by Heather Plett | Apr 8, 2016 | circle, Wisdom, women
“How would you introduce yourself if you alone got to choose how you are defined?” That’s the question I asked a circle of women who’d gathered for an all-day storytelling workshop yesterday at a downtown women’s resource centre. “There are ways in which we’re expected to introduce ourselves – what we do for a living, where we live, what our marital status is, etc. – but today we’re going to choose an introductory question that let’s us choose our own definitions.”
The first question offered was the one we used as our check-in question. “How are you a survivor?”
It was a beautiful question and it opened the door for honest and vulnerable sharing. These women are fierce survivors. Some are refugees, some are Indigenous, some are single moms, and most are living in poverty. They have survived domestic abuse, mental illness, conflict in war torn countries, the birth and death of children, racism, hunger, and a multitude of other challenges. They are resilient and courageous and it was an honour to be in circle with them.
“We have a choice,” I said. “We could have told those same stories from the perspective of victims, and they would still be true, but we chose to tell them as survivors. That doesn’t mean we haven’t been victimized – we have – but we found ways to survive and now that’s the story we’re choosing to tell.”
“It matters that we claim our own stories,” I said. “Because our stories give us power. Our stories define us and help us to tell the world who we are.”
Later that morning, I showed the women a magazine spread from the in-flight magazine I’d picked up the day before. It was a three-page spread promoting New York magazine’s Best Doctor issue. Not surprisingly, the only images were of white, male doctors.
“When we see things like this again and again in the media,” I said, “we make the assumption that the best doctors are white males. Then, when we find ourselves hospitalized, and we end up with someone who’s not a white male doctor, subconsciously we come to the conclusion that our doctor is not one of the best.”
Whoever gets to tell the stories holds the power. And vice versa. When it’s largely white males who own the media, run the big companies, have access to political machines, and have the most influence in the world, they get to tell the stories their way. Their stories reflect people in the way that is most beneficial to them, and so they tell us stories of people who look like them.
When we hear almost exclusively the stories of people who look and live differently from us – whether it’s because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, class, physical appearance, etc. – we absorb the message that we have less value. And that’s when we become shameful of who we are and we stop telling our own stories. We stop believing that our stories matter.
“I used to be ashamed of who I was,” one of the Indigenous women in the circle shared with us. “When I was growing up, there weren’t many Indigenous kids in our neighbourhood and the only thing we ever heard about Indigenous people was that they were drunks or homeless or gang members. I was ashamed to say who I was, so I tried to pass myself off as Italian. It took me a long time to reclaim my own identity.”
Another woman, a recent immigrant from the Philippines, shared about the shame she’d felt when she’d left an abusive husband and had become a single mom. “I was blaming myself for getting myself into that situation. I shouldn’t have married him in the first place. I felt like everyone was judging me.”
“Our shame keeps us silent,” I said. “But when we start to share our stories, we release ourselves of that shame and then people can’t hurt us with those stories anymore. Those stories become part of our beauty instead of part of our shame.”
“Would it have made a difference if you’d heard more stories of people like you?” I asked both women. “Would it have helped you believe in your own value as Indigenous women or single moms?”
“Yes, when we see people like us doing good things, it makes us feel better about who we are. And when we see their courage, we believe that we can be courageous too.”
“That’s why our stories matter,” I said. “And that’s why we have to find creative ways to tell them. The people who own the media and the publishing companies aren’t going to give us much space to tell those stories, so we have to find alternative ways of getting them out to people who need them. We have to find ways of reaching the kids who were growing up just like you did, and the women leaving abusive husbands just like you did, so that they can see their own worth.”
I pulled out the in-flight magazine again, and this time I shared a story of a photo exhibit opening in Washington, D.C., called “She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World” which brings together 80 stereotype-challenging, genre-defying works. “What’s striking about the works,” the article says, “is how they dispel the idea, put forth by the international media, that these women are homogenous and invisible. The photos are feisty, provocative, and, above all, thought-provoking.”
