Being online.
On making shared meaning and some pointers for leadership
We have So. Much. To. Do. Most of us former office-dwellers are overscheduled, trying to fix things, at home and at work which is the same thing now somehow. We know how to do things. What we struggle with is how to be, here, now. With ourselves and with each other. Whatever “here” looks like. A lot of our play spaces or spaces for free-flowing interaction have gone, interactions are limited and there are rules. As we do the doing, we focus less on finding new ways to keep these interactions as some of our work and life situations had to adapt.
Meetings are less about, well, meeting each other now. They are about lists, about Getting Stuff Done. This is “doing” territory and, more than ever, there are points to be scored. There is also a space where we just are. Being. Not doing. For ourselves as we go inwards, and with other people, in that magical ebb and flow that we call a really good conversation. Places where we make meaning together. We seem to be losing these spaces right now as we muddle our way through 2020 and all its demands of what needs to be done, shifted, transformed, requiring a growing list of stakeholders that have no bandwidth.
The “being” space looks suspiciously NOT like work. Your software will think you are idle if you haven’t touched your keyboard or moved your mouse, and surveillance software might track aspects of your doing in the illusion that doing is the only way humans have impact.
When we meet in this setup, silence is a flaw, when someone stops moving or speaking or doing and “just is”, we assume the connection has gone. And by “connection” we mean the Wi-Fi. To what extent do we allow ourselves to explore beyond bullet points and sound bites? Beyond the over-rehearsed story-arcs of appropriately calibrated self-disclosure?
We are colluding in running this simulation of a productive work environment and we make all our KPIs (Or Else). And, with all our efforts, we lost. We don’t get to see and hear each other think as much as we used to. Witnessing an idea make contact with another human, rippling through their face and body, sinking down into their minds and hearts, the silence until it lands, almost audibly. And then it sits there for a while, as we sit there for a while. Being.
These slow, undulating rhythms of good conversations. Thoughts that pop up, go for a little wander, look around, and lay back down again. Or run headfirst into a brick wall, then get back up and dust off their knees. Or find another thought, get curious about each other and start dancing with each other.
What we are missing right now is joint meaning-making. Witnessing another person think and feel. With our entire being, bodies and all. Having the time and space for that. For the thinking to slow down, to drop a level deeper. And then another one. And another one. Connection, beyond time and space, and the magic this can bring into the world if we just let it. Where does this go right now?
We have all been crisis-managing in some shape or form, and in many ways we still are. We are good at that, that’s why we have to be here, right NOW because we have STUFF to DO. At the same time, most of the transformation and shifts all start in the Being space, these places nourish our minds and hearts and enable joint acts of creation. The new ideas that emerge after these thoughts have danced, have had dinner and some quality time with each other. That magic is why we want to be here, as humans, that’s what we are longing for. That is the bit that is missing.
A lot of the conversations that crowd our calendars never wanted to be meetings anyway. Now the deeper interactions seem to be shielding somewhere else — without us and our busy proliferations. We seem to have lost the time and space for these shared interactions. This isn’t yet another zoom rant or whatever platform gets to house your waking hours. This is about our intention, our needs and what we do with them. Creating and holding a space where we are heard when we don’t know what we want to say yet. The gnarly human stuff. The space where complexity gets untangled. The space where we make sense of what is happening with us, and how we want the new world to be. The gloriously human stuff. The hitching post for shifts and transformations. This is about bringing these spaces back, and that is the big invitation for leadership right now.
In times of crisis, we want answers. Answers make us feel better. So when we get asked a question, we fire back an answer, leading by telling. The more educated we are, the more tools we have to make that look good and to turn it into a way of scoring points in a competition of our own making. We read the agenda and the PowerPoint and we came prepared, ready to fill each space with rows of bullet points to make reality feel more contained than it actually is. It feels so nice and orderly, and yet it doesn’t make things better. And we know it, deep down we know it. Nobody calls it.
A lot of this could have been an email. Presence-in-absence as an extra load, empty calories nourishing no one. Quantitative reasoning for questions that don’t even know what sort of question they wanted to be yet, now conveniently stunned into submission. It was just a thought. It wasn’t that important. Nevermind. It doesn’t have a clear outcome. As if anyone had the sort of clarity we crave right now. Let’s be honest.
When we don’t get seen, parts of us never bother showing up. And then we don’t feel seen, and that hurts. We deliver our bullet points, our insights, our updates. 19 min into our meeting, passionately discussing point 4 on the agenda — we were never truly here. What shape is that emptiness?
Most of our quantitative metrics will not capture that kind of presence or absence in a way that matters. At least not right away, as your team barometer starts dipping and as you start filling lunch breaks with more resilience webinars. You might sense it somehow, but that won’t have a place to go.
In the long run, we want those missing parts back. We are pretty good at the Doing already, most of us built mighty fine careers on that. We need more of the Being, and more of the dancing between the two.
That connection between being and doing, that liminal in-between and how we make that a thing will be how we make change, how we rebuild, how new things happen. It’s what good leadership needs to invite and support. This is how we will keep each other’s spirits alive through all of this. From a distance and incredibly close. Being, when we allow it, feels closer than doing, and that scares us a little at first.
In a conversation that truly connects, we won’t remember much about what texture the walls were that provided that space, nor how the air smelled that carried the sound, so don’t make platforms or our current situation the excuse. Instead, let’s make that the starting point from which we explore this together. Step by step, we can start wooing all those other parts of us to come and rejoin us in here. We all can lead by holding more space for this. In the Being.
This doesn’t require thought-leaders as we knew them. In that space, we need thought-hosts, thought-spacebuilders, thought-baristas and thought-chefs so that all the thought-sharers and thought-witnesses are well looked after. That, too, is leadership. You haven’t frozen. Your connection is holding.
