Last months session focused on exploring our relationships with others. We used various exercises and quotes to frame the session – including this wonderful one from Victor Frankel: Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
During the session, we reflected on three areas:
- How we are turning up? We explored what we bring into a relationship in terms of our own self-knowledge, biases, expectations and ideas. We examined our trickiest relationships as an opportunity to understand our own selves better, by acknowledging our shadow. And we all chuckled at the quote “You teach others how to treat you”.
- How we are connecting? Here we examined how we communicate and how people differ. We used various frameworks, including one that differentiated styles between introverts and extroverts, and those who were more people or task driven. We noticed where we masked language with ‘sort of’, ‘I just thought’, ‘possibly’ and other words that reduce the impact of what we say. There were some deep realisations during this part of the session. One person said “Don’t judge others outsides by your insides”.
- What contains the connection? We examined how much we trust each other, the unsaid in the space between and our shared and different objectives. We thought about how to transform a relationship by changing the context– by finding the ‘blue feather’ the shared, element that exists within a black and white situation that helps both parties move beyond a binary approach.
Another strong topic was ‘agency’. The choice remains ours how we interact and with who. To decide to engage, how to engage, to pause to consider a reaction and to re-set at any stage the terms of engagement.
We were lucky enough to have Debbie Warrener ‘beam-in’ as our expert to provide us with her thoughts on the topic. She is one of the volunteer coaches on the programme. Debbie approached the topic in her gentle, informed way and left us with some great insight…
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We’d encourage you to reach out to Debbie if what she says resonates with you. She can be found here.
If you have an area of expertise that is relevant to She Leads Change and you’d like to share, please do get in touch with hello@sheleadschange.org. We currently divide our work into 6 sessions: Vision, Self, Other, Whole, Resilience and Beyond, and welcome any thoughts, speakers, tools/techniques or other contributions.
If you are curious about the programme, please do join on our next open evening to find out more. We’d love to meet you.