Purposeful Spaciousness
This is not a post about De-Cluttering. I am no Marie Kondo. I wanted to share something I re- learned recently, while facilitating a session with a team going through a transition. It was a joy, and inspired me to reflect on any new ways I can apply this.
Taking a ‘balcony’ view for a moment - we have all a Ego Protection part of our brain. It’s instinctive and survival based. When I’m engaged by a client to do something I haven’t done before, haven’t done for a while, or haven’t done with them - it’s going to kick in .
Instinctively, it wants to impress. It’s attracted to content they have never heard before, to seeming smart, to packing a lot of important content into the time available.
It’s yammering nervously in the background, comparing, fretting, distracting me, wasting my time and is a source of stress when I don’t actively manage it. It has no wisdom, no memory of helpful previous experiences, of research about what’s most effective.
My wise self - the part of my brain where Big Picture perspective lives- has the sense of proportion and priority. It knows that people can’t take in more than one or two big ideas at a time. It knows that when facilitating a team, what’s most important is what’s already in the room - the experience, values, skills and perspectives of the people on the team.
When the Ego Protection spin began - the impulse to add more, and complicate - I remembered a mantra I used when I was doing my Coaching Practicum, and again when beginning as a Team Coach. Trust the People, Trust the Process and Trust Yourself. That quickly centred me again.
My job is to keep it simple and focused. Co - create with them a safe, open, creative and courageous space. And use one or two tools and frameworks that help them access their wise selves - rather than come from their own Ego Protection part ( we all have one).
Get out of their way so there is more room for their biggest ( most authentic, not most egotistical) selves to do their thing. Carve out maximum time for their thinking, reflecting, sharing, synthesizing, sorting and noticing. Focus on serving by helping them notice their thinking and their strengths. That’s the spaciousness I mean. Roominess in the agenda, lots of it and ignoring the inner voice that frets it seems ‘ scanty’ or says ‘ they don’t need me for that’. Yes they do - they need an outsider, fresh eyes, someone objective, with a few tools and experience.
That purposeful spaciousness - it’s magic. People are their most mature, creative, wise. They are impressed by each other, and by the power of the group. They see how much potential, experience, skill is present - significantly more than they realized . They are inspired.
Setting my goal and focus on having them impress themselves as a group leads to wonderful things. So much more potent than trying to be impressive myself.
I wonder - is there an area where you may default to ‘knowing best’ or ‘proving yourself’ where you could focus more on having someone/ a group impress themselves? Increase their self trust, their awareness, the recollection of how they’ve done challenging things before? I’ll be reflecting on that too.
