Facilitate yourself before anyone else
My heart rate is through the roof.
It's 2018 and the day before a big event to kickstart a collaboration programme.
A group of government agencies has teamed up to improve the lives of young people. Noble enough, but vague.
My role is to ensure young people's voices are central to the process.
I can't even get out of bed.
I spend the entire day wallowing. I'm paralyzed with worry.
You see - I had created an internal story where the success of this first big gathering was a make or break moment for my career. According to this story, my reputation was on the line. Young people's wellbeing was at stake. (It's as if world peace depended on me!)
The expectations I was creating for myself weren't anywhere near reasonable. And my body simply couldn't cope.
Are your beliefs useful?
Today, I cringe and smile as I reflect on that experience. Have you ever set yourself such a needlessly high internal bar like that?
The wellbeing industry has sold us the idea of positive thinking. If we focus on the positives, we can manifest our wildest dreams.
I reckon that's a load of unhelpful rubbish.
What unhelpful beliefs are making it hard for you to facilitate? "I'm not a natural." "I don't have charisma." "People don't listen to me." Leading by facilitation often requires us to do things that might make us uncomfortable. Like speaking in front of a large group. Asking a challenging question. Admitting you don't have the answer. To lead by facilitation, we need to be aware of our:
This is what it means to facilitate yourself before anybody else. But how do we stay aware of all that while things are going bananas around us? Sometimes it's like trying to see the back of our head. We can't do it on our own. Easy to write about, harder to practiceThis is something I now teach... but I'm just as prone to forgetting this as anybody else. Recently, my wife Ellie said to me "Paul, I feel like your work is getting all the best bits of you. But nobody is forcing you to work so hard. That's all you." I know that I have to facilitate myself. But it's easier said than done. What about you? How are you at facilitating yourself before anybody else? |