Do You Need To Interrupt Your Embodiment?

If you want to change you need to interrupt your embodiment. You are the embodiment of you. To what degree is that working for you?

To quote my friend Francis Briers “Embodiment is the exploration of the body as a lived experience rather than an object”

In life, in leadership, the body is with you. You are your body. Far more than your brain

Still with me? Or perhaps a ‘what??’

Your professional competence as a leader is embodied. It cannot not be.

Does this help? In your body …

• How does your pattern to rush live?

• How about deep listening?

• How does excitement live?

• And your reaction to bad news?

• When the path is not clear?

• How does anger, frustration or despair live in your body?

• And love, joy, delight, happiness?

• How does asserting your opinion live in your body?

• How does saying No, saying Yes live in your body?

Simple examples? Take a challenge, something you face now - how does that live in your body?

What have you embodied that helps - or hinders? How can you interrupt the hinderance? Through the body. You have to see and know the pattern before you can interrupt it.

If you want to change you need to interrupt your embodiment.

Do you want or need to?

This is what I help with. Contact me here if you would like to know more.

Centering in your intention eases your leadership

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A third of the team had left, the engagement scores were on the floor, on top of which they were known as the team that always said ’No’. Six months before, he’d been asked to build a team that could partner effectively.

He’d built a reputation for driving through change and taking tough decisions but he knew he needed to back up and engage them in what might be possible.

We worked out how he would begin to pause and centre in his intention before offering his opinion. In the process, he discovered how tiring it was to push all the time.

Although he was good at relationships, he knew they’d benefit if he could soften his style, pause and slow down as well.

It took 6-8 months for the team to get a different kind of traction. He coached more; they’d become curious, started listening to colleagues and being more co-operative. He still got frustrated; sometimes the team were now being pulled into unnecessary decisions - because they were partnering!

Which do you find harder, more tiring; A - sharing your knowledge and advice, driving onwards or B - pausing, slowing and listening?

If you would like to know more about how an embodied approach to learning (that is learning that lives in the muscle) can take you beyond tips and techniques contact me here.  

The Inner Critic - green, gnarled with sparkling teeth and spiky hairs….

It was green, gnarled, with sparkling teeth and spiky hairs pegged over it’s nose. It had the most pernicious voice and could, at the drop of a hat, speak to her with a tone of absolute disdain. Turning her insides out, leaving her feeling flawed.

Her inner critic! She’d spent years fighting it. Telling it to go, come back when it had something useful to say. It never worked.

She’d receive another barrage of criticism. The proverbial pink elephant in the room that she wasn’t supposed to think about but couldn’t avoid thinking about.

She tried something else.

She began to notice the part of her that felt wretched, abused, shrunken, collapsed in the face of this critic. What did that part need?

At first she had no idea, she’d feel the discomfort of it and push it away. She began to recognise that it was afraid.

THIS was the part of her that was afraid of putting her head above the parapet, risking her reputation. All this time, she'd been fighting with the wrong thing. How was she going to get round this one?

Do you have something in you that holds you back?

Can you slow a moment to recognise what it needs?

If you'd like to know how she did get around this, sign up for my free book on how to work with the Inner Critic here.

The Triune Brain and Personal Safety

Am I safe? With this person? This situation? I know what I need to do. I know what I should do, I even know how to do it. And yet… I don’t. Why is that? It might, consciously or unconsciously be because you do not feel ‘safe’.

What do we mean by ‘know’? I might ‘know’ in my cognitively - but there’s another part that ‘knows’. It ‘knows’ something different. My body ‘knows’ whether I’m safe and it’s telling the…

Enter the (over-simplified, I know) Triune Brain. Loosely made of three structures — the reptilian, the limbic and the neo-cortex: the survival, the emotional and the thinking. Guess which part evolved first?

The product of c.4 million years of evolutionary wiring, we started out as cells. Cells that wanted to survive to multiply. Cells still to this day, coded for survival. Those cells grew into the reptilian brain first. And those cells are the first to pick up signals for ‘not safe’.

Literally then, when we take it right back to the core, we are constantly sensing for safety.

Consciously in situations with ‘DANGER” written all over and unconsciously through the neural wiring of our bodies. Length and breadth. (You know that feeling of hairs on the back of your neck…?)

