Trying to Deliberately Develop? Take Advice from the Baby Fern Fronds
Throughout my career, I have experienced my own challenges in the leadership development or the personal development space. Personally, I had spent years reading books on leadership, creating personal development plans with my managers, working with therapists and talking through my problems, going on leadership retreats, etc.
I always gained really clear insights, but when I went back to work, although improving marginally, I was recreating the same negative behavioural patterns — always getting stuck in similar corners, leadership challenges, feeling hurt by the same types of people, feeling anxious in the same types of scenarios, overworking, burning out.
After spending years arming myself with more intellectual knowledge, highlighting and “working on” my weaknesses, and building trusted relationships within the teams and organizations I worked with, I never felt like I was able to show up in radically new ways. I could touch my growth edge and perhaps push it a bit, but aside from gaining more credibility and positive reputation at work and a promotion here or there, I would find myself back in the same cycles of limiting beliefs and uncomfortable feelings in the same situations.
I always viewed my weaknesses as something that needed fixing. Like I was a software program that I could de-bug the code for, so that the program runs smoother. That I could dig into my weaknesses, measure, analyze and improve them. Over time, the bugs would be fixed, I would be a more effective leader, this would improve other’s opinions and views of me, and I would be rewarded accordingly. It was like my development and leadership capacity would follow the linear increasing pattern that my career would.
Fast forward to the most recent few years. Given that I know and understand my lens of these topics will evolve, expand and change, I thought I would offer a new metaphor to which I view leadership and the personal/professional development space.
But first, I want to tell you about the Koru, the Maori term for the unfurled silver tree-fern, or baby fern, I would like to say. Every year in the spring, you can witness the spiral shapes of the Koru, emerging and unfurling from the tops of the fern trees. Over the course of weeks, the fronds uncoil gracefully until the beautiful, perfect, green fern is complete and fully unraveled in all its glory.
There have been different ways and in different times that I have felt nourished and have been able to unfurl. Here are a few examples.
1) I had mentors and managers who were highly supportive in creating spaces for me to take risks and try new things,
2) the system I was working in supported, incentivized and at times even invested in my own exploration, learning and development, and
3) when I started getting out of my head and learned to listen to my heart and the rest of my body through various forms of meditation and Somatic Experiencing trauma therapy.
Essentially, this has been all about putting the mirrors up for myself to my internal world and feeling and sensing into that and learning to trust it.
I like to think that we all are more like ferns at different stages of unfurling. While the ferns are nourished by their trees and the sun over time, we need support as well, in our development and learning, but more importantly, in our whole being, as we move forward though life.
What gifts of nourishment have you received?
What are the people in your life that have created the space for you unfurl?
