Chris Gribble

Be yourself - Everyone else is taken (Oscar Wilde)

Four signs that indicate you are emerging from burnout

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1. Creativity re-emerges

Truth’s daily task

Truth is not clinging to a failed understanding,
Truth is the soul’s daily work,
The creative heart work of the true human.

Another line in this poem that I wrote was that “truth lived brings laughter and tears”. When in the midst of my burnout there wasn’t much laughter, tears were the more common expression of my state of being. Creativity requires both to be present in our life. The unhealthy imbalance was very evident in my daily lament about my lack of value to anyone.

James Altucher in his book, “Choose Yourself” recommends that we write down ten ideas a day. I would normally say such a task is too easy but my idea well was completely dry during this time.

Creativity re-emerging showed itself in a growing confidence to try something new. Each day as I took the next faltering step forward I was able to move to a new understanding of myself as a person. The old ways of seeing myself were lost in a finding of a new truth that touched the very core of my soul.

Psalm 85

When love and faithfulness collided with my life,
The sparks shot to the heavens,
The light shower showed me the way forward,
The paralysis of despair healed completely…

I used the word paralysis to refer to the despairing state that I found myself in during my experience of burnout. The discovery of those who could meet me with love and faithfulness in the moments of darkness encouraged the smallest sparks of creativity that they saw in me and this allowed light to emerge on the next step forward. Being able to work creatively and to then have the confidence to share my work with a community that expressed love and faithfulness was a very clear sign that I was beginning to rediscover a balance in my life.

2. Sleep refreshes

One of the clearest indicators of my state of being when in the midst of burnout was a poor sleep rhythm. Even when I did sleep it never felt like I woke refreshed. There were times when I questioned if I would ever have a proper night’s sleep again. I felt like I lived in a state of perpetual tiredness. Being able to have a good night’s sleep was a welcome relief that was a clear indicator that something was beginning to shift in me.

A reflection on Psalm 112

My heart’s deepest gladness has been found,
Living in the centre of God’s intention,
I sleep peacefully each night,
I dream of hope and belonging…

For me the tiredness hung around for a long time. I am normally a quite active person who approaches life with enthusiasm. My preferred rhythm is to wake early and it’s in that time that I can be quite creative. When I continually was waking up feeling tired there was little creativity left in me.

As I emerged from my continual tiredness I started looking forward to the mornings again. As creativity emerged I began looking forward to waking up so that I could engage in the creative activity of my work. Sleep was welcomed because it was a restful sleep that came from resolving some of the tension that I felt had emerged in understanding my sense of vocation and my response to that call.

3. It doesn’t have to be about me

At the height of my burnout my conversation centred around me. Sometimes when I was saying the words about me I felt tired of hearing myself talk. Some good friends stayed with me during this period and continued to listen and I am thankful that they were able to do this.

A reflection on Psalm 104

Like a lost friend who is brought close,
Creation continually welcomes me with a huge hug,
I am safe again in his presence,
His Voice the centre of my conversations….

One of my burnout symptoms was a complete retreat into myself. This was very difficult with a wife and four children who were very used to me be very present in our family life. I still managed to be very self focussed in my world of perpetual distraction. Even when I was with them I was never really there. I would be looking at them but thinking about a thousand things that could be going wrong, what I needed to do yet in that day, what mistakes I had made that day and a constant self talk of failure. There wasn’t much room in my head to fit anyone else.

My centre had become all about me and this was creating fatal wounds in my life. Learning to discover other important voices that spoke into my life helped me to re-find my centre. I loved the growing sense of belonging that brought with it a healing voice into my life. The words that emerged brought a new understanding of my own voice that could transcend my immediate problems.

4. Confidence returns

So many of us let others determine what we are worth. It’s our duty to make that determination ourselves.”
Jonathan Goldsmith

Dr Travis Bradberry in article in Forbes Magazine recently that quoted research from the University of California in San Francisco that showed the more difficulty you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. He also says that before we say “no” we need to have worked out what we are saying yes to.

Writing Psalm 203 was about me re-finding my centre in work by first learning to say yes to God.

My first word today is to say, “No”,
To a thousand different questions,
That seek to bring complexity,
To what is the simple choice,
Of first saying yes to God.

