Blast From The Past: Daring Leadership Part 5

Show Notes:

We are continuing to re-share a "Blast from the Past" series that I did back in Season 1 of Behind the Line. It was one of my favourite series and I think really important content for those who may have missed it the first time. The series takes a look at Brené Brown's work in her book, Dare to Lead, and discusses applications to helping professions where it is absolutely IMPERATIVE that we improve leadership and systems, because they are hella broken. I hope you'll share this series with your sphere of influence and that together we can make it different...

Today’s episode covers the final aspect of daring leadership, following the work of Brené Brown in her book, Dare to Lead: Learning to Rise. This episode is all about how to handle the hard moments, and how to make them more fruitful for individuals and teams. The learning to rise process focuses on three main pieces: the reckoning, the rumble and the revolution. 

The reckoning: This is all about awareness – building our own awareness of when we’re stumbling into a problem or hard interactions, cultivating awareness of our emotions and needs, and preparing to rumble. It means getting clear with ourselves and curious with others.

The rumble: This is the process of confronting challenges together – not in a confrontational way, but rather in a collaborative one with shared curiosity and a willingness to acknowledge the stories we are telling ourselves in an effort the seek clarity and to disconfirm our conspiracies and confabulations. This is where we talk about SFD’s (shitty first drafts) and the story rumble process for teams.

Brené identifies three questions we should ask ourselves about our shitty first drafts:

1.      What more do I need to learn and understand about the situation? 

2.      What more do I need to learn and understand about the other people in the story? 

3.      What more do I need to learn and understand about myself? 

The revolution: This is an acknowledgement that participating in daring leadership skills, particularly those around rising, is revolutionary. It is culture shaping and transformative. 

During this episode I talked about a couple of Brené’s free online resources related to today’s topic, here they are (you can access these and other free resources from Brené here):

The Story Rumble Process (A Tool for Groups & Teams)

Dare to Lead Read Along Workbook (you can find exercises including the piece I mention about “permission slips” in here)
           
Episode Challenge:

Notice your SFD’s (shitty first drafts) in various parts of your life and try checking them out with the people in your life. “The story I’m telling myself is…”

Share this podcast with those you know who are in First Response & Front Line Work – emergency response workers, social services workers, healthcare workers, law enforcement workers, community support workers…the list goes on! Help us on our mission to support wellness and sustainability on the front lines.

Additional Resources:

If you haven’t yet, check out the free Beating the Breaking Point Indicators Checklist & Triage Guide to help you self-assess your experiences and exposure to burnout. Use this tool as information as you get honest with yourself about the impacts you have experienced – and start considering telling the story of your resilience as someone who has invested in their own wellness by looking into our Beating the Breaking Point Training Program designed for First Responders and Front Line Workers. You can grab the free indicators checklist here, and learn more about the training program here.

As discussed in todays’ episode, check out Brené Brown’s book Dare to Lead. You may also enjoy some of her other books, including Rising Strong; Braving the Wilderness; and Daring Greatly. These are some of my favourite books for personal development and wellness. She has a couple of other books that are also excellent, but if you’re new to her work, these are the ones I would highly suggest starting with.

Connect, Rate, Review, Subscribe & Share!

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Creators & Guests

Host

Lindsay Faas

Trauma Therapist, Host of Behind the Line, Educator & Advocate for First Responders & Front Line Workers, Owner & Director of ThriveLife Counselling & Wellness

What is Behind The Line?

Created for First Responders and Front Line Workers to tackle the challenges of working on the front lines. Dig into topics on burnout, workplace dynamics, managing mental health, balancing family life...and so much more. Created and hosted by Lindsay Faas, clinical counsellor and trauma therapist. View the show notes, and access bonus resources at https://my.thrive-life.ca/behind-the-line.

