Truth and Transparency: My Struggles Managing a Team
Truth and Transparency: My Struggles Managing a Team
Transcript
The following is a transcription of Truth and Transparency: My Struggles Managing a Team, which is part of my practice of coming into full truth and transparency.
For the full series and depth to this practice visit: My Commitment to Truth and Transparency.
Hello Dear Friends,
Today I’m going to share with you some of my struggles with managing a team and the relationship struggles that I have had, the communication struggles that I’ve had with individuals and with hosting a team of people. This is focused on starting in about 2021, in St. Pete, Florida, and continuing through to Asheville, North Carolina. I’m going to share about the struggles that we had together, my role in the struggles really, and some of the work that I’ve been doing to bring more integrity into my relationships and make sure that my relationships with my teammates, my colleagues are meeting their needs, their basic needs, and that they’re feeling empowered and very alive to be working together.
It’s been a great struggle, a great struggle and I’m going to share it with you today. How I’m going to do that is, I actually wrote a letter of mourning. I wrote this one year ago, in the winter of 2023, and this is a letter of open mourning to my team and to colleagues who have worked with me. So, this is what I’m going to be reading.
Before I do that, I want to remind any of you who are here, if you … what I’m doing is, I’m coming into a place of full truth, full transparency, sharing what is inside of me, sharing a lot of what I’ve been guarding and hiding and just coming into a place of full truth and transparency with the goal of bringing my life into complete integrity. So, if you haven’t already, before watching this video, I really encourage you to watch the introduction to this “Truth, Transparency and Integrity” series. This isn’t about just sharing my lies of the past or anything like that. This is about a deep practice of integrity, and I want you to be on this journey with me.
This isn’t just about any kind of drama … listening to drama. This is about growth and so, I’d love for you to listen to that intro if you haven’t already. One small note that I share in that video but that I want to share very clearly is that I’m not doing this out of a place of guilt, out of shame, out of right or wrong, good or bad, blame, have to, should. I’m not doing it out of any of that. I’m doing this because it’s in my heart. My heart is singing to be in truth and transparency, to heal relationships and to be of service through this and to bring my life into integrity. So, I’m doing this out of a place of actual joy and compassion and empathy, and a desire to nurture my relationships. So, here I have my letter of mourning and I’m going to go ahead and read this and you can actually read it right there at robingreenfield.org/mourning. You can read it right there if you’d like to.
Before I read to you the letter of mourning, I would like to share with you what mourning is, as per the practice of non-violent communication or compassionate communication. So, I have written … I have copied a little description from their website. “What is mourning? A life connected mourning is when you are present with the feelings flowing through you while at the same time staying connected to the underlying needs. As you stay with the feelings and needs rather than any thoughts or stories involving blame, judgment, criticism, wrongness or punitive retribution, something remarkable tends to happen. At some point, you are able to differentiate between the pain of the unmet need and the beauty of the need itself.”
So, mourning is not an apology. It’s not saying “sorry.” It is much more and it is … the purpose is to come to a place of healing and connection. With that said, I would love to read this letter of mourning for you, to you, with you. This is an open letter of mourning to each person who has felt hurt or pain in their experience with me. Especially those who have worked with me as teammates and colleagues. The last handful of years have been years of growth for me and for each of you. No doubt we have all gained from our service together. I am so incredibly grateful for all we have done together and at the same time I mourn some of my communication and my actions.
I mourn deeply that many of you who dedicated so much of yourself to me and my mission got the worst of me. With great frequency, I focused on criticizing and critiquing and I lacked in sharing appreciation and gratitude. My focus on criticizing was demoralizing for many of you. I often focus directly on the task at hand, operating based on efficiency and effectiveness, often providing little to no encouragement or words of affirmation, even with the difficult tasks. I often failed to celebrate our successes together and, instead, just moved on to the next task.
I often spoke with sharpness and shortness in a way that stimulated pain for many of you. I often spoke in a tone that came across as cold and harsh and felt hurtful. I often met your requests and contributions with defensiveness rather than gentleness and empathy. I often had unattainable expectations and assumed that if I could do something, so could you. Or if it was easy for me, it would be easy for you. I was often late to meetings and didn’t have things ready when I said I would.
