Pig’s Ears and Silk Purses
April 17, 2008
The horizon emanates a sharp brightness under a dome of gray sky. A light breeze ruffles branches, setting blossoms in motion as this spring season seems to hang suspended, unable to move forward.
I notice how big a part expectations play in our lives – we expect something to unfold in a certain way, we expect it to turn out well or to turn out badly. By projecting past experiences into future possibilities we become attached to our own idea of how things will be.
What happens when reality turns out to be quite different from what we were expecting?
Plans are similar to expectations in that planners bring their best experience and knowledge to the task of projecting how things will proceed in the future. One very big difference is that you build a great plan and then get ready to see how it will change, and it will change.
Successful planners believe in the thoroughness of their plan and at the same time they are not attached, they have learned that their expectations (the plan) may need to be radically altered in real time to accommodate what is actually happening.There is an old saying, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” but that is exactly what we can do if we are able to quickly release expectations and give ourselves to the reality in the moment. The very worst seeming situations can lead to incredible results if we aren’t engaged in a fight with “what is.”
Truly releasing expectations isn’t something we can fake and for most people the ability to let go of their personal preference is a strength that needs to be cultivated. Perhaps the key to letting go is trust – do we trust that if our intentions are honourable, then life will tend to work out for the good?
This kind of trust isn’t always part of our nature. Listen to people as they talk and listen to your own self-talk, what is the predominant tone? You hear it over and over, things like Murphy’s Law – what can go wrong will go wrong. Or you say to yourself, of course it’s all screwed up; nothing ever goes the way it’s supposed to.
Most of us don’t give these kinds of conversations much weight but they are the “tip of the iceberg” and they are indicators of the underlying deep belief systems that guide our lives. Contrary to this is a belief system that says, don’t worry things generally work out for the best. One trusts failure and the other success.
I recently witnessed an example of someone’s detailed plans (and expectations) getting dramatically derailed. Every firmly booked meeting was cancelled; a significant business opportunity fell through and a social calendar was left unexpectedly empty.
In this case the person realized that events outside their control were in play and they went to immediate acceptance. What could have been a frustrating and fruitless week turned into an enjoyable flow of spontaneous meetings and new contacts and a sense of being at peace with life.So much of leadership development focuses on driving hard and pushing and being determined to have life fall in line with our plans and I wonder where the balance is. I wonder where all of the ancient wisdom of our species is.
It is a human arrogance to believe that we are in control or that we soon will be, and we use every bit of our ingenuity in an attempt to achieve this control – and every day we are shown proof that control is, and will always be, just out of reach.
Sometimes life hands us exactly what we were expecting in the best possible way; we get pure silk. Sometimes life hands us lemons or pig’s ears and it’s up to us to make something wonderful with what we’ve been given.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
One Divided
March 31, 2008
Outside the window, in the early morning light, the Magnolia quietly unfurls exquisite pink flowers from within their green sheaths. This transformation is always all around us reminding us of what is possible or perhaps of what is certain.
From the perspective of the ego-mind each of us sees the self as a being that is distinctly separate. This is experienced as subject and object, one’s self is the subject and everything else falls into the category of object. For most of us other people are objects and only have meaning or value in as much as they impact or affect us; whether they are friend or foe, valued or despised, seen as equal or lesser-than depends on how they make this separate self feel.
It doesn’t take a great intellect to see how limited and dangerous this orientation to others is (the term “other” is already a huge statement of separation). Now multiply this profound and innate sense of disconnection several hundred times to account for the “otherness” we feel toward animals, plants, minerals, the air and the seas.
It is this ego-dream of separation that allows us to commit murder in the name of war, to treat the earth, air and oceans like a garbage dump, to see life forms as “resources,” and to ultimately destroy the very ecology we depend on for survival.
Since our beginning there has been some small number of us in every tribe or culture who intuited a different perspective of reality – a oneness or unity. In this unity the self is not separate but is rather an essential component of something vast, incomprehensible and beautiful. And at the same time the self is a discreet expression of that unity.
This perspective has been taught through oral tradition and woven into the earliest of sacred texts. This oneness is at the root of every major religion and all spiritual tradition.
This is not to suggest that there is some earlier idyllic period of human awareness that we should return to. There has never been more than a small percent of humanity that truly embodied the wisdom of our oneness.
What I notice is that humanities newest God, the God of science and technology, is now beginning to describe this same unity. The so called objective curiosity of science is revealing an interconnectedness that flows throughout all of existence from the smallest sub-atomic viewpoint out to the greatest possible context.
There is only “one thing” science seems to declare. And that one thing is alive (is life). It sometimes looks to us like a particle and sometimes like a wave. It is constantly in motion and no matter how chaotic it appears it is always in the process of organizing at a higher level of intelligence.
All of this takes me back to the Taoist understanding of “The Flow.”
Our dream of separateness has us forever trying to outsmart the flow, trying to push the flow in the directions and ways that we believe it needs to move. Our free will (that treasured aspect of humanity) leaves us free to push for all we are worth. It also gives us the option of realizing that not only can we go with the flow but that we are the flow.
We have a choice in every moment – separateness or oneness. One divided will always be less than the wholeness that is possible.
For more thoughts on this here is a link to a video talk by Jill Bolte Taylor, a must see. How many brain scientists get to study their own brain from the inside out? I recommend going to http://www.microclesia.com/?p=320 – allow 18 minutes and have your mind blown open.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
The Good Fight
March 12, 2008
Yesterday’s rain and cold winds blew themselves out to a brilliant sunset. The early morning skies are deep cobalt with streaks of pale blue on the horizon. The power of life keeps flowing and changing; asking us to do the same.
I notice how our beliefs and the ways that we orient ourselves to life can result in seeing life like a battle between “us” and “something” out there. This world/life view is certainly supported by movies and video games, entire genres of fiction and even in the notion of a cruel but just God.
It is a perspective that makes all of life a fight. We fight to earn a living, to raise our families, to be noticed and to succeed. We fight inside ourselves about whether we are trying hard enough or whether we “deserve” to succeed. And then when we can’t fight anymore we find some way to blank out: television, food, drugs, alcohol, sex – the list of ways is extensive.
Another more radical way to orient one’s self is to see our own life as a river. The river is already flowing, moving in the direction it needs to move, it doesn’t need us to push it. From this perspective what life requires is our alert and willing co-operation.
This way of relating to life is aligned with the deeper understanding in most of the martial arts, competitive sports and many art forms. All of our training and dedication bring us to the place where we then let go into the moment.
Imagine how you would fare if your life depended on how well you dance. Now imagine yourself fighting your way through each dance, fighting your partner, fighting the dance floor, fighting the music. Imagine spending all of your time “trying” to dance.
There is real joy in mastery and mastery comes from inspiration, dedication, some of that trying, and then an unexplainable letting go into knowing. None of us could walk, ride a bicycle or drive a car if we spent all of our time thinking about what we were doing – if we spent our time trying; fighting to succeed.
The Taoists say, “The master does nothing and nothing is left undone.” Is this a mere riddle or does it point to a different way of living?
Anyone who has had an experience of mastery or of “flow” has had at least a taste of this. It is as though the “doing” happens through one, rather than the sense that one is causing something to get done. There isn’t as much food here for the ego but there is far more ease and joy.
Perhaps there are points in our lives when how we grow to our next level of awareness is by being a fighter – no right or wrong about it. Still it is worth knowing that there is another way and that we can learn this way.
Perhaps any complete definition of The Good Fight should include a good surrender.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Conflict - Honestly
March 6, 2008
There is a light frost on the roof tops – a clear sky last night. Each day brings spring more fully into being, and yet the last bit of winter hangs on.
Many people dread conflict to the point where they are willing to accept profound levels of dysfunction rather than address the issues that are begging to be looked at.
It isn’t uncommon for people in organizational teams to ignore the fact that two team members despise each other. If it is talked about it usually happens behind the backs of the parties concerned. On one team that comes to mind there was a person that nearly everyone else was afraid of; their response was to work harder at trying to appease her.
When you question people about why they haven’t said anything to the people they are in conflict with you are likely to hear things like: it’s not that bad, they may be difficult but they do a great job, I don’t want to make things worse or what’s the use, nothing will change.
Most of the resignation is likely to be learned behaviour from family and school where we learned as little people that we didn’t have the power to affect the changes we wanted. The suggestion that we should put up with conflict and disruptive behaviour from people who are good at what they do is just plain missing the point.
Conflict is a feedback mechanism (like physical illness) telling the organization or the individual that something in this system is out of balance. Life is always sending us information about what needs to happen next; it is up to us to pay attention and act on the information.
The overwhelming majority of conflict is rooted in opinions and beliefs – the more rigidly held those are the more likelihood for conflict. Clinging fiercely to the notion of having the only right belief or viewpoint is always a form of self protection.
We become identified with beliefs and opinions (which football team is the best) no matter how serious or silly. Those beliefs become part of the great ME and anyone who challenges those beliefs is in fact challenging ME.
To begin any inquiry into conflict we need to surface the explicit and the implicate beliefs of all concerned parties. In other words people need to get deeply honest with each other.
This is a fact that often surprises people in conflict situations; most people are certain that they are quite honest. What isn’t included in this personal assessment is the more-or-less automatic self-censorship that most of us run at all times. We don’t say what we think.
The quickest way out of conflict and the best way to reduce the chance of conflict is to actively develop a culture of deep honesty. When people learn to really listen to each other what they tend to discover is their similarities, their shared humanity.
Whether we agree with someone else’s perspective becomes secondary once we genuinely understand how and why they think and feel as they do. On the flip side, whenever we have the experience of being heard and understood we almost always find it easier to relax our insistence on having the only valid perspective.
Organizations of every size and type express the belief that there isn’t enough time. Despite all the world’s wealth, riches and technological advancements we just don’t feel that we have any time to simply sit and talk to each other. And yet talking and listening to each other is still the most technologically advanced way for human understanding to occur.