Hey front line friends, and welcome back to Behind the Line.
I’m your host Lindsay Faas. If you are new to Behind the Line, what you should know about me is that I am a clinical counsellor specializing in trauma therapy, and after years working with First Responders and Front Line Workers around issues like burnout, compassion fatigue, PTSD and related OSI’s, I have become a passionate wellness advocate and educator for those who sacrifice so much for our communities out on the front lines. Behind the Line is a place for us to talk about the real life behind the scenes challenges facing you on the front lines. I created this podcast with the hope of bringing easy access to skills for wellness – allowing you to find greater sustainability, both on the job and off.
Today we are going to have what I think might be the MOST important conversation of this series on daring leadership. In some ways, it probably responds to questions that have come up for those of you who have been listening along the way – the skeptic voice in some of your minds that says, “yeah Lindsay, this all sounds really nice but you have no idea how brutal and broken MY workplace is. There is no chance I can implement or apply these daring leadership skills where I work.” If that’s been on your mind and weighing heavy during this series, then this is the episode you’ve been waiting for. And please believe that I hear you, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that what we’re doing here is no small task and that the hurdles are incredibly high for many of you. The truth is, it would be unfair of me to ask you to move into the brave space of daring leadership without preparing and equipping you for not just the likelihood, but the promise of hard falls along the way. Brene talks about the arena for a reason – it’s no always pretty, and it can hurt like hell, and we can get pretty battered and bruised in the midst of fighting for being authentic and calling others to walk in the realness of life alongside us. I’m not going to pretend that this is a walk in the park or sugar coat the situation – but I am going to call us to be brave together and be willing to step into some hard and uncomfortable places in an effort to leave a legacy of change.
Brene talks extensively in her book, Dare to Lead, about the need for educating people to fall. She compares it to the preparations for sky diving – that before doing your first skydive you practice falling off a ladder a zillion different ways to make sure that you know how to land safely in varying conditions to reduce injury. It’s better to practice this before taking the dive, than to be asked to learn once you’ve already hit the ground. She shares that in her research as well as within the feedback from those who work within her own organization, many indicate never having learned, ever, how to have difficult conversations, how to identify and address feelings collaboratively, and how to really drill down and talk effectively and caringly with others about hard topics like failure. She talks about the work within her organization to address this aspect (among the other aspects of daring leadership) within a program that is built into the new staff onboarding process – that they have proactively built expectations about falling and failing into the language of their team right from the start. She says this, “Here’s the bottom line: If we don’t have the skills to get back up, we may not risk falling. And if we’re brave enough often enough we are definitely going to fall.” This speaks to the need to be well prepared for the falls, and equipped with tools to help us get back up. At the heart of these tools is resilience and Brene’s research identifies three parts to this process: the reckoning, the rumble, and the revolution. Of this process, Brene says this, “The Learning to Rise process is about getting up from our falls, overcoming our mistakes, and facing hurt in a way that brings more wisdom and wholeheartedness into our lives. As tough as it is, the payoff is huge: When we have the courage to walk into our story and own it, we get to write the ending. And when we don’t own our stories of failure, setbacks, and hurt – they own us.”
So, let’s start with the reckoning. At it’s core, the reckoning is about conscious awareness. Remember that the learning to rise process unfolds when things have gone a bit sideways from our intentions and we’re in the weeds – whether it’s an outright conflict or hard conversations that need to happen and not be ignored – we’re moving into rougher waters here. As we do, emotions naturally come up – it’s human and we can’t pretend like we’re robots. Brene defines the reckoning this way, she says, “The reckoning is as simple as that: knowing that we’re emotionally hooked and then getting curious about it.” Now, this may sound pretty straightforward – and in theory it might be but in practice it’s a whole other ball of wax. For many of us, when our emotions show up on the scene we lack the ability to slow things down and make use of them. If we haven’t been taught and trained up in how to recognize, identify, label and make use of our emotions, we are likely to ignore them, suck it up and shove them down, or take them out on others, usually in some passive-aggressive way that we feel shitty about ourselves for afterward. What we’re talking about in the reckoning is slowing the process down enough that we can notice, “hey, something’s coming up here for me, I’m feeling hooked up here” and then wondering, “I wonder what that’s about.” I love that Brene says, “It’s kinda like thinking before you talk, but it’s feeling before you swing or hide.”