“These women chose to tell their own stories their own way,” I said. “Instead of waiting for someone to give them permission to tell their stories, they chose to own them and tell them the way they wanted to.”
We ended yesterday’s workshop by brainstorming creative ways in which these women could tell the stories of their people in their own neighbourhoods without waiting for the mainstream media to call.
Our stories matter. Our stories have power. When we tell them, we let go of shame and we give other people hope and courage.
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Learn to tell your own stories in the next online Openhearted Writing Circle on April 23, 2016.
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by Heather Plett | Jan 14, 2016 | grace, gratitude, grief, growth, holding space, journey
“How do I know if I’ve gone deep enough?”
That was a question that came up during the Soulful Year virtual planning session on Saturday. It was asked in relation to an exercise that invites you to reflect on the grief, grace, gratitude and growth of the last year and then to release it so that you are ready to receive the year ahead. (You can find the exercise here.) The person asking it wanted to make sure she’d done a good enough job of processing what had happened in the past so that it wouldn’t get in the way of the future.
“Instead of asking ‘have I gone deep enough?’” I said, “ask yourself ‘have I gone as deep as I’m prepared to go right now?’”
“There will always be another layer,” I continued, “and perhaps when you’re working on another exercise this afternoon, something else will come up for you that you’ll want to add to this mandala. That’s okay. You can always go back. Just go as deep as you can right now and trust that, if there are more layers to uncover, those will come up at the right time.”
Here’s a story to illustrate the point…
Last weekend, I was decluttering and re-organizing my laundry/storage/pantry room in the basement. It’s one of those catch-all places for everything that doesn’t fit in the rest of the house, so it holds a lot of clutter. I hadn’t thoroughly cleaned it in a long time, so there were storage bins in it that still held clothes that haven’t fit my daughters since the early part of the century.
By the end of a weekend of hard work, it was still pretty full, but everything fit on the shelves or under the stairs. I was satisfied that I’d gotten rid of everything I could. At the very least, there were no clothes left that don’t fit someone in the family.
A few days later, I was sitting at my computer trying to prepare material for an upcoming course and becoming increasingly frustrated with how stuck I was. Nothing was flowing and no new ideas were showing up. In exasperation, I pushed away from my computer and paced around the house.
Almost by accident, I found myself back in the laundry room staring at the shelves. I yanked a Christmas wreath off the shelf and realized I hadn’t hung it in ten years and probably never will again. I was tired of it. It spoke of another era when I loved to play with pine cones and hot glue. I stuffed it in a garbage bag. Then I started pulling storage bins from under the stairs. One of them was full of dried flowers. Another held a half-finished knitting project and bags of moccasin-making supplies. A third held a handful of other half-finished craft projects and the leftover supplies from a dozen finished projects that I might want to do again someday.
I’d hung onto them because “you never know when I might want to make another pair of moccasins or a dried flower arrangement”.
The truth is, though, I won’t ever make another pair of moccasins or dried flower arrangement. That’s just not my style. I get really interested in an art form, pour my heart into it, and then abandon it when something else catches my attention. In all of my nearly 50 years on the planet, I have never gone back.
The boxes are still there because I’ve been carrying around a story about myself that that is a weakness. I was convinced that some day I’d fix that part of me and become a better person who finishes every project and doesn’t lose interest in things that bore her. Suddenly, standing there staring at those boxes full of craft supplies and shame, I was ready to release that old story.
Here’s a new story… I like to explore. I like to try new things. I am a scanner who loses interest in what I’ve tried in the past because it no longer challenges me and I crave something new.
Giving up on craft projects because they bore me does not make me a bad person.
Finding delight in new ideas every six months does not mean that I’m fickle or wishy-washy.
It’s just who I am. And I don’t need to have a basement full of reminders of why I should be ashamed of that face, because I am NO LONGER ashamed of that fact.
