I am into my third week as part of Laura Storm and Jenny Andersson’s Regenerators Journey, a 10-week virtual deep-dive into regenerative leadership and regenerative practice and it is EPIC!
Why I wanted to share this is that as part of this journey, the clarity that I now have around the impact of separation from ourselves and each other can be what stops us sensing into change being an inside job, thus giving away our power to things or people outside of us.
This video was shared by one of the travelers and I wonder what comes up for you on watching it? It is only 12 mins and was recorded a year ago pre C19.
What bothered me the most was:
“You need to find something that people once got for free or did for themselves or for each other, take it away and sell it back to them, somehow."
It blows my mind to think of bigger systems this way! The original snake-oil salespeople!
I am so grateful not be separated from my wife Jackie anymore :-)
Change Is An Inside Job research
This week has been another busy week of research interviews with Whitney Johnson, Susanna Brönnimann, Juliana Kossler, Aga Bajer, and Crocetta Brucato offering their wonderful, rich insights, which has taken me up to 25 completed interviews.
I have another 15 open conversations which may or may not turn into further research for the book, but the common themes are becoming very clear, which is helpful and interesting.
One of the common themes, whilst it may seem obvious, is important.
Change is very personal and individual thus at an organisational level, without everybody being heard and seen, the opportunity to reach a tipping point of momentum can often be stifled.
This, in part I am sure, why 70% of all change initiatives fail.
Taking my own medicine!
When speaking with Debra Ruh recently, founder of Ruh Global Impact which exists to help global brands become more inclusive, she shared this wonderfully profound reflection:
“If you want something, give it away. If you want peace, go and help somebody else find their peace, if you want love, go and love somebody else. If you want to feel calm or relief, give it to somebody else and you will give it to yourself”
I reflected on this more deeply earlier this as it looks like my work organisation is going to block the publication of a case study outlining a 3-year cultural team transformation that would have gone into teaching MBA and Masters programmes at London Business school and Harvard Business School.
A sharp reminder of how easily and innocently we can tie our self-worth and identity to a thing outside of us. The case study is not causal to my self-worth or wellbeing, yet where I sit, right now, I feel a little lost around this topic.
However, I can empathise and see this differently. Some other people in my work organisation are afraid, they are scared of new ideas, and by me leading with empathy and kindness, I will get that back as per Debra’s reflection.
That said, my last 5 years of personal development has also served me well as I realised that the only change that was needed, was for my thinking to settle down.
I will explore this much more in the book.
We are continuous work in progress, us humans, but I try to operate from a place of love and compassion, more of the time!
Tru Inclusion 2020 is coming up on 19th May 2020
This week’s Value through Vulnerability boosted by HumansFirst podcast was with an incredibly inspiring human, Joanne Lockwood.
Jo shares early in our conversation two significant examples of change being an inside job, and both at the same time in 2017!
“I decided about three and a bit years ago that I needed to make a change, so I not only made a change of career, I also took the opportunity to gender transition at the same point. I came out of that with a passion for inclusion, belonging and trying to make the world a better place”
Jo is an incredible thinker, both systemically and within the belonging and inclusion space, and has a wonderful gift for communicating razor-sharp clarity.
During our conversation Jo also shared that:
“We recognise that not every leader has been trained or has the tools in their toolkit to be a great leader and we now have a workforce looking up, wanting inspiration, wanting direction, at the same time that they are vulnerable. They’re not used to delivering this type of emotional support to people”
Within the book, we shall explore the importance of acknowledging, sitting in and processing emotion from a lived experience point of view. As someone myself that suppressed emotion of over 20 years, the freedom that comes from truly ‘feeling’ them and letting them go, can be transformational.
Jo will be hosting her TruIncusion event fully online on May 19th and with a nominal contribution of just £10 er ticket, but pay more if you can, I will be going along at different points and hope that you can make it too.
Wishing you an enjoyable and safe weekend.
Cheers
Garry