Learning about leadership in the light and shade of loss
Grief is raw and unforgiving. There is nowhere to hide, little or no escape. It is messy, and it is unpredictable. It is about love and togetherness, as much as it about the haunting loss of love and the aching sense of aloneness. In my lived experience, grief is all of these things.
My husband, Jim, died of leukaemia in February 2020, a few weeks before the Covid-19 pandemic struck the UK. Early on it felt like the pandemic was stealing my time to grieve because suddenly things no longer felt ‘normal’, for all of us. Yet for me, things were already never going to be normal again. When Jim died, I lost the man I love. I also lost my sense of identity as the lifelong partner of someone who loved me, heard me, and who could support and challenge me kindly with worldly wisdom and wit.
My experience of loss and grief is making me face up to who I am on my own and it’s leading me to think out loud and speak out more boldly. It is showing me how much the light is shaped by the shade; something which Jim spoke about and embodied through the gentle power of his singing voice, and through the insightful poetry of his lyrics (he was a talented singer and song-writer). Now I see, feel, and hear that light and shade wherever I go. It seems to have a particular resonance during these extraordinary pandemic days, in the raw messiness of our shared and differing experiences. The paradox of utter despair juxtaposed with hope and a sense of possibility.
What has my experience of loss got to do with leadership?
A year ago Jim spoke with frank curiosity about how I might spend the rest of my life. It was hard to hear that at the time. But living with grief, through the pandemic, has made me question more about purpose and making a difference. I’ve reflected with a growing sense of unease about the nature of leadership, and the influences on my leadership development practice. It’s made me think harder about what working relationally really means, and why it’s so important.
The experience of loss is threading its way through our individual and collective lives, and it seems to be evoking a growing sense of injustice, and a desire for social change. There has been much said and written about ‘we can’t go back to how it was’; although sustaining this spirit has felt tough at times over the unfolding months of the pandemic. While the inequities which beset our society pre-date the pandemic, it has undoubtedly exposed and highlighted them more starkly. It feels to me now that the focus of leadership must be on understanding and acting on these inequities. And I mean leadership in the broadest collective sense, not the hierarchical power vested in a number of senior individual leaders at the top our organisations.
I find my attention being drawn more towards how we connect in our communities, and how we develop more meaningful relationships both across society, and across the boundaries created by our organisations. I already believed in an approach to developing leadership which has at its heart relationships and a sense of community; the experience of the pandemic and of loss has underlined its necessity. Developing this kind of leadership depends on how prepared we each are to bring our whole self into our work, and into how we make a collective contribution. This takes openness, trust, courage, and a preparedness to be vulnerable. No one can make us do that; and no one else can do it for us. We each need to find our own way to do it, to find our own voice.
Over this year, I could not have practiced honestly and completely, as a coach and as a facilitator of leadership development, if I had not been prepared to voice my own experiences of grief and loss. Coming to terms with Jim’s sudden illness through leukaemia, and his death, is a big part of me and my story. Grief has cast its shadow and caused me to question what really matters, and how I am in the world.
In the shade of adversity, reach for the light of connection
The evidence of local community and organisational responses to the pandemic demonstrates powerfully that we have the skills, know-how, and experience we need for change across the system, throughout our communities, and in our organisations. But they aren’t vested in one person, or group of leaders, at the top of the hierarchy. Those skills and assets are across our communities, spread throughout our teams, and at all levels of our organisations. Earlier I argued that the focus of leadership is to hold in mind equity. Building on this point, the ‘task’ of collaborative leadership is surely to embrace the diversity of lived experience, skills, knowledge, and intelligence across our communities. It further means trusting that the ‘answers’ lie in our collective knowledge, skills, and insights — and that these ‘answers’ might necessarily be messy and imperfect.
