Leadership

The pause between the facts and the story we are making from them

The photo is of a chaffinch that flew into my window and died. He was so completely bird, his heart a pulse that I could feel and then not feel.

I gently buried him under a tree, covered him with soft moss and felt bruised-tender with sadness. Yet I cannot talk about sadness without also talking of joy - for he was beautiful, his feathers so exquisite. So what story do I tell myself? It was so sad....? It was so tender and beautiful? Both stories are true and thus, this is a deep truth.

Let me explain

The amazing physicist, Frank Wilczek speaks about complementarity, whereby two different ways of regarding reality can be true but you have to choose your focus between them because fully investing in the truth of just one can negate the way you perceive the other. Light is both a particle or wave depending on how we measure it - both are true, both oppose the other - this is a deep truth. For me, as leaders we have to pause in our need to simplify answers - rather we should develop our ability to question the complexity of life. We have to engage with reality from different perspectives - from different stories.

We need to pause.

I was recently eating knäcke bread (Swedish crisp bread) and felt something break. I spat out two teeth. My front crown and attached bridge were both in my hand - not in my mouth. It was a Wednesday and I was due to fly to the UK on the Monday to meet my book agent for the first time in real life and also coach one of the UK's top sports psychologists. It was shit timing.

In the past I would have tumbled into all the negative stories:

"Who did I think I was writing a book...?"

"This is a sign that I am nothing - worth nothing."

"I knew I should not have hoped ..."

Etc. Etc. Etc.

However I didn't. I paused.

The facts were that my crown was over 25 years old and the tooth it was on had decayed. The other tooth was attached to it. It was that simple. I managed to get an emergency appointment at the dentist the next day and after 2 hours, 8 injections, one tooth extraction, one crown removal, one veneer removal and tooth drilled to hold another crown - a temporary bridge was put in place and I went to London on the Monday.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Because of the pause.

I did not tumble into the mire of toxic stories that normally entwined me like weeds - that were born in the soil of childhood poverty and trauma.

I paused at a gateway - that I previously had not even known existed - and looked out at the stories but did not step towards them. I chose the story I wanted to create from the facts.

Yes - it was bad timing.

Yes - the teeth were broken.

It did not mean anything more than that.

This pause is where I feel true leadership lies - whether over our own stories or over the stories of our organisations and teams.

Does yet another change in leadership mean that it will fail?

Does the loss of a vital team member mean the rest will follow?

No - it does not. However, unless you own and create the story you want - well then you will fall into the old story without even knowing it.

Last week I ran a session for the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee Medical team about stories that act as constraints, stories that act as connection and stories that act as direction. The session was held online and was called 'Narrative Bound' - it was a great success as essentially all of what I have shared here and what I shared in the session with the team, is built on known neuroscience of how the brain works and the thalamic relay - impacting on the effect of all those old narratives that floods out of the amygdala. The pause comes from training our brain when it is not triggered - that is why I could pause.

I have been doing the hard work of building a new pathway/channel in my neural forest, enabling often triggering events to have another conduit, so that my amygdala does not become flooded - rather the flood water enables a connection to the pre-frontal-cortex where higher order thinking happens.

Where a pause happens.

If you are interested in finding out more about my work with organisations or teams or you are interested in 1:1 coaching sessions - please feel free to contact me.

Let us learn to pause together.

K