This article originally appeared in my newsletter. A number of people responded favourably and some wanted to link to it, so I thought I’d post it here as well.
Ten years ago, I was in the most difficult and discouraging job of my career. I was the communications manager of a major, high security federal laboratory that was involved in every major health scare from SARS to West Nile Virus to Mad Cow Disease (and many things in between).
I was miserable. Not only was it extremely busy and stressful (during the height of SARS, my one staff person and I were fielding hundreds of media calls a week from all over the world and were often working seven days a week), but it was not at all aligned with my interests or passions. Though I pride myself on being an expert communicator, putting science mumbo-jumbo into laypersons’ language is not my idea of a good time.
The worst part, though, was that I felt completely disillusioned with the leadership path.
I felt like I’d taken a detour that led me straight into the fire swamp, and the “Rodents of Unusual Size” were closing in on me (a Princess Bride reference, in case you’re confused).
Only a few years earlier, I’d taken on my first leadership role (in another government department) and had completely fallen in love with the experience. I had keen and gifted young staff who were passionate and exciting to work with, and I had a boss who modeled Sophia leadership and was my greatest champion and mentor.
At the lab, though, everything was different. I still had a passionate and highly-skilled staff member on my team, but our contribution to the organization was not valued, we were short-staffed and couldn’t get proper funding, we were forever in conflict with the powers-that-be in our head office, and we felt marginalized and demoralized.
One of the biggest downfalls that I saw at the lab (and that I’ve witnessed in other similar environments) was the fact that they promoted good scientists to leadership roles (to reward them for their contribution to science) and forgot to consider whether or not they would make good leaders. At most management meetings, I was the only person who didn’t have “Dr.” attached to my name, and I was the only person whose eyes were consistently above the table instead of under it where the Blackberries were “hidden”.
I wouldn’t say that good scientists can’t be good leaders, but by and large, the skills that make a person a good scientist are not the skills that make a person a good leader. A scientist has to be good at working independently in a laboratory, focusing for long hours on tiny details, being a micro-manager, and putting scientific breakthroughs ahead of personal relationships. None of these are what I would consider strong leadership traits (especially when it comes to Sophia leadership).
In a place where leadership was secondary to science, I saw a lot of bad leadership. I also saw a lot of bad leadership at the political and bureaucratic levels in Ottawa. (Since we were so high profile, and the health scares our scientists were working on were in the media nearly every day, politicians & high level bureaucrats kept their noses firmly planted in our business.)
It was all very far from my intuitive sense of what leadership should be. And yet I felt like my hands were tied. Though I challenged some of the practices, and tried hard to build a more effective internal communications strategy, mostly I had very little influence and not enough experience to convince people that there was a better way.
I spent a lot of time crying during that period in my life. I had two small children at the time (and gave birth to my third while I was working there) and every day I would ask myself why I had to leave them to spend my days in misery in a place where I didn’t belong. As I described in a recent blog post about trees that need to die to create compost for other young trees to grow, I was firmly stuck in the rot.
And then one day, a tiny seed got planted in the middle of that rot.
Surfing the internet, I came across a Margaret Wheatley book called Turning to One Another, about “hosting conversations as the means to restore hope to the future.” Say what? Conversations can help us restore the future? Sharing our stories will help shift things? A highly educated author believed what I knew intuitively to be true?
I was intrigued and the idea wouldn’t let me go. Before long, I’d found the book in the library and devoured it like a starving man released from concentration camp. It was brilliant, but depressingly far away from my current leadership experience.
I started looking into everything Meg Wheatley was putting out into the world, and became particularly fascinated by an organization she’d co-founded called Berkana Institute (whose byline is “Whatever the problem, community is the answer”). Following a trail of breadcrumbs, I also found the work of Christina Baldwin (and her partner Ann Linnea), and was equally intrigued. Christina teaches about how gathering in circles and sharing stories can help transform the world. (I love all of Christina’s books, but especially recommend The Circle Way: A Leader in Every Chair.)
It was like someone had lit a candle for me in a dark place.
Suddenly I saw true leadership illuminated in a whole new way. I started reading everything I could by Meg, Christina, and other thought leaders in their circles. It was transformative for me, and even though nothing much shifted in my workplace, I started to hold out hope for another way. At the time, a little dream popped into my head… some day I would study with Meg and Christina and maybe even work with them. It seemed impossible at the time, but I couldn’t help dreaming it.
