Invitation to evolve
Our times are calling on us to stretch, grow and evolve. Will we accept this call?
I come to you from San Francisco Airport, coming off a phenomenal few days sparking joy with humans who renew my abiding faith in our species.
The trip started off leading a global sustainability leadership retreat for one of my favorite multinational companies. I treat such engagements as the greatest act of trust: our workplace teams can be sacred spaces.
As my colleague, psychoanalytic workplace consultant Gabriella Braun reminds us, our workplaces—and teams— are where we bring it all, regardless of what anyone says. I don’t take these invitations lightly, and always feel moved as people step up, get vulnerable and honest, demonstrate real growth mindsets, and out of comfort zones. I continue to marvel at what is possible when a leader sees the need to support their teams to show up, support one another, evolve and transform our ways of working. It’s simply magic.
Creating a space to look honestly at how we approach our change work is not for the faint of heart. The “immunity to change” is real. The ability to take stock and interrogate our strategies, personal defaults and theories of change—from telling, yelling and selling to guiding—takes real guts. Watching transformation before my eyes gives me hope.
I was then fortunate to spend time with an incredible group of youth to explore these intersections of change leadership, psychology, trauma-informed practice, and organizational change. Together, we looked at what draws us to the work reflected in Project InsideOut, and where this work wants and needs to go. (Stay tuned, exciting developments are afoot!)
We were gifted with a very special guest! Dear friend and colleague Phoebe Tickell was in the house! If you are not familiar with Phoebe and her work, please check her out. Phoebe brings an exquisite sensitivity, acuity and clarity to her work on moral imagination and what it means to become an “imagination activist.” Watch this space soon, as I will be featuring more of her work and others at these edgewalking frontlines of how we can incubate, metabolize and bring forward new ways of being, dreaming and manifesting the world we envision. We are so thrilled to have spent time with her!
Tune in next week for another installment of notes from Becoming Guides.
In the meantime, here’s your invitation:
Where is your growth edge now?
What are we being asked to evolve into?
What does edgewalking mean to you?
With love and care,
x Renée
PS. Check out a new podcast conversation the importance of questions, how agency is one of the most important aspects of our humanity and how robbing those we try to change of it is counter productive. This is a dive into the world of change making through artful questioning on the World of Wisdom! Enjoy!