It turns out that, regardless of our intellectual and scientific progress, simple honesty is still our greatest hope for happy and peaceful co-existence.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Open for Business
February 25, 2008
Early morning cloud dissolves to reveal blue horizons, as the awakening of spring takes another bold step forward.
For many people living life and doing business are all about control. So much of the conversation I hear is about managing risk, guarding against something unexpected or protecting one’s self from competitors. This orientation to life makes me think of Musk Ox gathered in a protective circle, facing outward at a world full of danger – a survival strategy of limited value.
Part of my background has been in planning large industrial projects where the goal is to identify every possibility and prepare for it in advance. Years of experience taught me that the only way to survive a project, with any joy and real success, was to create the best possible plan knowing that the reality would look different.
The well conceived plan means you have looked at all the variables within your awareness and experience so that they don’t hover at the edge of your mind plaguing you with anxiety. With that taken care of you are then free to greet the actual, live-in-the moment unfolding of life as it happens – expected and unexpected.
I believe that the world tends to look very much like we say it does and that as we increase our awareness what we say becomes ever more important; producing results in alignment with our thinking. Based on this understanding the very best attitude toward life and business is one of openness.
To greet life with openness is to issue an invitation. Rather than the protective circle we stand with legs spread wide and arms flung out in welcome and anticipation. Our feet are planted firmly on solid ground, we know where we are, and at the same time our hearts are wide open.
This orientation can be described as leaning into life; open and accepting to both the sorrows and the sweetness. No part of life is our enemy or out to get us. Things happen, they aren’t personal, and everything is our beloved teacher if we wish it to be.
In the world of music this might be called “finding your groove.” Given the choice of fighting our way from ridge to ridge or slipping into our groove and flowing, which will we choose? That choice isn’t a simple as we might think.
For as long as we see others as competitors fighting us for a limited supply of whatever it is we think will make us happy and fulfilled, then that’s the way it will be. For as long as we see life as a contest or a struggle, it will be.
To move toward openness in life we have to first be willing. Once there is willingness then we can begin to be honest with ourselves, looking at what frightens us and trying not to project it onto the world. Safety and danger, like misery and joy, have far more to do with our insides than they do with our outsides.
Maybe today is the day we take that sign (the one we created with our thoughts) that says “closed” and flip it to read, “open for business.”
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Act As If
February 22, 2008
This morning’s sky is washed gray; the trees stand out in sharp relief; the birds are awake and singing. The first of the crocuses are in flower, an official sign of spring in Vancouver.
I believe that all of us are capable of making a positive difference in our own lives, in the lives of our families, organizations, communities and in the world. That can seem like an outrageous statement if we focus on the massive threats and challenges at the global level and still, I believe it is true.
We have the possibility of making a positive difference because every thought and action at the individual level ripples out and affects dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of people we way never meet. One smile given to a stranger in traffic; one act of kindness or consideration, they have the power to brighten the day for many, many others.
Initially what stops most people from acting as though their lives make a difference is a belief that they are powerless in comparison to the vastness and complexity of the issues at the organizational or global level – how can I influence how this corporation behaves or stop global warming or war or hatred, and the list goes on.
Even when we do come to understand that our smallest actions can and do make a difference we can get stopped because we are uncertain how to begin living life as though we really do have an impact. We are so used to feeling and believing that we are powerless that we don’t know how to begin acting differently.
Years ago I came a cross a wonderful expression that describes a way of moving yourself into new behaviours; especially behaviours that seem beyond us – “Act as if.” The idea is that if you’re not sure what it would be like to be kinder or happier, in a good relationship or successful in business, you begin by acting as if you already are.
To do the acting we have to first observe the characteristics of whatever behaviour we are moving toward and this can be the beginning of changing how we see everything. With a willingness to learn we start to notice that others are positively affecting their lives, positively affecting the world. We will also see that those others are no different than we are – pants go on one leg at a time, they eat, sleep, laugh and cry just as we do.
There is a breakthrough in this behavioural shift when we realize, “My God, we are all in this together.” When we really see that we have played our part in creating all the situations and behaviours that we find intolerable and that we could just as easily be a part of creating a liveable world.
What a wonderful and powerful thing it is to realize that we do make a difference; that we are creating the world we live in. It’s at this point that we stop, “acting as if,” and begin to be the change we want to see.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Less can be More
February 13, 2008
Early morning sunlight kisses the top of a big Cedar tree and lays a golden band across a rooftop. The mist has burned off to reveal blue skies; the Magnolia flaunts its early blossom buds. Change keeps happening slowly, slowly and then all of a sudden.
Somebody once said that we are not human-doings but human–beings, emphasis on the verb, to-be. But study yourself, the people around you and the organizations you are a part of, and see what we all do the minute we’re not sure what to do – we do more. It seems that we either are not comfortable with “being” or that we have little faith in our being-ness to lead us in the right directions.The workers in the construction industry used a little ditty that went, “When in trouble or in doubt run in circles scream and shout.” This tended to describe one typical management response to a plan gone wrong – look busy even when you have no idea where you are going.
The trouble with the headless chicken response (and there are a few) is that those who are counted on to do the work lose faith and respect for the leaders, all the running accomplishes very little, and the decision makers have kept themselves too busy to take the time they need to regroup and re-discover their direction.
I use the term re-discover because I believe that the best directions we can take arise from a knowing of who we are, what guides us (core principals) and how we prefer to work – all aspects of our being-ness. Sometimes when things are becoming chaotic the best thing the leader can do is go for a walk, either figuratively or literally.
It can be powerful to assume that whatever project or group or task we are responsible for is the one we are meant to be doing; there is no mistake that we are where we are. Each of us sees and understands life differently (even if only a very little) and this means that our response will be just a little different than anyone else’s.
If we can trust that the reason we are where we are is because that “different” personal response is the one that is needed, then we can begin to act with a deeply experienced sense of confidence. This is exactly the opposite of spending a lifetime trying to figure out how to act like someone else because we perceive that they alone have what the world needs.
If there is any real value in leadership trainings and break-through workshops it will be that they have been structured in such a way as to inspire the participants to, first know themselves and then trust themselves. Self-knowledge is a core leadership and life skill.
To honestly know who we are means that whenever we have the experience that the project, career, life, are on the line and awaiting a clear decision from us we have a touchstone. We look for the most powerful way to express our particular unique being-ness and then go with it.
This isn’t a path for those who won’t move without a clear set of operating guidelines or a memo from someone further up the food chain. This is a path of self discovery, courage and accountability, where you realize that the one thing that is always on the line is your own integrity.
Evan Renaerts 604 314 0835 evan@evanrenaerts.com posted by Evan Renaerts at 12:07 | Comments (0)Living Language
February 6, 2008
It is trying to snow again, or rain, no clear decision yet. Yesterday ended with a bright band of light all around the horizon and towering dark clouds above – witness the dance of spring and winter on the West coast of Canada – first one leads and then the other.
Once again I am noticing the power of our language and our speaking in shaping the world that we experience. Weather is a great example; for one person a heavy rain is like a personal affront, while the person standing beside them is all smiles, loving a “good” rainfall.
More and more the world’s leading minds agree that we are continuously creating the world we find ourselves in. One way it’s been said is, “We don’t describe the world we see; we see the world we describe.” In other words, we see what we expect to see.
Anyone who has worked with groups and organizations will have heard people say, “We always do it that way,” or “Nothing ever changes.” Just imagine the limited reality and range of possibility in those statements.
What the so called “new science” is pointing out is that life is an open system and in open systems everything is possible. In open systems, seemingly predictable networks of elements can give rise to unpredictable and unforeseen new entities with new properties. This is at direct odds with the old “clockworks” view of life, reality and the world where everything occurred in a predictable sequence of cause and effect.
What’s really exciting about all of this is that we humans are also open systems (part of and inseparable from the bigger system) and this means that we too are capable of unforeseen, unpredictable change. The limits to that change are the ones that we ourselves impose through our deepest beliefs about the nature of reality and life.
This can sound abstract and moderately interesting until one really “gets” that their life is proscribed by what they say about themselves and about life. If we say I will never accomplish or I can’t do (whatever it is) because of – and then we insert our current list of reasons – the chances are that we will prove ourselves to be right.
Somewhere I saw the phrase, re-imagine the world, and it struck a cord. What is the story that we tell ourselves about life? How much is it based on history – ours, our parent’s, or that of our country? What “truths” have we taken as our own without ever questioning them? Most importantly, what is the story we would tell if we knew for certain that we were describing our own lives?
It is time for new stories, stories of possibility and wonder. What we need today are stories of inclusivity and relationship, stories that transcend separateness. We need stories that proclaim a future worth living into and at the same time hold open a generous space for all of life’s mystery, all that we do not know.
Today we need stories that are filled with choice and action and surrender so that we both move and remain guided in our movement.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
The Inside leader
February 4, 2008
It is early morning, still dark; the roof tops and grounds are covered in frost. Yesterday was brilliant sunshine with the snow-topped mountains etched against the horizon. Last night’s red sunset promises sunshine for today.
One of my personal beliefs is that everyone is a leader and that everyone is always leading – in ways that add to the good or that take away from it. I notice, when I say this, how many acknowledged leaders and managers adamantly shake their heads no – they don’t believe or accept this statement. Perhaps it’s only semantics and what’s needed is a deeper conversation about the nature and forms of leadership.
Leaders make choices and then initiate action based on those choices. They don’t always know for certain that they have made the right choice or that their actions will lead to desired outcomes, they are acting on goodwill, faith, intuition and experience, all propped up with the best information available.
I say that we are all leaders because we are all making choices and acting on those choices throughout each moment of each day. What separates an acknowledged leader from all of the others might simply be that the acknowledged leader has a vision that includes the whole (tribe, clan, group, department, organization or nation).
Whether acknowledged or not, being a leader does not guarantee that good choices will be made, and in fact our world and our history are filled with examples of megalomaniacs and petty tyrants making decisions and precipitating actions that have hurt and killed millions. Even our well intentioned leaders suffer the law of unintended consequences.