When we’re trying to take notice of our emotions and get some clarity on them before proceeding, your body is the messenger. Feelings as they are can take us by storm, especially if we haven’t been trained in slowing it down, so if you’re needing some clarity on your feelings, your body can be a pretty good herald of what’s happening for you. I know that for me, when I am emotionally hung up my heart races, I get a bit queasy, and my brain goes foggy. Recognizing a pattern of this being my physiological response whenever I’m caught up in emotionally intense situations, I can use this as a cue. That said, your cue will be personal to you – but it will likely be fairly consistent, so take some time to reflect on situations where you can think back on consistent physiological indicators that might be part of your cue system. When we can use this cue system to help us recognize the moments we’re getting hung up in emotions, it gives us an opportunity to opt out of the usual path we might take of directing our feelings at someone or something inappropriately or reactively. It invites us instead into an opportunity to get curious about our emotions and check them against the situation a bit – and I want to suggest using a tool that Brene shares about called “the story I tell myself.” This tool has been a gamechanger for me and I hope it can be for you as well. Essentially this tool allows me to ask myself, “what is the story I am telling myself about this situation right now?” and then allows me to walk through with intention whether that story is legitimate or if I need to check it with others involved. Often, the story we tell ourselves is crappy and skewed – and if we let it run unchecked and allow it to influence how we choose to respond to a situation, our response is likely to be exaggerated and off-base. Slowing down and getting curious about the story empowers us to be able to decide how we want to proceed. It let’s us notice the places where the story gets hijacked by our negative self-thoughts and insecurities, our own fears and vulnerabilities, our past experiences and skewed internal beliefs, and it let’s us decide what we decide to allow to influence our responses and what we don’t.
Here’s an example. I have a long history of wrestling with the classic “imposter-syndrome”. From early in my childhood I experienced moments of fear believing that I would be discovered or found out – that I wasn’t as smart, or as “together”, or as important, and so on and so forth, as people thought me to be. I have often struggled with feeling sure that I’m a big fat fake and that at any moment, someone will see through the layers of fake and call me out. Now, the thing is that I’m not a big fat fake – and after many years working to undermine those imposter thoughts in my head, I know exactly where those come from and that they are twisty lies, but heck if they don’t still show up sometimes. Sneaky buggers. And the place I find it most? Opening emails. Silly, I know. This used to be really hard when I had first started in private practice. I would see an email pop into my inbox – usually with a semi-vague sounding subject line – and my first assumption, the story I would tell myself, was almost always “oh no, I must be in trouble for something I did or didn’t do”. My heart rate would go up, my stomach would sink and my throat would tighten. Those are my cues, “girl, you’re getting hung up.” Growing my familiarity with these and knowing that this is a place these show up has been helpful to be able to actively work at being curious and shifting it. The reckoning for me has been to grow my ability to notice, oh man, that creeped up again real fast. Once I see it, I can work to catch it – I’ll take a deep breath and challenge the thought, reminding myself that it has been almost never true that an email is about me being in trouble (and that any time there has been a hard issue that I have always been able to deal with it really well), and then open the email to get confirmation that yes, for the ten bagillionth time, it is a totally neutral email and all is fine. Doing this on an ongoing has certainly reduced the frequency of times that I have this reaction comparing to when I first started my practice, and the intensity and duration have also been curbed in a big way. Now it’s something I laugh at – goodness, that thought is still there, what a cheeky stinker! Too bad it’s got no power here anymore.
The reckoning is really about growing our awareness, and slowing things down. A key skill that can be really useful, although largely overlooked, is breathing. Notice in my own example that I mentioned taking a deep breath? We’ve talked before on the show in our series on mindfulness skill about square breathing – Brene identifies that many of the military groups she works with calls this “tactical breathing” – and it’s this specific breathing skill that is intended to slow us down, calm our physiology and help us regulate in the face of stress. As a reminder, it looks like this: inhale for a count of four, hold for a count of four, exhale for a count of four, hold for a count of four. Regulating our bodies helps us to make the space to get curious about our emotions rather than get hijacked by them, and it facilitates slowing things down to make conscious choices in how we want to respond to a situation rather than get caught in reacting.
