Waiting, Expectantly and Sadly

Artist Credit- The Amazing Scott Erickson Scott Erickson Art

2020 is almost over.

Thank goodness.

In a year like no other, we have all experienced a kind of collective social and emotional trauma that leaves no one untouched. Life in our country has gotten harder for almost everyone. There are millions out of work, food for many is scarce. Those who can work are being stretched to the very limit of their capacity. The fabric of our society is thin, fragile and tearing in many places. Our systems and structures, the things on which we rely for order, are being threatened and dismantled. Some of this is hard and some of it is good, necessary and overdue. Racial and ethnic inequities, long ignored and dismissed by many, are slowly and awkwardly being addressed—may we see this continue. Unhealthy and destructive power structures are being exposed, are slowly and awkwardly being dismantled—may we see this continue too.

For most of us, these issues seem out of our control and ability to impact. And it causes us anxiety, stress and even alarm. There is much to be overwhelmed by in the world around us.

And as I have watched and stay connected to many friends and colleagues around the country, it seems this year has brought many of us great personal pain and heartache as well. I know this is true for me. I have navigated this year with dear friends who tragically lost a daughter to gun violence, a life taken too soon and senselessly. I have experienced my own young adult child wrestle with issues of identity and emotional health. I lost my oldest friend to a 30+ yearlong battle with cancer. Another dear friend is facing a diagnosis of chronic illness. Two of my closest friends have had grandchildren born with illnesses that may take years of interventions and surgeries to heal. Two others lost their adult children to suicide and another is dealing with mental illness in her teenager. The pain and heartache that touches me through these losses. both my own and those I love, feels very overwhelming these days.

How do we stay whole, even marginally sane, in the midst of these challenging times? I think we must really lean into lament, grace and gratitude. For it is here we can find flickering glimpses of hope.

 Lament, an ancient and often forgotten practice, is simply the ability to express grief and sorrow for something lost. Western culture is prone to dismiss or diminish lament. We do this in all kinds of ways.

• We compare our loss to someone else’s and discount that ours really matters.

• We shortcut our grieving in favor of activity and productivity.

• We suppress our painful emotions in an effort to lessen or deaden the pain.

• We resort to numbing activities—drinking, drugs, mindless binge-watching and binge eating.

But a healthy season of lament allows us to freely express our pain and sorrow and grief and then begin to come to a place of acceptance so that we can integrate and assimilate our suffering and move from a new, and stronger, place emotionally. 

In this season, this long Corona Virus winter, we have all lost something. And we must create space to lament. To grieve what we have lost. Not to become a victim of our circumstances, but to freely and righteously give voice to the emotional and often physical pain of our losses.

 Grace is the receiving of unmerited favor. When someone forgives you for an offense that caused them hurt or harm, they have extended grace. Being released from an obligation or debt that weighs heavy is an important form of grace as well. And in this season, I have come to believe that we must learn to give ourselves grace. We burden ourselves with obligations to ourselves and others that become difficult to achieve.

 Yes, you can give yourself grace, in small ways. You can create space in your day to breath, to work more slowly, to allow yourself to process your feelings, and to create space for things that are life-giving and restorative. Grace is also permission to release things—obligations, relationships, burdens we carry that are unhealthy. Grace is as necessary to our wellbeing as breathing.

Gratitude is a close cousin to Grace. It is the ability, even in the midst of terrible pain and hardship, to find that one thing that you can be grateful for—a good cup of coffee, a snuggle with your puppy, a ray of sunshine peeking through the clouds. And we know that when the mind processes gratitude, it actually changes something chemically in our brains, moves us forward with something we thought long lost—hope.

 In the Christian calendar, we are entering the season of Advent. The season of Hope.

We wait with hope and expectation for the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. He has been promised to us by the ancient prophets and so we wait, anticipating that yet unseen goodness.