One observation I have is that we put too much emphasis on the outer manifestations of leadership and give too little attention and consideration to the inner leader. Most leadership training focuses on behavioural attributes such as, responsibility, accountability and decisiveness. Business management training broadens out to include economic models and perhaps even the latest trends in sociological thinking – all aspects of how to behave.
Even as our cultures shift to insist that leadership thinking include a triple bottom line it is still a fact that leaders face huge pressure to produce ever increasing financial returns and sometimes that pressure is in direct opposition to a better choice of action.
What is dramatically missing from the leadership conversation is an inquiry into “who” the leader is. It is a truism that we can not guide anyone beyond where we ourselves have gone and that means that we can not call forth the best in others if we haven’t gone looking for the best in ourselves. We can’t ask others to consider the well being of the whole system if we don’t embody that ethos within ourselves.
Real leadership training needs to bring together groups of people who have a desire to lead in a setting where they are challenged to go beyond what they have believed to be possible; where they experience the intelligence of thinking in a committed team and where all of this is embedded in the real world.
Leadership must go beyond conceptual and theoretical to include real people, nature and the environment and the astounding complexity of life. This training should never be about reducing the complexity in order to make simple decisions – every decision needs to be made with the humility to acknowledge that we do not know all of the possible consequences of our actions.
The world needs leaders who experience the full range of human feelings and are okay with that experience. We need leaders who truly want to collaborate and share ideas, always looking for the missing piece of wisdom. We desperately need a kind of leadership that genuinely seeks to serve and to nurture people, places, life and all of existence in its endless forms.
As with all great undertakings this awakening of enlightened leadership, if it is to happen, will start with individuals who say, “It begins here with me.”
Evan Renaerts 604 314 0835 evan@evanrenaerts.com posted by Evan Renaerts at 07:33 | Comments (0)On Time
January 26, 2008
The past week in Vancouver has been cold, clear and sunny. Today is gray and cold and the weather people are talking of snow. In my neighbours back yard the daffodils are three inches above ground, and so this is a typical winter-into spring transformation process.
I have been noticing that almost all of my clients have started the new year focussing on time-management issues. The two primary components are: looking ahead to see what is possible and what needs to be done yet, and following-through to insure that whatever is initiated is also completed in good order and in good time.
In leadership language these categories are referred to as visioning, planning and execution and all three need to be engaged and balanced. No individual, business or organization is likely to succeed without a vision – the picture, set of goals or dream that pulls them forward.
It can seem to some that they have never had a clear vision and yet still managed to come out on top. When we look closer, however, we see that even these people have some picture or dream that they have been living for and that has unconsciously guided choices and directions.
Where vision is concerned it is sadly true that an unconscious negative dream is equally capable of drawing us toward unpleasant outcomes – we “succeed” at creating what we don’t want (but what we do believe in).
To powerfully enact a vision in life we need to dream it, talk it, write about it and then plan for it. Many of the creative people I meet resist the planning part because it feels to them as though they will be limiting their creativity. The exact opposite is true, as long as they can remember that the plan they make is intended to serve them and not the other way around.
Creating a plan that serves us means that we always know where we are in relation to all those details that make up our busy lives. We know where we are, we have a clear sense of where we are going and the steps needed to take us there, and when we get there we will know that we have arrived – succeeded.
The knowledge that we are managing all the various aspects of our lives and businesses frees us from anxiety about what we have forgotten to do. Many people I meet live with a constant sense that some critical thing they have forgotten to do is about to overwhelm them. It’s easy to see how exhausting that way of living is and how thoroughly it can choke creativity.
When we finally understand how important and how liberating it is to live plan-ful lives we are still left with the issue of follow-through. To “get the job done” we have to stay on top of the tasks and take them to each next logical step all the way through to completion.
Establishing a habit pattern of execution (follow-through) in our lives and in our businesses is the single most potent way of guaranteeing our successes and our peace of mind. Convert this behaviour to a motto and it might read: Think it, Say it, Do it.
The other important piece of this is the principles and motivations underlying all our visions and plans and actions – but that’s another story.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Let it Flow
January 14, 2008
Heavy rain and huge puddles again this morning, and each morning the sky (even the overcast sky) lightens a little earlier. When I listen carefully I can hear the tender green shoots of the crocus pushing through the earth and the buds forming on the trees – out of darkness and dormancy new life.
I notice how attached people become to hard work and detailed planning as the way forward and the way to achieve their goals. They aren’t wrong of course, hard work and good plans are components of success but they aren’t all of it.
Early in my own working life I had the experience of “work” becoming something else. I didn’t have language for it in the beginning and I probably didn’t even talk about it; I just went with it and smiled – my first taste of flow.
When flow happens it is like stepping into a parallel universe; you see the same sights and are aware of the mundane reality but at the same time people and activities and tasks and objectives all change shape and texture and seem to operate according to a different set of laws.
My own experience of this has been that some hidden master choreographer had trained and rehearsed every element of the project I was involved with. People moved through complex tasks with hardly any words needed and synchronicities of timing simply emerged – beyond all of our best laid plans. At the same time there was a quality of ease and joy among those doing the work; everyone wanted for each person to do well and to have fun and at the same time for the whole project to succeed.
A single day like this on a year-long project transformed the entire project. From that point forward people knew that they were a part of something that was greater than any individual and that they were a part of something that could lift them beyond what they had thought possible.
The puzzle with flow, although there are accounts of it in science , dance, theatre, sports and in almost every field, is how does it come about and how can we promote it. The answer seems to be part rigour and part mystery.
The rigour is in learning our parts whatever our field of endeavour. Flow seems to occur more readily when true expertise exists. The mystery lies in the fact that, no matter how expert we may be, we cannot force flow.
Flow requires trust; we must trust ourselves to go beyond expertise and beyond our much loved plans. Holding to anything is the antithesis of flow. The paradox in this is that all of that planning is part of the expertise – we have done our work and gotten ourselves ready; the only question left is can we then let go; can we overcome our fear of letting go?
There also seems to be a way that one can live all of life as flow — in flow. This remains a study for me; it can feel like walking the knife edge, how much to do, how much to allow.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Worth the Risk
January 7, 2008
Early morning rain washes away an overnight dusting of snow; the temperature dances around the freezing mark, while winter and spring look each other over.
A recurring behaviour pattern that I notice is a resistance to go outside of our comfort zones. The comfort zone looks different for every person and it can take time to realize that what is being witnessed is once again the hesitancy to take action when that action feels risky or threatening.
One extremely common way this shows up is when clients are facing an issue where acting and not acting both feel dangerous, either could lead to angering or alienating a customer or threatening a key relationship. The response can be to just stop communicating.
The person who engages in this avoidance strategy believes, in their own mind, that they are just taking the time to consider the best course of action. It isn’t until one or two or three days have gone by and a number of telephone calls and emails have gone unanswered that they realize they are actually in trouble.
Another more troublesome form this pattern can take is where the overwhelmed person begins to tell their customer, their boss, or whoever it is they need to communicate with, the things they believe the other person wants to hear – but not the truth. This type of response usually leads to serious crisis and fast.
Any of us can become frightened, but what is it about these mental/emotional fears that can paralyze or cause us to act irrationally. One thing that becomes obvious after dozens of times addressing this behaviour is that many people live with the fear of making “the fatal mistake,” and this fear can exist regardless of how successful one has been.
Whenever a person is supported to unpack this fear they can easily see how unrealistic it is, which doesn’t mean they will never feel this way again. What can happen is that by looking at the fear one can see that it is the fear itself which blocks the ability to address whatever issues need addressing and it is the fear that needs to be confronted.
The fear of failure is a false (but potent) enemy. Everything that we do in freedom from this fear we can refer to as within our personal comfort zone and all those things we fear, a huge spectrum of circumstances and outcomes, is outside this zone. Simply seeing this truth can make us aware that all of our new growth and success exists out beyond our comfort zone.
Unless we are willing to atrophy as beings, willing to just put in time, then we have to go where we fear to go. We have to do this every day in big and little ways. This means learning to breath into our fears, learning to talk to trusted friends and advisors and mostly it means getting extremely honest with ourselves about what we are doing, and not doing, and why.
The high powered Guru’s of change will tell you that by following their course of action you can forever master your fears and become a zillionaire, just like them. My own experience is that this work is what we call life. Just when we think we have it all figured out we discover another new aspect, some other place we fear to go.
In my own life I endeavour to be radically honest with myself, while being radically kind to myself. This means noticing when I feel frightened and moving toward that fear. I like to think of myself as a fire fighter – I am willing to run into the burning building when everyone else is running out.
I don’t run toward fear out of bravado or to prove anything; I do this because it’s the only way I’ve found that works. Also, it isn’t necessary to throw ourselves off a cliff in order to prove that we are not frightened; all we have to do is keep moving toward the fear, keep leaning into it.
This life is meant to be lived and living is a risk – a risk worth taking.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Finding a Way
January 4, 2008
I was talking to a friend and colleague the other day; he was on his way to meet with a very large corporate client to discuss a project. Many people in his position would be busy strategizing, trying to anticipate the client’s desires, my friend’s attitude was, “I’ll just go see how I can be of service to them.”
I think of this as my friend’s “way.” It is a way that is based on principles and an orientation to life that doesn’t rely on strategy or manipulation to achieve success. It is a way that remains constant regardless of the client and their particular motives. Most importantly it is a way of being that the doer can always feel good about.
In his book, Birth of the Chaordic Age, Dee Hock leads the reader through the journey he took when given the task of creating what would become the credit card giant, VISA. Those of us who have grown up with credit cards don’t remember what it was like in a cash-only world, or when each banking institution had its own card. That was the world when Dee Hock set out to create an organization that brought together natural competitors working across national and international boundaries.
In order to create a successful strategy Dee Hock and a core group of leaders from various institutions needed to create a way of working together that combined shared values and no restriction of individual freedom. The key turned out to be a set of guiding principles that addressed the very nature of the new entity. Prospective members were invited to sign-on and be guided by these principles if they wished to be a part of VISA.