I packed it all up and gave it all away. And suddenly I felt something physical shift in my body – like something had been blocking my airwaves and suddenly I could breathe again. And, as if I’d planned it, Jann Arden’s song started playing from the music player on the washing machine… “So I’m punching out walls and tearing down paper, cutting my bangs, yeah sooner than later, I’m selling my soul right back to Jesus, taking up hope and giving up weakness, untangling the strings… I’m free, yeah. I’m free.”
Here’s an important part of this story… Just like I didn’t need to be ashamed about those unfinished projects or old stories, I also don’t need to be ashamed of the fact that it took me so long to release them. I wasn’t ready until now. I went only as deep as I was prepared to go at the time, and then, when something coaxed me to take another look, I went deeper.
Go only as deep as you’re prepared to go right now. There will be time for going deeper at another time.
I’ve been inspired by a few of the participants in my Mandala Discovery program who signed up for the program a few years ago and have worked their way through the exercises three or four times since. Each time they do them, they gain something new and take their learning to a new depth. What showed up in the third or fourth pass couldn’t have showed up the first time through. They weren’t ready for it then.
Not long ago I had a conversation with a residential school survivor who testified at the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. “I told them about the physical abuse,” she said, “but I wasn’t ready to talk about the sexual abuse. Those stories will have to wait for another time when I’m ready to share them. They still feel too raw.” I was struck by her wisdom, trusting herself to know what felt safe to share and what needed more time in the tender places of her own heart.
This wisdom is true for personal growth, it’s true for interpersonal conflict, and it’s true for community-building. Whether you’re dealing with your own issues or wrestling through things with others, it’s important to pay attention to what level of depth feels right in each particular moment. Sometimes it doesn’t feel safe to go any deeper, sometimes it’s just not the right timing or you don’t have time for the deep dive, or sometimes you haven’t found the right container that can hold the complexity of the depth you need to dive to.
Recently I was having a conversation with a colleague and we were talking about some upcoming training we want to offer in The Circle Way. We were contemplating whether to offer a two-day session or a deeper dive in five days. One of the questions we were asking ourselves was what depth we felt the potential participants might be ready to go and what depth of conversation they might be ready to hold. The Circle Way is one of those practices and containers that can offer value at a rudimentary level or can hold really complex stories, emotions, conflict, etc. at a much deeper level. Again, it depends of the level you’re prepared to go or the length of time you have for the dive.
It all comes back to the spiral. Again and again, whether it’s in our own personal growth or the growth of our communities, we spiral through the layers of what we need to learn, going deeper and deeper until we reach the core. Just like a path straight up a mountain would rob us of our oxygen, a straight path to the depths of our learning would strangle us.
If you’re ready to go deeper, to find the next level of the spiral, then find the right container that can handle the dive. A “container” can be offered by a trusted friend, a therapist, a coach, or a sharing circle – whatever person or group of people holds space for you and makes you feel safe enough for the dive. Or it can start with a set of tools and creative exercises like Mandala Discovery or The Spiral Path (in both cases you have access to a community of people who are working through the program at the same time).
Consider the container like the oxygen mask and wetsuit of a deep-sea diver – the deeper you go, the stronger your equipment needs to be.
When you’re ready, take the spiral path to your own growth. It will lead you through the layers at the speed that you’re ready to uncover them.
by Heather Plett | Jan 5, 2016 | Community, connection
In one of my favourite childhood photos, I’m sitting on the couch with a row of dolls lined up on my lap. Unfortunately, that photo was lost when my mom moved away from the farm after dad died, so it exists only in my memory now. The way my memory serves me, though, each of those dolls has a different skin colour, hair colour, and/or cultural attire. Only one of those dolls has blonde hair and blue eyes like me.
That’s the way I like to think of myself – from a young age choosing to surround myself with difference, with diversity. It’s not always true (in much of my life I have been surrounded by too much sameness), but it’s my ideal image of myself.
I thought of that photo recently when a viral video depicted two young white girls reacting in disappointment and disgust when they received black dolls as Christmas gifts. What’s most disturbing about that video is the way the adults giggle about and invite their reaction and the very fact that some adult thought it was funny enough to share online. Clearly their behaviour is a learned behaviour. Raised in another environment, those girls would likely have been delighted by the gift.
