I was speaking to a friend of mine who I had known for many years the other day. I usually would hear about her partners life and how his business was going and how overwhelmed with busyness he was and how important it was that he felt supported. When they went away together, it would be to do things that he wanted to do like intense rock-climbing expeditions and treks and she would go along with it, even at the risk of her health sometimes. All I would hear about her life was how she hated doing her job and how she felt compelled to keep doing it so she ‘kept up’ with him. I would hear about how he would make decisions about his career, including moving overseas without any concern for her and how she may fit into the move. She would often sit and try to be ok about the compromise and pressure this put on their relationship and even had moved over to be with him but no sooner had she done that, he changed his mind and they both had to move back to Sydney.
Fast forward two years later, the same thing happened and he has moved overseas to follow his career path but this time she has decided that she will finally take the leap and leave her job, apply for a work visa and move over properly with him. She is going through all the usual emotions and fear of leaving the safe harbour of her role and the wage that comes with it but has started to notice something happening for her.
She is the one who is left to pack up the house and sell off any stuff they didn’t want to store and has noticed that as she keeps taking each step towards what she wants, support keeps coming in. No matter how challenging or impossible each step of the move is, she keeps getting supported by people. The car that had been taking ages to sell, sold this week. The clutter around the house since her decision to jump has cleared, bit by bit. She is noticing that she is beginning to feel lighter and lighter about the whole experience. She has several job opportunities waiting for her to arrive and she is moving to a country where her 51 years is respected and admired, whereas she was experiencing ageism and glass-ceilings here in Sydney which contributed to her fear of leaving her job, believing that she will soon to be unemployable and irrelevant. She was talking about the very thing that we all know and love to experience and that is flow. Things falling onto place when we follow our heart no matter what the perceived challenges are. She leaves next week and feels good about it, regardless of the fear inherent in change.
Then she shared with me that she had heard from her partner last night and that he wasn’t feeling so great about the move and that he wasn’t sure about staying there. She initially started to go into her usual role of concerning herself about his mental state and about how he was feeling under-challenged in the role and how he was bored. But then….something clicked inside of her as we spoke. She realised that she no longer had the energy left to keep worrying herself about his problems and choices and certainly not for his frame of mind. She realised that she had been walking around on eggshells with him for as long as she could remember, afraid of his reactions and worried about his mental health history, worried about his moods and temper. She had put aside her love of TV and Media, a role she had when they first met and was awesome at and had effectively made herself small next to him so that he didn’t feel bad or challenged by her. What clicked for her was quite profound because what she realised was how none of this had anything to do with him! She had been the one to choose to put his requirements ahead of her own. She had made the decisions based upon her judgement of him not being able to handle himself emotionally. In her attempt not to upset or challenge him, she had given him no choice but to turn up like he did and seem to take advantage of her like he did. But no-one can be taken advantage of unless they unconsciously let that advantage be taken. She had hit a point of release where she knew that for her to continue to feel the flow of life around and through her, she would have to make the choice to move overseas FOR HER, not for him and that she was the one who was able to take responsibility for herself and let him take responsibility for his choices.
It was beautiful to witness as years of self-judgement and weariness began to fall away. It doesn’t mean that the next while will now be all hearts and flowers and that it wont come with continued courageous steps and challenges in the story of their relationship but it does mean that their relationship can now become more of what it truly is. Each of them no longer able to continue to turn up the same way as before, a new, more real and authentic experience awaits.
So I ask, as a point of reflection and pondering, who is it that you are caretaking? Who do you put your life on-hold for and concern yourself about their well-being above your own and keep yourself small as a result? Who do you use as an excuse for not living your life? and what justifications do you keep telling yourself about why you do it so you feel like you have no other choice?
For me, the success of building a High Performance team comes not solely from the more conventional ways of skills and behavioural training but more profoundly from the willingness for each individual to take 100% personal responsibility not only for themselves but for the whole team.
This is a courageous way of turning up in the world because what it really means is that if there is a lack of performance in the team, it is highlighting a situation for each person to own rather than only the people directly with whom the issue shows up for. When we see an issue arise in a team where we are not getting what we really want, say a team member who is always dragging their heels or not meeting their promised deadlines, instead of having the attitude of, ‘ well that’s their problem, not mine’ a courageous leader would take a moment to look closely at what is occurringinside them to see in what way they are contributing to that dynamic.