Sometimes it can seem incredibly difficult to find our way in life. On one side are the voices that say, if we don’t take advantage of that person or that situation someone else will; while on the other side we hear, never treat anyone differently than how you wish to be treated.
In business I have watched companies contort themselves trying to guess what it is that the customer wanted to hear so that they could promise to deliver that – even when they knew they couldn’t deliver what they were promising. Not surprisingly these scenarios never work out well. What they demonstrate to the observer is an absence of core principles or perhaps a belief that success means being/doing what others expect of us.
Great minds in science, medicine and business have all agreed that the simple solution is often the best and this applies equally in the life of an individual or an organization. The simple solution is to know who you are and what guides your thoughts, decisions and actions.
One such simple way that I have heard for finding your guiding principles is to imagine yourself on a sinking ship; there’s one seat left in the life boat, what would you give up that seat for? What do you value above life itself? When you can honestly answer that question you will be close to knowing what your deepest principles are.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Okay Right Now
January 2, 2008
Outside the living room window it is dark and raining hard; high winds are predicted. The earliest of the spring flowers, snow drops and crocus, have begun to push green shoots through the soil. There is fresh snow on the mountains that ring this city; breathtakingly beautiful when the sun breaks through.
It is all here in this moment: death, destruction, birth, life, joy, darkness and beauty. Can any part of this wholeness exist without all the other parts?
I notice that the mind has preferences, likes and dislikes. Most of us tend to go through life with unexamined criteria for what is “good and acceptable” and what is “bad, sad and unacceptable.” We live life in an ongoing attempt to impose our preferences on reality, on what is, and when that doesn’t work we try to defeat, deny, or avoid all that frightens or saddens us.
The rock group R.E.M. sing a song entitled, Everybody Hurts, which is a truth we all seem to recognize. For any of us there can be times when life seems too full of suffering and we can find ourselves looking frantically for what it is we can change or what we need to do to get out of that feeling. The Buddha said that life is suffering and the way out of suffering was to let go of all our craving and all our aversion.
Not many of us choose to follow that teaching – it’s hard to imagine a much more radical teaching – simply accept life as it is, neither clinging to that which gives pleasure nor avoiding that which causes suffering. Genuine adherence to that philosophy, if all of us gave up our addiction to pleasure and our fear of discomfort, would cause a massive upheaval in the world economy.
What I notice as I live longer is that although it’s possible to live life in such a way that we tip the odds in favour of having a good life we aren’t ultimately in control. Things happen in everyone’s life. People we love get ill, become disabled, or die or perhaps our own health declines and suddenly we can’t do certain things; however it comes about, choices are eliminated.
The other thing I notice is that what happens in life is one parameter and that the other and more important parameter is what we do with what happens. And what we do with what happens applies equally to that which we deem good and that which we deem bad. As somebody, somewhere once said “be courageous in defeat and magnanimous in victory.”
Every part of this life’s journey improves when we can learn to be okay with whatever life brings us. This isn’t a recommendation for passivity; we have free will and choice and we are meant to use these. What is possible, is for us to accept the gifts we’ve been given in whatever form they happen to arrive, and then ask how we might take what we’ve been given and use it for the greatest possible good in our own lives and in the lives of all those we love.
In my own life I try to see this life that is given to me as honestly and realistically as possible. I say, this is it, this is the miracle that I’ve been waiting for – I might have thought that it would look different but this is it, so thank you.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Return on Investment
December 23, 2007
It isn’t noticeable yet but we have begun our return toward longer days and more light. This is what all the (religious) holidays related to this time of year have in common – whatever our culture, we celebrate the return of the light.
To invest in something is to commit or to devote one’s self or some portion of one’s self. The time, energy, thoughtfulness and awareness we give to life: people and places and situations are all investments; possibly more important than whatever money we invest.
At this time of year many of us will receive cards and letters expressing thanks for support we gave, or time we took. Perhaps we will gather with our friends or families, our parents, children or siblings and laugh about things we’ve done together or even cry for the things we’ve been through together.
These simple pleasures are all reminders of where we have made our “investments” in the truest sense. These have not been commitments made for gain or to make us look good but they are great riches.
Whenever someone thanks me for giving them the gift of kindness I am reminded that these are a completely viable kind of business investment too. Investing in business as we would with loved ones means looking for ways to include good listening, time and kindness in the way that we conduct our businesses.
I notice the business people who bring integrity, honesty and openness to their affairs and what the return on investment looks like in their lives. Clients, suppliers and colleagues all go out of their way to refer businesses that operate in a warm and life-affirming way.
This kind of return on investment can sometimes take longer to notice than the quick money returns that come to the dishonest and self-serving business people. Looking from the outside it can seem that the honest people are the fools, missing out on the fast bucks; it’s like comparing a spring freshet with a deep river.
The freshet profits from the heavy rains and then dries up. The river has taken years to carve out its channel and though the river may experience highs and lows, it never runs dry – the slow patient work is an investment in longevity.
People who work the land possess a simple and profound understanding of the investment principle. The harvest we reap depends entirely on the seeds that we sow; it may seem that we are a long way from planting or harvesting but the fact is that this work never stops.
While we celebrate the return of the light in all of our various religious and cultural ways may we also plant seeds of kindness, care and concern for each other, and for all of existence.
Blessings throughout this season and the year to come!
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Simply on Purpose
December 13, 2007
The dependable rains of this wet west coast have returned after several days of cold and frost; the dark, short days of winter are upon us. The city seems to come to life more slowly, less traffic, people on the street rubbing their eyes – yawn, when will the light return.
I notice that a quick way to cut through personal and organizational dilemmas is to ask one simple but frequently overlooked question; what are we trying to achieve. This is the “purpose” question. Since we can do any number of things, then what would cause us to make one particular choice over another?
Because the purpose question is often overlooked, individuals and organizations regularly end up shuffling through a stack of possible options looking for “the thing” that they should be doing. Another common aspect of this phase is that people become attracted to complex and dramatic looking solutions or interventions.
What it looks like from the outside is that the ego has gotten engaged and the ego, everybody’s ego, loves drama, loves to be special. So to come back to the purpose question, what are we about and what are we trying to achieve in this situation, can feel a bit like throwing cold water on all that specialness.
Still, when we are faced with situations that require extraordinary action the cold water of basics and simplicity can be the very best starting place. An organization might have a team in break down, or a division that is failing to meet performance expectations. For individuals they may be facing a career, financial or family crisis; there are any number of possibilities that fall into the category, “This needs immediate attention.”
Regardless of the specific situation or circumstances it is always worthwhile to stop and ask, “What are my values and, given that this crisis has come into my life, how can I use it to help me get where I want to be?” By asking questions like this we can move out of panic, out of drama and specialness, and out of being a victim of circumstances.
Knowing who we are and what we value is the most direct route to knowing what our purpose is – the areas of endeavour and the ways of relating that will support us to experience fulfilment. The other immediate payoff in knowing our purpose is that we can then avoid wasting time, energy and money on overly complex and highly dramatic workshops, consulting services, and various other high cost interventions.
The world is a complex system; one tiny action in this corner can trigger completely unforeseen consequences in another corner. Over simplification and unnecessary complexity -neither are answers. There is real value though, in taking a simple approach to complex issues.
Principles, values, purpose, they aren’t necessarily easy to define but they are always our simplest and best reference points.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Who’s On First
December 10, 2007
Sunlight and warmth melt heavy frost from the neighbouring rooftops; the stripped bare tree limbs and branches are etched against a washed-blue sky.
I talk to and listen to a lot of people as a natural part of my work. The one common thread that runs through all of these conversations, whether about work, money, hopes, family, fears and challenges, is the first person singular – I.
It doesn’t matter if it is my story or yours; or if it is a story of success or failure or some scenario about the future, at the center of the story is “I.” This isn’t wrong or something to feel bad about; this is simply the ego functioning to survive.
We can take it as a given that the vast majority of humanity enters life with this self-centered perspective and that most of us never completely outgrow it, nor see any compelling reason why we should. What finally moves us away from the “I” at the center of the universe is a realization of how limited this perspective is.
The self-centered perspective sees everything past, present and future as having to do specifically with them. Hence, all fear and anxiety are about the diminishment of the “I”, whether through loss or shame or ultimately death. Anger, hatred and greed are all “I-centered” strategies for protecting or expanding this limited sense of self.
Even love, the noblest of human emotions, can be not much more than a nicely dressed expression of selfish self-interest, where the “other’s” adoration of “you” is what sustains the love. On the flip side of this equation is the martyr who gives their all for the sake of another because that is the only way they get a sense of value for their “I.”
Once you glimpse the shallowness and the emptiness of this relationship to life there can awaken a hunger for some greater understanding – a relationship to life where I am part of it but not all and not the center. Every genuine spiritual teaching throughout human history has had, as one of the primary goals, this lessening of the ego- centered view.
The famous Zen Ox-herding drawings begin with a wild ox as the symbol of the untamed mind, the self-centered mind. Gradually the awakened part of the self begins to tame the ox until over time the ox will follow wherever the master goes. Finally the master and the ox become one and then both disappear into wholeness.
The master does not hate the untamed part of herself nor try to push it away nor destroy it; she embraces it and loves it while being unshakeably determined to live a life beyond the confines of self-centeredness.
Real joy comes when we are able to know our selves within a greater context -to be aware of self here in this room, in this building, this city, this country, this universe. We see that we are like threads in a tapestry of unimaginable proportions and we come into a sense of right-size.
There is a transitory self, a very small and limited self which, is living and working through all of life’s phenomena. And there is a great Self that exists outside of time and place and which observes the whole of this passing parade in complete peace.
The way to the great self is through the willingness to be a part of the whole. We stop blaming people and situations and we stop asking the world to change in order for us to be happy.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Freedom & Choice
December 3, 2007
Heavy rains rattle the eaves and window panes, washing away the snow from the weekend. Vancouver’s streets and sidewalks are a slushy mess with storm drains overflowing; it seems that winter has arrived.