Over the months of the pandemic I have travelled nowhere, and yet I have learned so much from the breadth of connections I have made through social media and other networks. I have learned from leaders of social enterprises whose entrepreneurial spirit, boldness, and deep local relationships are contributing so much support in their communities. I have learned from leaders in local authorities and health services who have found their way around long-standing barriers, quietly got on with reshaping services, and are making the essential connections with people who need help and support. I have become more aware of the impenetrable jargon that we all slip into at times, and to the consequences of the labels we apply a bit lazily and indiscriminately, even if with the best of intentions, e.g. “the vulnerable”, the “hard to reach”, “patients” and “carers”. I have paid more attention to people who are calling out the inhumane consequences — even if unintended — of our systems, and who are seeking to re-humanise them through relational and radical kindness.[i]
Bringing this into an approach to developing leadership, I believe that creating connections, deepening our relationships, and developing a sense of community are essential to our learning. And we do this by sharing openly something of ourselves, our vulnerabilities and fears as much as (if not more than) by working on our skills, knowledge, and ideas. By being prepared to listen to others, without leaping to conclusions and judgements, or rushing to any quick solutions.
The more glossy and neatly bounded we make our ‘programmes’ of leadership development, the more we risk diverting our attention from the deep work we each need to do, and the more we risk obscuring the path to our collective contribution to our communities, and as a part of society. I think ‘leadership development’ needs to reflect the messiness of our context, take place in the ‘live work’, and have a sense of community and relationships at its heart. I am not dismissing the importance of learning about the theoretical leadership models and practical frameworks; but while they might point a way, they should not be the point. And I believe that we need to draw on wider and more eclectic sources of thinking and ways of looking at the world, including the arts and philosophy, to help us make sense of what’s happening in the world around us, and our part in it.
What if we spent more time meeting each other as human beings?
Leadership is about much more than a formal role or position in a hierarchy. In fact I would assert that more of our focus should be on the leadership which is happening in, and along with, communities. It’s about making connections across the system; convening and contributing to the conversation, rather than directing or controlling it. And it is about embracing a breadth of understanding, rather than relying just on professional expertise and technical solutions.
To be truly alongside each other in our communities, we need to understand more about what really matters to each of us, our perceptions of purpose, and our areas of concern. The light and the shade, if you will. Only then can we all rethink what is happening in public and third sectors, and consider whether it is all still fit for purpose. And that all comes back to creating connections, listening to each other, and to building relationships as people first. What if we were to seek to understand and work alongside each other, and get past the boundaries and different languages and ‘rules’ we have created in different parts of the system — and which so get in our way?
Over this past year I have heard so many people say how much they need more space to think, to try and make some sense of what’s happening, to listen and to be listened to. Through my involvement in creating spaces for listening alongside others, I have had the opportunity to experience and learn even more about the power of listening.[ii] I have directly experienced both the restorative power of being listened to, and the magic of learning from hearing other people’s experiences and perspectives. Being heard, and not ‘rescued’, has been a lifeline. It has enabled me to sit with the pain and discomfort, and to find my own insights quietly and in my own time; after all there is no easy fix to grief.
It might sound deceptively simple, yet it is far from easy. It has the potential to be deep and meaningful; it can also be raw and unsettling. That’s precisely when we can be most open to the learning. And, I am increasingly interested in how and where we have meaningful conversations about purpose, how we value each other’s perspectives, and how we both disagree respectfully and reach agreement with each other. This is all the work of leadership, and it has to be integral to how we develop our leadership too.
As a facilitator developing leadership, I see my role as being alongside the group, rather than casting myself or being cast into the role of expert imparting or prescribing a certain body of expertise or wisdom. I am learning all of the time, just as much as anyone else. And that learning has to start with, and continue to be informed by, who and how I am.
Coming back to where I started, being prepared to be open about my experience of grief and loss has been at times hard and painful. Yet, it has also shone a light for me on how much more we are able to work together openly and honestly if we are prepared to meet each other as people first. It helps us to stay open to understanding so much more about the challenges we are all facing in our lives.
With gratitude to all those who have been alongside me virtually, and truly listened to me, over the past ten months.
[i] For a perspective on relational and radical kindness see both the recent report from the Carnegie UK Trust, The Courage to be Kind, as well as the guest blog, The courage to be kind starts with how we listen, I co-wrote with Charlie Jones for the Carnegie UK Trust.
[ii] For more on the creation and experience of spaces for listening see the blog, Spaces for Listening, I co-wrote with Charlie Jones (@charlie_psych) as well as the commentary on Twitter by searching #SpacesForListening.