Now, this is not initially an easy thing to do and perhaps why courageously led high performance teams are not yet the norm because it just doesn’t make sense to our rational mind to accept that we have any effect over another person. We are unaware of how unconsciously we are effecting our experience and the people in it, all the time through how we are being not just what we are doing or saying. The communication within a team is 90% of the time non-verbal! That’s sounds crazy to our heads and that’s because we live in a world which places so much power in intellect and words without acknowledging the whole energetic communication piece. this is what is only just starting to be addressed in major corporate business environments when they talk of EQ or emotional intelligence.
Simply put, when each member of a team has a commitment to having a firm understanding of who they are, are practicing being mindful and present in the moment, are taking responsibility for not only how they show up but also for how the whole team shows up, that’s how a high performance team works in the new paradigm.
Collaboration sounds like such a lovely word and we talk a lot of how important it is to collaborate but when it comes down to it, how can there be true collaboration when there are individual agendas driving what is meant to be a team? And whats more amusing is that most of those agendas are unconscious ones which come from inside each person.
Currently collaboration means something like;
“I will listen to what you have to say and look like I will compromise on what feels right according to me in my framing of the world, so long as you ultimately see that MY way is the best way!”
How about choosing it to mean something more like this;
I commit to me turning up the best version of me in relationship to you and choosing to communicate my truth about what I feel and think about whatever it is we are aiming for and not withholding that or mind reading what I imagine you are thinking and feeling!”
This would foster a natural feeling of collaboration through authentic communication. Each person would be much more mindful of what they really meant and would listen for what someone was really saying and encourage (instill courage!) each member to fearlessly go for their whole truth. Now that would be a way of having a high performance team!
From previous posts, I would expect that it would now be obvious that I am perhaps a little renegade in my approach to courageous leadership!
This post is no exception. I acknowledge upfront that everything is perception and very much depends on which context you are sitting in when discussing any subject.
With that said, I often feel uninspired by models which attempt to explain our human condition. The reason why I do is because most that I have come across attempt to define people through what they do, ie the strategies, beliefs and values which a person lives and behaves by.
Though this can be extremely interesting and intellectually satisfying, and also often provides a way for conventional corporate business to measure success and return on investment, it still only ever comes from a paradigm of ‘managing, fixing, changing or improving’ . In other words, how can we use this information to improve or ‘deal with’ the dysfunctional behaviours which turn up in our people/company?
As a non-conventional leader, I would not be satisfied with the norm in that regard. I would be looking to the foundation of any particular issue and look truthfully at how I could transform it rather than fix it up. I’d want a transformation approach rather than a continual band-aid approach which came from moving a few pieces of ‘problem’ around in the hope that things would be better.
Courageous leadership for me is where you realise that transformation, rather than fixing, is preferable and that happens from a contextual place rather than from a content shake up. So in simple terms, make a shift in the context of each individual and sit back, be present and watch how the content changes automatically.
I feel it is vitally important for me to be clear in saying that there is nothing essentially wrong with the conventional approaches that focus on the content – only that you acknowledge the limitation and ask yourself as a leader, what it is you are really looking to create?
…For anyone who is burdened or tortured by their minds.
S- STOP
T- Take three breathes and smile throughout your whole body
O- Observe your body
P- Proceed with Love and Kindness to break the pattern
“The truth is that the only power there is, is contained within this moment: It is the power of your presence. Once you know that, you also realize that you are responsible for your inner space now- nobody else is- and that the past cannot prevail against the power of the Now.” Eckhart Tolle
If you were to create an ideal future for yourself, what would it be like?
All things that now exist in form were once simply ideas in consciousness. We each hold the power to manifest different circumstances for our lives. If we wish to manifest a new reality for ourselves, we need to consistently focus our imagination on the ideals we seek to realize.
Remember to explore your ideal in terms of qualities, not people or things. What qualities do you most want in life? Freedom? Respect? Playfulness? Abundance? Whatever qualities you seek, imagine experiencing them now and be open to new ways to discover those qualities appearing in your life.
Change is created by those whose imaginations are bigger than their circumstances.
Unknown source