I was listening to one of my teachers talk about choice. He had been asked if at a certain level of awakening we no longer needed to worry about choice because we would be guided by divine intelligence.
The teacher replied that the opposite was true; that the more awake we become the more accountable we are for our choices – and we are always choosing. To describe the nature of choice in our lives he said, it’s like driving a car, you are always making tiny adjustments to the steering wheel, you don’t even notice that you’re doing this, but if you didn’t you would land in the ditch.
In the “free” world we love our freedom: free speech, free press, freedom to bear arms; we have court cases about whose freedom is the most important freedom. What we pay far less attention to is the consequences of our freedom – who goes without so that we can have; whose voice is silenced so that ours can be heard and who has to die so that we can feel safe?
Part of the difficulty in all of this is the ever-present dilemma of complexity and unintended consequences. From the perspective of the singular “I” it can make complete sense that I should have the freedom to say whatever I believe is true and I should certainly be free to defend myself from aggressors.
Now extend that same freedom to all the billions on the planet, to all the different cultural perspectives and all the different interpretations of what is true. Suddenly the likelihood of misunderstanding and tragedy has exploded into possibility. The great complexity of human life on earth (not even taking into consideration all of the other life forms) cannot be addressed through simple codes and beliefs.
One of the points that my teacher made was that we are accountable for our choices whether we wish to be or believe we are. The greater our awareness of how our choices affect others, the greater our level of accountability. As frustrating as it is for the straight ahead action types we humans need to be constantly talking to each other; putting our best efforts into learning about each other and examining the choices we make.
Freedom of choice is deemed the greatest gift of humanity and like all great gifts it comes with a great responsibility. We all have our hands on the steering wheel: in our own lives, in the life of our communities, and in the life of our species on this planet.
We are the wise leaders we have been waiting for. There are no extras waiting in the wings. It’s up to us to make the best choices we are capable of making and to continue growing our own awareness while doing this.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Count On It
November 30, 2007
The neighbourhood roof-tops glisten white with frost, the local mountains are covered in a fresh coat of snow and the world is full of bright sunlight.
How often do you say that you will do something when you don’t want to do it; how often do you say you will do something when you have no real intention of following through?
I was talking with a colleague about accountability and wondering about this behaviour, where a person volunteers to do something and then doesn’t, and not just once but repeatedly. My friend suggested that maybe this person was trying to guess what I wanted to hear and then offering to do that.
One of my beliefs is that everyone’s behaviour makes sense – to them. Promising to do something because you believe that is what the other person wants is an act of what the therapists call mind reading. You know what you would want or expect from others, based on the experiences of your life, and then assume that others want these very same things from you.
Most of us believe that we can “read” other people; that just by observing their facial expressions and body language we will know what they are thinking and feeling and what they want. The truth is that none of us knows what anyone else wants from us or expects from us, unless we ask them.
Perhaps none of this would be of any importance if it weren’t for the fact that whenever we promise to do something and then don’t deliver we are essentially inviting others to question our integrity. This becomes even more problematic when we fail to communicate about not doing what we said we would do and offering some explanation for our behaviour.
Most people, when they don’t have enough information to understand another’s behaviour, will make up a story about why that person acted the way they did – sometimes that story is compassionate and often it is harshly critical. Either way, people will stop relating to you as someone they can count on.
The solution to the accountability dilemma is to know yourself so well that you never promise to do something unless it is something you are really willing to do. All you’re left with then are those times when life intervenes to prevent you from delivering on your promise within the agreed upon time frame and the solution then is to immediately communicate with those who are counting on you.
This is the one area where I consistently see clients and friends struggle; they know about their business, about cars and sports and politics but not about what makes them tick. Someone said that the unexamined life wasn’t worth living but it might be better said that the unexamined life is one not fully lived.
For most of us it isn’t until about age forty that we even begin to question who we are and what it is that we authentically want and value. Up until that time we are too busy playing the roles that we identified with success (however we may have defined that).
Still, it is never too late to have a happy childhood and never too late to get to know yourself.
To be someone that people can count on doesn’t have to be onerous for the simple reason that we are never compelled to promise anything unless we are truly willing to deliver on that promise – count on it.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
The Next Step
November 28, 2007
Last night many of the folks who live up and down this city block that I call home gathered in front of one house to wish the owner a happy birthday. She is 90 years old, still gardens, visits with her neighbours and volunteers in the community.
Just staying alive for a long enough time brings its own learning and one of the great metta-learnings is that life goes on regardless of our fears of making that “one fatal mistake.”
One of the things that I notice is how so many people get stopped, stuck in a place that gives them less and less return, because they don’t know what to do next. What I see is that we get where we are by doing what we know how to do and when that stops working we are not sure what to do next – it can seem like everything we think of is very much like what we have always done.
The other thing I notice, and this is based on experience more than observation, is that staying stuck in an unsatisfactory life situation is a seriously unhealthy option. People who stay stuck get sick and then get sicker yet; ultimately they may give up on life all together.
My own sense of how we get stuck and why we might stay there is that it can feel too dangerous to take the next step when we don’t have any past experience to reassure us that this particular step is safe and that we’ll be okay. We get stuck because we are at a place where what we have known is no longer sufficient to take us where we need to go.
One fear that people describe at these critical choice points is the fear of being annihilated. It is remarkable how similar are the descriptions of this psychic/emotional place – how to do what you don’t know how to do; how to go into a territory you have never seen and don’t understand.
I think of the early explorers who wondered, as they sailed, if they might come to the very edge of the world where the sea ran over the edge into the emptiness of space. Yet those explorers did the only thing we can do in these situations; they gathered up everything they knew how to do well, all their skills, and brought those together with their faith, whatever that faith was, and then moved away from what was known toward the next unknown.
This is the journey of life! This is the same journey we all take as we learn to crawl, then walk and so on all the way up to the place where our fear begins to stop us. When we look at fear we can see that it is always about the future; about what “might” happen next. Fear is one big hypothetical question about things that haven’t happened and may never happen.
There’s a great saying from self-help work, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” It sounds too simple to be taken seriously and yet it is what we must do if we want to live life rather than just put in time.
The next time you are feeling stuck, ask yourself, “What is the next bold step,” and then start moving.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Thought-Full
November 22, 2007
Bright sunlight glitters on heavily frosted roof tops, sidewalks and parked cars. The light brings all of the colours alive, pink-white blossoms on the magnolia, pale blue sky, white and black streaked birch trees; everything is radiant.
In order to notice anything one must be aware; aware of self, aware of life, aware of inner and outer. To be aware includes the capacity to be the observer, you notice what is outside you and at the same time you notice your own thoughts and feelings; even the sensations in your body.
We walk around in our lives with our heads full of thoughts! If you are honest with your self you will notice that you have an almost uninterrupted flow of thoughts: discernment, appraisal, judgement, criticism and praise, along with snatches from old songs and various other bits of nonsense.
My guess is that most of us are also walking around with any number of thoughts that we “shouldn’t” have – greedy thoughts, selfish thoughts, angry and resentful thoughts; even homicidal and suicidal thoughts. The real problem with these thoughts is that while we walk around thinking them (or even just watching them flit through our minds) we are also pretending to ourselves and to the world that we don’t have these thoughts.
Everyone knows that only bad people and crazy people have angry, hurtful thoughts, right? Wrong! I have talked to hundreds and hundreds of people about their thought processes; they often begin by denying these kinds of thoughts but ultimately everyone who has a capacity for self-honesty acknowledges having unwanted thoughts. Often they qualify this by saying, “well, they aren’t really thoughts, they’re just a kind of daydreaming that my mind does.”
Yes, that might be true, but they are happening in your head. These thoughts, that aren’t really thoughts, are causing tension in your body and triggering reactions of impatience and frustration or conversely, passivity and withdrawal. The point is that the content of our minds affects our lives in very real and concrete ways whether we want it to or not.
One proposed antidote to this mental pollution is “positive thinking.” In the positive thinking approach one trains themselves never to think negative thoughts; a kind of mental diet plan. This method has an upside and a downside.
The upside is that we become much more aware of the minds content, and because of this we become much more discerning about what we feed the mind – what we read, what kind of movies or television we watch and even the kinds of conversations we are willing to take part in.
The downside is that we may begin to attack and judge our minds and our selves and from this we may begin to feel all those unpleasant feelings while we pretend to only think good thoughts. Instead of cleaning up our thoughts we’ve just driven them further underground.
The most helpful and compassionate method I have found for working with thought and the mind is what I call radical self-honesty and radical self-love. In this approach we become willing to see what is in the mind, understanding that the mind has a mind of its own. Thoughts flow through the mind like water through a tap and no thought, regardless of its nature, can harm me or another unless I either deny the thought or identify myself as the thought.
When we identify as the thought then having an unkind, cruel or even criminal thought means that we must be unkind, cruel or criminal. When we deny the thought we begin to lead a double life; we fear our own thoughts and to maintain our denial we project these unsavoury thoughts on to others. We begin to see evil people and evil institutions all around us while failing to see what is within us.
Radical self-honesty means that we simply notice what is in the mind: lust, jealousy, greed, kindness, patience, anger, frustration – it doesn’t matter. We notice the content and embrace our “Self” in unconditional love and acceptance. Nothing frees us from thought faster or more completely than loving acceptance.
Working in this way it is possible to come to the realization that, “I am not these thoughts.” Thoughts and feelings occur and none of them are “who I am;” they do not cause us to do or to not do anything- choice is always ours.
This is the realization of freedom when one can honestly say I am living the life that I choose to live.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Un-Cluttered
November 20, 2007
Today there is a pale yellow sun circling the horizon from east to west; the sky has a soft-smokey- quality with a cool and crisp edge to the air. It’s a day that invites long walks and stopping to examine the details of tree bark and wilted flowers and the random beauty of fallen leaves, as they decompose.
I have a friend who says that what he loves about procrastination is that it means there is still hope – he may yet get around to doing all those things he has said that he wants to do. He always gets a laugh.
