by Heather Plett | Nov 14, 2010 | Birthing Sophia
This post originally appeared on my personal blog, Fumbling for Words, in June 2010, when I began imagining Sophia Leadership into being.
“Bring your vulnerability, your tenderness, your fear. Bring your questions – bring the things that puzzle you. Be prepared to hold ambiguity – to sit with the ‘not-knowing’. Open your heart and your mind to yourself and to the other people in the room.”
That may not be exactly what Michael Chender (one of the founders of ALIA) said in his opening speech, but it’s the way that I remember it. I wrote this in my notebook: “Wow! An opening speaker who welcomes our vulnerability!” His speech has stayed with me ever since.
How often have you sat in any workshop (especially one focused on leadership) and been told that your vulnerability is a valuable place to start? The leadership training I’ve received in the past tends to focus on strengths, confidence, vision – certainly not vulnerability. That’s for weaklings.
I think it was about that time at ALIA when I felt the tears well up in my eyes and they stayed pretty close to the surface for the remainder of the day. In the past, when I’d followed my intuition and used my vulnerability as an asset in my leadership, I had almost always been faced with resistance and blocks and my own fearful gremlins. And almost every time, I’d tucked my courage and convictions away and gone back to putting on my “confident and unshakeable leader” face.
The challenge didn’t stop with Micheal Chender. Later that same day, at the beginning of our “Leader as Shambhala Warrior” workshop, Meg Wheatley’s first question to us was “What breaks your heart?” Really? What breaks my heart? This is the starting place for a journey toward warriorship? Indeed it was! The things that break our heart are the things that drive us forward – that give us purpose, vision, and strength to carry on.
During the week at ALIA, the term “strong back, soft belly” came up often – especially during meditation practice. When you sit in meditation, you are taught to sit with your back straight and strong and your stomach relaxed and vulnerable. This is not just a statement about posture – it’s a statement about how we are encouraged to live. Every day. Our strong backs remind us to have courage and strength in the face of adversity and fear – to hold firmly to our values. To be warriors. Our soft bellies remind us to make ourselves vulnerable to each other – to show compassion and extend understanding and forgiveness to ourselves and others. To open our hearts.
Today was one of those days when my “strong back and soft belly” were put to the test. In more than one situation, I was in the position to extend compassion to people who needed it, and yet at the same time was required to establish boundaries and to maintain an unwavering commitment to protecting and serving as a warrior for other people who were being negatively impacted by the same difficult situations. If I said I was completely successful, I would be lying (I had to fight hard not to let fear and anger play the parts they wanted to play), but I did my best and, with a combination of prayer, meditation, and turning to other people for support, I made it through the storms to the other side.
Sometimes, we choose either strong back OR soft belly and forget that we can hold both at the same time. Sometimes we treat people with too much kindness and forget that they also need us to hold firm to the boundaries in our relationships. Other times, we put up strong walls to protect ourselves or others and forget that compassion is also necessary.
I say this to you… Bring your vulnerabilities. And bring your strength too. It’s what every good warrior (and a true “Sophia leader”) does.
(Yes, in case you’re wondering, I’m thinking that the next step in the journey is taking me toward “Sophia Leadership”.)
by Heather Plett | Nov 14, 2010 | Birthing Sophia
This post originally appeared on my personal blog, Fumbling for Words, in June 2010 when I began imagining Sophia Leadership into being.
I don’t remember the question that we were supposed to discuss at our table group, but I remember where it lead us. One of the women at the table was the newly appointed head of a women’s program at a university. She was wrestling with where she needed to lead the organization after the departure of its founder.
She’d had an a-ha moment that week and had come to realize that what was ironically missing in the program was a truly feminine approach to leadership. It was modeled too closely after traditionally masculine styles and needed to evolve into something new. I think it was during our conversation that she had the even deeper realization that she had, in fact, been hired because her background in engineering made her well skilled at thinking like a man.
What she said touched me in a place so deep I didn’t even know it needed touching. “Yes!” I said. “YES! That is a systemic problem! I see it everywhere! It’s the major flaw of the feminist movement – that it poured so much of its energy into getting us access into men’s role and teaching us to adopt men’s wisdom and leadership styles that it forgot about what it SHOULD have put energy into – raising the value of women’s voices, women’s roles, and women’s wisdom and leadership styles.”
