safe to be non-white.” Friend: “You’re citizens; no need to worry.” Me: “Citizens have been picked up and detained already. Lots to worry about on many fronts. Please do not dismiss people’s concerns, even if you don’t share them. They are not all unfounded.”
Our friendship has developed over a couple of years, accelerating and deepening this year around and through mutually respectful and unreserved political discourse. This thread occurred spontaneously last week. I felt safe to express my fears as well as my reaction to his response. I know he did not mean to dismiss my feelings; he knew that my response was meant to uphold mutual accountability rather than incite shame. Our relationship is now strong and trusting enough for us to be bluntly, caringly honest. We caught up on the phone today and reaffirmed that respect and trust, that bond of platonic love that transends difference even as we embrace and grapple with it. I cannot wait to sit down over lunch and explore each other’s perspectives again soon.
This summer I gave a series of wellness presentations to a global professional firm. Over five Zoom sessions we explored self-awareness and -regulation, open and honest communication, generational differences, variables of diversity, psychological safety, authenticity, leadership, and culture. I did my best to leave an impression and aspiration of empathy, compassion, and accountability in action and relationship, to be cultivated intentionally, both individually and collectively, in the year to come. In all of my conversations with the series organizers before and since, we continue to seek the attitudes, postures, resources, and practices that help a workforce engage and contribute, dissent and challenge, all in the name of elevated collaboration and excellence.
This weekend I traveled to New York City (hence this delayed post) to meet Andy “AJ” Wilson-Taylor and my fellow fans. I only knew two other attendees walking in, and was welcomed and folded into a truly unique throng of uplift and bonding. This community, led by a loving, humble, curious, generous, and kind soul, reflects and amplifies those qualities and values in spades. The brightest love and joy radiated from every person gathered; oxytocin flowed and saturated my whole being. I wondered aloud to more than a few people about the possibilities of capturing the energy of that assembly–the joy, love, shared humanity and connection–concentrating and focusing it, then aiming it to heal the wounds of the world. Members of this group, led by AJ in his unassuming and self-effacing way, have already healed themselves and one another in presence, encouragement, and steadfast mutual support through darkness and disconnection back to light and flourishing kinship.
I pondered this weekend what political discourse would look and feel like in these groups–collegial coworkers practicing interpersonal effectiveness to leverage diversity and elevate creativity and innovation, and a gathering of women brought together by shared love and admiration of a man whose purpose in their space is to ally with and elevate their personal, sexual, and social well-being.
Then yesterday Braver Angels hosted an extemporaneous gathering of leaders from bridging organizations across the country: “Dignity Over Violence: A Unified Civic Response”. I hope to have a link to the recording to share here soon. Claim hope, my friends. This movement of intentional, resilient, and empowering connection across political polarization grows stronger and tighter every year. Love can still win. Over the two hour program, at least twelve leaders both acknowledged what is and pointed to what could be. They cited words and acts of people across the political spectrum, from every demographic, that defy the loudly skewed rhetoric of extremes. In this, yet another mission-driven gathering, I felt an unwavering commitment to mutual understanding and connection, to humility, curiosity, empathy, generosity, and accountability.
“When you hear something triggering, take a deep breath and ask a [good, open and honest] question. Try to understand why that person believes what they believe.” This is the first step to any exchange of true connection.
All systems of human relationship require us all to practice these skills. We cannot just rely on designated leaders to lead by example (especially since so few today do so). Each of us must take up the cause of connection and get to work; more urgently now than ever in my lifetime. But how daunting, to consider reaching across a great political chasm to connect with an adversary, real or perceived?
So after this weekend immersed in gatherings of hope and possibility, I remember that any skill must be developed and cultivated deliberately, consistently, and iteratively. As I prepared to leave the office at 8pm today, I debated briefly about doing my five minutes on the slackboard. Consistency. Commitment. Every session on the slackline, no matter how brief, is another chance to train my nervous system in sensory awareness, feedback integration, and dynamic balance. Over the course of 2.5 songs on my Spotify liked list, I had the best session to date. So too, political discource can be trained in the workplace, in a social gathering, in a family–anywhere and with anybody–by practicing humility, curiosity, empathy, generosity, kindness, and accountability in any relationship system around any topic. We all do it, but I bet we don’t think of it in these terms.
The slackboard, a Braver Angels Zoom call, an AJ’s Angels meet up, my wellness talks, and my conversations with Friend–these are all spaces where I feel safe to express my authentic self. I can challenge staid and conventional social norms, explore the possible. I practice and develop the skills that make me confident to engage in political discourse calmly and with equanimity. Come to think of it, patient encounters train me for this every day, too.
So I ask again: When and where is it safe for you to disagree strongly and still maintain healthy relationship?