What I notice is that whenever I put things off clutter starts to happen; there is a slow steady build up of items on the to-do-list, whether that list is written down or only in the mind. Not giving time, attention or energy to the business and the plans and the dreams in life creates a background of discomfort.
While it is possible to turn our eyes away from the things we want to do there is no good or permanent way to turn the mind away. One example that comes up on a regular basis is with clients who don’t know what their current financial situation is. They postpone balancing cheque books and resist keeping a budget (too restricting) and hope that their income to expenditures ratio lands right side up.
In every case the ongoing uncertainty about how much money there is begins to create stress. These individuals find themselves worrying about money in a completely ineffectual way; they worry, they have no plan, and take no action to relieve the worry. While they might have hope that everything will be okay, or if not, that it will get better, they just don’t know and the not knowing more than offsets the hope.
Where the procrastinating is more general; where tasks are left undone for days or weeks and dreams are left unexplored, the anxiety is more general and harder to pin down. People in this state often feel as though a storm is gathering just out of sight, ready to bowl them over the minute they relax.
What leaps out from working with this issue is the tremendous and simple freedom that comes from maintaining some basic disciplines in our lives. The paradox is that by submitting to a discipline that we believe will tie us up and take away our spontaneity we are set free from the continuous nagging of fear and uncertainty.
One of my personal growth practices is t be as honest as possible with my self. Before I make a to-do-list I inquire within about why any particular thing should go on that list: is it something that I personally want to do, is it something that I need to do for the general well-being in my life or is it something I want to do for another or maybe because doing it will feel good?
When I know why I have put a thing on the list and what the doing of it means to me then getting it done is never an issue. The other thing to keep in mind is that “life happens.” Make a plan and if life doesn’t seem to cooperate then just change the plan – don’t get caught in the belief that there is only one right way.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Make Me
November 18, 2007
A beautiful quiet autumn morning, soft cloud giving way to a washed blue sky, no breeze; everything is still, as if taking an in-breath.
“You can’t make anyone do anything they don’t already want to do,” a friend and colleague says of his experience in working with people, groups and organizations. The topic comes up because clients often tell us they want to get their people talking to each other, they want them to be more accountable or to communicate better or to collaborate or to do something that they aren’t already doing. And they want “you” the consultant to make it happen.So, given that we can’t make people do anything in any kind of free or even quasi-democratic circumstances, what “can” we do? We can invite people: we can invite them to look at their reality as it currently exists and to ask questions about how well it works; how happy they are, and how satisfied they are. We can invite people to consider other perspectives and other visions and with enough time we can even invite them to try on different behaviours.
The thing about this approach (like all good work) is that it must be sincere and free of hidden agendas. We cannot issue an invitation if what is hiding behind it is threats and ultimatums – “make these changes or find another place to work.” People always know when the invitation is genuine.
A key challenge in bringing people to a place where they are even willing to consider new ways of operating is to take them outside their “normal” ways of seeing and thinking and behaving – out beyond the default settings. Most of us are not even conscious of our daily behaviours as choices; we just see them as “the way things are.”
It isn’t until we are in a strange country or city or a strange job or some other unusual circumstance that we even realize we have normal way of behaving. Not easily being able to behave in our usual way is what finally makes us aware of it.
Many leaders in organizational change will tell you that organizational change doesn’t actually work. People have an experience and may even shift perspectives, but without ongoing support to continue their inquiry they tend to revert to the old and comfortable ways of thinking and behaving.
That old school yard dare, “try and make me,” still holds good today. Even if you have the ability to force someone to behave as you wish it doesn’t mean you have won them over and even when it appears that they are doing what you want, chances are they are doing it in a way that delivers as little as possible.
The most compelling source for real change is the desire that arises from within the individual. The best that organizations can do is to invite individuals to look at how things are and to consider how they might be. The consultant’s role is to make that inquiry as intriguing and as irresistible as possible.
When change makes sense to people, and they can see that there is a support system in place to see them through their transitions, they will generally move to embrace the new ideas and new behaviours. This process happens quickest when the people themselves identify why the change makes sense and how they are going to implement it.
One other factor that is too often overlooked – in order to guide anyone anywhere you must first have walked that ground yourself.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Cultures of Expression
November 14, 2007
Sunday’s wind storm stripped the last of the leaves from the trees; they stand with up-flung limbs expressing another form of beauty.
Last night my twelve year-old and I were at the open house of a high school she is thinking of attending next year. The teachers, students, and parents collaborated to create a presentation of the various programs, followed by a student led session for the kids and a parent and teacher talking circle for us old folks.
The entire evening was structured to make the new people feel welcome and to make it safe to ask all kinds of questions. This is no small feat, creating a culture where the hierarchy of management is just one part of how things work.
In my work I am acutely aware of the spectrum of safety and trust within organizations; everything from the model where the boss is the boss and questioning is not encouraged to a modified form of consensus decision making where every voice has equal weight. The more groups and organizations are structured to encourage every voice, the higher the levels of trust and the sense of safety.
Wherever people sense that they will be criticized or penalized for not knowing the “right” answer, for questioning the perceived wisdom, for opposing a main stream decision or for saying what they really think, they will revert to spouting opinions and positions. When people do not feel safe they seldom risk exposing their real self – their three dimensional, creative, playful, wise self.
The thing about creating an expressive organizational culture is that it can’t be faked. All of us humans have built-in detectors for pretence and bullshit.
To draw out the best in ourselves and each other and to truly invite in the “whole person” in each of us, then we as leaders (and we are all leaders) need to be alright with not having all the answers. We need to cultivate a practice of noticing what roles we have fallen into and be willing to step out of those roles; the roles seem to offer security but what they really do is limit the range of our expression.
Within our groups and organizations we must open ourselves up to the broadest possible range of voices and perspectives; this is our access to unexpected insight and wisdom; this is what’s outside that “box” that everyone talks about.
There is always a challenge in finding the balance between the process and the action in any group, and there is no pat formula for doing this. And perhaps this is where many organizations shy away from genuine dialogue and inclusivity – it isn’t simple and it doesn’t stay “fixed.”
To have an alive and vibrant organization means everyone has to stay engaged. In that way it’s like the rest of our lives; we can either be present and alive or glide through on autopilot.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Boundaries and Borders
November 12, 2007
Late yesterday afternoon the wind began to rise, howling out of the southwest, blowing heavy rain and the last of the leaves before it. This morning the rain abates and the dark gray cloud mass is torn open to reveal blue skies again.
My little family and I headed into the United States this past weekend to help celebrate a friend’s fiftieth birthday, a simple two and a half-hour drive to Seattle. The sky was clear and the traffic light until we reached “the world’s longest undefended border,” where everything stopped and was held up for ninety minutes of security checking. The experience on returning to Canada the following day was exactly the same in reverse.
All of this defending of borders and boundaries got me thinking. When we start out in life we have no clear sense of being “separate” or differentiated; the world is us and we are the world. Little by little we learn to make distinctions between something we come to identify as “I” and something we identify as “other.”
This process is deemed to be psychologically essential, the development of a sound ego and a good sense of self. It’s easy enough to see the value of individual boundaries; they create the space within which we can try out ideas and concepts and they give us the room we need to draw some conclusions about who we think we are.
When the creation of boundaries goes too far in an individual or a state we begin to see a movement away from expansion and generation toward contraction and degeneration. The entity (whatever it is) stops being open and permeable, becomes resistant to new or even “different” perspectives. Too strong a boundary begins to engender fear of the “other.”
Excessive fear has never been identified as a factor in rational behaviour – fear leads to bad judgement and bad decisions, as ever more options and possible choices are eliminated. When fear is allowed free reign a point is ultimately reached where even that which had previously been seen as a part of the “I” is now seen as other and a threat.
In ancient cultures such as India there exists an understanding that a sound sense of self is needed for a person to fully enter into life, to take risks, to interact with others, and even to create community. It is further understood that once a person is established in the world they must then begin to let go of that separate identity.
Perhaps the whole purpose of a well developed ego is to bring one to the place where they are strong enough to begin letting go of the notion of separateness and begin a conscious journey back into unity. The real strength comes with a realization that there is nothing that requires defending (why defend what cannot be destroyed) and nothing to defend it from.
I don’t expect most people or any governments to agree with this perspective and until faced with a direct threat of annihilation there’s no way to be a hundred percent certain that I can live by this knowledge. Something we all can do though, is challenge the fears we feel rather than have them run our lives.
When the cure for fear is to defend yourself to the point where all that’s left is you and your fear, then this truly is a case of the cure being worse than the disease.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Love a Good Plan
November 9, 2007
The morning starts with a breakfast-frenzy; what will Emma eat and what will she take for her school lunch, which flows into a squeaky, squawky clarinet practice filled with chatter and laughter, and then the dash out the door – whew!
Last night at the dialogue class my wife and I are teaching, one of the participants was wondering how to gather people together at meetings in ways that support the open inquiry that is the hallmark of good dialogue. So many meetings, he said, are plagued by difficult people or people advocating for completely different outcomes; how to deal with that?
The question took me into what I know about groups and about convening anything from an important discussion, to a meeting, to a multi-million dollar project. Oddly though, the first image that popped into my mind was that of a gardener. The really gifted gardeners are more than mere botanical mechanics; they scratch the soil and speak their love to the plants, they water and fertilize with such care and attention, so that the entire process is love in action.
I love this as an image because most of us know from experience that there are gardeners, and then there are gardeners for whom everything flourishes. My proposition is that the quality of consciousness that makes an exceptional gardener is the same quality you will find in exceptional conveners and exceptional planners.
In my own background the planning of a project would begin at the moment my interest was caught by a possibility, by the potential of something that might be brought into form. That spark of interest and curiosity would lead me to explore the full scope of possibility, looking for the big picture.
Getting the “wide angle” perspective would launch my own visioning process – my mind would begin generating images and flowing through sequences, seeking for the feel or the innate rhythm of this nascent project – and without thinking about it I would begin to love the project into life.