Being able to say no to someone means that there is something bigger at play in life. I have learned once again to find a bigger purpose in my life than some of the more material goals that dominated my life during my period of burnout. This gives more confidence to be able to make choices and to then live with those choices.

I notice myself saying no more and more lately. Sometimes saying no is often about choosing between good and best, this choice can be difficult especially when the creative juices are flowing and there are so many options to explore. But, saying no helps focus creativity and beds it into more fertile soil that is ultimately more productive.

No can sometimes bring with it some immediate pain but this is sometimes better than the dull ache of a half hearted yes. No, changes the terms of of a relationship because it makes the reality or impossibility of a situation clearer. Burnout can feel like living in a fog but with finding the capacity to say no confidently the fog recedes to give a clearer picture of reality.

Psalm 202 – In praise of work

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I sleep well each night,
Waking to expectation,
Knowing my plans belong to God,
Starting with creation’s imagination,
Continuing through each human life,
Gifted to our world’s loving desire,
To seek what can be given,
To the one to whom we all belong.

Each creative act I perform,
Was given by creation’s loving impulse,
I know that work is created from love,
From which each step forward is born,
Love is what sheds light on understanding,
The gift given of human thought,
That searches out our deepest desires,
To transform my uncertainty,

Leadership and Liminality

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About 18 months ago at the end of a retreat I was told that I was in a liminal space. These words came after sharing my story with a group of trusted friends and letting them reflect back to me some of their impressions.

I received their thoughts when much of what I thought I would be leading was gone and I was unsure of what the next step forward would be. There was a period of time when the only productive task that I completed each day was to pick up a load of free mulch that was provided by our electricity company, load it in the boot of our car and spread around our yard. I felt a huge achievement when I got one area of the front yard covered. This was the result of a continuous small effort day after day. In terms of achievements I wasn’t exactly climbing huge mountains.

It was during this time that I questioned if I had anything of value to offer to anyone. My eldest daughter still tells me today that that she was the only person in our family that was employed.

I then came across an article from Harvard Business Review that talked about leadership in liminal times. It began by explaining the term liminal:

The liminal term comes from Arnold van Gennep, the Belgian anthropologist who first outlined the common patterns in how cultures mark transitions from one human state to another (for example, from adolescence to adulthood). In his 1909 book The Rites of Passage he described three stages of separation from one world and entry into another. The liminal (or threshold) stage is central
(HBR)

During my period of liminality I couldn’t see a way forward. The best I could do was to know that, “the way behind had closed”. My life script had been altered in a way that I didn’t expect. I had a picture of how I expected life would work out and it didn’t happen that way.

Firstly I realised I was wrong.

I Thought

I thought that I was strong,
I thought that anything was possible,
All I needed to do,
Was to believe enough in myself,
And, it could be done.

I thought that I was in control,
I thought that I determined my future,
All I needed to do,
Was to have enough things,
And, my world was secure.

I was wrong.

This was one of the key discoveries I have made in slightly more than 50 years of living. Admitting that I was wrong, and that I was not in control gave incredible freedom to begin to contemplate the possibilities for the future.

Commenting l on van Gennep’s work, anthropologist Victor Turner explained it as “a moment when those being moved in accordance with a cultural script were liberated from normative demands…. In this gap between ordered worlds almost anything may happen.”

The word “liminal” comes from the Latin word limens, meaning literally, “threshold.” A liminal space, the place of transition, waiting, and not knowing is:

…a unique spiritual position where human beings hate to be but where the biblical God is always leading them. It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else. It is when you are finally out of the way. It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. If you are not trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait, you will run…anything to flee this terrible cloud of unknowing.
– Richard Rohr

The “threshold” was a terrible place to have to wait at because none of my old excuses worked. There was nothing to hide behind, only the certainty that all my old protections were gone.

Secondly being wrong is not the final word.

For a while I had nothing to lead. But, then slowly I again took on some life responsibility. This was firstly for my family. There was much that I had neglected during my pre-liminal and liminal period that required my attention. I remember one day looking into the backyard and being surprised by the young man playing cricket in the backyard, it was my son. But, I had missed some important growing that had gone unnoticed by me.