Much the same as your heart beats outside of your conscious awareness, your reptilian brain, through your neural network, is always checking. Am I safe?

If not, it wins. Hands down.

For control then - we must observe this brain in action and learn the strategies to work with it. What will it take for my reptilian brain to feel safe?

Do you know how to work with yours?

Thriving, Surviving, Struggling or In Crisis?

I came across this at the weekend. It has me wondering how many people really ARE thriving - on all fronts? Professional, personal and everything in between?

I have a feeling that there is another national period of metaphorical 'breath holding' going on. (Covid 2020)

Christmas, the next milestone that we must reach. We will breathe out for a bit and then on again to the next one - the Spring, when perhaps we will begin to be able to sense an 'ending'.

Take a look at the columns, where are you really?

If you are anything other than thriving, what do you need right now? If you are in Surviving, maybe it is to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, breathe a little more easily, acknowledge what is here for you now, go with it, know that it will in time, pass. Maybe there is some small step you can take that will bring a reset?

If you are in Struggling or In Crisis, who can you reach out to? If you are doubting whether you can, the hardest part is honestly, the first part. Just those first words and then it will feel a little easier.

Above all, know that these are all human responses. There are generations of us alive today who have not experienced a background anxiety like this.

Can we draw upon the strength of many of our forebears?

The Tyranny of Shame and Perfection - bound in the physiology of the body

When I first came into contact with a possible pattern of shame I had no sense of it. It wasn’t even that I had an inkling and pulled down the shutters. There was literally nothing. The words fell into a void.

Now I understand my own reaction as a normal protective disconnect.

Shame gets bound up in the physiology of our body, permanently woven into the fabric of our tissues. It causes us to constrict, to pull in, to slump, to seek invisibility. The intensity caused me to disconnect from it, unnoticed.

Why put all of this here - of all places?

Recently I've had a few conversations where underneath all of the future and forward movement of the goals, is a story that pegs back to an emotion of shame.

When we unwound such feelings - not necessarily with all the detail – they come to a natural completion, their grip and power loosened. Working with the gentle, sensitive movement the body, the reality is often less overwhelming and scary than anticipated. Thankfully.

Circling back to Brene, she suggests a shame buddy. When you do feel shame, you call, explain, they listen and acknowledge. You both let it be there, no pushing it away. The shame loosens up and keeps you away from the grip of perfection.

Leadership requires hard choices

Image by Alex Motoceo on Unsplash.com

What did Goldilocks have that we don’t? To some she was a fuss pot, to others a perfectionist, maybe a bit of a princess.

A simple tale, nothing to do with today - right?

Such a search for ‘just right’ in this complex, chaotic world is challenging.

A balancing act everywhere - between self-care and indulgence, compassion and helplessness, progress and overwork. At work there are a host of competing, clashing priorities in which every one is a priority and then of course, nothing is.

Yes, sure you will say this is just ‘bad leadership’. I agree leadership requires hard choices!

How do you make those choices when caught in the cross hairs of competing demands, a team that is exhausted, when taking ‘time out’ is no longer the answer?

Back to Goldilocks. She was looking for what FELT right to her. She was able to attune to what she was looking for, what would suit her, maybe setting aside the inner chatter.

An incredibly unsophisticated parallel but the capacity to tune to the inside, to. listen deeply into what really is a priority when it’s clear your team need you to lift some of the weight before they go under.

It might mean some very awkward conversations elsewhere, but that capacity to tune in is what will guide you towards choosing your closest ‘just right’.

Do you need to be more Goldilocks?

What are you a commitment to?

Say this out loud: “I am a commitment to my well being”.   Then say this out loud: “I am committed to my well being”. What do you observe as you feel below your neck, how you say that?   Which one is harder, asking more of you?

Whatever our commitments, those of us trained by the Strozzi Institute know this phrasing, and how it invites us to become the embodiment of the commitment we want to live into.

Embodied commitments move us beyond the mental constructs of plans, vital as they are.

A commitment to being the commitment you make invites you to consider how you need to change your very structure. The commitments we make are often a call to courage.

Competence gets built from the inside, leading to deeper authenticity and alignment emanating from your core.

Furthermore, living and embodying a commitment provides a much needed anchor when the sea is rough, the stars are hidden and the night is dark.

