Have you ever told your staff or volunteer team to grab some scissors and glue and get down on the floor with some old magazines?
Two places I go for solace and support – the labyrinth and the grave. Tonight, after a long and tiring board meeting that left me feeling beat up, dragged through the mud, and totally spent, I went to the grave.
On the way there, the tears flowed… again. The words that escaped my trembling lips were “I am not enough.”
More than anything else, these days, I am realizing that I am just not enough. I am not enough to fill the tank of all of the people who need it. I am not enough to respond to all of the hunger in the world. I am not enough to fill the ever-present needs of my children. I am not enough to provide the affirmation and support that my staff (who sometimes think I’m a little aloof) want. I am not enough to respond to the demands of my boss, my board, and all the stakeholders who want my leadership, my decision-making, and my vision. I am not enough to support the friends and family who need supporting. I am not enough to reach out to the people in the neighbourhood like the young mom who just died of a drug overdose. I am not enough to do the volunteer work that I often feel guilty about avoiding.
I am just not enough. I cannot fill everyone’s tank. Especially when mine is empty.
As I sat there at the grave, I leaned on a sturdy tree and looked out across the rows of graves. With the sun setting behind me, my body cast a long shadow across the grass.
A gentle voice whispered in my ear. “You can learn something from that shadow. If you stand here and trust the Light, it can make you much taller than you ever dreamed you could be. Keep the Light behind you, and even if you bend over with the weight of the world on your shoulders, you can reach the people who need to be reached. Leave the rest to someone else.”
Somehow, I’ve got to find and trust others who are willing to stand with me with our backs to the Light. I’m tired of trying to do so much alone.
There’s nothing particularly amazing about this photo, but of my recent “walk in the Springtime” collection (taken yesterday), it’s the one I feel most drawn to today.
Just like the iris, I feel a little lost in the shadows these days. My sunny companions, the daisies, are busy basking in the sunshine, but I’m not finding much light where I am.
The gloom has not lifted, though there have been periodic breaks in the clouds. It’s not that I don’t expect to see the sun again, it’s just that the clouds keep moving in front and blocking the view. (Both literally and figuratively this week.)
I spent part of the day at work today, and though there was nothing particularly bad about it, I just felt an overwhelming sadness when I left. I’ve poured a lot of myself into this job for 5 years, and it has sucked the energy out of me. Being a leader, a change agent, and key decision-maker can be very, very draining.
I need my tank re-filled. I’m not sure how that will happen, but I know that – in order to emerge healthy and whole again – I need to find a way.
You can’t see the tears in this picture, but trust me when I say they were streaming down my face. It was one of those shadow moments. (Why did I turn the camera on myself? Like I’ve said before, it’s one of the ways I process the world, including my own sadness.)
Like the dandelion, I want to let go, let god and nature take over, and lose myself in the breeze.
When I started my current job, I told myself “5 years. I give this job at least 5 years.” I said that partly because I know that I’m a restless soul and up until now, my history has been about 3 years in each job. A wise mentor once told me that it takes at least 3 years to change a culture, and I think in all of those past jobs I kind of gave up at the 3 year mark when there was very little evidence of change. (It takes A LOT to change a government department – trust me.) Even though I learned a lot in almost all of those jobs, and had some great experiences, I need to be in an environment that values creativity and positive change, and mostly I wasn’t.
I also said it partly because I knew that in 5 years Marcel would have graduated from university and would be back in the workforce. I’ve always dreamed of breaking away from the 9-5 life and doing more freelance/consulting work (you can find out more about that at my website), and once our family was a little less reliant on my income, I felt I’d have a little more freedom to explore those other things.
Well, today is my 5th anniversary. I still love my job. And I am finally in an environment that values creativity and positive change (and philanthropy and global awareness and justice and a whole bunch of other things I value). And I can say, in all humility, that I have definitely impacted this organization in a positive way. Years from now, people will look back in the history of the organization and say “that changed during the time Heather was here.” Interestingly enough, change started happening in a fairly big way around the 3 year mark, which was definitely the motivation I needed to stick around.
It’s really been an incredible 5 years. Since I started here, I’ve learned a tonne about leadership, I’ve gone on some incredible adventures, I’ve managed some exciting creative projects, I’ve met amazing people, I’ve gotten to do lots of writing and photography and visioning and creating (and get paid for it!), I’ve hosted some big media events, and most of all, I’ve learned SO MUCH about my own passions and values and personal calling. Sometimes, it’s been really challenging (especially the part that involves leading a diverse team spread across the country), but mostly it’s been an amazing ride.
But… (you KNEW there was going to be a “but” didn’t you?) I’m starting to feel like I’m done. I’m starting to feel that restless feeling that I always get when it’s time to move on from something (even when that something is really good and is worth sticking around for). I’m starting to dream of other things. I’ve got a big dream project that I really want to sink my teeth into, but I need time to do it and there’s no way I can get there while holding down a full time career and trying to be a good mom and wife.
There’s still lots I can do here (and if the board approves a plan I’m submitting, I’ll be able to unfold a whole lot of new ideas and growth opportunities), so I’m pretty sure I can be happy here for awhile, but I’m just not sure if I’ll be fully satisfied if I have to wait too long to try out some of these other big dreams that seem to have camped out in my imagination. Patience is not one of my greatest strengths.
What about you? What are you dreaming about? How do you handle the waiting when the timing isn’t quite right for the unfolding of the dreams?
A few weeks ago, I was in Toronto for a three day workshop on leading remote teams. My staff is spread across the country, and that has been REALLY challenging, so I’ve been looking for inspiration on how to be more effective at it. Unfortunately, though, this was not the right course for me. Although I tried to make the best of it and struggled to find some takeaway knowledge that made the rather significant investment worth it, in the end I had to admit that it didn’t move me any further in my journey as a leader.
