One of the ideas from last week – “Begin Before It Begins” – received this comment from an educator in Nebraska:

“I have been scheduling weekly Zoom calls which have been good but I have been disappointed with the low numbers of students participating.听 Then I realized I was only sending out one short post on the Remind App. I decided after reading the post to take more time the day before and send the link by email and text and even Snapchat through my son’s account.听 The result was almost every student was on the call!”听

This was one of three ideas in our last post to help get yourself and others connected and perhaps more importantly orient themselves towards the work and each other.听听Take a read through our next idea below and see where it may fit for you!

When Standards Fall, Highlight the Non-Normal

Have you noticed a creeping mediocrity in your life or the work of your team or students?听 There are plenty of recommendations out there to “take it easy” on ourselves, but when it comes to work and/or learning, you are likely expected to raise the bar (or at least keep it from slipping lower!).听听

No worries: try these steps towards an effective practice that checks so many positive benefit boxes in order to “Highlight the Non-Normal”:

1. Turn up/Tune in your listening.听 In order to highlight something you have to notice it first.听 Simply reading this post is already tuning your observation systems to be on the alert, now just pay attention.

2. Notice non-normal participation where someone went farther than usual or expected: they took the extra step, stretched themselves or went above and beyond.听 Someone may challenge an assumption, ask a difficult question or volunteer to pursue a complex task. Maybe you hear about or notice someone not giving into complacency, or trying out something off-the-wall.听 Whatever raises the bar on your team’s notion of ‘engagement’ or ‘participation’, notice it.

3. Highlight it!听 Shine a spotlight on it in someway: appreciate/acknowledge the person, ask what difference that made, etc. – just do anything you can to put more focus on the action.

By paying attention to whatever that person did that was exemplary, you are shining a light on the quality of participation you want.听 When this new kind of participation gets highlighted, there is an implicit permission for others to participate at the same level. In that moment you have interrupted the normal script and moved the relational space to a place of dissonance*.听

As more and more non-normal outputs are highlighted, a new-normal is created: the team now knows that a different kind of participation is standard in this setting.听 They will come to expect it and it will even carry over from session to session. As new employees or students join, they will adapt to whatever the ‘normal’ is, so the more engaged the better!听

As the engagement bar gets raised and normalized, you will notice that:

• people will get more value out of participating at that level

• people are creating and experiencing heightened relationships with each other and there will be a great sense of belonging, a key predictor of a group’s success.

A final benefit and one we will share about in our next post is this: when you highlight the non-normal, you are helping yourself and others practice being comfortable with the uncomfortable.听 Simply put, teams and classes that can master this profound practice see an exponential increase in performance through heightened cooperation, creativity, focus, relationships and more.

As the pandemic alters normal all around us, use this tool to create a new-normal, based on qualities and competencies you want to foster in your team or classroom.

* In our Master Class we highlight this as a significant contextual understanding when working with people and we use the metaphor of the Elephant/Rider developed by Jonathan Haidt and used by Daniel Kahneman to help explain this vital neuroscience and the impact it plays when working to build engagement with individuals and groups.听 Check it out here.

Looking for a daily practice to help keep you or others connected to your ‘self’ and the world around you?听 Check out The Elementals – a new product from 糖心Vlog官方.

听

Recently I have really appreciated being a city kid and moving to the country because I have be able to learn more about farming and food. 听I think it has really helped me appreciate and understand more about what farmers have to deal with.

One thing I have come to appreciate is how much of a great endeavor it is. There is this incredible lead up to harvest which is hard to under-appreciate: all kinds of effort, expense, thought, energy and time – all put in for one result. 听And so it is clear to see why harvest has such an association with thanksgiving and gratitude. There is so much put into it. 听So in farming there is this notion of a Great Endeavor鈥�

The other thing I have appreciated is what I have come to think of as the presence of fragile moments during the life-cycle of a crop: times when things can go south very quickly. I heard one farmer talk recently about how tenuous is the time between when a soybean plant loses its leaves and is ready for harvest and when it actually is harvested. 听It is during this time that even the slightest hail or even a high wind storm can burst open the bean pods and leave them all听on the ground, unable to be harvested.