I have been disturbed lately by sameness and the way those girls’ actions too closely reflect our own. I see it in my own life and I see it in the world around me. We gravitate toward what is comfortable and safe, what looks and sounds like us, and so we end up in places, in conversations, and in friendships where there is a clear insider and a clear outsider. In doing so, we marginalize the people who don’t fit in. Without even knowing it, we toss aside the black dolls just as those young girls did.
Most of us are good people, so we don’t do it intentionally, but good people make mistakes when we don’t pay attention. Good people make mistakes when we see the world only through our own lenses.
Marginalized people get hurt by a lot of good people who “didn’t mean to hurt anyone”.
Let me be perfectly clear that I include myself in this critique. I like to be comfortable as much as the next person, and so I too often find myself in places and in relationships where the people in the room largely fall into the same racial, gender, and socio-economic categories as I do.
But we miss out on SO MUCH when we don’t listen to the voices of people who are different from us. We miss out on SO MUCH when we don’t challenge our own comfort levels and dare to stretch ourselves beyond what feels safe. We miss out on SO MUCH when we toss aside the beautiful black dolls.
When everyone in the room looks the same, someone’s left outside. Sometimes that’s okay (when we’re at a family gathering, or when we’ve come together for healing or empowerment, for example), but often it’s not.
Over the festive season, I participated in two spiritual gatherings. The first one (which I’ve written about before) was a small gathering in a hospital sanctuary, where people of diverse faiths each lit a candle and talked about what light means in their spiritual tradition. At that one, the room was full of diversity of every kind. Not only were there at least nine faith groups represented in those who lit candles (most of whom were people of colour from various parts of the world), but there were hospital patients in wheelchairs and people of all walks of life, with varying degrees of health, socio-economic status, and physical ability.
I left that gathering feeling energized and connected to God/dess.
The other gathering I attended was on Christmas Eve, in Florida where my family was vacationing. This was a traditional Christian service that was fairly similar to what I grew up with. Though the setting was very different (this was a large posh church with theatre-style seating, while I grew up in a tiny and poor country church with old wooden pews), the language was largely the same. There was some comfort in that sameness – I knew the Christmas carols and had heard the Christmas story hundreds of times. It was a perfectly lovely service, with great singing and good story-telling on the pastor’s part. One story he shared was quite moving – about how a large endowment to the church had been split up among church-goers who were told to go out and do some act of kindness in the community.
Unlike the gathering in the hospital sanctuary, there was very little diversity in the room. In a room filled with more than a thousand people, I saw only three people of colour and could see evidence of very little socio-economic diversity. Among the visible leadership, there was even less diversity. The only people who spoke or served communion were older white men. Either you received God’s teachings and God’s body and blood from an older white man, or you didn’t receive it at all.
I left that gathering feeling weary and disconnected from God/dess.
I have no doubt that the church-goers and their leaders are good people doing good work in their community. They don’t mean to exclude anyone, and there’s a good chance they have well-meaning conversations about how to increase their diversity and how to reach out to people who are different from them. I know many good people like them, and in many ways, I am one of them – good people trying to do good things.
But good people hurt other people by living their good, comfortable lives and ignoring their own privilege and narrow views of the world.
And this is not a domain that’s exclusive to a conservative Christian church by any means. It happens in all kinds of settings.
Recently I was looking at an online advertisement for a women’s leadership summit – the kind of event I’d normally be drawn to, where leadership is seen through a feminine lens and there’s a comfort level with talk of the feminine divine and women’s power. But there was something about it that left me feeling sad, and I realized it was because of the sameness of the images on the speakers’ list. All of them were white women between the ages of 30 and 50 who looked like they’d stepped out of the pages of a yoga magazine.
Just what the patriarchy has for so long done to them, the organizers of this online summer were, (inadvertently of course) doing to others – marginalizing the voices of those who don’t fit. I’m sure these women would have all been horrified by the video of the young white girls tossing aside the black dolls, but in a way, the result was the same.
