The hardest thing to do in moments of deep distress is to stay fully present. It’s hard because the human brain and body learn quickly how to answer attacks they can’t escape: they help us survive by taking us somewhere else, anywhere else but here. As I’ve mentioned, my brain recently took me away from […]
Communities brave enough to feel in
Justice work can be exhausting. No one who has worked on an intractable social issue for any extended length of time would be surprised by that statement. As much as it’s common knowledge that social activism can mean feeling sorrow or pain over suffering, it isn’t at all common to have teams that will hold […]
Your shadow precedes you
According to Carl Jung, a person’s “shadow” represents those parts of their selves that they’re unaware of, especially facets that they might recognize in others and find repulsive. Our shadows accompany us. They’re also often like the second quadrant in Joseph Luft’s and Harrington Ingham’s Johari Window: perceptible to others, but not obvious to us. […]
Simplify: Heart First
“Just look through the microscope.” It’s a phrase based on now-mythic stories about Galileo’s unsuccessful debates with the religious leaders and church-governed philosophers of his time who, he said, refused to look at the natural world’s evidence because of their presuppositions about it. Particularly in times of stress and conflict, one of a leader’s most important skills is the ability to simplify, […]
Leadership means accepting authority
Look at the relationship between the English words authority and author. It’s almost as if this language conspired to remind us that authority is about intrinsic power to write one’s way into new realities, interpretations, and ways of being. What I didn’t know until recently is that there’s also an etymological relationship between author and authentic. To be authentic means to be real and […]
Leaders use their superpowers on themselves first.
A leader’s primary superpower isn’t their ability to persuade or inspire or mobilize others. Mobilizing others is essential to leadership. Mobilizing others is co-creating space where other people can motivate themselves to take aligned, constructive action. Mobilizing others is secondary to a leader’s ability to transcend internal resistance, work around interior shadow, and recognize that most […]