A couple of years after that, I left the job at the lab and spent the next six and a half years in a non-profit organization that was much more suited to my passions and skills. It wasn’t always easy, but I had an amazing time leading a national team and traveling across Canada and around the world. My leadership skills and philosophies continued to be stretched and challenged. During that time, I started feeling a familiar tug leading me to the next stage in my leadership journey… it was time to teach and write about some of the things I’d learned.
Fast forward to 2010. As many of you know, 2010 was a big transitional year for me. I left my non-profit job to launch Sophia Leadership. But before I did that, I spent a week in Halifax at ALIA(Authentic Leadership in Action) Summer Institute. I was drawn there largely because I’d read about it on Meg Wheatley’s website. While there, I was delighted to be part of a 5 session leadership intensive that was led by Meg (and Jim Gimian and Jerry Granelli). It was a dream come true. The whole experience was one of the most profound and transformational experiences of my life.
Four months later, after leaving my job, another dream came true. I got to spend four daysstudying story and circle with Christina Baldwin (pictured on left), and again my life was changed. When I told Christina that she’d lit a candle in a dark place for me ten years earlier, tears sprang to her eyes.
Ten years after first encountering them, ten years after that seed had been planted in the messy rot of my unhappiness, and in the very year that I was launching my own leadership & creativity business, I got to study with both of the women who’d planted that seed. And then the seed began to grow and now I am self-employed as a leadership mentor and teacher myself. Even now I can barely believe my good fortune that all of this has come to pass.
As I reflect on those ten years and all that transpired in that time, I recognize a few important lessons that we can all learn from.
Follow the thread. If something excites you, and makes you feel alive and energized even in the middle of despair, follow it. Though there were years in the middle of those ten years that I thought very little about Meg or Christina or the things I learned from them, I never let go of the thread and I never gave up the dream that I would some day study with them.
Never stop learning. Read lots of books, go to as many workshops as you can afford, and invest in your learning in every way you can. Even when you’re in the middle of a dark place and it feels like you will always be there, read books that challenge you and talk to people who inspire you to follow that thread.
Be patient. Ten years is a lot of time to wait for a dream to come true and for a new door to open, but those ten years were not wasted. I learned an awful lot of leadership lessons in those ten years that helped prepare me to serve other emerging leaders, and I don’t regret any of it.
Sit with the rot (a.k.a. persevere through the fire swamp). Oh, this is a tough one. When you’re in the middle of transition, and it feels like there is nothing but despair in your life, it’s hard to believe that some day dreams will come true again. They will. You need to believe it and you need to let the things that have died turn to compost so that new seeds can grow. I hated that job at the lab, but I learned a lot from it and I’m a better leadership mentor now than I could have been without that experience.
Next week I’m traveling to Columbus, Ohio for my second experience of ALIA. It wasn’t easy to pull this off, given the fact that I’m in my first year of business and not making a lot of money yet. But this is my tribe, my replenishing well, and my summer camp, so between air miles and an offer to do some promotional work for ALIA in exchange for registration, I’m making it work. I couldn’t be more excited. I know that I will grow once again and I will come home inspired with even more ideas and energy.
One of the things that tickles me about this trip to ALIA is that this time I’m doing a leadership intensive with Deborah Frieze, who spent several years running Berkana Institute, the incredible organization that inspired me ten years ago. I’ve recently read Walk Out Walk On (about communities that walk out of broken systems and dream something new into being) which Deborah wrote with Meg Wheatley, and it excited me about this work all over again. Once again, I can’t believe my good fortune.
I have little doubt that every single experience in these past ten years has helped shape me and shape the services and wisdom I now offer the world. It hasn’t been easy to hang onto that thread or to trust my blurry vision, but it has been worth every minute of it.
Wherever you are on your journey, whether you’re stuck in the rot and feeling hopeless, or on a winding path that doesn’t seem to be taking you where you think you should be going, I hope that you will be inspired by my story to stick with that thread, follow your inspiration and passion, and keep the faith.
Like Meg and Christina did for me ten years ago, I will continue to put my stories and wisdom out into the world in the hopes that they might light a candle for someone else. I encourage you to do the same.
– Pelicans. I’ve seen more of them this Spring than ever and I just love the way they glide through the air in giant, lazy, graceful circles.
– Birthday lunch with my 14 year old daughter Julie on a patio yesterday afternoon.
– ALIA. I’ll be there at this time next week with my tribe, soaking in the wisdom, and being awakened to new ideas and possibilities.