Spilling out beneath my words were so many memories of the times I’d tried to introduce things like “feeling checks” into staff meetings, or clay molding into annual visioning exercises – the many times I’d intuitively felt compelled to introduce a more feminine style of leadership. BUT almost all of those times I’d been met with so much resistance that I’d simply given up and fallen back on old models. Oh, I could write a book about the times when I let the fear hold me back from what had always come so naturally. Too many times I saw those things dismissed as frivolous, or “just a silly girl’s ideas”.
During the course of our conversation, something rather magical happened. I don’t think I realized just how magical it was until it was done. There were markers at our table and a paper tablecloth. As I so often do when I’m sitting in a meeting, I picked up a marker and started to doodle. The man at the table asked “can I add something to your art work?” and I said “oh certainly!” And then, with a gesture, I invited our other two tablemates to join in the fun.
It seemed innocent enough, but it was transformational. Soon, we were all animated and energized in both our conversation and our art-making. Each of us added our unique flare to the tablecloth and each of us built on something the other had done. At one point – though I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it – the man at the table tried to put a square black border around the area where we were making art. Something bubbled up from within me and I resisted, scribbling all over his border as he drew. The other women joined and soon we had spilled over the border into every direction. Defeated, but with a good sense of humour, the man happily added to the “outside the box” art. (To be fair, at another point, I ruined a sun that the man was trying to create by prematurely drawing a line around it.)
By the end of the discussion, we’d filled the whole tablecloth with art, and we’d helped the leader of the woman’s program realize some of the steps she’d need to take when she got home. On top of that, I think each of us at the table had a unique a-ha moment that emerged from both the art and the conversation.
Mine didn’t fully evolve until later. I knew that something significant had happened, but I didn’t at that point know just HOW significant. Some day I think I will look back at that collective doodle art and remember that it represents the moment my life changed.
Because, my dear friends, that moment was the culmination of so much wrestling, so much thinking, so much struggle to find my focus, my truth, my place of belonging. Remember the necklace metaphor – how it wasn’t the struggling that untangled the necklace but the slipping from my hands and dropping to the floor? Well I think that moment was the “dropping to the floor and untangling my truth.”
What am I talking about? I’m talking about THE VERY THING that I’ve been grasping for. For years now I’ve known that my greatest energy comes from sharing wisdom – through facilitating workshops, writing, public speaking, etc. – about the things I’ve learned about creativity and leadership. I’ve known that somewhere in all of that lay the nugget that would lead me into the next phase of my vocation. Only… I couldn’t seem to find the right shaped nugget to fit me. It all seemed too general, too vague – too unfocused. I thought I found a few times, but it never felt quite right.
And now, after a week at ALIA, and especially a remarkable moment of doodling, I have clarity that I’ve never had before. The purpose that is evolving for me is TO TRANSFORM LEADERSHIP THROUGH FEMININE WISDOM! There it is! Bringing more creativity, compassion, art, soul, and holistic truth to leadership. AND helping those people who think their feminine passions and gifts – art, spirituality, motherhood, body wisdom – do not make them qualified for leadership recognize that the world needs them to help in its transformation.
It’s simple and yet it makes so much sense. Look around you – wars, oil spills, climate change, oppression – isn’t it clear that we have a leadership crisis on our hands? Isn’t it clear that the old models aren’t working anymore? It’s time for a new model and I believe that new model includes a much bigger space for feminine wisdom. I’m not saying that all the male leaders need to be replaced by women – I’m simply saying that both men AND women need to learn to trust their feminine wisdom more.
It’s an idea as old as the Bible, and yet as often forgotten and marginalized as so many other truths in the Bible. Sophia. Wisdom. FEMININE wisdom. It’s what Solomon wrote so many sonnets about. It’s the feminine wisdom of God.
THAT is the power I’ve been called to stand in, the wisdom I’ve been called to share. It’s time to get busy sharing it!
How will this evolve? I’m not quite sure, but I am excited. I know this… I am not really “fumbling for words” anymore. This is something new and it will need a new space. Maybe it’s “leading with your paint clothes on” or maybe it’s “sophia leadership” or maybe it’s something else I haven’t thought of, but I’ll be spending the summer thinking about it and hopefully by September something will have emerged.
Hang on for the ride, because it will most definitely be colourful and exciting!
by Heather Plett | Nov 11, 2010 | Uncategorized
Dear Dad,
This morning as I was running through the gently falling snow (Yes, I’ve taken up running. Surprised?), I found myself thinking about you, Dad. You see, there’s something I’ve been aching to talk to you about this week, and it’s making me miss you like crazy. There’s a lump forming in my throat as I write this.