In some of the most important places I had left a gaping hole that could not be fixed in an instant. There are some wounds that are bit like Humpty Dumpty’s predicament, “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again”. For me the coming back together was in a very different shape from what we had before.

Then, slowly I felt creativity begin to reemerge. Ideas began surfacing. Most of them totally impractical but I began allowing myself to dream again. This began my pathway back to believing that there was some hope.

Thirdly be ready for hope to emerge.

What does hope look like?

Smiles that start in my heart,
Songs that I feel in my stomach,
Shadows that cool the harsh light,
Rainbows where I know the end is close,
Dreams that are doused with love,
Ideas that are bigger than me,
Calling that knows my name.

This period was marked by a lot of uncertainty. I found it difficult to plan anything because I had no idea of what was to be next. And, because I believed I had been so wrong I hesitated to make any decision in case it ended being more disastrous than what I had just done. But, hope wouldn’t allow uncertainty to have the final word.

One of the most valuable activities was to have a retreat day with my wife. It was a day of silence, listening and talking. It led us to a discerning of the path forward for us. This discerning didn’t mean there was an immediate transformation but it did allow me to hold the liminal tension a little more easily. For me this day was the beginning of seeing the way forward but there was still a lot of uncertainty yet to come.

As hope returned new leadership opportunities emerged. I began to see any possibility with a new humility. The arrogance of self sufficiency was clearly shown to me to be an illusion. As Dickens says so well in “The Tale of Two Cities”,

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way”.
I am able to look to that liminal period as a significant marker in my life. It’s still very close and maybe the way forward is still emerging. But, as David Whyte says, it’s during these times that transformation can begin. That without some despair, or destruction something new cannot emerge.

There are three gems that I have picked up during this time,

  1. Admit where things went wrong.
  2. Recognise that this is not the final word.
  3. Look for hope to emerge.

Leadership and the Psalms – Part one

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Note: I have used “he” when describing the leader in the third person. This was not meant to be exclusive but chosen because much of this post is written in the first person. Because I am a male I thought it would be best if this was consistent in the post. My apologies for the limitations of language to adequately convey the non gender tone I desired.)

Over the past year I have been finding myself in the Psalms by making the Psalmist’s prayers my prayers. I have sought to find God’s and my own voice as I have rewritten them in my own words. My methodology wasn’t correctly exegetical in anyway and I think sometimes the reader may have difficulty in recognising the original Psalm. While rewriting the Psalms I have discovered some great personal truths as I have travelled with the Psalmist and his journey of love, justice, rest, God, faithfulness, betrayal, disappointment and the rest of the gamut of human experience.

Because of its length I will divide this essay into two sections. This first section will cover my exploration of my first two themes about leadership and the Psalms. They are as follows:

  1. Leadership and loneliness.
  2. Leadership and disappointment

Then in Part Two I will explore the following two themes:

  1. Leadership and rest.
  2. Leadership and courage.

The first two themes will explore some of the shadows that accompany leadership and then in part two it will look at the places where there is light.

The reason why most of the Psalms are written is because leadership is tough. The psalmist is usually facing a situation that is very difficult and often feels like it’s beyond his control. Prayer is the way that he is able to work out the way forward in his understanding of the situation in the context of belonging to God.

My key points in this post flow from the understanding that leadership can be difficult. As I have written my own versions of the Psalms I have sometimes reflected on my leadership experiences and empathised with the Psalmist and his leadership journey. The words that have emerged in my versions of the Psalms have come from my heart as I have found myself in his prayers.

As the themes emerged in my writing of the Psalms new words were brought to me each day as I uncovered a prayer in my heart for that day. One of the most confronting themes for me was that of betrayal, where those who I thought would be there in a crisis didn’t turn up and even worse I watched as they turned their backs on me. Disappointment is that knowing I was deserted and then seeing those people becoming my most vehement critics. This is often the leader’s lonely path and one that we know was experienced by David who is one of the main psalmists.

The second theme that I will write about in this section is that of disappointment. Disappointment emanates from a sense not belonging and the often hurtful discovery of this can be transformative. I felt one of my deepest hurts when I was told that I didn’t belong to something that I helped create. Although this rejection was deeply painful the experience was also the start of something transformative in my life. This is the nature of opposition that is often firstly painful before it becomes transforming that every leader will face and then need to decide how to respond to.

