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Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

coaching

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The gift of non-attachment

A touching moment as a tiny Piping Plover chick snuggles into its parent on a sandy beach in the early morning sunlight.
Photo credit: Ray Hennessy
Recently I talked with a former colleague about the gracious way our community had held space for both of us to outgrow and leave it.

“It’s been like an incubator,” she said.
“Like an eggshell,” I said.

If you’re a growing chick, there’s no point in getting attached to your shell. It nourishes you, makes you strong, and then you have to break through it to live a mature life. If you never push against your shell, you don’t become strong. If you never break your shell, you actually die.

And if you’re the person who’s called to care for growing chicks, there’s no point in getting attached to any of them. They eat your food, soak up your heat, break their first boundary, and will fly away if unhindered. It’s not that they’re flying away from you; it’s that when they do what they’re designed to do, they will fly.

Non-attachment, then, is a gift. It isn’t indifference but rather full and non-grasping presence. It keeps disciplining tools like rules, forms, and organizational structures in their place—secondary to people. And it also applies these tools as much as they’re needed to hone and amplify people’s contributions for wider benefits.

A shell serves its chick, and not the chick, the shell.

It’s non-attachment that allows a grounded, healthy mentor to teach, guide, and counsel mentees without becoming bruised by mentees’ choices or learning process. We learn to invest in our groups and peers without being overly bonded to their outcomes; we practice giving our best without trying to wrest others’ stories away from them.

“Non-attachment” can be deeply challenging to live when all our brains want to say is “Please don’t change anything!”

But as I talked with my colleague, I realized that this was the leadership mode that has had the best consequences for me and other real people who still have growing to do.

How does non-attachment show up in your work? Send me a note to tell me about how you’ve seen it in action.

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Getting your own way

A healthcare CEO sometimes asks other executives to examine how fast they move to quash disagreement and other kinds of relational discomforts.

“Do you sacrifice reconciliation for resolution?” —Curt Nonomaque

From the ExecuDeck: "THE QUESTION Do you sacrifice reconciliation for resolution? WHY IT MATTERS When dealing with an uncomfortable situation, we may experience a strong urge to fix the problem quickly and make things right. This often causes us to resolve the issue without actually achieving reconciliation—and the relationship suffers. Other times we can’t find a way to resolve an issue, and our discomfort causes us to miss opportunities to achieve reconciliation. Reconciliation doesn’t require resolution."
Text by Curt Nonomaque; art by Dave Cutler (CC-by-NC-ND)

I thought of Curt and this question as I read a thread about networking on LinkedIn this week.

“I have received very positive responses even from cold contacts,” the writer said. “However, most offer to help via email first and plan a meeting [later] in case their help via email isn’t clear enough. How do I convince a cold contact for a meeting when he offers help via email first?”

I reflexively bristled at the idea that contacts need convincing to fit our expectations of how best to connect.

I also understand the LinkedIn writer’s uncertainty. It can be so easy to privilege what I want from an interaction and to insist on it right now rather than consider what others in relationship with me might want or what our relationship needs to evolve and flourish long term. We might shoot for the immediate goal, whether that’s securing their agreement, locking down a hire, or resting in the simple satisfaction of completing a planned process.

It’s a lot harder to acknowledge the demands of those immediate goals and still hold the relationship with the gentle neutrality of a gardener whether or not those short-term goals are met.

Ultimately, there’s no need at all to rush or manipulate connection. And more: the desire to control what happens between two parties today can be the thing that most limits what could emerge between them tomorrow.

Seeking to control not only limits our ability to listen to what another person might be saying to us through word or action; it also stymies our ability to receive life’s surprises. Opportunities and experiences we couldn’t have developed on our own can meet short- and long-term goals when we’re willing to back up enough to let them bubble up to the surface.

Managers and leaders and teachers and mentees and partners and workers and friends—all of us navigate this question in some way. We all experience temptations to try to over-determine how things unfold.

Value your relationships more than you value getting your own way in relationships, and see how much room life makes for you. My bet? More room than you could have planned.