Your needs for respect, consideration and equality may not have been met by these actions. My way of communicating often came across as condescending, judgmental or like I was out to prove you wrong or get you. Over the last five years, I have gotten the feedback time and time again that you did not feel seen or heard by me or that I communicated in a way that might cause some of you to feel stupid around me. I mourn that so many of your needs were not met from some of my ways of working, communicating and being a housemate: your needs for emotional safety and security; your needs to be seen, to be heard and understood; your needs for appreciation, consideration, inclusion, equality, mutuality, and respect.
With these foundational needs not being met, so too were your needs for joy, peace, play, stability and celebration of life harder to fulfill. I know that many of you are hoping for more care from me and connection and harmony with me, and I mourn that I did not provide that to you. I know some of you experienced your self-expression and autonomy stifled in my presence and even your own power over your world. When you hoped to be empowered by this work, you may have come away disempowered. Rather than being uplifted in your interactions with me, you may have found yourself questioning yourself. I mourn that, at times, you felt anxiety, stress and worry when I would call or enter the house or during our interactions and meetings. I mourn the number of times that you would not feel safe to speak your truth with me and share what was truly alive for you.
I don’t mean to speak for any of you with what I’m saying. I know for each of you, your experience was different. For some of you, none of this applies at all. For some of you, it was minor and you’ve long forgotten it. And some of you experienced trauma that you still hold or are healing from today.
Some of us have had deep conversations that resulted in full understanding and healing closure, and some of us have never had that. I do hope through this that, by sharing this feedback, that I’ve heard consistently from you and your colleagues, that some of your needs to be understood, to be seen and to be heard are met, even if just a little bit. If you’re open to it, I would love to share how I feel.
Looking back on these many interactions and moments, I feel heavy-hearted and sad. I feel disappointed with myself. I also feel a bit ashamed and definitely embarrassed. When I reflect on some of my communication with you, I grieve and I mourn. I have few regrets in life, but with these interactions with you, I feel regretful. I yearn to have been able to have done things differently. Many of these interactions stick with me today with pain. Sometimes while I lay in bed at night, sometimes when I’m out for a walk and sometimes while I’m trying to focus on work, I think of you. And don’t get me wrong, I have many thoughts of joy, peace, inspiration, excitement and appreciation when I think of you, too. A feeling of warmth and comfort often comes over me thinking of our time together. But, with all of this, there’s a great heaviness in my heart for my actions and for what I could … what I would like to have done differently.
If you’re open to it, I’d like to share what needs of mine were not met by my actions through the way that I communicated: my need to live in integrity was not met; my need for the well-being of my teammates was not met as well as I would have liked; my need for closeness, connection and friendship with you were not met as well as I was hoping. My needs to act with consideration, fairness, inclusion, mutuality and respect were often not upheld; my needs for equality and shared reality were often not met; my needs to be appreciative of my teammates and to celebrate life together were sometimes deeply not met. And there are so many needs that were not met at times by my way of communicating, but certainly my need for compassion was not met.
Although I did not always act like it, we more or less had the same needs that we were trying to meet. If you’re open to continue reading or listening before I share what I’m choosing to do differently for the future, I would like to share what needs of mine I was trying to meet when you felt hurt. I would understand if you don’t want to hear it, if you are feeling that maybe you’d rather not hear it. I’d like to share why I want to share what was going on for me. What I’m seeking is to tend to hurt feelings and unmet needs. I’d like you to be able to heal any feelings of hurt or pain. I’d like for you to be able to overcome trauma, if you have any. I want to do what I can to repair our relationship and to heal from the conflict and to come to a place of peace within. I’d like for you to get any closure that you’d like. Why? Because I really do care about your well-being, even if I didn’t always show it.
I also am tending to my hurt feelings and unmet needs. I want to become whole. I am healing and I am seeking closure. The best way that I know how to achieve this is through empathy, which is truly to see what is alive for you, what you are feeling and needing. The best way that I know to achieve this is through understanding. My hope through sharing what was going on for me is so that we can both meet our needs for understanding, making sense of life, clarity and growth. And although this is a written one-way or spoken one-way message, this is also an invitation to heal with me. If you’d like to heal, I’d like to heal with you on your terms: writing, video call, meeting in person, if we’re in the same region, or even with the assistance of a compassionate communication facilitator, which I have done with a few of you and we have made great strides in healing and growth.