1. Leadership is lonely.

There are some really tough lonely conversations that the leader will have as he leads. Most literature on communication and leadership is about the way the leader speaks to those he leads but the leader is also required to listen to those around him. These conversations when tinged with betrayal and accusation can bring a sense of separation leading to a despairing loneliness.

All of us desire a deep connection with another person, when it happens it’s a discovery of that place where we we truly belong. In my versions of the Psalms I have often referred to that sense of belonging as, “home”. Loneliness is that place that makes us seek out togetherness and brings us to where we desire home above all else. As I wrote Psalm 143 I was recognising the gift of togetherness with God when compared to an angry outburst I had recently faced where the person’s aim was to lash out and hurt me.

As I watched this person’s anger reflected in his words and eyes I felt that deep disappointment of a betrayed trust that any such outburst brings. To help deal with this I sought God’s mercy, one version of this Psalm starts it with, “Lord, hear my prayer”. This is every person’s desire, we want to be heard. One of the leader’s most important tasks is to hear the voice of others but sometimes in the midst of that it can be difficult to find a place where he is heard.

Psalm 143
Mercy is my heart’s cry today,
This morning your gift is its sweet words,
I allow only these words to fill me,
My dear enemy spews constant hate,
His cold eyes that have dark souls,
Drawing me into their emptiness,
Wanting to see me cling to false hope,
I feel the pain of disappointment,
The desert of loneliness,
When what was important,
Was too easily discarded for a trinket.

These words came to me as I considered the encounter in which I experienced vehement opposition that spilled over to become very personal statement about me. At first I was surprised by what I saw in the person’s eyes because I expected the gift of friendship. This was replaced by words that sought to drive me away. I was shocked that something so special as the deep connection I thought we had could be betrayed so easily by the other person.

This took me to the place of loneliness, where my prayers to God were for mercy. I was seeking a sense of togetherness and this was now lost in this relationship. Loneliness brought about by being told I didn’t belong was a haunting hurt that required mercy’s voice to speak to me in a more loving way. This emerged from Psalm 143 and many other Psalms that have found me in that alone place.

2. Leadership is disappointing

Disappointment makes us reconsider reality, and question what we thought was secure. It can help us reconsider our sometimes too generous assessment of the loyalty of others. It can bring us back to a more realistic truthful assessment of the motivations of others.

I can be overly optimistic about the intentions of others and loyal without the common sense of wisdom. This has led to deep disappointments when this loyalty has not been repaid in the way that I thought it would to be. I was guilty of making a deep emotional commitments that were never going to be reciprocated. In hindsight I should have seen the signs that betrayal was inevitable and been wiser in what I allowed my heart to be open to.

For me disappointment and opposition often come together to create a sense of overwhelmingness. When the opposition mounts I know I can feel quite besieged. Inundated by the words that are often carefully chosen to bring the maximum hurt I have recoiled into a state of numbness born from disappointment.

Psalm 43
Disappointment is a constant companion,
Opposition seems to dog every step,
Love isn’t my natural response,
To those who use confusion as their weapon,
Even those my own side are difficult,
Saying one thing but doing another,
They should be sticking up for me,
But, they are blocking my light,
I can’t see a way forward,

What will I do?

I think my best response to disappointment comes out of Psalm 142. I know that I have not always wanted to make love my first response but this was not right. I have discovered It is to whom I give my love that is important and will help shed light on the way forward. Making God my first love has helped me to be better able to love others.

I won’t depend on anyone now,
Except my God’s love,
Too many disappointments have come,
These seek to overwhelm me,
The powerful destruction of divided attention,
Is what slowly destroys love’s desire.

This world is always going to give its share of disappointments. Plans will not work out as we anticipated, people will be disloyal, we will be told we don’t belong. Each of us will experience these disappointments in our own way but one of life’s guarantees is all of us will experience it.

I know that when the disappointments have inundated me I have responded with uncertainty and by withdrawing. But, as I have sought God first and my attention has become less divided I have found the deep hurt of disappointment is able to be understood and then used as a transformative tool.

