First published, 6/5/2013
I had a ‘difficult’ experience professionally recently. My Design Team facilitated a group event and we got back some harsh feedback. It doesn’t matter what is and isn’t true about that. What I want to talk about is how I reacted and what I saw about myself. My reaction even before any feedback is that I was, Done! I didn’t want to give any feedback to them. I didn’t want to complete the job by processing with my team. I didn’t want to do anything. This is a pattern I can see being repeated in my past. I love the start-up time when all the planning is going on but when I really drop the ball is at the end. I have a history of walking-away.
There is really so much to this.
Yearning to walk-away is very ego driven; I will be: embarrassed, ashamed, and uncomfortable. I will have to dig in and work through things with people, and in my past that just hasn’t worked out very well. I will have to do work that isn’t as fun to me as organizing and planning the start-up phase.
It helped me realize that much of the work we have been doing in our Design Team has been to stay engaged and not walk-away. I have definitely wanted to walk-away many times in the dynamic tension of Design Teambuilding. But I am convinced that to change my world and create lasting change—that it is going to come from groups-not individuals. I have come to believe in the paradox that it is in our interdependence that we become independent. In the many months with my Design Team I have stayed when walking sounded so much better.I think it will be another blog post that I talk about the ‘magic in the middle’ that has happened to each of us individually on that Design Team. But I know that staying in, has created more magic in me than I can explain. I have witnessed more magic in my team-mates than I can share. My belief about what is possible has blossomed.
I thought about all of that as I yearned to walk-away. I talked to my team mates and admitted how much I wanted to walk, how much I saw it was a pattern. They helped me to see that I would be missing the magic in the middle. Not only would I be missing it for myself, but if I walked, then the possible magic for my team and the group we worked with might not happen. What I realized is that it is this moment, when we have to draw things back together; after chaos, or difficulty, or brutal honesty; this moment, is when the magic happens! This moment of staying is when we show acceptance, when trust is built, when we reach coherence, when I surrender.
When we have enough grace and compassion for ourselves and others, to keep talking, to keep in relationship, and to not walk, is when the magic in the middle happens. It’s when we are vulnerable enough to stay.