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Greetings!
Here's something that amazes me all the time: how connected things often are. This is amazing for me because many times these connections come through in what seem to be unlikely circumstances.
My year has been full of such moments. Many moments add up and weave together what I am to be focused on. This describes what it means to have a vision for one's life based in being open to life. Various experiences weave together my future focus.
Front and center for me right now is pulling together. It was woven together by a lot of small and large experiences in my professional and personal and learning life. Pulling together is my way of feeling my way through to a response to its opposite: what I call 'sidedness.'
When I label someone as being on a side, I condemn them to being unmovable, set in their box. When I choose a side, I close my self off to understanding.
When we see and try to make sense of complexity by choosing sides we lose the view of the space in between, and we simplify. It is in that in-between space that we can find some common ground.
Sidedness pulls us apart. Seeing the space in-between, and living with ambiguity and unanswered questions, allows the exploration that pulls us together.
I am for pulling together. When we pull apart or are in a tug of war, in power struggles, little gets done. Relationships become frayed. It takes courage, patience, and an open mind to stop putting one another in boxes, and choosing sides, and seeing change only in terms of one side over the other side.
Rather, we might consciously choose to listen and understand, and, be conscious of complexity, ambiguity, depth.
Doesn't common ground arise from deep recognitions, and not from simple reductions and making up of sides?
The need to relinquish our certainty lies at the heart both of modern science and ancient spirituality. From the science of Complexity, Ilya Prigogine tells us that, "The future is uncertain. . .but such uncertainty lies at the very heart of human creativity." It is uncertainty that creates the space for invention. We must let go, clear the space, leap into the void of not-knowing, if we want to discover anything new.
We're not comfortable with chaos even in our thoughts, and we want to move out of confusion as quickly as possible. Burt Mannis in The Leader's Edge, said, "In this day and age, if you're not confused, you're not thinking clearly." Confusion may be part of a much deeper process of organization. Life is about the creation of new systems through relationships and through inclusion.
- Margaret Wheatley
What kinds of experiences brought me here, to my trying to figure pulling together? People working to support my health. Having to put together a human infrastructure to take care of my new dog. Being an observer and learner in Meg Wheatley's group, in which people are practicing how to withhold judgment and not cause divisions by jumping into their opinions. By seeing how my clients have grown and continue to evolve their teamwork, often under very difficult conditions. Most importantly, the rough times have motivated people to pull together, listen closely.
I could go on and on. Probably you've had the experience of coming to something big and then seeing how what got you there was working toward the big something all along. One of my insights is: one can create this sidedness within themselves too. I've literally pulled myself together and figured out how to take care of myself, and, sustain my aspirations at the same time.
One funny in-a-good-way event provided some fuel. My book from five years ago, They Just Don't Get It, Changing Resistance Into Understanding, has begun to resonate with people more than my other books. It struck me: this was the book where I began to collect my thoughts about "together" rather than "sides." I'm fired up for the first time in three years to compose thoughts and research and create a new book.
Let me know what you think. As always, feel free to pass along, opt in or opt out of my newsletter.
Have great days,
Leslie
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Ins &
Outs of Motivation and much more...
Leslie Yerkes has been teaching courses in the executive education
program at The Weatherhead School of Management's Dively Center for many years.
Her classes represent the intensive version of public speaking about the same
subjects. Several years ago she began teaching two section: Managing For
Motivation, and, Managing the Generations.
Leslie fits her experiential
learning approach to two broad frameworks about motivation. One is to bring in
her long-standing understanding about the whole person at work, the second is to
differentiate what some of the generational differences are with respect to
leading and motivating today's diverse, inter-generational workforce.
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Leslie Yerkes
Leslie is co-author
of the best selling 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work (Berrett-Koehler) and is the
author of Fun Works: Creating Places Where People Love to Work
(Berrett-Koehler); Beans: Four Principles for Running a Business in Good Times
or Bad (Jossey-Bass) ; They Just Don't Get It: Changing Resistance Into
Understanding (Berrett-Koehler); and in 2008, Beyond Kicks Carrots: Motivation
for the 21st Century (Norma Sustenere Publishers.) Fun Works, published in a
revised edition in 2007, is considered a cornerstone of the research and work in
the field of the positive, high performance workplace.
As always, these subjects and much more are used as topics for her keynote
speaking. For more info: funworks@catalystconsulting.net - 216.791-7802
Quick Links
Catalyst Consulting Group, Inc. | Amazon author page
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