Sameness. Comfort. Marginalization. Barriers. Disconnection.
What do we do about it? That’s a big conversation and it needs the voices of many people who see the world differently from me.
I can only offer my own perspective from where I stand.
We start by noticing. We start by paying attention – looking around the room to see who’s sitting with us, checking our social media feed to see who we’re conversing with, noticing the books we read and the voices we listen to, paying attention to who has a voice at our gatherings. Because if we’re not listening to the stories of people who are different, if we’re not sitting and having conversations with them, we’ll always be stuck in this same place.
I loved Gloria Steinem’s recent book, My Life on the Road, largely because she shares so many stories about how she was influenced and changed by the people she met on the road. Much of her wisdom came not from people who look like her, but from black people, indigenous people, bikers, and farmers. She is the woman she is today because all of these people’s stories have been woven into her own.
I’m here to challenge us all to live more like that. Let’s be the kind of people who listen to stories and wisdom of people who look, think, and live differently from us. Let’s read books from other parts of the world and written by people of other races and classes. Let’s have more conversations with people who don’t share our political views or our socio-economic status.
I’ve created a list of books written by people who’ve lead very different lives from mine that I want to read and I’m working my way through them. Some I’ve read recently and recommend are Wab Kinew’s The Reason You Walk, Rosanna Deerchild’s Calling Down the Sky, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. I encourage you to build your own list.
I’ve also signed up for a course called “How to Embrace Diversity to Improve your Business” being offered by Desiree Adaway and Ericka Hines. Quite frankly, there is still too much sameness in the kind of clientele I attract and I want to see what I can do to change that. I know that Desiree and Ericka will challenge me and hold me accountable, and though it may be uncomfortable sometimes, I’ll do my best to stretch myself.
What else can we do to shift the status quo? Good people, I look forward to hearing from you.
by Heather Plett | Dec 17, 2015 | circle, connection, journey
I am delighted to share with you the launch of a new website that I have been part of building in 2015. The Circle Way now has its own home on the web.
I first discovered The Circle Way fifteen years ago, when I was working as Director of Communication at a large federal lab. I’d been in leadership positions in the federal government for 5 years, and I was feeling burnt out, discouraged, and hungry for something new. I was sure there must be a better way of doing leadership than the toxic, disconnected, hierarchical patterns I was witnessing, but I didn’t have enough experience, knowledge, or confidence to trust my own intuitive sense. I went searching for a guide who would help me navigate my way.
When I stumbled on the website of Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, it was like someone had lit a candle in the darkness for me. They were the guides I’d been looking for.
I remember that moment, sitting in my lonely office perched at the top of a long ramp that separated the management team from the scientists in the lab. Discovering that there were people talking about exactly the kind of leadership and community-building that I had a vague sense about but didn’t yet know how to articulate was life-changing. My body trembled with a sense of awakening and calling that felt ancient and primal. I wasn’t just being called to something, I was being called back to something. I didn’t know how the circle would become part of my life, but I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it would.
The path that finally led me to the rim of the circle was long and somewhat circuitous and often I wondered whether the calling I’d felt was true or just an apparition emerging out of my loneliness. After giving birth to my third and final daughter, I was so restless in a job that didn’t fit me that I could barely stand going to work each morning. It hurt to know that there was something better waiting for me but not know how I would get to that place.
I finally left the government a few years later and started working for a non-profit that worked internationally. I loved my work there and I learned a lot, but I still kept feeling like there was something missing. I took as many leadership and community-building courses as I could, and I talked to a lot of experts and teachers, but nothing helped me tap into the longing that I’d felt when I’d first discovered The Circle Way. To be honest, I still had such a vague sense of what it was and how much it would change my work that I never worked up the courage to ask for funding or time off to attend a training session.
I didn’t fully understand it, but I knew I wanted deeper relationships, more meaningful conversations, and more intentional collaboration and nothing else satisfied that craving.
