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gossamer: approaching hard edges with softness

27/2/2022

 
With thanks to my many teachers who guided me this far, a long way from where I started, and home to myself and where I belong.
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The Man said "I want to go deeper, I want to spend longer",
and the Witch said "Let's drink tea together, sitting with others."
And the alchemy worked in the Man, space and stilling
​birthing growth far beyond even the dreams of that first grasping.
That’s part of my own story and how I came to the threshold of a different way of looking at my work. A way I am experiencing more and more, and finding truly remarkable in its gentleness and impact.

I hesitate to even name and describe it, so I just call it gossamer - approaching hard edges with softness.
Read more ...
Whatever the professional term – coaching, change, development - too often I think folks see this work as being about fixed goals and measured outcomes. This can lead to an assumption of hard work and something to be overcome. I have had several clients say to me in chemistry meetings “I know this is going to be hard work”, “really” I think, and often reply that it needn’t necessarily be so. The very assumptions are revealing.

Limiting thinking that anything worthwhile needs to involve striving and struggle is often connected with major change initiatives - the battle cry of transformation rings out, so ‘big stuff’ is coming, accompanied by great plans and stratagems, and the message that the disruption may be difficult, but will be worth it in the end (and unspoken “for those that survive”).
“Sometimes you have no words.
Not because you’ve lost the poetry, but because you’ve become it.
Everything you are now sings the song that can’t be sung,
​only lived and breathed with every breath.” (McCall Erickson)
I encourage you to go with the possibility and poetry of this article, to read with a little brain bypass, and let your body reveal an understanding it already knows.

gossamer maybe doesn’t even seem real in contrast to hard goals and outcomes. It is other than, ethereal. Yet from working in its spaces, scaffolding insights emerge that become the structure of healthy, beneficial change. The alchemists call this transmuting - changing appearance and characteristics.

Most folks have already had glimpses of it. Think of those times when you were in a particularly idyllic or settled place, and somehow you had an insight into a problem, a way forward emerged that previously didn’t even exist. You cast your eyes upon a vista, a painting or piece of sculpture, and it seems to work within you to bring you to a different form of realisation and knowing. Someone says something in a way that makes new connections for a group, and entirely different understandings and possibilities are right there in front of everyone.

The ways of gossamer are already known to you, the possibility is all around us: in silence and in gentle ancient practices like tea and yoga. I relish the nourishment that being in practice and with teachers in these spaces gives me. What is wonderful is that we can cultivate this space and activate it in working with others in coaching and helping relationships.
What seems to be understood or released so suddenly has been held by the body for a long, long time. And yet “What is precious inside of us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.” (David Whyte)
By working work with deep presence and a listening body, engaging in emergent and intentional conversation, gossamer becomes activated, whether it be individually or in groups, in circle or in constellation. Mostly all we need to do is to tune in to what resonates, and I have noticed that these approaches raise the chances of harmony in one’s favour:

  • Crafting a good container and giving the past a place,
  • ​Being with the present, just as it is,
  • Being in front of and beyond processes and models,
  • Wisdom and maps alongside and behind,
  • Going outside of the logic of presenting polarities,
  • Opening paradigms alternate to that of a beginning question or issue,
  • Working ‘as if your head had been cut off’ and letting the knowing body speak.

Working with a clients metaphorical and spatial territory is like touching gossamer. They begin to mine not previously conscious, perhaps even mythical, meaning making and intelligence, emerging entirely fresh insights and ways of taking action.

The mind is known to work best in the presence of a question, yet the body feels and understands best in the presence of a 'true' sentence. As coaches and facilitators, 'true' sentences emerge from presence and allowing our body to speak. From such a sentence a shift in state emerges in those we work with. That is so often enough, at least in the moment. Later, movement and action, or choices not to act, emerge, now from a different form and state.
What is it that troubles you?
What is it that troubles this place?
With a question that ignites or a sentence of truth beyond knowing, a new song is breathed into those we serve, bypassing cognition, harmonising instead a shift in the very being. Sometimes the simplest questions and sentences can be the most profound and true. Gently and meaningfully touching unspoken, unknown wounds, individually and organisationally, and so revealing new places and paths of healing.

