The step before courageous conversations

I once told a colleague of mine that I was frustrated with them for sending me urgent emails late at night.  At the time, I was proud of myself for being honest.  But looking back, I was only sharing something half-honest.  The full truth would have sounded something like this:  “I’m feeling anxiety about my lack of presence with my family and I’m feeling a ton of pressure to keep my inbox clean because I’m afraid of being seen as someone that’s not responsive enough.”  The surface level truth was that I was frustrated with them.  The deeper truth was about my own struggle.  

And there’s a big difference between our “honesty” about someone else and our full honesty about what’s really going on with us.  When we hear about someone’s struggle with us, our defenses often go up.  But understanding more about their struggle – their insecurity, pain, or fear – usually causes the opposite reaction.  We end up more deeply understanding the other person, and feeling more deeply connected to them. 

This is what we see in our team intensives - that the deepest level of honesty usually reveals new truths about ourselves and our experience - not about someone else.  And yet, when teams work on becoming more honest, they sometimes focus on the types of courageous conversations that are had with each other.  Those are so important, but they’ll also be incomplete when people haven’t had the chance to be more honest with themselves first.  

We’re in the process of scheduling team intensives for the spring and summer and I want to share why I think they’re so powerful - because it opens an opportunity for teams that they’ve usually never had before - an extended chance to bear witness to each other’s individual journeys.  Team members get to explore things about their leadership experience in each other’s presence, and share things about their own experience in an environment where no one will try to “fix” it.  We get to see people unburden themselves with their colleagues, and to feel the power of simplying sharing some fear or self-doubt that they’ve been carrying for months (or longer).  

Incredible things happen when people feel safe to share and there’s no expectation of responding or doing something with it.  We’ve seen team members share their fear of dissapointing their leader, and leaders share their fear of letting someone down.  We’ve seen a team member tell a colleague that they’ve worked with for years that they’ve never fully understood them until this moment.  Almost always, teams leave the experience not just feeling so much closer to their teammates but understanding them so much better.  And that can change everything.  Not only will the courageous conversation be easier, it may not even be necessary. 

If reading this speaks to your heart, let’s start a conversation about an intensive with your team this spring or summer.