This can sound airy-fairy but what is actually happening is something that I believe all skilled persons bring to their craft. They bring a deep level of caring, deliberation, thinking and re-thinking; as though they were brushing loose dirt aside, checking the undersides of the leaves and plucking off withered twigs.
We can call it conscientiousness or professionalism, but again, if it goes beyond the mechanical application of skills there is an element of love present. I make this point because I believe it is this love that is the “secret” ingredient in truly successful human endeavours.
Leading edge science and consciousness research indicate that we humans are actively creating the world we experience through our perception on a moment by moment basis. There is no fixed, immutable world out there that each and every one of us experiences in exactly the same way.
If we accept this premise that we are creating our own world, then why wouldn’t we create a world with the greatest possible degree of harmony and flow; why wouldn’t we create gatherings and meetings and projects that reflect our deep trust in others, our faith in a collective goodwill, and our love of life?
It seems to me that a great use of energy is to let go of trying to control people and events in life and instead bring appreciation and love to my visioning and my relating.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
A Spacious Place
November 6, 2007
It is mid-autumn, one and a half months until the winter solstice, and the magnolia trees in our yard are beginning to put forth buds again. They do this every autumn and I am wonderfully surprised each time. The power of life to continue under all kinds of conditions is both hopeful and inspiring.
A friend was telling me the other day that their eldest son had called from Thailand where he had completed his first ever twelve day meditation retreat. My friend was just off the phone with his son and still feeling all the joy and gratitude and sense of accomplishment that his son had expressed.
Hearing my friend connected me to the energy of the final day of a silent retreat when the meditators begin to speak again but the stillness lingers, when all eyes are filled with light, and every face smiles. One of the greatest learnings of all may be to learn how to sit and to be quiet with all the inner voices and all of the urges and desires; to simply watch them as you would watch a play.
Friends and colleagues who know about my own meditation practice ask me how I manage to sit every day or why I sit. The answer is tied to my first significant experience of awareness meditation when I discovered that I didn’t need to react to thoughts or feelings or to sensations in the body – I discovered a place of spaciousness within myself.
Most of us take the events of daily life quite personally, feeling hurt or offended by people’s actions and comments, being angry at the weather, or at other drivers; it can seem that life is” being done to us.” In meditation it is possible to see that the endless flow of events and occurrences is just happening and that it has almost nothing to do with us.
Even when people seem to have singled us out for their words or actions we can, when we look more deeply, see that they are really focussed on themselves and that all their words and actions are really about them, what they want, what they feel they need, and that we the recipients are merely coincidental.
This discovery on its own is enough to create a huge place of inner freedom! By realizing that the fear, anger, jealousy and resentment expressed by others emerges from concern for themselves we no longer need to waste any time or energy trying to defend ourselves or prove the other wrong and ourselves right, all of those behaviours become meaningless.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Stress-less
November 3, 2007
A fine, misting rain falls, soaking the earth, greening the growth; everything is shrouded in the soft grays of autumn.
Riding on a city bus, sitting in a cafe, at an appointment with a professional and I keep noticing people who cannot sit still. One leg taps incessantly, hands rub together, the entire body shifts from one position to another and another – there is a sense of some pent up frustration or dis-ease.
It seems to me, here in my corner of North America, that this phenomenon is more widespread and apparent than ever before, as though people can no longer simply be still and attain some level of inner peace.
We live in a world filled with more and more distractions, music plugged straight into ears, ever-present internet, connectivity and communication, the very air waves are buzzing. We humans do love to distract ourselves, to tune out in all the various ways, and yet our best efforts don’t appear to be bringing the relief we seek.
Every few weeks there is another news article or academic study discussing the impacts and affects of our increasingly stress-filled-lives. Organizational consultants coach people on how to manage their emails and phone calls, and how to manage their time, and how to manage some balance in life, and what you end up with is a different kind of busy-ness, but it’s still busy-ness.
Some people I know long for a more idyllic time, a time from some imaginary past, and the occasional person actually moves out to the country, to a quieter and slower life. For the vast majority of us this isn’t a viable option, we need to work and to live in places that are accessible to that work.
So, how do we do the things that we need to do, and maybe even really want to do, and still enjoy life? How do we keep on keeping on, while reducing the stress?
I have found, from personal experience as well as experience shared with many others, that simple awareness meditation is one of the best ways to lower stress levels, and ultimately to change how we relate to the world and to life. Awareness meditation can teach us to be aware of our inner state, and through the “key” of awareness we unlock a greater possibility for choice.
My own chosen meditation practice works with an awareness of the breath; sitting in silence for a period of time, watching the in-breath, watching the out-breath, noticing when there is tension and disturbance, noticing when there is calm. It is a simple and demanding practice that changes every aspect of life.
Because the breath instantly reacts to stimulus; going from an even flow, to erratic, and then ragged, it can alert us to our primary experiences long before we have begun any outward reaction. The breath becomes uneven and the practiced meditator immediately wonders to them self, “what is causing this, what am I experiencing?”
Working in this way we can become more aware of those times and those situations where we feel overwhelmed, frightened, angry, resentful or frustrated. Through the increased awareness we can avoid reacting in ways that damage us and others.
Meditating day after day, we learn to accept our selves just as we are; this acceptance can be a first step in an alchemical change. The willingness and acceptance of our selves, just as we are, means that we have already become something bigger, we have become a bigger container, more able to embrace the ups and downs of life.
Beginning a daily meditation practice can seem like a huge undertaking. People say, how can I find the time, or, I don’t know how to meditate, or, I can’t sit still. For most of us our ego does not want to sit in silence and is far happier hashing and rehashing the same old material over and over again – making itself sick.
Whatever doubts and concerns may arise, the value of meditation out weighs them all! The easiest way to begin is to just begin. Find a quiet place and sit. Watch the flow of the breath and then watch the mind’s resistance to such a simple task. Keep returning awareness to the breath and watch your consciousness awaken.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Movers and Shakers
November 1, 2007
Today holds a quality of gray silence I associate with winter, as though a snow fall is gathering itself just out of sight.
There’s a kind of nursery room “toy,” called a mobile, which is made up of several different shaped pieces, each suspended from a thread, and usually hung over a baby’s or a child’s bed. A feature of all mobiles is that if you touch or move one of the pieces, all of the pieces move – changing places in relation to each other.
Mobiles have been used as an image in the study of family systems to demonstrate how family dynamics work and of course family dynamics are what we tend to see in all human relationships. In this understanding there are a number of roles in the family or the group (the pieces in the mobile) and each person occupies a role, everyone playing their part.
Every family, group or organizational system works on the same principle as the mobile, when ever someone gives up a role and moves to a new way of behaving or expressing, then everyone else in that system moves as well. One person stops leading and another steps forward; silence the “trouble maker” and a new one emerges – the system is continually seeking to express its wholeness.
One systems model proposes that there are four key roles: the mover, the opposer, the follower and the bystander. The mover is the person (role) that initiates the new. They offer up new ideas, start projects and generally look for ways to keep things moving.
The opposer (or shaker) questions the mover’s initiatives and is often identified as the malcontent or the trouble maker and their role in a system is often shunned or marginalized. Followers are those helpful people who ask thoughtful questions about proposals and projects and help them to become better thought out. Bystanders are the ones who stay out of the center and because of this can often offer up a clearer perspective of what is happening for the whole system.
These roles can be expressed along a spectrum from very negative to very positive. Movers who offer one new idea after another, never allowing time for anything to become integrated can wear out any organization. Opposers who only point out flaws and never offer helpful suggestions can undermine moral and foster a climate of cynicism.
Followers who fail to raise good questions may simply go along with whatever is popular or politically acceptable, thereby depriving the organization of valuable insights. And bystanders who stay on the edges and never really participate tend to draw energy away without giving much back.
It can be very powerful for an organization to consciously work with the understanding of these roles – to support each of the roles and draw them out in there most positive aspects. Even the opposer, the role most organizations fear, can be supported and encouraged to bring their wisdom forward in positive ways.
By acknowledging what is real and present in our organizations we can help to bring all of these elements to maturity, and at the same time learn to trust and appreciate what each of these roles offers to the combined intelligence of our organizations.
It is important to remember that all four of these “characters” are roles and that the people in our organizations may change from a mover to an opposer to a follower or a bystander and back again. The more we can create a place where it is safe for each person to freely move from role to role (even within a single meeting), then the more vital and responsive our organizations become.
I love the understanding of life as improvisational theatre – we jump on to the stage; move it, shake it, and then stand back and see where it takes us. The more we learn to do this with a spirit of goodwill and a caring for the well-being of the whole, the richer and more rewarding the whole play becomes.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Transitions
October 30, 2007
The leaves on the Magnolia tree, blood-red centers with pale yellow-green edges, shine in the soft autumn light.
It’s been a busy week with lots happening on many levels. My older daughter Sue gave birth to a baby boy this past Thursday; standing at her bedside, watching her cradle this newly arrived being, seeing the love in her eyes and I was struck by the realization that this daughter I was seeing was completely new to me – a different person than the one I had known before the baby.
Birth is, of course, one of the major life transitions and what I notice about transitions is that even when they are expected and awaited they can change things in ways we never imagined. Every significant transition, whether in relationships, business or geo-politics can be seen as both a death and a birth, whatever was previously existing must give way to what is emergent.
Humans seem to like the idea of birth, of newness and novelty, and the entire concept of growth is held in especially high regard. Oddly enough we aren’t as open to the idea of change as we are to birth and growth (even though they do go hand in hand), perhaps it’s because we realize that change means letting go of what has been, even what we have loved.
In some cultures there seems to have been an understanding that large scale change and transition contain both risk and opportunity; that there is very little chance of moving forward in life without an element of risk.
One of the best ways to move up to and through transition points is to combine a vision for your journey with some real reflection about what has worked for you and what is working now. The vision acts like a magnet pulling you forward, while an acute understanding of your strengths can help you see how to move through the risk and uncertainty.