 We know how the story turns out, and yet each year we mark these next 4 weeks with expectant hope. Why? Because I think we need the reminder, the remembrance, each year that there are often long seasons of waiting. Of lamenting. And of grace and gratitude. Life is marked by all of these seasons, however much we may want to avoid them. In the Christian tradition, there is no promise of healing or wholeness in the broken world of today. Only that all things will be reconciled to Him, Jesus, in the new heavens and the new earth. And that is our hope, in the now and the not yet of Shalom, Flourishing.

For today, we lament. We freely give and receive grace. And we seek out those things that we can be grateful for, even in the darkest of days.

This piece of art, part of the New Icons collection by Scott Erickson is a picture of this season, of pain and loss and expectant hope. Eve, our spiritual mother tethered to sin and brokenness, yet reaching towards the hope of the savior in the swollen belly of Mary. Sadness and Lament. Grace and Gratitude.

Here are some Advent Resources for you:

Honest Advent by Scott Erickson

Inner Work Webinar Wednesday December 2, 2020 2pm ET Register here

Justice, Whiteness and Voice

I see injustice, should I remain quiet?

“Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” Isaiah 1:17 NIV

This was the question posed and the Scripture reference that came with a request to write a devotional piece for the Made to Flourish Network last fall. Here is a link to the full post that I republished in February of this year.

Now, we are in a painful cultural moment as the trauma of black and brown bodies being brutalized, violated and murdered in our streets has hit a point of outrage and protest.

 As it should.

And there are questions that it has raised for those of us who are white and care deeply about race, equity and the Kingdom in our country.

One of the big questions, on which there are conflicting answers, is should white people be speaking up right now, or standing aside to create the space for the black voices that must be heard and responded to with real answers?

So far, I have not spoken. I am learning, I am listening, I have posted some things on social media in support of my brothers and sisters of color. I am pained and outraged by what I see, but I have not spoken.

In today’s Pittsburgh Post Gazette,  there was an article that convinced me that it is no longer ok for me to remain silent. Here is the quote that compelled to action from The Rev. Brian Edmonds of Macedonia Church in the Hill District:

“To my white brothers and sisters, I need you all … to help change the narrative. We need to you to be more than just physically here. We need you to be in the spaces where we are not,” speaking out on racial justice in corridors of power, “so that we won’t experience trauma on top of trauma.”

Reverend Edmonds, I don’t know you but I hear you. And I answer.

As a white Christian, a follower of Jesus, the brown skinned messiah who called us to care for the most vulnerable, the oppressed, the marginalized, I have no choice but to answer.  The instruction from Isaiah is most useful here again:

We must Learn- that means listening with empathetic ears

We must Defend- that means we must speak up for those who have no voice or power

We must take up the Cause of the Fatherless and plead the Case of the Widow

We must SEEK JUSTICE

This requires anyone who has power, because of their (white) skin color, their position of authority, their office, to SPEAK OUT. But to speak from a place of humility and courage.

This is our collective calling. My own pastor, Terry Timm, preached this today in a brilliant sermon The Ministry of Reconciliation: To Pray, To be Present and To Participate.

 And here is what I know from experience, you may pay a cost. I did. Speak out anyway. Participation is not optional.

Two years ago I spoke up for equity around race and gender. I spoke for myself as a woman and created space for a dear black sister to speak as well. We shared our experiences (not to be compared, please don’t read that) but because living and working as a (white) woman in a paternalistic Christian culture yields one kind of pain. Living as a black woman in the same culture which is also largely white yields a whole different kind of pain, of trauma. My sister called it “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome”. For her, and many others, it is exhausting and is constantly re-traumatizing.

“trauma on top of trauma.”

 I did this at an event I curated for a largely white audience. I got skewered.

• I was accused of being a Marxist on the path to Socialism. I am neither a Marxist or Socialist.

• I was accused of being ‘outside a biblical world view’. I adhere to a deeply biblical orthodoxy, while admittedly not a scholar.

