Personal Growth and Butterflies

A comment on David Maister's blog mentions the need for courage and conviction with reference to doing what you know you need to when it comes to organizational or personal change. Too right. But when people are not able to follow through does this mean that they did not have the courage or conviction. Usually not. In my facilitation experience i have seen teams formulate actions that would choke a snake,dir whose mouth can open pretty wide. When the actions did not get followed up on, blame abounds when really, it was the size of the task in relationship to the energy required to complete it that was mismatched.

To assume that the mismatch is a conscious one is pretty misleading. Lots of times the intentions are good, the logic is sound, but the one element that gets forgotten is the deeper level of growth and readiness that drives forward movement. In companies where initiative has been stifled, why take the risk. Most of this sits beneath the surface, well concealed.

The level of leadership required now demands a high level of attunement and conscious awareness into detecting the incongruencies as signals and then connecting the signals into a larger dynamic. The courage and conviction is applied then to developing increased personal and organizational awareness which, as Steve Roesler, points out no one wants to do alone. Nor should they. These are times when the collective efforts are the only way to forge hope for the future as another species bites the dust.

What signals do you see and what do you see as the larger dynamic that allows a collective shift of direction? Stay tuned for the butterflies in the next post.

Comments

[Steve Roesler]

Dawna,

I really enjoyed your observation that courage and conviction aren't always the culprits in change. Instead, over-planning and unmentionable numbers of tasks can easily overpower the best of intentions.

It never ceases to amaze me that, while we probably both discuss with clients the importance of readiness and growth, the process can't happen until there is frustration with the task.

Keep writing...