40 Leaders, Below the Surface
You know that feeling when you're in the elevator at work... and your stomach is already tight before you've even said good morning to anyone? That kind of feeling points to something with our relationships at work not going right - which I personally find sad and concerning and needs to be addressed more.
On June 9th, we did exactly that and explored how to cultivate better relationships at work, through a mix of storytelling and experiential learning.
The Concept: From Self to Others
How we connect and relate to ourselves is the foundation of how we connect and relate with others. We are independent, sovereign beings - yet we are also interrelated, and we need belonging and community to thrive. A recent Harvard study confirms that the quality of our relationships has a direct impact on our happiness, health and longevity.
Considering that - and how much time people spend at work - making sure those work relationships are healthy seems important to me. Not to mention that happier, more connected people are more motivated and engaged people.
I left the corporate world of high-end events management in 2015, and have spent the years since helping people create richer, more authentic relationships - with themselves, and with each other.
So I opened the session by taking the 40 leaders in the room back in time, to a story of my own: my first big corporate event, 25 years ago, and a manager I initially clashed with - until one heart-to-heart conversation changed the course of that relationship, and the years of good work that followed. It's a story about self-responsibility, about initiating the hard conversation instead of avoiding it, about listening to each other's grievances even when it's hard, and about what happens when two people decide to really see each other.
Lesson one: it always takes two, to tango.
And I was honest with the room that not every story ends that way. Sometimes, even when we seek understanding and change, our needs won't be met - and then we have to decide how much we're willing to compromise, and where we start letting ourselves down.
Lesson two: not every relationship is worth saving.
So to summarize, here are some of the most important ingredients that make genuine connection possible, from where growth can arise:
1. Own your part. Speak up. Seek the hard conversation instead of avoiding it.
2. Actually listen. To each other's frustrations and each other's hopes. Without jumping in.
3. Speak from the heart. Not just the head. When we do, people can actually feel us.
4. Then act. Agree on what needs to change - and do the inner and outer work to get there.
Simple in theory, more challenging in practice - especially in a world that's constantly pulling our attention away from ourselves and each other.
Because these skills ask something of us: to get out of our heads and start paying attention below the neck. To feel our bodies. To feel our hearts. Both carry a kind of intelligence that only comes online when we slow down enough to drop in. When we can feel ourselves, we can finally start to share what's really going on. That's how hard conversations turn into heart-to-heart conversations.
And so, that's what I decided to invite the group into - because as one participant afterwards said so beautifully: "I studied organizational psychology and am building a career in the field, so I walked in thinking I had a decent handle on what relational wellbeing means. But it turns out there's a big difference between understanding something academically and actually sitting in a room where someone makes you feel it."
That's exactly it. Understanding something in your head is one thing - feeling it in your body is another.
What I Invited People Into
In your internal board of directors, you want the mind, body and heart working together - not just logic and critical thinking, but the wisdom your body carries, and the warmth and compassion of your heart. They should all have a say in how we do relationships, work and life.
So we moved the chairs aside, and I took the room through a set of embodiment and authentic relationship practices - dropping from the tired, over-functioning, worrying mind, below the neck and into the wise body. Bouncing, tapping, a little dancing at 8am, and then coming to silence - forming a circle, standing across from each other, and simply saying hello with our eyes.
From there, we moved into helping them feel, sense, and understand themselves and the people they were relating with better - that same below-the-neck attention, now turned toward each other: sensing our body from within, giving words to it, listening, and sometimes offering each other feedback - feeling each other's heart.
One participant put it this way:
"I felt the shift... no rushing into introductions, agenda, solutions, opinions... somehow everything softened. The air was still, emotions became visible, I could sense the energy of the other person... the other human being."
We closed with a holding space practice, where they asked each other specific questions to gain more insight around their relationships at work. Yet, without interrupting each other. No advice giving, no trying to fix... just listen.
That was challenging for many people in the room... because we are so trained to think that we should be able to respond with something smart, to help... when oftentimes, what people need first, is just to be seen, heard - their feelings and thoughts to be acknowledged.
We all have room to grow in the areas of truly listening to one another.
What Lingered
By the end of the session, the atmosphere in the room had changed. Conversations were deeper. Attendees were listening differently. Connections felt more genuine - people arriving as individuals and leaving as a collective, as one participant put it so beautifully.
This is what stepping away from doing, and spending time observing, connecting and learning about themselves through the experience of others, can do. Lingering longer than usual. Faces more open. Looking more alive as they leave the event - and hopefully, remembering more often to slow down, look up from the screen and truly see the person in front of them.
As I always say, people, are people, are people... no matter what role we hold at work. We all want to be seen, valued and feel like we matter.
About the author: Corinne Konrad Calder is relationship coach, embodiment teacher and coach at the Bravos Employee Engagement Awards. More info on https://www.corinnekonradcalder.com/.