Leadership is a transformative task that requires the leader to work out their disappointments. Being let down is a part of the deal but as I learn to give my undivided attention I am better able to serve those who share a sense of togetherness in a task or common goal.

On the other other side of disappointment comes the possibility of transformation. Often what lies before has to be taken away before real change can happen. The leader’s task is to take up that disappointment and bring the group together with an undivided attention.

I finished Psalm 142 in this way:

My heart longs for a shared intentions,
The love of God above all things,
Lost in the maze of endless distraction,
But, I am brought home by trust in God,
Despairing of any loyalty,
My cry for help is heard,
Instead of pain I seek out the goodness,
That my God has given me.

Conclusion

Excerpt from “Monet Refuses the Operation”
by Lisel Mueller, from Second Language
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapour without end.

In the worst moments of my leadership journey I have wanted to disappear into a vacuum of nothingness. But, with a wife and four children and responsibilities crowding in from every direction this is not always possible.

What saved me was being able to take the time to step back from my circumstances. I was able to gain some perspective about my own loneliness and the deep disappointments that have come my way. I write this knowing that I have lived a privileged life that many people in this world would envy yet I still experience this deep yearning for what I believe is possible in the way that we work and live together. Writing my own version of the Psalms enabled me to pull the earth into the arms of heaven. The exploration of this world is expansive with increasing possibility that only expands my leadership capacity further as I bring God into the conversation.

Hope – the key to making an idea work.

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Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist the parachute.
George Bernard Shaw

When hope smiles

When hope smiles,
“Possible” is not a winsome regret,
It’s an opportunity,
That opens with a new day,
With the sunrise smiling back at me.

When hope smiles,
“Work” is not a drudgery,
It’s creativity,
Born from a Creator,
Well done his voice says to me.
(Chris Gribble)

I wrote this poem when considering the importance of hope in my own life. Two key thoughts for me centred around the words possibility and creativity. Both of these emerge from the idea that “work” is an intrinsically good thing.

Despair is the antithesis to hope. Despair also is the voice of regret and drudgery. Hope makes possibilities possible and reimagines work as a creative expression of who we are. When we lose our way in our work then it can become life draining instead of life giving.

Hope is an important ingredient in making ideas work. Professor Martin Seligam is considered an authority on optimism – In his findings he describes some of the differences between optimists and pessimists.

For example he writes about the differences in how the two mindsets view setbacks. The pessimist globalises the setback while the optimist limits it to the one event.Then in the case when something goes right the pessimist will say that it’s a once off event while the optimists believes that it will continue.

The resilient person views a setback as something that can be changed in the future.

Creative, possibilities – Well done. This is the voice of hope.

“When hope smiles…”, possibility emerges.

Learning to Be

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“Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others’ faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.”
Rumi

The Hidden Power of the Gospels: Four Questions, Four Paths, One Journey

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An Excerpt from The Hidden Power of the Gospels: Four Questions, Four Paths, One Journey by Alexander J. Shaia with Michelle Gaugy

 

“The wisdom teachings in Matthew contain such an abundance of sensible counsel that we would do well to keep them close. They are a poetic guide to the promises and the dangers that greet us on the first path. The recommendations and responses they hold are truly Be-Attitudes designed to move us forward. They challenge us to:

• “Accept that we do not and will not know results in advance. We often feel ‘poor in spirit.’

• “Make farewells to our yesterdays and embrace the grief we feel.

• “Be humble in our willingness to journey. Yielding to exile will yield riches of Spirit.

• “Know that our true hunger and thirst are for Spirit, and only Spirit, despite all trials and temptations.

• “Greet all we encounter, within and without, in mercy, and reap the rewards of gratitude. Recognize that mercy derives from merces, a Latin word that translates as ‘reward.’ (It continued into French as merci, meaning ‘thanks,’ or ‘gratitude.’)

• “Be full of heart. Do not seek to remove any thought, any feeling, or any person from our inner life. Each is an aspect of Spirit. Welcome them all.

• “Believe in ‘Jeru-Shalom’ as a home of welcome that accommodates the true peace of respect for differing voices, if we will but listen.

• “Accept inner and outer hardship as needed for the sake of living a new life in the presence of God. Power and applause are not what we seek. Our journey leads instead to humility and service.

• “Anticipate lack of esteem. Be prepared instead for conflict — and meet it with respect and love.

