There is a dangerous seduction I’ve noticed in my years of facilitating folks on the journey towards more courageous leadership.
This seduction is, as far as I can tell, universal. (I have certainly fallen prey to it.) It is totally normal. Utterly understandable. Completely forgivable.
And it is totally unhelpful.
It is the seduction of taking the information about how to become a more daring leader…
…and immediately think about how it applies to other people.
“My boss just doesn’t care about courage.”
“You know who really needs this stuff? My colleague.”
“I tried to be in the arena but my employee just wasn’t interested!”
Totally normal. Utterly understandable. Completely forgivable. Totally unhelpful.
There is nothing in my work or in Brené Brown’s work or in any work anywhere that will give you the ability to change the behaviour of a single other human being.
We simply don’t have that power.
The only thing we have power over is our own behaviour.
All of the gold is inside us.
And yet, we spend heaps of time thinking about how we can change other people’s behaviour: “How do I get them to act differently?”
We spend heaps of time complaining about other people’s behaviour: “Why do they do that? If they would just do this instead…”
Look, I get it. Other people are super frustrating. (Not us, of course. You and I are awesome 🤗 It’s definitely those other people that are the issue.)
So what do we do?
We start with total acceptance of the fact that our job is never to transform others.
We start by appreciating that that person isn’t the challenge, the relationship is the challenge. The relationship between my needs and expectations on the one hand, and what I’m actually getting on the other.
We start by realising that the only place we can start is with ourselves. How am I showing up? What boundaries am I setting? How am I communicating those boundaries? Enforcing them? How am I holding myself to account? What messages am I sending?
And here’s the thing: when we transform ourselves, our relationships are guaranteed to transform.
Every relationship is emergent from the parties to that relationship. Change 50% of the ingredients, the recipe’s gonna change — even if everything else stays the same.
When we transform ourselves, our relationships transform. Immutable law of nature.
Give it a go and let me know how you get on.
Ngā mihi maioha / warm regards,
Kaila Colbin, Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator
Founder and CEO, Boma