In October 2010, I quit my non-profit job and launched my own business. Three weeks after leaving my job, and ten years after setting an intention to study with her, I traveled to Ontario to attend my first circle workshop with Christina Baldwin. It was as life-changing as I’d hoped it would be. The first thing I told Christina, in our opening circle, was that her words had lit a candle in the darkness for me ten years earlier. Her eyes filled with tears.
The workshop was so powerful for me that I felt like I was always either trembling or on the verge of tears. There’s something about satisfying a ten year longing (and an even more ancient ache) that can’t easily be put into words.
I came home from that workshop determined that I would become an ambassador of The Circle Way. I started incorporating it into everything I did. I held workshops and retreats in circle, I invited my university students to move their desks against the wall and join me in the circle, and I began to teach my online courses in virtual circles. Even in my coaching sessions, there are elements of the circle in the way I hold the space for people’s emergence.
The year after attending Christina’s workshop, I became part of Gather the Women, and I discovered how powerful it is to be part of a global network of circles. Last year, I invited a number of women in Winnipeg to join me in circle, and we’ve been meeting weekly ever since. This circle of women has become a lifeline for me.
In 2014, I had the pleasure of joining Christina and Ann and a circle of 25 other Circle Way practitioners in a 4 day gathering in which we worked to develop the framework for a new iteration of the work. After much discernment, Ann and Christina had decided that it was time to entrust the next generation of practitioners and teachers with this piece of their work. They prepared to step into their new role as elders and we prepared to pick up the torch and carry the light forward.
In May of 2015, Amanda Fenton and I joined Ann and Christina on Whidbey Island for three days of intense work. Together, we built the new website that would house this next generation of The Circle Way.
The work we did together was some of the most beautiful and meaningful collaborative work I’ve ever been part of, largely because it was done with such careful intention and such deep love. That was exactly what I’d been longing for years earlier when I’d felt so disconnected in my government position. The circle was not only what we were writing about and creating, it was the container for how we worked. Just as we do with any circle gathering, we started and ended each day with a check-in and check-out, we placed what was sacred to our gathering at the centre, and together we held the rim of the container that held our purpose. (And this, I believe, can become a container for the work done at any kind of business, non-profit, community organization, or government.)
It’s hard to express just how meaningful it was to work alongside my mentors for those three day and to be trusted as a partner with them in the work. This is what the circle does, though – it teaches us to honour each person on the rim as a leader and valuable contributor. It teaches us to speak with intention and listen with attention. In that circle, each of us was able to do our best work because we were being seen and heard, we were being trusted, and we were each taking responsibility for holding a shared purpose.
If you’re curious about The Circle Way, I invite you to start your own journey to the circle by exploring the new website. You’ll find lots of useful information and resources and you’ll also find learning opportunities and teachers/practitioners. While you’re there, sign up for the newsletter.
Though the details haven’t yet been worked out, I hope to work with some of my colleagues in offering a circle practicum in 2016. If you work for an organization or community group and would like to introduce The Circle Way as a new way of working, meeting, and being in conversation with each other, I’d be delighted to talk to you about what might be possible.
by Heather Plett | Oct 22, 2015 | Leadership
Here in Canada, we’ve elected a new Prime Minister. Perhaps you’ve seen the headlines, touting his good looks, his sunny disposition, his vision for a more equitable country, his way of wearing his heart on his sleeve, his lineage as the son of a former Prime Minister, and his well-spoken yoga-teacher wife.
You may have also seen headlines about his youthfulness, his inexperience, his lack of realism, his marijuana-smoking, or his people-pleasing ways.
As is always the case when someone rises to power, we seek to turn him into either hero or villain. If we voted for him, he becomes hero and we set him up with unrealistically high expectations. If we didn’t vote for him, we scrutinize every move, compare him to the person we’d rather elevate to hero status, and prove our opinions right when he begins to make mistakes.
In time, many of those who saw him as hero will realize his halo is a little rusty and he makes mistakes just like the rest of us mere mortals. Then those who saw him as villain will smile and say “I told you so!”