• I was told I was drawing from Critical Race Theory. At the time, I had no idea what that was, but will tell you now I do not believe in CRT. Exchanging one oppressed people group for another is not what I understand to be biblically grounded. That said, we might learn some things from CRT in this moment that would be useful. (This piece on CRT written for the Anglican Compass by Esau McCaulley a few weeks ago is helpful.)

And I would do it all again, WILL do it all again. Because I must and so must you.

So go to work, to learn and listen. The resources available are abundant right now. You can start with the NYT bestseller list this week.

Speak up, speak out. Leverage your cultural power to give voice to those who have less than you do, especially in rooms where they are not present or represented.

 And be ready. It may be costly. For as Bonhoeffer also said,

“Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.”

For those of us who hold power, simply because of our skin color, now is the time to steward that power. What place do you occupy that you could speak up on behalf of others in more effectively? What risk can you take?We all need to take responsibility. Are you ready? Now is the time for speaking up and taking action. Let’s go to work.

The Fictitious road Named “Return to Work”

As I work with leaders around the country, I am paying careful attention to both the words being used as well as the intent behind those words. 

“When we get back to work…” or “When we can get back to normal…” is a common refrain.

These words and the thinking behind them are troubling to me. The idea that we are simply going to return to work, that some kind of switch will flip that has us back in pre- March 15 conditions is not grounded in reality. 

This week, I was invited to do an interview for TechVibe, the weekly radio broadcast of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. (Listen in: Part I and Part II of the interview, broadcast 5/6/20 on PGH 1020 AM KDKA)

The discussion was both sobering and hopeful as we talked about the need for every organization to re-imagine themselves as a startup, and what will be required as we enter the next chapter of what will be multi-chapter story. This post was crafted to support and offer resources the broadcast as you navigate this with your organization.

If your business or organization has not already begun a drastic examination of your strategies and tactics with a bias to throw much of it out or radically re-think it, then you may have work to do.

On March 15th, self-described "medical detective,’ Dr. Michael Osterholm, author of the 2017 book "Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs," and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota said in an interview that quickly went viral,

 “This is not going to be like a Minnesota blizzard. . . we're talking about something that I call a coronavirus winter.”

Colleagues at Praxis Labs, an entrepreneurial incubator and accelerator in NYC, took this metaphor and built on it a few days later in an excellent essay called Leading through the Blizzard: Why Every Organization is Now a Startup.

They assert that while the current environment is like a blizzard, with hostile conditions and little safety; we will soon be entering the winter, where you can go outside, but not for long and not without protective gear, knowing that the threat of another blizzard is imminent. This mode of operating is focused on survival. They extended the metaphor to propose that what follows winter may be something like a mini Ice-Age where previous conditions don’t return, but we begin to find new ways to live and even thrive. The need is to innovate and begin rebuilding.

The economic and medical experts are also looking at the impacts on the global economy and their early comments are sobering.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb*, former FDA commissioner indicated early on that ‘it would be unwise to expect a full economic recovery until a reliable vaccine can be developed that will give people peace of mind about returning to normalcy — and that is at least a year or more off.

"Absent that, this is going to be an 80% economy," Gottlieb said in an interview on CBS's "Face the Nation" over the weekend (April 5)” Article here. 

A more recent Economist article, The 90% economy that lockdowns will leave behind, suggests a pullback of 10%.

By comparison, the economic pullback during 2008-2009 was approximately 4.5%.

*Note: Gottlieb is one of the key authors of  National Coronavirus Response; A Roadmap To Reopening published by the American Enterprise Institute on March 28, 2020 and Public Health Principles: Guidance for Governors Reopening published on April 17, 2020 by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Either way, returning to work as it existed in early March is not a viable option. We can’t return to something that no longer exists, that has been forever changed.

In my work with leaders and their teams, I am seeing them come to terms with the new realities that are slowly emerging. Here are a few that have been thematic. While this list is not exhaustive and will continue to grow, it does provide some insight into the conditions- winter and even ice age- that we are facing in businesses and workplaces.