That brings us to the rumble. Remember a few minutes ago we talked about the idea of the story we tell ourselves? Brene says this, “The rumble starts with this universal truth: In the absence of data, we will always make up stories…Meaning making is in our biology, and when we’re in struggle, our default is often to come up with a story that makes sense of what’s happening and gives our brain information on how to best self-protect.” This process happens largely unconsciously and often instantaneously, and notice that it is a story that makes sense of what’s happening…but it does not need to be true. In fact, our brain so badly wants to just hurry up and complete the story, that it will jump to all kinds of places to fill in the gaps and make big assumptions without data to fill those gaps. Because we tend to go to extremes and make wide assumptions when we are crafting these stories in our minds, Brene calls these stories our “Shitty First Drafts”. Yep, that’s the technical term, SFD’s for short. As a child friendly alternative she offers “stormy first draft”. Our SFD’s are heavily influenced by knee-jerk reaction grounded in our own insecurities or fears. She says this, “In our SFD’s, fear fills in the data gaps. What makes that scary is that stories based on limited real data and plentiful imagined data, blended into a coherent, emotionally satisfying version of reality, are called conspiracy theories.” She identifies that our shitty first drafts are full of conspiracy and confabulation – which is essentially a lie that is told honestly. We create a narrative that feels like it’s true, regardless of whether it is actually true. Essentially we are creating myths – a pinch of truth, a dash of imagination, and a sprinkle of believability. And the reality is that we do this all the time, and in all kinds of spaces in our lives. Work, marriage, friendships, family dynamics, you name it and we’ve got SFD’s.
One of the things Brene says that I think is really valuable is that daring leaders want to know the SFD’s. They permit space to hash out those stories we’re making up and work to come alongside and reality-check these to help fill in the gaps and craft a more accurate story. She also suggests that writing down our SFD, or talking it through with a trusted person in our lives, can be helpful to allow us to take a step back from it being caught up in our heads and take a look at it somewhat more objectively. Writing it down or talking it through gives us space to get curious about whether what we’ve crafted even makes sense or seems accurate considering what I know of the character or values of those involved, and so on. As you get curious Brene identifies three questions we should ask ourselves about our shitty first drafts:
What more do I need to learn and understand about the situation? Essentially, we’re asking what do we actually know objectively to be true and parsing this out from what assumptions we might be making.
What more do I need to learn and understand about the other people in the story? Here we can identify what additional information we may need, or questions or clarifications that would help fill in the gaps more accurately.
What more do I need to learn and understand about myself? This is the space where we have an opportunity to learn and grow – to get curious about what is behind our responses, to dig into what we’re feeling and how that influences our reactions, and to take ownership and be accountable for the part we may have had to play in the situation. This one is a leveled-up skill set that goes deeper than the situation to try to carry personal growth forward and really engages some vulnerability to explore and dig into this.
Can you imagine if we did this? I mean, individually if we did this there would be massive payoff, both in being able to be responsive rather than reactive in situations – but collectively if we as a team or a workplace or a society opted into this way of engaging, can you imagine how much more we would learn in the process of challenging moments, and the growth we would see? It’s a bit staggering I think. Brene gives a really great walk through of how this can look, she says this:
“Imagine how powerful it would be to catch ourselves making up an SFD, rumble with it for a few minutes, then check it out with a colleague: ‘Hey. Tough meeting today. You were quiet, and I’m making up that you were pissed off about your team having to do all of the work for the next sprint. Can we talk about that?’ FYI: If you walked up to me and sayd that, my trust and respect for you would skyrocket. Let’s say my response is, ‘No, I’m not mad at all. I’m exhausted. Charlie’s sick and he was throwing up all night. But I appreciate you checking in.’ This gives you the opportunity to practice empathy:, ‘I’m sorry. That’s hard. Can I get you a cup of coffee?’ Now let’s walk through the situation of this alternate reply: ‘Yes. I’m super frustrated! This is not our project and we don’t have the resources to own the work. It’s total bullshit.’ This gives you the opportunity to say, ‘Okay. Let’s sit down and talk about it.’ Win-win. Either way this is connecting and trust-building.”
Because Brene is all things practical and actionable (which, if you haven’t yet noticed is a HUGE part of what I LOVE about her and her work!), she has laid out a roadmap for a story rumble process intended for use within workplaces and with teams. I have linked to a worksheet version of these points from her website, I would highly recommend that those interested in bringing her work into their own workplaces snag the handout and print it off…or just buy the Dare to Lead book which you can also find a link to in the show notes for this episode. I’m going to share the pieces of the process as outlined in the book, and throughout this process the goal is to remain curious – working to be a learner rather than a knower. Here is the process:
Step one: let’s set the intention for the rumble and make sure we are clear about why we’re rumbling.
Step two: What does everyone need to engage in this process with an open heart and mind?
Step three: What will get in the way of you showing up?
Step four: Here’s how we commit to showing up (drawing from steps 2 and 3)
Step five: Let’s each share one permission slip (we didn’t talk about permission slips in this series, but you can find more on her website, again I’ll link to some of her resources about this piece in the show notes if you want to know more)
Step six: What emotions are people experiencing? This is about putting it out there and naming the various elephants in the room.
Step seven: What do we need to get curious about?
Step eight: What are our SFD’s?
Step nine: What do our SFD’s tell us about our relationships? About our communication? About leadership? About the culture? About what’s working and what’s not working?
Step ten: Where do we need to rumble? What lines of inquiry do we need to open to better understand what’s really happening and to reality-check our conspiracy theories and confabulations?
Step eleven: What’s the difference between those first SFD’s and the new information we’re gathering in the rumble?
Step twelve: What are the key learnings?
Step thirteen: How do we act on the key learnings?
Step fourteen: How do we integrate these key learnings into the culture and leverage them as we work on new strategies? What is one thing each of us will take responsibility for embedding?
Step fifteen: When it the circle-back? Let’s regroup so we can check back in and hold ourselves and one another accountable for learning and embedding.
She finishes this list of trust-building and culture shaping questions with this reminder: “Own the story and you get to write the ending. Deny the story and it owns you.”
So now we’ve talked about the reckoning – which is becoming aware of a problem and our feelings about the problem; as well as the rumble – which is the process of untangling the problem, gaining clarity through curiosity and bridging connection in the midst of it. That brings us to the revolution. About the revolution Brene says this, “Revolution might sound a little dramatic, but in this world, choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance. Choosing to live and love with out whole hearts is an act of defiance. You’re going to confuse, piss off, and terrify lots of people – including yourself. One minute you’ll pray that the transformation stops, and the next minute you’ll pray that it never ends. You’ll also wonder how you can feel so brave and so afraid at the same time. At least that’s how I feel most of the time…brave, afraid, and very, very alive.”
Throughout this series, I have invited the idea of a revolution – I have talked about this effort as our own little rebel alliance working to strategically use our limited resources and troops to take on the great big empire. When we walk the process of the reckoning and rumble – when we act out of curiosity rather than react out of our own un-assessed biases – we participate in revolution. Using our influence, big or small, to chart a path that offers understanding, empathy, care and connection – that values people by allowing them and us to be seen, heard, known and valued – this is truly revolutionary. Choosing to not stand for the status quo of toxic cultures. Choosing to take notice of the impacts on us and others and advocating for something better, something that supports sustainability. This is the rebellion. Drawing together vulnerability, empathy, trust, and the willingness to rumble grows our capacity to strengthen one another, strengthen the system, and as a result, offer strengthened services to the communities we care about. Because we all got into the work out of a heart of care – we are helpers after all.
I hope that you have been able to connect with others within your workplace to support one another in considering the way forward in your unique system. I know that some of the broken pieces are just so very, very broken and that for some, the processes outlined in this series sound wonderful but so hard to apply with limited power to influence and shape the higher-up broader problems that leech down. Start with you. Start with your immediate team. Stand united in your valuing of one another and grow from there. Sometimes transformation is quick, and other times it is tediously slow – but don’t let the pace alter your determination to stay true to yourself and true to the cause of caring for one another. As you journey this process, I would love to hear from you and know what you’ve found helpful or challenging. You can reach out by email or on social media – you can find all of my contact details in the show notes on our podcast website. Please do check out the show notes today for links to some of Brene’s free resources mentioned in this episode, they are really helpful, and if you are interested in snagging a copy of the book you can find a link to that too. Next week we are continuing in our series on daring leadership and applications in first response and front line systems – I can hardly wait to share some of the pieces that we have planned so be sure to join me back here again next week. Until next time, stay safe.