I invite you to try it out this frame choosing something that matters to you just a little out of reach. Notice whether it produces a little fizz of energy, maybe it’s a little scary.   If so, that’s OK, you are in the right place.

Are you yet the embodiment of your commitment?

Including the body in coaching is a gift

I left then. Somehow I got separated from her and I've been chasing her since. There's something elusive. A kind of knowing that I can't quite grasp.

This is the story of Anna. At 10 her family moved her away. Sending her to boarding school where she stayed until 18.

She benefitted and when the time came, landed a good job, setting off up the ladder.

Years later, from the outside her story is one of accomplishment, fulfilment and comfort. But that's not how it is on the inside.

Inside she is unsettled, forever striving, lonely and unhappy. Nobody knows this of course. What they see is success. So why doesn't she feel it? She harbours a fear that it's all going to unravel. That the inner truth will out.

When we work with the body we learn that we cannot muscle our way through. We also learn that the body has a pace and wisdom of its own. That the pain we fear isn't as painful as the fear itself. That the body is wise and kind, moving us towards our definition of a settled life.

Including the body in coaching offers this gift.

Perhaps you left yourself somewhere someplace? Or perhaps you too have heard the wisdom of your own body?

(This is an illustrative story to represent how the outside doesn’t always match the inside; that the answer is often found by including the body.)

The Power of Words

I don’t much care for cheesy, or gushy.   I don’t much care for hype, or ra-ra.   But yesterday I bought the hope of the Inauguration.   There was no hype, I didn’t get much cheese, but I did hear words.

Words beautifully strung together as an example of their power.   The power of the word to declare and create a new future.   A future of course that now has to be lived into with action.

As much as I was inspired by the promises being made, there was a quiet part of me listening with one eyebrow raised, holding back, aware of the enormous mountain that lies ahead.   Wondering if the promise of peace and unity could become a reality.

I’ve had an on-off relationship with peace and unity.   If asked, for many years I’d put peace above happiness.   For there to be peace in the world.   And then later, something tried to persuade me that this was a childish notion, a silly, impossible thing to want.

But I do want it. Yesterday reminded me of that.

I marvelled at the power of the juxtaposition of just two words when President Biden said “not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example” to create the possibility of a new future, and a new way of showing up in the world.

Do you have words that you to choose to declare your own new future?

Breath. The Miracle Worker

Standing in the kitchen. Peeling another onion! A reminder that there are layers and layers. We peel back one, revealing another.

As I pondered on a post last week inviting more grace and ease into my bodily movement, I reflected that there was, ‘duh’, of course another layer here.

With relevance for leadership. If leading is about engaging and galvanising others towards some common goal, then how does that happen if frustration, anger, irritation – whatever is not helpful - abounds?

If we can invite ‘in’, we can let go. Let go of the felt sense, often tension, of something not useful. First we have to notice.

If I’m fed up peeling onions again, I can notice how that feels. Where am I holding tension, or collapse, how am I slumped into fed-upness. Where exactly do I feel that?

And then, I breathe. Into that place. I start something new to let go the old.

Breath. That little miracle worker. We all know how to, yet do so poorly, so absent mindedly. That little miracle worker that allows us to expand, let go, and as my friend Francis Briers offers to ‘relax and tone’.

We keep on breathing, slowly, deeply into the belly – the holding goes. Gently then, the body comes to its relaxed, balanced, full and gently present state.

Do you get fed up peeling onions?

The Body as a Source of Wisdom - Somatic Coaching

Image by Leon Liu on Unsplash

How good is your GPS? Is it reliable? Tell you everything you need to know? Get you where you want to be, accounting for jams, diversions, and side routes?

Did you know that you have an in-built GPS situated deep within you that you can access and use any time, not only as a guidance system but also an early warning system?

We are thinking beings.   Anyone who has ever sat on a cushion to try and meditate will be only too aware of how the thoughts 'just keep a comin’.   Whenever we are stuck, the default is to think our way through.

But we are much more than thinking beings.

A recent post from natacha wilson asked about sources of wisdom.   Many people opted for sources on the outside, not recognising the value of the sources on the inside.

The body in many ancient and indigenous traditions is its own source of wisdom.   By combining intellect with emotional, biological, neurological and the sensation of feeling, we can arrive at a far wiser place. The body delivers the route map.

And this, relying on more than one system, has to and does bring far more wisdom than the thinking default.

