e.i.b.: Offering Handrails

and more supports during these new transitions.

If you’re feeling awkwardness, anxiety, curiosity, or just confusion about the new unfolding transitions surrounding you, you might connect with a recent conversation between Brene Brown and Priya Parker.

The conversation revolves around meetings as gatherings though they speak to much more along the way.

One gem shared is about offering handrails or guardrails for others as we navigate these next transitions in our communal lives.

A snippet I liked:

Priya Parker: Naming is the most powerful tool that we have as facilitators, it is 101 to actually name the elephant in the room, and even if the elephant is just awkwardness, it just allows everybody to take a breath, and I’ll give a simple example. And I think you can name it in big ways, we’re all trying to figure out exactly how to be… That sounds… Well, to you, this won’t sound funny, but I think we will all experience micro-moments of perceived rejection over the next many months.

Brene Brown: Oh my God.

PP: You reach out to your elbow, someone…

BB: Say that again. I want you to say that again for everybody.

PP: We are all going to experience micro-moments of perceived rejection over the next many months. And when I say micro-moment, I mean, say the invitation is perfect, everything is gone, and then you walk into the room and someone raises out your hand and someone leans their body back, that’s what I mean by a micro-moment of rejection, or somebody walks over and somebody else moves away, we don’t fully know how to do this, and it’s going to be really clunky, and I think part of naming that as a leader to de-personalize some of that perceived rejection, to allow the stumbling and fumbling around, to also, particularly for virtual meetings to…

Take a listen to the episode here, if you’d like.

I’m thinking of making a playlist of podcasts and maybe some music too that speak to belonging and change… might you be interested in listening to something like that?

Leave a comment or reply to this emailed post with your thoughts!

Til next week,

Cassandra