When I first became a leader in the federal government (though, admittedly, far from the rank of Prime Minister), I struggled with this quite a bit. There were always those among my staff who put me on a pedestal and others who were convinced I was too young/inexperienced/optimistic/female/etc. Due to my own insecurities, I felt immense pressure to live up to the expectations of some and improve the perception of others.
In one particularly memorable instance, after I’d moved to non-profit leadership, a member of my staff started out believing I was infallible and an answer to prayer, and then, a couple of years later, was sending me unpleasant emails on a daily basis pointing out every mistake I’d ever made since I started in the job. (She’d kept notes in a little black book.) For unrelated reasons, this staff person had to be fired, and then her utter disdain for me became an even more unpleasant lawsuit (that was eventually thrown out of court, thankfully).
Around that time, I wrote a blog post about how, because I am human and fallible, I will let everyone down at least once. That’s the way of any parent/teacher/leader/human – we make mistakes. As I said in that post, though, because I will continue to let people down, I will also continue to wait for grace.
Justin Trudeau will let us down some day too. And so will every celebrity, author, friend, politician, or parent we ever put on a pedestal. And hopefully we’ll have enough grace to forgive them and continue to support them as they get back up off the ground and carry on.
Why do we seek to make heroes of our leaders, celebrities, teachers, authors, etc.? Our hero worship always tells us something about our own stories of inadequacy. We believe our heroes will fix our problems, protect us with their super-human courage, or make the world a better place with their exceptional wisdom or beauty. We choose heroes because we believe they are not as weak as us.
The problem with hero worship is that it gives us a false sense that we no longer need to take responsibility.
If a politician is a hero, then it’s HIS responsibility to fix the problems of this country, not MINE. If a teacher is a hero, then it’s HER responsibility to make sure I learn, not MINE. If a celebrity or author is a hero, then it’s HER responsibility to make sure I’m entertained, not MINE.
Hero worship is just smoke and mirrors, though – it doesn’t foster real change. For that, we need engagement. We need citizens who see a leader for who s/he really is, accept them as both flawed and powerful, and choose to work alongside them to bring about a better future. We need people who will see the leader in THEMSELVES as well as others.
The greatest possibility for this kind of engagement lies not in a hierarchical model, where the leader stands out alone as the hero at the top of the pyramid, but in a circle, where there is a “leader in every chair”. In a circle, each person takes responsibility for what they contribute to the whole. Nobody gets to pass the buck.
The longer I’ve been involved in leadership, the more I’ve deliberately moved away from a hierarchical model. I don’t want anyone looking to me as their hero – I want to sit alongside them, wrestle through our questions together, and find new possibilities in the collective rather than in any one person. Even in my classrooms, I often had my students move into circles for discussion, so that each one would take more responsibility for what they contributed to the shared learning experience and none would look to me for all the answers.
When I spend too much time in front of a classroom or on stage or at the top of a hierarchy, I find it plays tricks with my ego and I once again feel the pressure to live up to the image people are choosing to cast me in. There is nothing healthy about trying to satisfy someone’s need for a hero.
When I sit in the circle, on the other hand, I am neither hero nor villain, I am simply human. And so are you.
Yes, I am still a leader in the circle, but more importantly, I have become an intentional listener, for in the circle, we always listen more than we talk. And each person in the circle is a leader and listener along with me. And as we each take responsibility for both the leading and the listening, both healing and change begin to happen.
Imagine what would happen if the circle began to inform our political spaces.Imagine if politicians were taught to sit regularly with their constituents and listen more than they speak. Imagine if opposing parties were required to sit in circle with each other and not interrupt when someone brought a good idea to the circle. Imagine if those in power were required to sit with those who’ve been marginalized and pass a talking piece so that nobody controls the narrative.
Imagine if Justin Trudeau were required to consult with a wisdom circle on a daily basis – one that kept him both grounded and accountable.
Now THAT’s a political system I could get excited about.
Shall we set aside our expectations that our heroes will fix the problems of the political system and work together to bring about real change?
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