And for a SIM card, (to stick with this somewhat stretched analogy) think of Somatic Coaching as the card that will power up that GPS!

When was the last time you paid mindful attention to what your own inner wisdom was telling you?

Purpose and Meaning for Life

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I  keep coming back to a zoom call of a few months ago. An ordinary man who pricked into my conscience. By day he works with processes, people and numbers. By night he works on the streets.

None of this on its own will bring global change, but it will change the lives of the people he works with, rippling beyond his first degree relationships.

In his spare time, outside of professional and family time, he helps the homeless with food parcels, offering connection and support.

It is said that the confluence of what you love and what the world needs reveals your life purpose.

Here is a man who has taken the word ‘world’ and fashioned it into something smaller.

He has shaped a corner in which he can make a significant difference. He has carved out spaces which add value to others. His leadership serves, aligned to his values and what he believes is needed, the gap he has seen.

His purpose, it would seem, is aligned to service. His purpose is about making the lives of other people better. It emerges from his values, what he loves, and what he observes is needed most in his corner.

It is not a purpose that is self-serving in its focus.

In your own corner of the world, can you see something that is needed that might be met by what you love and value most?

Conflict Management - A Vital Leadership Skill

“Can we go now” I asked for the umpteenth time. My Dad and Grandad were arguing again. They’d do it until the cows came home, getting so angry with each other.

The ‘beauty’ however of these arguments - or rather the safety for me listening (despite my boredom) was that I knew they loved each other. When it was time to leave, Dad would always say ‘Cheerio Pop’ and Grandad would answer ‘See you next week Son’.

Dad never brought the argument to the car as we climbed in - finally! It was done. That was one of the good qualities about Dad - you could argue like hell with him and it didn’t damage anything.

This never quite translated for me into many other areas however. I’ve been very forthright over the years but rarely do I really argue with anyone like I did with my Dad.

Which brings me neatly to the matter of conflict…

I don’t much care for it - I know I am in good company.

I recall the first time I heard the idea that conflict could be generative. What? Generative as in positively generative rather than destructively generative?

Getting good at conflict, especially if we want to move with it gracefully, not lose our head, nor collapse into a heap, takes time and practice. Productive useful conflict asks us to find our inner sense of dignity, purpose and connection. When we can feel into our self-generated safety we are less threatened by the powerful feelings conflict generates. When we can put maintaining dignity and connection at the heart, meaningful solutions become possible. Conflict management for yourself and others is a vital Leadership Skill.

Are you good with conflict?

Are You Listening to Connect or be Right?

“I had to go for a swim before I called him to tell him what he could do with his ‘suggestion’. A swim in open water on a sweltering hot day was literally cooling off time in more ways than one!”

Conversations are vital, underpinning the root of our connection with others. Video conferencing and masks produce different conversations; more patience, less interruption, clearer speech.

The swim helped clear his head, and he was able to look beyond what he was assuming, consider what hadn’t been said. They ended on the same page, a new understanding created, the gaps filled in. Is this how conversations go?

Sadly not always. Often we listen to persuade. You speak, I speak, each of us listening for an angle. We rarely listen from a mood of genuine, open curiosity.

Did you know that each time we are ‘proved right’ we get a dopamine hit? Addicted to being right is a real thing.

In a complex world where much is being re-thought, taking people with us will only happen through the conversations we have. Those that listen to connect, expand our thinking, to engage in power with not power over

Can you tell when someone is listening just to be right, when they are listening to connect, or simply not listening at all?

How I nearly missed a good candidate through bias

As a new store manager, he put his head around the door and asked… “Well come on then, where is it – the cardboard cut-out you use?”

We laughed. It was meant as a compliment.

I’ve often reflected on this conversation. The position between the dress code we upheld and the concept of diversity, as in all peoples, shapes, sizes, appearances...

One time, in that same job I interviewed a slightly unkempt young man who swaggered in, not making a good first impression. My go to (my bias) was always hands, nails and teeth. Were they clean?

I could have spent that interview looking for evidence that supported the appearance based assessments I was making.

I don’t recall what he said to persuade me otherwise, but I reflected later on the power of the interview. I set aside the standards of appearance I was holding and listened. We employed him, suggesting he give the dress code some attention.