Dad, this week I became a teacher. For real.
Oh, it’s not that I haven’t been a teacher before (I’ve lead lots of leadership and creativity workshops before), but in those cases, I usually referred to myself as the “facilitator”, not sure I had acquired the authority to call myself “teacher”.
But this time, I’m a bonafide teacher, Dad. In a university. I’ve been hired to do the job and I have no doubt I have the qualifications or authority to call myself teacher. After being a writer for most of my life, and a communications professional for more than thirteen years, I don’t have any qualms about being the expert in the room when it comes to writing for public relations.
Do you remember, Dad, about nineteen years ago when you made a special phone call to tell me you thought I should be a teacher? I could hardly believe it when I came home and one of my roommates told me you had called. “My DAD?!” I’m sure I exclaimed. “He CALLED? He NEVER calls! This must be important.”
And I guess it was important. Important enough for you to do one of the things you hated most in the world – pick up a phone and make a call. You did it because you knew that, after graduating with an English and Theatre degree, I was contemplating whether an after-degree in Education might be a good way to put my otherwise rather useless degree to work. You wanted me to know you thought it was the right choice. I think it’s probably the only time in my life you offered me career advice. Mostly you were okay with your kids figuring those things out on our own.
I never did go for that after-degree. I applied, but then I missed the appointment for the interview and then never bothered to reschedule. The truth is, I really didn’t have much interest in becoming a teacher in a traditional school setting.
But that phone call kept nagging at me. What was it you’d seen in me that made you think I should be a teacher? I wish I’d had the sense to ask you that question when you were still alive. Honestly, though, I think I was a little afraid that your reason was simply that you wanted to persuade me to persue something more practical than the writing career I dreamed of. I guess I didn’t want to hear that, so I never asked.
Now that I’m older, though, (and a little less resistant to the advice of my elders) I think that perhaps you perceived something in me that I didn’t yet see. Maybe you had a foreshadowing of a calling I didn’t see until later in my life.
The truth is, you were right. I love teaching. When I stand in front of a classroom, I know that I was meant for this.
No, I still don’t want to be a schoolteacher, and I don’t regret that choice I made so many years ago, but now that I have gathered some wisdom worth sharing, I believe that I am called to share it. And that’s what I’m going to do. Find ways to share it – both in my writing and my teaching.
One of the things I’m wondering, dad, is if your phone call had something to do with what you felt was your own missed calling? Perhaps you saw in me what was in you as a young man? Because I’m sure you would have been an amazing teacher dad.
See, there’s something I think you should know, Dad. It served as such an inspiration to me how, later in life, you found ways of fulfilling that calling you probably thought you’d buried. I still have some of the clippings from pieces you had published, and some of the notes from sermons you preached in your simple, untrained but eloquent way. Thank you for having the courage to do that, even though you probably doubted whether you had the qualifications. Thank you for every envelope you had the courage to address “to the publisher” and place a stamp on. One of those envelopes (complete with an article penned in your unique handwriting) was returned to me after you died by a publisher who knew it would be meaningful to me. It is one of my most cherished possessions.
Thank you for the inspiration, Dad, and thank you for your blessing. Even though it took me nearly twenty years to follow your advice, I did it, and I hope you’re smiling right now.
Say hello to Matthew, will you? And Marcel’s dad. We miss you all. So much.
Your beloved daughter,
Heather
p.s. If you want to read more about losing Dad, or read a poem I wrote about him, check out this post.
by Heather Plett | Nov 8, 2010 | Uncategorized
As a novice runner, I use a handy-dandy app on my iPod to tell me when to switch from running to walking. So far, I’ve worked my way up to nine minutes of running and two minutes of walking, repeated four times (for a total of 44 minutes).
Each interval is marked by a chime that rises above the sound of my music. I’ve switched most of the chimes to pleasant sounds, like a Tibetan singing bowl, for example – sounds that sooth me as I run.
The only sound I haven’t changed from the default is the one that sounds at the very end, after all of the reps are completed and I’m home or close to it. It’s a buzzer that sounds exactly like a school buzzer reverberating its way down locker-lined hallways.