Where do you already do this well? When you disagree without getting triggered, how do you show up and conduct yourself? How can you translate this mindset and behavior pattern to the more fraught and emotionally higher risk scenarios? What do you need to feel safe to try/train? Can you identify the ladder of escalating potential triggers to tackle, the way a skier progresses from green to blue to black diamond trails? Can you schedule practice sessions the way an athlete trains for a race, so you can hone the skills, see and feel yourself improving with each encounter?
How can we all make it safe for one another to practice? Like accountability partners at the gym, how can we hold each other up in this effort to save our democracy, to reconnect across polarization and mutual dehumanization, one conversation at a time?
Humility. Curiosity. Empathy. Generosity. Kindness. Accountability. Start where it’s safe and easy. Then look for the next challenge. We grow and strengthen through struggle. Environments and circumstances that feel threatening are not conducive to learning or progress. We can create and cultivate safety for effective disagreement for ourselves and one another. Take a deep breath and ask one good, open, honest question. Start there.
When is it safe to tell the truth? And not? What does the ‘not’ cost us? What does the truth cost us?
Feeling called back to my non-fiction roots lately, I have listened to Revenge of the Tipping Pointby Malcolm Gladwell, My Next Breath by Jeremy Renner, and Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Burkeman’s book, subtitled “Time Management for Mortals,” reminded me of both The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson and The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. These three books, as well as Renner’s memoir, remind me that it’s not about manipulating schedules and timetables. It’s about choosing how and on what we will spend our precious and powerful time, energy, and resources, about what impact we intend and act to make in this finite life we are given.
Moved to listen again to Sinek’s descriptions of a Just Cause (for something [rather than against], inclusive, service-oriented, resilient, and idealistic) and how to advance it sustainably (build trusting teams, learn from worthy rivals, flex proactively and authentically, and lead with courage), and considering our current politics and systems, I feel my inner fire of purpose burn a little brighter. The past week has shown me both courage and cowardice, just cause and quick buck, and the risks and consequences of both. Wow.
A colleague once told me, “You call BS (when you see it),” and it was a high compliment. I like to think I do so diplomatically; I can also be both direct and blunt. My wellness talks this summer have centered around psychological safety–building trusting teams on which colleagues feel free to show up their whole, authentic selves. That is when we can all make our best contribution–when our diversity is sought and honored, where inclusivity and mutual respect are the intrinsic ethos more than an external mandate. When I feel safe to call BS and ask the hard questions, to challenge my peers to live into our integrity and highest stated values, I feel it in my chest and the lumbar spine. My posture is upright and I am grounded. I make eye contact and hold my shoulders square. The call to uphold our ideals outweighs any fear of reprimand or retaliation.
And yet, I can imagine how that fear can be paralyzing. How will I respond when the stakes for truth telling are high and the consequences threatening? Will I lose my job? Will I damage a relationship? Will I damage my conscience?
Today, as I think about all the competing interests at play in our systems–institutions, politics, business, economies, family dynamics–it all still boils down, for me, to core values of honesty, integrity, empathy, compassion, and respect. Playing the Infinite Game, to me, means keeping the long view in sight. It means making decisions that advance my just cause now and in the future. I must be vigilant about monitoring for when I’m making excuses, rationalizing, and justifying actions that my gut knows compromise my ethics, that pander.
Looking back, I imagine I have lost ‘opportunities’ as others would see them, when I speak directly, when I dissent. I can point to specific conversations when that may have happened. Overall the relationships I care about are intact, as far as I know. And there are probably negative dynamics I don’t know about–we can never know what everyone/anyone may be saying about us behind our backs. When I look at my life, however, I see no deficits. I believe my reputation is solid and consistent where it matters. I don’t call BS to bring people down or elevate myself. I do it when I see a threat to or violation of a core or stated value, when I see hypocrisy at play. I assume we are all here doing our best. I strive always to be kind, if direct. I hope others will call me out when my words and actions do not align with my professed values. I try to be open and honest about my ambivalence and conflicts (eg practicing concierge medicine when I know access to healthcare is at an all-time low for most people–yikes).
To live an ethical life, I must first be honest with myself–tell the raw, unsweetened truth to myself before I can hope to do it for anyone else. But the truth does not have to be brutal or mean. Kindness goes a long way to making truth bearable, and thus actionable. And what is truth even worth if we do not act on it?
Thank you, Mr. Burkeman, for prompting me to revisit Mr. Sinek’s work. I just never know when, where, or how the next epiphany or breakthrough will come, and it’s always gratifying to meet old lessons with new perspective.
How can we be more kind and truthful in our daily lives? What if we all did both a little more consistently? How can we make it safe for one another to tell the truth and thrive for it? I think it’s about honesty, humility, integrity, empathy, and respect, all in mutual reciprocity. They’re big, aspirational words, I know. But what are we here to do, if not the big, aspirational stuff?
Healing Through Connection 