For one thing, it was targeted at leaders who are newer to it than I am (I’ve done this for 10 years already), and more specifically, leaders who work primarily in technical and production fields (task-oriented leadership – very different from my line of work). On top of that, throughout most of the course, “remote teams” referred primarily to teams that you’re leading in other countries because your company has chosen to outsource to places where there is cheaper labour. That was a particular struggle for me, because some of my work (and personal passion) involves seeking justice for some of those people providing that cheap labour who are unable to feed their own families. (The last day of the course, just before catching an early flight, I couldn’t stand it anymore, and let flow a fairly strong response when someone implied that ‘we are saving the poor downtrodden masses by giving them jobs and teaching them the value of OUR culture over their own’.)
As I sat and doodled my way through the workshop, I realized that there was a deeper reason that none of it was resonating for me. I just wasn’t connecting with the instructor. It wasn’t just that he’d spent most of his career in the technical field and spoke a different “language” – it was deeper than that. On the last day, it finally occurred to me – he just wasn’t raising my level of trust, partly because he seemed to have less leadership experience than I do, but mostly because he didn’t seem REAL enough to me. Most of his stories were about general leadership ideas – few of them were about his own grappling with tough situations. He hadn’t even written his own material for the course – he was regurgitating someone else’s work. The bottom line was that he lacked authenticity.
When I got back to the office, I found a package on my desk. The book I’d ordered (based on my friend Susan’s recommendation) had arrived… THE AUTHENTIC LEADER! How appropriate!
This past weekend, I devoured the book like an addict looking for a fix (or a frustrated leader looking for inspiration). It was EXACTLY what I needed. I can hardly describe what this book did to me. It fed those hungry places inside me. It inspired me, yes… but more importantly, I think, it affirmed me. It made me stop and realize that “Damn it – I’m on the right track after all! I don’t need expensive workshops to teach me new techniques! I just need to keep going deeper in my path toward authenticity.”
“Simply put, being an authentic leader is synonymous with being oneself. It is that simple, but it is also that difficult. When deciding to lead, be true to self. Being true to self is being in a most powerful place. The power in leadership is not in being right, but in being real.”
I’ve read a lot of leadership books, and I’ve used many of them in teaching leadership workshops, but this is one of the first that I’ve read that made me feel so affirmed while still inspiring me on to greater heights. Often, when you read a leadership book, at first you feel inspired and excited, but then reality sinks in and you realize “I can NEVER meet those unrealistic expectations! I’ll NEVER be an effective leader!” I remember teaching a workshop once, based on “The Leadership Challenge” (a great book, but with some REALLY high expectations), and saying to the participants “this part right here? Ignore it. It is basically impossible and unrealistic and borderline STUPID. Don’t even bother trying it because you will set yourself and your team up for failure. Set more realistic goals than this if you want to succeed.” The workshop participants breathed a collective sigh of relief. I don’t think anyone had every told them to “ignore something the book/authority says” before.
This book is very different from that. It teaches that the road to more effective leadership is the road to authenticity. Spend LESS time trying to figure out the right techniques and skills for being a good leader and MORE time trying to figure out how to be authentic and how to inspire others to do the same. “An authentic journey is a path to finding your voice, to discovering your highest aspirations and purpose, to living an honest life, and to bringing your passions and gifts to the world in the form of service of others. … We see the ultimate purpose of leadership as finding and following one’s own authentic voice and then inspiring and supporting other people to find and follow theirs.”
This is the kind of book that everyone should read. If the term “leader” scares you, it shouldn’t. It’s not about positional leadership, but more about people who feel some kind of calling to inspire others and make a difference in the world. (One of the authors, David Irvine, has written another book called “Becoming Real: Journey to Authenticity”, which I assume is equally good and less about leadership, if that’s what you’re looking for. I’ve also read another book of his called “Simple Living in a Complex World”, which had a pretty profound effect on me 10 years ago.)
Though I recognized it at the time, it was good to have further affirmation that my bold step a couple of months ago was EXACTLY what my team needed. Now I just have to keep plugging away at it to make sure I don’t lose the momentum.
(This is part of my “fearless” journey. Earlier posts can be found here, here, here, here, and here.)
I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership lately. I had a great (though way too short) conversation with my friend Susan yesterday about what it takes to be an authentic leader. Susan was my boss several years ago and has been my friend ever since. (She told me that the day I walked in for the interview, she knew almost instantly that we would be kindred spirits and that she HAD to hire me.) Now we’re both bosses (in different organizations) and struggling with many of the same issues.
Susan and I have had similar experiences recently where we discovered that sometimes, to be good leaders, we have to take a big risk and allow ourselves to be vulnerable and exposed. Vulnerability is not normally associated with strong leadership. In fact, when we become leaders, we assume that our role is and will always be to be the strong one in the group. After all, a leader shouldn’t let weakness show, should they?
But sometimes, our greatest break-through comes the moment we admit to our team “I don’t have this all figured out” and then ask “can you help me?” After a long and often difficult road with my team in the last few years, that’s what eventually worked for me back in January. I had to be willing to say “look – this isn’t working and I feel like I have failed because I’ve tried everything and I no longer have any idea how to make it work” before they softened their stances and finally contributed meaningful ideas to an otherwise rather stagnant circle. It was a risk (because admitting my weakness opened the door for them to point out even more weaknesses), but it was worth it in the end.
It’s kind of counter-intuitive, but there’s wisdom to it, and I have to keep learning and re-learning it. Admitting weakness can be the most effective way to open the door to strength. (Rather biblical, isn’t it?)