“The nine Beatitudes reflect diverse parts of a harmonious unity which I endlessly reflect and touch each other as we go through our lives. At the very heart of Jesus’s teachings, their practice opens us to compassion. If we are able to place these on our hearts, walk with them on our feet, hold them in our hands, and seal them in our thoughts, we will have more insight along our journey. They will become our walking staff and guide for the arduous times we will face.

“We can certainly find equal relevance in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. All of us have ‘heard it said’ — by parents, by friends, by society, by religious institutions — that we ought to ‘do this’ or ‘avoid that.’ Unreflectively, we may have accepted or rejected what we have heard. Jesus’s words ask us to become more conscious. He tells us that truth is not found on the surface. We are encouraged to explore the original purpose and meanings of the things we have been told, as well as their genuine truth and relevance in our hearts and lives today.

“We have talked about the risk of returning to older, seemingly simpler ways, but an equal peril lurks within this first path: the urge to rush in the opposite direction. Our ego-mind can just as readily deceive us into thinking that all of yesterday’s wisdom is empty folly — that nothing we have ever learned or been told has merit or benefit; that we are without guidance. Rejecting everything and racing off to the ‘new and better’ can be a sprint to isolation and despair. Either one of these extreme positions is only a trick, not a truth. Quadratos requires that we ignore these deceptions and dig deeper, explore further. Although many people and institutions have become protectors of empty practices, there are others who still hold truthful, living attitudes of heart. We are on a journey to discover which have real veracity for us and endeavor to claim them in our own personal way.”

The importance of being in over your head

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From “The Dream Weaver”

I was eating lunch with a friend who has a PhD in leadership development, I asked him, “Based on all your research and experience, what would you say is the most important secret to developing world class leaders?”

He put his fork down. “Well its not a course, a lecture or a book,” he said. He then picked up his fork and started eating again.

His answer intrigued me. I asked him to explain.

“The single best way to develop leaders,” he said, “is to take people out of their safe environment and away from the people they know, and to throw them into a new arena that they know little about. Way over their head, preferably. In fact the more demanding their challenges the more pressure and risk they face, the more likely a dynamic leader will emerge.”

At first his theory surprised me. It sounded unsafe and unkind. But on second thought, it reminded me of many of my own experiences in the wasteland.

In fact God used a similar approach to raise up a leader in the wilderness, on the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.

(p. 117)

God loves you anyway

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Even when you have made mistakes, God has loved you totally. Even when you have betrayed yourself, God has loved you totally. Even when you have transgressed against others, God has loved you totally. Even when you have hated Him, God has loved you totally. And that is how He would have us love… Those who are mistaken about you, love them totally. Those who judge you, love them totally. Those who betray you, love them totally. Those who despise you, love them totally. That does not mean you should give them your keys, or surrender boundaries or any of that. It means only that love —and only total love — lifts us above the darkness of the world. When we think as God thinks, and love as God loves, we are given wings and a mantle of light to protect us and bless us all ways, on all days. For such is the power of Love. Amen
—Marianne Williamson

Leadership in Liminal Times

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I just read this article in the Harvard Business Review. There is much for me to ponder on:

Leaders have always shown their mettle in times of liminality. The term comes from Arnold van Gennep, the Belgian anthropologist who first outlined the common patterns in how cultures mark transitions from one human state to another (for example, from adolescence to adulthood). In his 1909 book The Rites of Passage he described three stages of separation from one world and entry into another. The liminal (or threshold) stage is central. Commenting later on van Gennep’s work, anthropologist Victor Turner explained it as “a moment when those being moved in accordance with a cultural script were liberated from normative demands, when they were, indeed, betwixt and between successive lodgments in jural political systems. In this gap between ordered worlds almost anything may happen.”

Organizations must also periodically go through such wrenching times of transition, and it is during such liminal times that leaders have their greatest impact. They must manage to both craft the new world with smart strategy, often in the wake of disruption, and cause the organization to embrace the required change. Lou Gerstner’s arrival at IBM in 1993 is a classic example of leadership through a liminal period. Parachuted in to salvage a beleaguered organization, he pushed the company toward a new way of thinking, ultimately growing IBM’s value and revenues by more than 40 percent.