The alchemy of fresh inner understanding is often difficult to articulate because the conscious mind hasn’t yet made sense of it, but we ‘know it’ because we can feel it. Details, specifics, plans may later be useful, but so often they now seem superfluous, with only adjustments and refinements required.

So, I see that these 'gentlest of interventions’ can have a more profound and lasting impact than striving for goals and outcomes.

We hold so much within our bodies, so much pain and so much knowing, encoded long, long ago, and waiting to be released or brought again into light. Healing and growth can be at its most profound and exquisite in the safety and strength of delicate simplicity.
​

In inviting you to step into your own very personal exploration, to activate these spaces for yourself, I offer this encouragement:
Wake up to the edge of your wonder,
to the pain held in your body,
to the love that surrounds you,
giving everything its place.

Go to the edges,
just to the edges,
be still there and stay awhile.

​Discover what’s possible now,
beyond the edge,
a breath away.
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Re-Dreaming Developing Leadership

9/2/2022

 
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This post was originally published as an article on LinkedIn written with my good friend and colleague Pete Marsh.
So many individuals, teams and organisations invest significant time, money and energy into leadership development programmes. Yet much of this fails to stick and leaders are left with the demands placed upon them outpacing their developmental efforts.
Read more ...
For the last two years we have been engaged in an inquiry into the nature of developing leadership and of what is being asked of them and of us. We have a continuing reflective practice, have designed and offered experimental workshops, and are discovering a different way of working with clients, particularly those that we might identify as moving toward later stages of development.

We offer this reflection as a brief insight into our thinking, and to begin the conversation with others.

We have followed three strands of inquiry:
  • What’s not working with leadership development right now? Have demands outstripped the notion of ‘development’? What different (new and perhaps ancient) approaches are we being invited into?
  • What are the consequences for us in our work as coaches, facilitators, guides, OD practitioners, …? How must we ready ourselves, be prepared to let go of or evolve our offerings and practices?
  • What are the themes that run through the insights from both above?

Certainly (sadly), we have delivered programmes where the utility seems to decline as soon as the check-out finishes. And there have been many when the initiating context changes dramatically part way through. This is in part about expectation management, contracting, pre- / post- programme design, but that’s surely not the whole story.
Perhaps more intractable is the observation that many leaders developed in a different reality to the world they are being asked to lead in (Luis Costa).
The same surely applies to those of us who see ourselves as developers of leaders. If we continue to look through our old and inherited lenses, we will likely see the same problems and offer the same solutions.
The themes that have emerged as important for us and in our work are:

  • Reframing the paradigms and titles we work with and offer. Crafting journeys that continue over time and with good cadence. Repositioning our role from one of being some form of expert and separate from, to for example sherpa and companion.
  • Building multiple awareness’s and intelligences - somatic, systemic, collective, neural, …, field. Understanding the natures of complexity and building the capacities to work within it. Understanding and working with systemic influences (individual and organisational).
  • Promoting both conscious leadership and the expansion of consciousness. Recognising the creative powers of stilling and slowing, of individual and collective self-reflexivity. Understanding the value of a community of leadership, a community of practice, and how to craft a good container.
  • Bringing the work into the practice, and the practice into the work. Understanding the potency and alchemy of conversations where we leap into and are the questions and challenges, rather than attempting to get beyond them or outside of them/us.
  • Modelling the wisdom and stance we aim to promote, and crafting our preparation and approaches to bring that to life in the room and in the conversation.
The conversation is not so much about the future but is the future itself. (Peter Block)
Please contribute your own experiences and thoughts and shape this important conversation.
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    That and This is my occasional thoughts and blog spot for reflections and questions that I hope prove useful. I'll also use this section to flag a variety of other resources that have helped and inspired me. Enjoy!

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