• Remote working and virtualization have been normalized- people will want flexibility and safety as they return to workplaces, including more protected workspaces. And they will want to continue to work from home more often, knowing now that it is possible and even desirable.  

• The predictions for an 80-90%’ economy indicate a strong recession or even depression for the next 18-24 months.

• The social and political climate is increasingly polarized and tribal. People find themselves on a continuum and there are real tensions to navigate. Example: Stay at Home v. Restart the Economy (hint: it is neither and both). Most of these positions are not binary and we, as leaders, will be navigating in the gray uncertainty as we make decisions. We need to be prepared for people who represent the extremes and everything in between.

• New and emerging policies, regulations, and guidelines will have huge implications for workplaces. Federal, state and local governments are all working on policies and legislation that may be helpful, or create more roadblocks, to both safety and economic activity. How we respond to the ones that affect our businesses will make a great deal of difference in the overall health of our organizations.

• The level of anxiety and stress—mental and emotional health—that our people are experiencing is unprecedented. We have experienced a kind of Collective Social Trauma that will take time to recover from. And workplaces must be prepared for the implications of this for their people and organization. 

However, there are signs of real hope. While this season will be hard and present new, unprecedented challenges, opportunities will emerge that have enormous potential, we can do much to be prepared. Here are a few critical shifts needed.

• From Return to Work to Realign to Work- leaders must do some deep empathetic listening to their people to discern where they need to re-imagine work flow, work environment and workplace habits and requirements, while also considering new regulations that must be considered. (Note: Salesforce has just launched a platform Work.com with tools and resources - worth reviewing)

• From Guiding Principles to Grounding Principles- identifying core values or guiding principles has been a key part of building healthy organizational cultures in recent years. And while in theory these should be timeless, they must be reexamined and redefined for the new conditions. Some of your deeply held assumptions about your business are likely no longer valid and unless you dig deep to excavate them, examine them and then adjust, you will be stuck in past that is no longer viable.

• From Employee Engagement to Employee Well Being- Engagement is not possible if employees don’t feel safe and are anxious and stressed. More important than ever will be the need for leaders to create conditions for social cohesion, meaningful contribution and most importantly, high trust. These three elements are the hallmarks of organizational health and social well-being. Ensuring that this is present in your team or organization is of primary importance. You must be trustworthy, now more than ever

• From Problem Solving to Sense Making- we can’t fix this problem. Navigating in complexity must be the muscle that leaders build right now. Traditional decision making and problem-solving methods will limit your ability to respond to the opportunities that begin to emerge. Complexity requires a very different framework and road map that includes:

  • Listening and probing first, not jumping to categorizing and analyzing

  • Abductive reasoning, not just inductive or deductive.

  • Thick Data, not just Big Data, that leads to Rich Data.

  • Emerging Practices (future oriented) , not Best Practices (past oriented).

To make these shifts will require interventions in all of your existing systems. The mindset will take some time to step into. This is a radical shift from problem solving. Deep listening requires empathy and a slower pace that will feel counter intuitive right now when there is a sense of urgency on all fronts. To reason abductively is to observe and then make simple moves based on a set of observations, even when the data seems incomplete. When you begin to add some discipline to the observation process, and build a simple system for gathering stories and experiences that will help you to see patterns emerge, that is the collection of ‘Thick Data’ that will inform how you interpret and make sense of the patterns. That helps you to develop enabling practices- the re-purposing or co-opting of one model or system or process or product for a new use it was not designed for. This is the heart of innovation. Without making these difficult but necessary shifts, you and your organization are at real risk for rubber-banding back to obsolete ways of doing things.

The danger of simply rubber-banding back to pre-pandemic norms is that you will extend the trauma and pain your people are already experiencing and will have profound impact on productivity, innovation and effectiveness. Rather you must be creating new conditions to realign around that create safety, possibility and hope.

