In one of the management training groups, it could be seen that the managers had come together for the training because they had been organised and given no other choice.
There was a visible and perceived resistance to yet another management training course, an expectation of the topics to be covered, an attitude of ‘I already know’.
I was grateful to this group because they brought to the surface their own internal tensions, which many groups do not dare to bring to the surface, but which are there.
This training journey with the group ended with the participants commenting that they had never imagined that leadership training could be so deep and soul touching on a deep human level, where we dealt with the “root hole”, in addition to the superficial leadership issues.
Once the root canal has been done, most problems resolve completely without any action plan.
The pain goes away, whatever the pain is in that team or organisation.
Anyone who has had a root canal will know what that means.
I don’t know what I do that is so different from their previous experiences, but I do know that I talk less and less about leadership techniques and topics and more and more about being human – getting in touch with myself as a human being on a deep level.
At a root level, because people have not made themselves heard on the root level issues that affect their lives.
People don’t need new information, they can read all the practical and good stuff in a book, listen to a podcast or ask a ChatGPT.
But before you can get to any leadership topic, you need silence.
We can’t take in new information into the system if there is no emptiness, no silence, no purity.
If the system is facing resentment, frustration, irritability, stress, passive-aggressiveness, incomprehension, being locked in, new information will simply crash the system.
Burnout, loss of commitment, lack of accountability.
Increasingly, I see that people need a space to be listened to, understood and accepted by others and 𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐤õ𝐢𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐚 𝐩𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐭.
This is nothing new or revolutionary, but how much do we still give organisations this opportunity for people to just be listened to, in an empty, contained space.
How much do we, as a training commissioner, understand that there is no point in pouring new information into a stressed person because someone somewhere is stressed that someone else is not doing things well enough?
You have to deal with the emptying before you can do that, and that means having someone who will just listen and say that your emotions and thoughts are OK even if the organisation or the leader doesn’t like them.
Yes, that’s what the best HR people do, but shouldn’t it be standard that a person can be listened to?
Couldn’t we all be the best HR people for each other?
Only when I use the bridge between us and cross over into another person’s world, leaving my own world behind for a moment, does human contact occur.
Only in this way can I listen from the heart and be listened from the heart myself.