Or talking with a farming family from this church, I was fascinated to learn that when you are growing popcorn, you have to be so careful in your harvesting: even the smallest percentage of grit, gravel or sand can make your corn unusable. 听So that fragile moment they must experience wondering 鈥渉ow well did we do at not picking up stuff that is not supposed to be there?鈥� 鈥� what a tenuous time that must be.

In looking back on these conversations I sensed听that underneath them both was this notion of how important it was to name the reality of the moment. 听The farmers do all they can to not get into a mess at these times, but they also don鈥檛 shy away from naming the potential for the mess or that they are right in the thick of it when things don鈥檛 go so great. Being able to call it what it is, is important.

Naming or describing our reality is held up by lots of thinkers and philosophers as one of the greatest human gifts. 听This is when you are able to genuinely look around and name where and when you are in relation to the world around you鈥hen you do this well you pull no punches and accurately place yourself where needed, even if that is in the tenuous middle of things that is so uncomfortable to acknowledge. 听Theresa Mancuso – an educator and a nun in NYC 鈥� 听highlights this by writing that 鈥渢he thing we desperately need is to face the way it is鈥�.

We don鈥檛 always face difficult things well though, because it feels so uncomfortable. 听I think our tendency is to name ourselves on the 鈥渞ight鈥� side of the fragile moment and avoid getting into the messiness by justifying where we placed ourselves. 听When things get desperate we locate ourselves in some kind of position along with some kind of self-righteousness that helps us justify and feel good and safe about where we are. 听Kind of like 鈥渨hew, thank goodness I am over here and not over there.鈥� 听

However, when we name the reality like this it is not quite genuine, is it? 听It is more one-sided in a way that lets us avoid the desperation. 听Which actually makes sense for it feels much safer: who wants to feel desperate when you can easily avoid it by being 鈥榬ight鈥� about something? 听This is how the Pharisee comes across in the parable that Luke tells.

Rudyard Kipling, wrote 鈥淎ll the people like us is We and everyone else is They鈥�. 听Every time we pick one of these 鈥榮afe鈥� sides, we separate ourselves from others by attending to our side and getting ‘right’ about it. 听We create a We and a They, and we place ourselves on a righteous side of reality that lets us safely avoid dealing with the reality of what is in the middle 鈥� in the gap 鈥� right in the heart of the fragile moment.

It seems that during the last several months, the trap of putting ourselves in one group or another has been so easy to do. There are silos and sides all around us, within easy reach. 听It doesn鈥檛 take much to pick a side, and when we do, we get to avoid genuinely naming the fragile moment that is in-between.

But if we take even a moment to look at it, the desperateness is apparent in so many directions: whether it is in Aleppo in Syria or here in the U.S. with the disenfranchisement of the wealth inequality or the abuse and assault experienced by women; all that has been uncovered recently is all right there for us to name鈥r not. 听And there is the trap: our tendency is to choose a side and justify where we place ourselves, but the gap and the desperation and the tenuousness is still there even if the side we choose is 鈥榬ight鈥�. 听The fragility remains no matter which side we agree with.

And so it may be that including ourselves in the tension and desperation – actually inserting ourselves in some way into the gap that is separating the We and the They is what is most needed. 听Getting into the muck and the mire truly brings the reality of the situation into closer proximity. 听It allows us to touch and deal with the reality in a way that placing ourselves in righteous land does not allow for.

And so I think this is our Great Endeavor. 听If we want to stand back and look at how to get to harvest time – this joyous time when we can look around and say “wow, we did it, we made it” 鈥� when we stand back and look at how to get there, it must be by willfully naming our complete reality. 听It must include us crying out 鈥� like the tax-collector – recognizing that we are indeed a mess and that the WE is not just a collection of a certain group that is separate from other certain groups. 听It is a WE that includes THEY. It is a WE that includes the whole kit and caboodle. It is a WE that has to be coming from a place of humble and even desperate recognition that our harvest 鈥� our well-being in the face of this fragile moment – must include everyone and everything.

When we do that听it has us then mind the gap. 听It has us connect ourselves and locate ourselves within the gap. 听Not standing safely on one side or the other while we thumb our noses across the void, it actually has us in the void swimming – maybe even flailing around – all while crying out to each other, to the god in each other, for some mercy; for the joint naming of the fragile moment.

When I started my journey abroad I had a vast amount of feelings, spreading from fear to excitement. I think I found that being a Boldleader allowed me to see that there is beauty in each of these feelings that I was having.