Another key passage is this:

Times of liminality are disconcertingly chaotic; therefore, a leader’s job is to provide some firm footing for people, with assurances of what will not keep changing. Gerstner did this with his clear and consistent view of where IBM needed to go, and Lafley did it with his reassertion of bedrock values. Great leaders also act as mentors, providing counsel and coaching to the people in the organization during various stages of transition. And perhaps the ultimate work of leaders in times of organizational change is to ensure high engagement levels.

I few months ago at the end of a retreat I was told that I was in a liminal space. I have wondered what this means in my own leadership? Much of what I thought I would be leading in no longer there. But, while I continue to breathe it’s not over yet.

Like what Seth Godin says to do:

Make two lists. One that lists all your obstacles:

The defects in your family situation, the criticisms your work has received lately. It is a list of people who have better luck than you and moments you’ve been shafted and misunderstood.

Then the other is the good stuff:

The lucky breaks, the advantages, the good feedback, your trusted network. It talks about the accident of being born in the right time and the right place, your health, your freedom. It features your education, your connection to the marketplace and just about every nice thing someone has said about you in the last week or month.

Which one do you choose to read?

 

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/10/leadership-in-liminal-times/

Perspective

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“The most common way to shrink someone’s perspective is to put them into a state of fear.”

I remember being very scared as a young person at a school camp. My job was to clean out the butter dishes but not to waste any butter. I had never done this job before so I wasn’t sure what to do. So I did my best.

I will never forget the roar of the teacher who discovered my attempt. I had mixed it all up and mixed the jam and the butter and made a mess of everything.

I was lifted by my neck off the ground by the teacher and yelled at at very close range, face to face

I was terrified. In hindsight that teacher displayed an awful abuse of power. I was 10 or 11 years old and he was a grown man. I spent most of the rest of that camp in a state of fear.

We make choices about the space we create around us. A creative place will be one where confidence is nurtured. Leaders are able to do this with all sorts of people.

They are able to create safe places that enable growth. This place has its challenges. It can be messy but the potential for creativity is far greater.

Leadership – Anxiety

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Definition of Leadership: “Being a non-anxious presence”

Recognition of what a non-anxious presence is:

– Secure in identity/anchored
– Well defined boundaries
– Knowledge of self

  • Centered, responsive, + flexible
  • Faithfully engaged in significant activities
  • Being free to be yourself as God made you
  • Planning + Prioritizing
  • In a world of tension, having no fear
  • Formally relating to others, but being approachable,so as to inspire, and transform

Do one thing at a time

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Peter Drucker once said the number-one trait of an effective leader is that they do one thing at a time. Today’s technology tools give you great opportunities to do 73 things at a time or to at least delude yourself that you are. I see managers who look like 12-year-olds with attention deficit disorder, running around from one thing to the next, constantly barraged with information, constantly chasing the next shiny thing.

The Secret to Success

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Leadership the Hard Way, by Dov Frohman. The two things that are crucial to success are firstly, that 50 percent of your time should be unscheduled. And second—and I love that this is coming from an Israeli intelligence guy—that the secret to success is daydreaming.

Leadership is about people

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If you’re a leader, your whole reason for living is to help human beings develop—to really develop people and make work a place that’s energetic and exciting and a growth opportunity, whether you’re running a Housekeeping Department or Google. I mean, this is not rocket science.

It’s not even a shadow of rocket science. You’re in the people-development business. If you take a leadership job, you do people. Period. It’s what you do. It’s what you’re paid to do. People, period. Should you have a great strategy? Yes, you should. How do you get a great strategy? By finding the world’s greatest strategist, not by being the world’s greatest strategist. You do people. Not my fault. You chose it. And if you don’t get off on it, do the world a favor and get the hell out before dawn, preferably without a gilded parachute. But if you want the gilded parachute, it’s worth it to get rid of you.

Tom Peters

What really matters

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People say that fame is important, but in the end it really isn’t. People say that wealth is important, but in the end it really isn’t. My ex-wife had a father who was in the tombstone business. I’ve seen a lot of tombstones. None of ’em have net worth on ’em. It’s the people you develop. That’s what you remember when you get to be my age.

Tom Peters nails it again.