It’s a rather jarring sound, and when I first heard it, I was determined to change it. But I didn’t get around to it right away, and by the second time I heard it, I realized that I’d grown to like it. Like Pavlov’s dog, the moment I heard the buzzer, I was filled with childlike glee. It’s the recess buzzer! It’s the sound that tells you it’s time to put away your work, grab your jacket, and run outside with your friends for fifteen minutes of unadulterated fun.
When I get to my front steps, exhausted and sweaty from a hard run, the buzzer sounds and I know that it’s recess time. Time to relax. Time for a hearty breakfast, a soak in the tub or a refreshing shower, a tall glass of water, and then maybe a cup of tea. I’ve worked hard and I’ve earned this recess time.
This past month has been an extended time of recess for me. When I quit my job (and the contract I thought I’d be starting with fell through), I was determined to take some time to refresh myself before jumping into new work. I’ve worked full time for all of my adult life (with the exception of maternity leaves and university), and I knew I needed a rest more than I needed to work at that point.
You know what? It was truly, truly wonderful. I have emerged feeling refreshed and excited about what this new business venture will look like. Now that it’s November, I’ve started some contract work, I start teaching this week, and I’m having lots of exciting conversations with people about interesting work on the horizon. Plus I’m getting ready to birth Sophia Leadership in a week or so. It’s all good and exciting stuff that I feel ready for since I took a break first.
Maybe you need to sound a buzzer now and then to remind you it’s recess time too? You know what they say… all work and no play, makes Jill a dull girl!
by Heather Plett | Nov 3, 2010 | Uncategorized
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time for play at the Listening Well workshop last week
- I am so very, very happy. Happy to be working in my tiny basement office/studio with my candle burning. Happy to be dreaming of all of the creative things I will be doing in this self-employment journey. Happy that I’ve been connecting with so many extraordinary people and learning some life-changing things. No, I don’t have a thriving business yet, but there are so many possibilities that I am somewhat in awe of how lucky I am.
- Next week, I’ll be a bonafide teacher. I start teaching a “writing for public relations” course in the university’s professional development program. Walking onto the campus yesterday and realizing I was there as a TEACHER instead of a student was kind of trippy. In a “holy cow – they’re going to take me seriously” way!
- Speaking of teaching, I had a flash-back this week of the day many years ago (when I was contemplating going for a second degree in education) that my dad phoned me (if you knew him, you’d know how extremely rare a phone call from him was) and told me he thought I’d be a good teacher. That thought keeps choking me up this week. I have such a deep yearning to be able to ask him “can you tell me what you saw in me that made you think I should teach?” (Dad – can you send me a sign? Anything?)
- Yesterday I went to my first business owners’ networking luncheon (invited by a dear, supportive friend). And you know what surprised me? It was fun! People were so genuine and welcoming and I realized I have to let go of my irrational fear of networking events. Perhaps I was just at the wrong ones up until this point.
- At the networking luncheon, I was reminded once again about how much easier it is to speak with passion about something you are truly inspired about – something that emerges from your own heart, your own giftedness. Perhaps that’s why past networking events were flops for me.
- I got some business cards printed with my photos on the back (thanks to Moo Cards), and they proved to be a stroke of genius. I pulled out the cards at the luncheon and let people pick their favourite photo. It creates a great opener when you want to talk about a creative consulting business!
- If you haven’t been there yet, check out my re-vamped business-y site… www.heatherplett.com
- I am also working on another site (to be revealed soon) for all this Sophia Leadership stuff buzzing around my brain. Painting, writing, dreaming, collaborating – fun stuff!
- One of other things I’m planning to do is re-launch a course I created eight years ago – Creativity and the Spirit. It will probably happen from mid-January to mid-March (for 8 weeks – in Winnipeg). If you’re local and you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send you the details when they’re ready.
- On an unrelated note (but somewhat related, I suppose), today is “take your kid to work” day for my oldest daughter. Since I work at a computer in a tiny basement office, and her dad is a substitute teacher never knowing where work will be from day to day, I made other arrangements. She is spending the day working with a local fashion designer. (You may remember – she’s the one who designed her own grade 9 grad dress.) I am ridiculously excited for her. I’m no parenting expert, but one thing I know is that there are few things more gratifying than helping teenagers foster their passions and giftedness.
- And speaking of my daughter and creativity, it was fun this week to watch her cut up a pair of her boots and re-vamp them into entirely different boots (shorter with more fringes and bling). She has such a cool sense of style.
- And just one more thing… I only created one Halloween costume this year – a coke can.
