"What would you do for your people?"
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This morning, I woke up by the sound of rain. Saigon hasn't been scorching for months, and finally the rainy season seems to begin.
It was too good of an invitation. I wanted to go and just screamed in the rain like I used to do, but I was staying in a hotel in the city center for a project.
I was doing work. Work that I care about. Work that matters. Work that I've gladly signed up for.
But still.
Still, there is that longing to merge the ecstasy of belonging to the Earth with the work.
Somewhat miraculously, someone at the same time posted on FB a poem by Mary Oliver that struck me.
Blossom
"In April
the ponds open
like black blossoms,
the moon
swims in every one;
there’s fire
everywhere: frogs shouting
their desire,
their satisfaction. What
we know: that time
chops at us all like an iron
hoe, that death
is a state of paralysis. What
we long for: joy
before death, nights
in the swale - everything else
can wait but not
this thrust
from the root
of the body.
[...]
when the ponds
open, when the burning
begins the most
thoughtful among us dreams
of hurrying down
into the black petals
into the fire,
into the night where time lies shattered
into the body of another."
The poem itself is bursting with life. Something rose up in my chest, like waves touching dam. Something had to come out. I wrote on a napkin.
"I don't want to separate life and work and love."
The life force is there, in the work, in the love. It's all here.
As I wrote before in You Belong Here, belonging has many different dimensions. Crafting a work we love, finding significant one(s) we love and living a life that is full of love. Those are much needed.
Yet even more than those dimensions, we must remember the pre-conceptual, almost primordial sense of belonging we all were given.
We Belong Here.
We are already in the Love.
"What would you do for your people?"
Lesson on asking good question
Even Samuel Jackson is amused...
On a different note, I’ve been officially apprenticing under MindKind Institute for a while (and unofficially for even longer under Dr Home who has played many roles as a mentor, teacher, boss and fun-to-be-around friend). This series is to document some of the rich lessons and reflection from this joyous and rewarding journey. Some of it will be about coaching, some about business and I hope all will be about life in one way or another.
As a note, while I try to articulate as much as I can, I’m aware that much of the learning comes from direct transmission — that which cannot be named. Enjoy!
“What are you willing to do for your people?”
We were in a conference call with the leaders of a fast-growing company that is undergoing through major change. They need some help with preparing the team to achieve the daunting goals ahead.
It was the first time we talked, so the conversation was about checking out and getting to know each other. It was pretty nerve-wrecking for me even as an official observer.
Dr Home was calmly asking question about how each person saw the current situation, repeating his understanding of what he heard and continued to probe for more.
At the same time, they were also getting to know us and learning whether what we offer would be a good fit. The implicit question was what kind of things can we do for them. My hunch was that they were seeing us as potential vendor and checking out our services.
There was a little pressure to give people what they want to hear and to move things forwards. On our end, Dr Home was not giving into much answering at all. It even felt a bit like dodging the question, somewhat like “Before I could answer your question about what we do, let me ask you a few more questions to really understand what you are going through first”.
There was an element of wanting to make sure that the potential client would be best served. This was a good example positioning as an expert, for only the experts know enough to care about the nuances of the situation.
Then he did what I considered to be a brilliant move. Instead of explaining too much about what he could do for them, he asked:
“What are you willing to do for your people?”
Silence followed for a few seconds, punctuating the conversation a big bass note. Then one person started to speak, and then everyone opened up and shared more. Even I perked up my ears to notice more than just taking notes on what people were saying. Something has clearly shifted.
You know that feeling after the blah blah blah intro conversation when a turning point happens and you start to get really drawn into it? That was the moment. The conversation reached a new depth and became so much more nourishing and delicious.
Lesson #1: Reframing “sales conversation”
First, from the sale perspective, by turning the question around, we were holding firm to our position as expert facilitator, not vendor selling standardized services. It is staying true to our power.
While this may seem more about sales at first, to me it is really about demonstrating leadership. As Blair Enns of Winning Pitching said in this interview: “The sales is the sample.” How else does one start to find out about how you will lead but in the sales?
Sales is about guiding the prospect through the mutual process of exploring how they could be best served. It means that we have to be as non-attached as possible to the outcome, which sometimes may not be a Yes. At any point, the question for any self-reflective person doing the sales is “Am I pursuing the truth of what is the best thing for us now or am I mostly caving into the impulse to give the clients what they want?”
In hindsight, the question “What are you willing to do for your people?” also serves an important filtering function as we see if the client is a good fit.
In seeing how comfortable are people in talking about this commitment, we also gauge whether they value and care enough about the important personal work rather than just fixing business problem. Clearly, we want to work with the former.
In our case, the answers we got made it clear that these were genuinely dedicated leaders whom we would like to work with. The point though is that it should become clear very quickly whether it’s a fit.