– Lilacs. I can’t walk past a blooming lilac bush without stopping to smell the blossoms.
– New, soft growth on evergreen trees. I can’t resist reaching out to touch.
– Interesting clients who let me serve as midwife for their stories. This is more fun than I could have imagined.
– Interesting members of my Paint Clothes learning circle. I can hardly imagine more fascinating and deeply honest conversations. They energize me to do more of this work.
– Friends. And the fact that I get to hang out with several of them at ALIA and another one after ALIA.
– Princess Bride, and the giggles I had with friends and followers on Facebook & Twitter as we shared favourite quotes.
– Books, books, and more books. (My “Sophia Reads” page is updated with new recommendations.)
– Hope showing up in some places that seemed hopeless a few months ago.
– Arizona Green Tea with ginseng & honey.
– A healed foot injury that means I can go for long walks and runs again. (Note: for those who remember that I was going to run the half marathon, well, I’m not. I missed a month of training and I’m just not up for it, but I’m going to do the 10 k walk this Sunday instead. And I continue to train for the 100 km. walk in September.)
– This work I get to do. Today I am filled with gratitude that I was chosen for this amazing work and that I get to interact with such an amazing circle of people in the process.
This morning I’ve been working on the latest email for the e-course I originally called “A Path for Happy Wanderers”. Today’s email is all about how I’ve recently come to call myself an edge-walker and how claiming that name has been kind of revolutionary for me.
Ever since I started using that word, I have had quite a few people say “me too!” There seems to be a sense of relief and deep understanding in the people that I’ve talked to – I have named for them their restlessness, the sense that we don’t really fit in with the status quo, and the endless craving for more wisdom, more experiences, and more truth. (Is that the case for you as well?)
As I was working on the email, it occurred to me that a re-naming of the course might be in order. Instead of “A Path for Happy Wanderers” it is now called “A Path for Wanderers and Edge-walkers“. It’s a subtle change, but I think it’s important. I wanted to acknowledge that many of us who are wanderers are also edge-walkers, prophets, truth-tellers, artists, change-makers, and intuitive-thinkers. Wandering isn’t just something we do to kill time – our place at the edge offers us a unique perspective on the world that is vitally important. (By the way, you can sign up any time and start receiving the emails. It’s only $25 and there is a LOT of good content as well as interviews with some pretty amazing people.)
The interview that’s included in the latest email is with one of my favourite fellow-edge-walkers, Connie Hozvicka of Dirty Footprints Studios. A few months ago, when I was working on the series that I’ve since put on hold (Let go of the Ground), I did a different interview with Connie about what it means for her to let go of the ground and surrender. Because the story she shared fits so well with the theme of wandering and edge-walking, I thought this was a good time to share it.
On an related note, I am delighted to be one of the artists in Connie Hozvicka’s art journaling course, 21 Secrets. Because of the big and beautiful response she received to this latest offering of art journaling secrets, she decided to keep it open for several more months. You can still register for the course and learn all kinds of delightful secrets that will fill your art journal with colour, depth, and some pretty profound truth. (In my workshop, I teach you to use paint to explore your relationship with your body.)
The above image has become my most powerful metaphor this Spring. I discovered it a few weeks ago and have made a couple of pilgrimages back to it since then. Last night Maddy and I braved a swarm of mosquitos to finally take photos of it. (We tried to do a video too, but Maddy was too busy fending off mosquitos to hold the camera still long enough.)
This simple sapling, taking root in the middle of an old rotten stump, has taught me more than many of the teachers in my life.
Out of the rot of the old, the new will grow.
Nobody understands more about transformation than the Creator does. Look at nature, read the story of Easter – it’s all about transformation, and its all intertwined.
Life happens in cycles. Birth, growth, maturity, death, decomposition, regeneration, new birth, and so on and so on.
It’s the same for every one of us. In order for new seeds (ideas, projects, businesses, etc.) to find places to take root, we need other things to die.
When we fail, we need to have the grace and dignity to let those failures sit and rot and become compost for new ideas.
When a project has reached the end of its value, we need to be willing to kill it, watch it decompose, and then watch what new things emerge out of the space it creates.
It’s human nature to want to hang onto the old “tree” (project, lifestyle, career, home, relationship, etc.), because it offers safety, familiarity and strength. But sometimes that tree has already begun to rot from the inside (the places we keep hidden from each other and even from ourselves) and holding onto it is only serving to hinder the growth of the young seedlings lost in its shadow.