Chances are that the core abilities that have brought you to a change point in life can also be used to navigate the change. One example of this would be the stay at home mom or dad who is now ready to return to the work force.
It can seem to this person that they have lost their edge for business and have little to offer, unless they take the time to note the skills they used to run a household and function as a parent. Their abilities: to be flexible, multi-task and manage time and budget, are the same ones that will move them through the next big change – returning to the workplace.
New babies, new partnerships, new careers, they all ask us to change, to open up and become “more.” A deep appreciation of our selves and our current abilities may be our greatest asset in a time of transition.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
The Art of Interviewing
October 24, 2007
The sunlight, slanting down through the oak tree outside my window, picks out the rust, orange, yellow, pale green of the leaves – like jewels overflowing their container.
I’ve been doing a lot of interviewing lately; interviewing clients about what is of importance to them and then watching them interview others. In most organizational interviews the purpose is to discover what is working well and what is problematic and to do that the interviewer needs to be coming in with a curious, open mind.
Something I notice is how different people tend to either over prepare or under prepare before they begin interviewing. The “over” group put time and effort into generating an extensive list of questions, while the “under” group prefer to approach their subject with a blank sheet of paper. Either of these strategies can work and either can lead the interviewer into dead ends very quickly.
In over preparing one of the big traps is for the interviewer to assume that the line of questioning that they have decided on is also important to the person they are hoping to draw out. If their assumption is wrong they may find themselves getting single syllable answers and no useful information.
What can happen in this scenario is that as we develop our list of questions we get inadvertently caught up in our own picture of what is happening in the organization or our own bias about how things need to move forward. When we begin interviewing based on our own “dream” of what is happening there can be a subtle form of manipulation going on – we are trying to coax out the answers we expect to get – and this will close down those we are interviewing.
For the personality type who likes to prepare especially well, I always suggest that they team up with at least one other person to brainstorm a list of really open questions. Generally the people being interviewed are willing to talk once they can see that someone is genuinely listening.
The under prepared interviewer is often the one who believes that they can, “just wing it.” They begin their interviews by asking people how they are and if they are happy, in the belief that if they set a tone of interest the other person will respond. What most often happens is that they get back answers and information as vague as the questions they are asking.
One key in any interview is respect for the person being interviewed. I always prepare myself by recalling that the person I am about to see is a “client,” someone I am in service of. My job is to support them to discuss what excites them, what frustrates them and most importantly, what they dream about for themselves and the organization where they spend such a large part of their life.
Time has become a scarce commodity for most people and most organizations and this poses a serious problem. People work better when their relationships are strong, and relationships take time. When people have time to talk they will usually signal, through their words, what kinds of things concern them and what they wish were different.
Organizations that take the time to interview their management and staff every few years have a much better chance of maintaining a realistic understanding of the issues, concerns and dreams within their business or service organization. Knowledge is power, and this kind of knowledge can enable an organization to address concerns before they become roadblocks. Every now and again this kind of knowledge can lead an organization to make radical and positive change.
One of the real pleasures in interviewing is watching someone’s eyes light up when they realize that, “this person is really listening.”
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Project Life
October 22, 2007
Heavy rain throughout yesterday and all of last night; the city is washed and scrubbed and the autumn leaves tumble, stripping the trees to their bare branches and trunks.
Emma, my daughter, has just completed a school project (grade 7) that required her and four of her classmates to work together over a period of four weeks. Trying to get five busy twelve year-olds together was a continuing exercise in logistics, planning, phone calls and frustration.
At the half-way point it looked as though the kids were not going to succeed. They would meet and then not complete what needed doing, and come away without any plan for working independently to take things to the next stage. Kate and I became concerned and had several unsatisfactory talks with Emma – we couldn’t understand what was stopping these smart young people from doing what they needed to do.
Finally, after a particularly frank conversation Emma broke down in tears and said that she just didn’t know what she was supposed to do to get the project going. It was here when Kate and I realized that no one had given her or the others any understanding of how to approach a project.
With Emma’s permission we helped her break the project down into its parts and then to create a plan for successfully completing each of these parts. Within a half hour Emma laid out the steps she and her team needed to take; who needed to do what and when, and how they could share the various pieces as a group.
This episode in life has reminded me that, although I take it for granted that one must create a map for moving through projects, it isn’t something that we are all born knowing. In fact, I’ve been surprised since I started coaching and consulting at how few of my clients habitually step back to get the project overview and create a plan for getting where they want to go.
In project planning the first step is to understand the project; what is the purpose of the project, what is that you want to achieve, where do you want to be when it’s complete and how do you want everyone involved to feel at that time. Part of this step is to identify everyone with a stake in the undertaking and discover how they see the project goals.
Once you are clear on the goals a powerful next step is to make a “shopping list.” List each activity required to move through the phases of the project, at this point it is not essential to get them all, just be as thorough as possible. I find it useful to list things in the order they are likely to occur right from the start as this can help you to picture the “flow” of the project.
Once your detailed activity list is complete it is then important to look at each task and ask yourself (and your team if you have one), “so how exactly will I achieve this task:” what materials do I need, what resources, how much time – have I missed any steps here.
Every question of, how and when, and what about, is an invitation to think in a more detailed way. Each difficulty, challenge and potential delay that is foreseen and planned for clears the way for a smooth and successful project.
This list making sounds too simple and too boring for many people; they want to believe that there is some magic to creating great projects – and of course there is.
The most important part of any project will always be the people involved and the people who benefit from all of the work. What works best for me is to “dream” myself all the way through the project, to see the people I will work with, see their faces and know what they are feeling – and to dream the happy ending, of course.
Emma’s project? They brought it in on time and with great success.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
Letting Go
October 18, 2007
Rainfall last night had the streets running like rivers; the storm drains plugged with autumn leaves. Everywhere there is a freeform mosaic of large and small leaves, orange, yellow, rust and ten shades of green.
I love the trees in every season and there is something of stark magnificence in their winter nakedness – striped of all fine presentations; their essential strength and texture revealed, and I’ve been wondering if it’s possible for humans to shed old ideas as quickly and freely as the trees shed their leaves each year.
When I say ideas I am including all of our assumptions and opinions and all of the various positions we all seem to relish taking up. Can we learn to drop them or to hold them so lightly that they do not confine or oppress us and others?
The thing I notice about our thoughts is that once a thought enters our minds, and we find it to be acceptable, we then begin to fit it into the already existing story that we have created about reality and this thought-story becomes a part of our identity. We see all of these thoughts, assumptions and opinions not as concepts we’ve taken on but as who we are – “attack my thoughts or beliefs and you are attacking me.”
What’s particularly troubling about this phenomenon is that the core of our assumptions about life and reality are all in place by about age five. By then we have taken on the culture we were born into, an entire set of unquestioned assumptions. We have taken on the experience of childhood, as seen through the eyes and consciousness of a child, with every fear and belief locked away, to be used for weighing the validity of all future concepts.
These primary experiences and the template they create function as an unconscious filter, sifting our moment to moment experiences and selecting what we will even entertain as possible ideas worth retaining. Whatever doesn’t match our template is rejected out of hand; in fact it may not even register. We may be deaf and blind to concepts that are too much at odds with our core belief system.
We are profoundly subjective beings, each of us seeing a slightly different world (maybe even radically different). How can any of us say that the other perspectives are wrong – who’s subjective experience of reality is the “right” one?
This is why people who speak the same language, maybe even from the same culture, have such difficulty communicating. We share a language but have no shared meaning. How much greater the challenge of communicating across genders, generations and cultures?
David Bohm, the physicist, had a particular interest in penetrating thought and language in search of shared meaning; he saw this as an aspect of finding the wholeness in existence. He called his work “dialogue,” finding meaning through words. This work has been picked up by many others and grown into what is now called “generative dialogue,” which might translate as, finding life-giving meaning through words.
The practice in this discipline is to be present, to make your own thinking transparent (here’s what I think and here’s why I think this), to suspend judgement about the thinking of others, and to remain open and curious. When people are willing to gather in this way their ways of seeing, understanding and thinking tend to transform significantly.
We are capable of deeply examining our ideas, assumptions and beliefs and we are capable of releasing them. New ideas and new understandings come to take their place just as new leaves emerge in spring. All that’s required from us is openness to the changing seasons.
Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com
The Leader’s Invitation
October 16, 2007
The leaves on the trees bordering our city streets glowed orange and yellow in this morning’s crisp, brilliant sunshine and then, as though with the wave of a wand, blue sky turned gray and warm air became cool, then cold, and finally the rain began.
A recurring question in this work that I do is the “true” understanding of leadership; does it mean to take charge and give direction, to charismatically stand out in front for others to follow, to support and nurture, to lead alongside of the others or even to step back and “do nothing.” And the answer, of course, is yes – to all of those definitions and to still more.
The most dynamic understanding of leadership for me is that it is an energy, a current, power or force that flows in to the moment in accordance with the context of that particular moment. From moment to moment the sum total of conditions changes and so does the kind of leadership that is needed.
In this understanding leadership doesn’t automatically belong to any one person but is accessible to all who are willing to embody the energy. The world from this perspective is seen as alive, fluid and in a continuous flux of change. Here a key component of leadership is the readiness and openness to flow quickly from one set of operational realities to a radically different set.You might say that this is leadership as dictated by reality rather than in accordance with the latest “hot” leadership theory. At the same time this fluid style is amongst the oldest and most intuitive forms of leadership in self-organizing groups from tribal to agrarian across the globe.
With the advent of the Cartesian worldview and the industrial revolution there emerged a belief in a mechanistic and predictable world and from that a mechanistic or systematized approach to leading. In this mode of understanding the world, nature and resources are seen as unchanging, abiding by scientific rules, and profoundly separate from us humans.
In the short term this perspective and the leadership it spawns can produce significant and even beneficial results – everyone gets where they wanted to go and on time too, it’s just that they may ultimately have ended up in a place that is very different from what they imagined. In current terms this is referred to as the law of unintended consequences (it seemed like a good idea when we started out).
Today as the global pace of change leaps exponentially and as we become m