Learning #2: Ask about willingness
From the coaching perspective, you are already showing that you can “add value” by helping people reflect on their own commitment. What made it such a powerful moment, especially in front of a group of leaders like them is that the question was not so much a rhetorical and motivational one. It wasn’t the kind of “Don’t ask what the country can do for you but what you can do for your country”. Rather it was a genuine inquiry into the vulnerable matter of willingness. How many leaders dare to say “Well, I’m not that willing to do a lot for our people”?
Regardless of what kind of answer we get, the info is helpful. It will tell us not just about each person’s willingness but also the level of trust that exists among the team.
As you might know, one crucial coaching skill is to ask the right question. The question of willingness, as we also often ask within MindKind, is perhaps the first and most important one besides “Tell me about what’s happening?” If you lack the know-how or the capacity, we can help. Without the foundational willingness, well.. it may take a lot more work.
This question is also applicable in a context of a personal life coaching situation. “What are you willing to do for yourself?” Neither what you should be nor what you want to be, but are willing to do. The purpose of the question is to bring the attention of the client back to a place of centeredness rather than internalized expectation or unconscious desires.
Learning #3: that which cannot be named
If you want to takeaway something from this post, this one powerful question can be it. You can use it to assess where you and other people are at. But if you are still looking for more, let me invite you to go even deeper, to see what I saw.
Since I was supposed to be apprenticing, I can and may emulate how Dr Home asked that willingness question. Yet, while learning may involve emulation at first, this not about emulation. This is really about learning how to be awake. To bring nuanced, exquisite attention into what we experience and how we respond in the moment.
What is important here is not just a tactical bullet point or technique. You can imagine developing a chatbot that can ask you a bunch of questions (“if you answer this, I’ll ask you that”) For better or worse, it’s already happening. As I wrote this post, I was weary of reducing an entire complex experience into a nice soundbite too.
It’s not only about asking the right question but also at the right time, in the right manner, with the right intention. Right not in the sense of right vs wrong (which only reinforces the “holier-than-thou” dynamics of separation), but in the sense of being more and more attentive to is happening.
This kind of learning may seem subtle and gradual at first, but I know it’s eventually more powerful. To use a computer metaphor, it is not only installing new apps but also upgrading the entire Operating System. When I thought back of that moment Dr Home asked the question, I had to tell myself that it wasn’t just that moment but also an accumulation of years of experience, awareness and sensitivity.
It reminded me of a story about the late anthropologist Gregory Bateson who was giving a lift to a young hitchhiker who ended up turning a knife against him. As recounted by his then-10-year-old daughter Nora Bateson who was sitting at the backseat,
[My father] cheerfully looked down at the knife and then into the eyes of the hitchhiker and said in his most droll Englishness, “Well hello, what have we here?” My father began to ask him questions. How had he come to be in Big Sur? How had he found himself in such a muddle? Through these questions and, more importantly, the tone of the questions, my father was listening and learning about how someone can get in such a twist. He was not applying a psychological trick or a technique. This was not a manipulation. He was not ‘trying’ to calm the guy down. He was just interested, one human being to another. His curiosity in the young man was piqued, and his inquiry reflected that. He did not see a knife… he saw a person with a story.
The story still gave me goosebumps whenever I read it again. Our work is not just coaching or teaching mindfulness practices. The real work is to cultivate what Stephen Gilligan called “a skillful human presence”, a way of being that is so coherent that whatever he ends up doing serves the greater good.
This is a theme that I’d explore further in future posts, but for now it’s enough to say that I’m excited about the apprenticeship.
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Read the full post here on Medium.
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Quotes I'm contemplating this week
"Until I learn to love the brokenness in everything, I will not fix anything. Including myself"
This line came to me at the same time as the rain. I was happily exhausted. In the past I'd have pushed it to work harder, but now I'm so glad that the body was exhausted - it's an invitation to rest & love. Easy to say, hard to do, worth trying.
"I've seen the face of God a thousand times but never feel less awe." - Gibran Rivera
In this powerful interview, the renowned change facilitator Gibran Rivera talked about his motivation at work and how he can keeps going in those daunting projects facing a lot of resistance. It gives me the inspiration again that if in this time of complex change, we'll need to tap in and bring together all kinds of intelligence, including spiritual one.
"The people who are asking to be treated more human at work are also those creating the very dehumanizing technology of AI... how ironic is that?"
- Esther Perel in her talk at SXSW 2019. Provocative...
Lastly..
Such a lovely poem. Hear Mary Oliver recites here
Little Dog's Rhapsody in the Night
"He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I'm awake, or awake enough
he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.
Tell me you love me, he says.
Tell me again.
Could there be a sweeter arrangement?
Over and over
he gets to ask it.
I get to tell.”'
SO MUCH LOVE!!!
Khuyen
P/s: Do reach out for the Inner Critic Assessment or general conversations about life. I'd love to be of service when you get stuck.