Death is hard. Decomposition is excruciating. I know it – I’ve been through more cycles than I care to count. Rot is ugly, painful, and demoralizing. Some days it feels like it will never end. Some days it feels like there is nothing but rot in our lives.
This past year has been that way for me. Lots of ugliness. Lots of wading through rot. Lots of letting go.
Sitting with rot seems counterintuitive, especially in a culture that values productivity and success and climbing social ladders (with sturdy rungs that never succumb to rot). And yet the rot is an important part of the process. The rot creates the nutrients for new growth, and that takes time – LOTS of time. Compost isn’t created out of freshly killed trees. The tree stump in the photo, for example, was probably dead for about ten years before a new seed found enough nutrients there to sustain its growth.
For each of us, it’s the same. When something old has died, we need to give sufficient time for the transformation before we can expect new growth to happen. Patience is the most valuable part of the process.
Don’t rush your way through transformation. Let rot happen.
Note: If you are currently going through a transformation process, you may want to consider working with me as your Transition Guide. Contact me if you have questions.
As I prepare to travel to Columbus for ALIA (Authentic Leadership in Action), I find myself playing with the word “leader”.
Who are the leaders of the world? What do they look like? What makes them unique? What makes us want to follow them?
For a lot of us (especially for women), the word “leader” is a huge block. It feels like too much. Too bold. Too cocky. Too self-assured. Too “I don’t have my OWN shit together – how can I possibly lead other people?”
I’ve heard every excuse in the book. Heck – I’ve USED every excuse in the book. “I’m not smart enough. I don’t have enough knowledge in this subject area. I don’t know how to motivate people. I don’t have all the answers. I’m not confident enough. I don’t like having people depend on me. I don’t know how to fix my own problems – how can I possibly fix other people’s problems? I don’t want people to think I’m too big for my boots. I’m in too much pain.”
We let those limitations block us, because we’ve accepted the wrong paradigms for leadership. Ask any circle of people to name leaders in history or in their own lives, and they’ll talk about people like Nelson Mandela, Obama, Mother Teresa, or the executive director of the organization they work for.
Well no WONDER we get intimidated by the word leader if that’s our paradigm! Very few of us will ever be THAT kind of leader. The world only needs a few of those.
Until they’re coaxed, NOBODY in the room will mention the first grade teacher who opened the world of language for them, the guy who swept the floors in the gymnasium with a smile on his face and a kind word for everyone, the little girl in the playground who made sure everyone got a turn on the slide, the drummer in the high school band who wordlessly kept everyone on beat, or the waitress at the local coffee shop who listened to their stories and made them feel heard.
I’m on a personal mission to bust us all out of those old paradigms of leadership. I’m on a personal mission to make you see the leader in the janitor, the drummer, the waitress, and yourself.
Let’s ask ourselves some new questions.
What if the leader is the person who:
– asks the right questions, instead of knowing all the answers?
– remembers that play is the best way to learn?
– makes a lot of effort to make other people feel seen and heard?
– believes in the power of crayons and dance shoes?
– invites people to wander through possibilities instead of looking for the most direct path?
– creates a container where our feelings and ideas are safe?
– delights in the opportunities that arise out of mistakes?
– invites our bodies and souls to every gathering along with our brains?
– celebrates curiosity?
– believes that the collective wisdom in the room is greater than her own?
– intuitively understands when to say “stop” and “rest” and “walk away“.
– trusts that the most beautiful things often grow out of failure?
Sit with these questions, and then ask yourself “if I can hold this new paradigm, can I then call myself a leader?”
At ALIA, leaders of all shapes and sizes learn about leadership from jugglers, painters, aikido masters, dancers, jazz drummers, meditation teachers, dramatists, doodlers, floral arrangers, etc., etc. The incredible tribe of people who gather at ALIA believe that leadership lessons come from everywhere, and every person in the room holds some of the wisdom. It’s an awe-inspiring experience to sit in a large circle of paradigm-shifting leaders and know that your wisdom is welcome there.
Which piece of the wisdom do you bring to the circle? And what is stopping you from bringing it?
Note: If this new paradigm for leadership excites you, challenges you, or affirms you, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy How to Lead with your Paint Clothes on. The first learning circle has drawn together a fascinating group of people and I look forward to gathering the next one soon. (Dates to be announced.)