If you are relying primarily on what you know and what has worked in the past, you may find yourself and your organization in dangerous territory. Our work at Tamim Partners is to provide conditions for the grounded growth leaders require if they are choosing to work at the edge of complex change. Which is where we are today, right at the edge.

If this has sparked interest in you, or discomfort that you want to explore, please set up a 30-minute discovery call to see if we might be the right navigational advisor and guide  for your leadership journey.

Leading from Betwixt and Between

There is a marvelously breathtaking moment when we watch the trapeze artist flying through the air as she releases one swing and looks suspended, seemingly weightless, high above the ground before she reaches to grab onto the next swing or the hands of her partner.

While it fascinates us to watch, we are also experiencing a myriad of reactions. Some cover their eyes, unable to bear the tension for fear she will fall to the net below. Others sit forward in their seats, holding their breathe with anticipation and excitement. Still others laugh or cry out, wanting to join the moment. It evokes emotion in all of us, however fleeting, for in some way we have all experienced such a moment in our lives. It is the space in between.

In my freshman year of college, I took my first anthropology course and fell in love with the study of cultures and how people lived and worked together in communities and societies. I could not know then, some 30 + years ago, that my work would lead me into a unique space where I now work and serve clients and their teams. Victor Turner, one of the brilliant anthropologists I studied in the 1970’s, calls this space the betwixt and between, the liminal space. It is a place of paradox and uncertainty. A place of tensions and creativity. 

Liminality is defined as relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process or occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

Right now, we are collectively living in liminal space. We are at the initial stage of a process and standing at a threshold. It is a remarkably uncomfortable space and as I interact with leaders around the country, I am seeing a wide range of responses.

Here are 4 I offer for consideration:

• The Commander- this leader is operating from a command center. He is rallying the troops, making fast decisions and centralizing as much of the organizational operations as possible in order to manage and control the environment and the outcomes.

• The Strategist- this leader is mapping scenarios of all possible implications for next steps. She has teams of people dedicated to spreadsheet projections and white boards of plans, prepared to move in one direction or another based on some yet to be known bit of input or data.

• The Historian- this leader is oriented towards what they already know and reference the past often. “Here is what we did in a like situation…” (hint: there IS not a like situation in our current environment). He is committed to the assumption that things will ‘return to normal’ and that norms and behaviors will simply rubber band back to how things have been historically.

• The Navigator-this leader is listening and learning, entering the place of not knowing, and looking for the signs and signals that will indicate the right next step to take. She is empowering her people to make decisions and choices at their threshold, keeps lines of communication wide open and gathering rich data to support the next course correction and adjustment. She is leading in liminality.

In times of uncertainty, there is a place for all 4 of these leaders to show up. When things are chaotic, the Commander offers needed central control to bring order and set direction so people can be responsive to the environment. The Strategist can offer options to address complicated problems and defined solutions to presenting challenges. The Historian can reference the past and pull forward solutions that have worked in the past that may offer valuable insight for the present.

But over the long haul, in this long winter season we are entering, it is the Navigator who will likely be the most effective leader. She will recognize the time and place for all 4 archetypes to bring their best. She does not assume she has to be all 4, but rather can access and call forth what is needed from the others in ways that serve the team, the organization and the world.

Leading from between, from the liminal space, is what is needed now. Becoming that leader is a hard, but worthy pursuit.

Theologian and philosopher Richard Rohr describe it this way in his new biannual literary journal Oneing.

“Liminal space enables us to see beyond ourselves to the broader and more inclusive world that lies before us. When we embrace liminality, we choose hope over sleepwalking, denial, or despair. The world around us becomes again an enchanted universe.”

In these #CoronaTimes, it is hard to imagine the world as an enchanted universe. There is pain and yet healing. There is death and yet life. There is suffering and yet joy. There is despair and yet hope.

Tamim Partners offers a place for grounded growth to those Navigating leaders who are embracing the challenging space of complex change. Please reach out today for a 30 minute consultation to explore your readiness to undertake this journey.