This then was the reinforcement of cardinal lessons about bias and our pre-conceived notions. It behoves us all to listen slowly, with curiosity to our inner self-talk about how something or somebody is. To hold it lightly, with the possibility that we might well be missing a different perspective.

Words shape perception, impacting how we lead

Once, I was put on a word ban. Not a swear word but I did ask mum the meaning of a particular word one time, knowing full well the answer! Not a good exchange.

The word banned was ‘struggle’. Fairly innocuous perhaps, but in my case, defining.

It was also generative. Each time I used ‘I struggle with…’ all I did was generate an assessment in others that I wasn’t confident, that I found things hard, that I wasn’t assertive etc etc. I certainly wasn’t generating assessments of capability

Add in a tilt of my head and one might conclude that I was undermining myself. So, my head had to come upright when I spoke as well.

The point is that our very language shapes and reveals something about who we believe ourselves to be, and generates beliefs in others about who we are.

So too does the way in which we move and hold ourselves. Our bodies communicate all of the time. My head tilted on one side maybe telling you that I am listening, it may be saying I’m curious, or I’m not a threat, or it might be saying ‘I’m really not sure’.

Whenever we show up we reveal who we are – loudly, or subtly, but we reveal. We just don’t always take the time to put it into words – it’s just there until we decide to pay attention

Does this resonate for your leadership?

The Rhythms of Life impact how we show up

Should you hibernate right now? Much preferring the spring and summer I always long to give winter a miss.

But this year, as I see the falling leaves, observing nature clearing out, sending energy back into the ground, replenishing for glory of a spring to come, I wonder what I shall build for the year ahead?

Nature follows a rhythm, despite our chaotic meddling. The rhythm this year has been interrupted by COVID, but our natural cycles will continue, just maybe not at the pace nor in the way we envisaged. The sun will continue to rise and set each day and so will we.

We do not know what 2021 holds, and it is for me, far too early (for me at least) to be focusing on New Year resolutions. But as we continue living in this uncertain, complex and slightly chaotic way, what rhythms of life will you attempt to flow with?

What choices can you make about who you will be as you step through this next time period? How will you be as you navigate the uncertainty that which comes with not being able to put stakes solidly in future ground?

Given our current context, what will keep your satisfied, if not fulfilled?

How do you want to live your life this next six months, and the next beyond that? What commitment will you make for your journey?

Personal questions yes; which one resonates most?

Who Are You Offering Water To?

Maybe it’s the state of global leadership that has me wonder whether anything will really make a difference.

I first touched this properly in 2013. A fissure of grief emerging from deep within about the state of the world we have all had a hand in creating, some more than others. It feels kind of lonely, and then I realise that I’m not the only one here.

So, when I pick myself up, dust myself down, with a nod towards the fissure I ask…

In what corner of the world do you want to make a difference? Its size doesn't matter. What matters is that you choose. I’ve chosen mine, sometimes I can see it really clearly, sometimes it gets a bit hazed over, but I keep moving towards and within it.

You know that expression glass half full versus glass half empty, the global leader Margaret Wheatley suggests that we shouldn’t even be talking about glass half full or empty; we should be offering the water to those who need it.

So, who are you offering water to, how are you going to get it there?

In your corner of the world, what is the difference your leadership will make to those who agree to follow you, or perhaps better said, to the people you are willing to serve

Are people at the centre of your decisions?

Have you experienced a fissure in how you observe the world?

Discomfort and Vulnerability

In 24 hours I’ve been in three conversations calling into focus the gap between the rhetoric and reality of mental health awareness. Sadly.

The separate conversations reflect that in some quarters mental (or emotional) health is little more than lip service. The mental health of employees to be outsourced to an EAP programme, to be achieved with an awareness week here and there, a plaudit putting people at the heart of everything. And, yet the behaviours on display, the conversations engaged in, the attitudes that prevail do anything but recognise the humanity of the people we work with and alongside.

Vulnerability can only be present when it is safe to be so. It can only be safe to be so when those with whom we would be vulnerable are able to sit alongside and with, the discomfort of the vulnerability we bring.

If I cannot sit with my own discomfort around your vulnerability I will not be able to support you, to be present to you. If I avoid my discomfort in that moment by pushing it away, blocking it then I cannot support you.

Mental (or emotional) health awareness is going to change the nature of required leadership.

Can you sit with another’s discomfort?

Do you want to - at work?