When I began the internship program in St. Pete in the spring of 2020, I did not know what I did not know at the time, but I really did not know what I was getting myself into. I had some experience with managing people, which was generally a struggle, but I had learned a fair bit over the previous few years and thought that I’d be able to manage a team of people with relative ease. My heart was in the place that I was trying to best utilize my skills and resources to be of service and it made a lot of sense to have a team working together to do this. By providing lodging, food and educational, community-based experiences, I could take the small amount of financial resources I had and make them go further in service. So, that was the basis for creating The Community House in St. Pete.
What I quickly found is that this experience resulted in a near crippling level of anxiety for me. I was experiencing the most anxiety I had ever felt in my adult life and I was often incredibly overwhelmed. The months in St. Pete were the most difficult months of my adult life. Just knowing that I needed to go into the house often stimulated an incredible amount of anxiety. At the time, I learned that I experienced social anxiety, which was something new for me. I was managing the lodging, the food and the roles of about nine people and I realized it was just way more than I knew how to manage. I was overwhelmed with the service that I had taken on as well. I consistently underestimated how long things would take me.
Many of the things I was doing were behind schedule by multiple years already, due already, due to my underestimation of tasks. I was constantly underestimating how many working parts there were to each program, and when I thought I was getting ahead, I found that although I had made progress, I still would not be caught up even if I worked morning until night for the next many months. I was taking on way more tasks than I could handle at once and it was incredibly stressful to be trying to balance all of them and to move from one to the next in any given day. With a team of nine people working on numerous roles, I was under the constant stress of switching from one thought to the next, often going back and forth in between many times in a day, as I tried to keep everyone flowing. It’s safe to say that I was disorganized and off-balance and I take full responsibility for this. Full responsibility for that.
I did all of this to myself. My own mismanagement made service harder than it had to be for most teammates. My own underestimation of tasks meant that I was constantly underestimating how long a task would take for a teammate. Because of this, I had unrealistic expectations. I have always had high expectations for myself and often expected others to be able to do what I could do, considering it to be common knowledge or a skill everyone has, but I was so wrong about this many times. I was in a state of inner turmoil and most of my teammates could sense this, I think. Although I was very proud of overall how well a group of nine strangers got along and that we had no major issues, it was safe to say that there was a fair bit of drama that I was responsible for. You know, my part of it. My inner state was reflected in how the organization and the team functioned, often too busy to manage our own stress levels and give ourselves the self-care we needed. That’s the training I received in my work previous and I carried that over to us.
This was all at the center of a whole lot of difficult communication. I learned that when I was stressed or anxious that I was most likely to not communicate compassionately and that I would sometimes communicate in a way that would stimulate others to feel hurt. So, as much as possible when I was overwhelmed in stress, I tried to keep to myself, but with everything we had going on, again due to my own mismanagement, I often found myself communicating at times when it was not wise to do. These were the times when people especially ended up feeling the most hurt and not having their needs met. This was also around the time that I put together some of my deeply ingrained communication that is in the realm of being on the autism spectrum. Many of my communication patterns that didn’t feel good for those around me were in alignment with the Asperger’s experience. At times, my bluntness comes across harsh and sharp. My literalness, to a degree that sometimes results in a lot of communication struggles. I always said that I was void of empathy, which I now know is one of the most important characteristics to have to compassionately manage a team.
With my Asperger’s, I have been very sensitive to noises, often relatively minor noises that are not even noticed by others. I am sensitive to lights. I’m also quite sensitive to being too close to people or to many types of touch. So, I was constantly overwhelmed in the house and constantly trying to control my environment to reduce my anxiety and stress. When I was in this state of being overwhelmed, which is often the case in a house full of people, I was not in a place where I could easily communicate compassionately. I also have always struggled to compliment others or to share appreciation. We didn’t do it in my childhood household. We didn’t do it at my university. I didn’t do it much for the first three decades of my life. I’ve always felt a huge block with it and it’s been a source of great discomfort for me. I often did feel the appreciation, but drew a blank in expressing it to you. My inability to communicate with warmth, tenderness and compassion was certainly a big part of the struggle for people. At the same time, there was much misunderstanding of my words, my tone and my intention. I was only beginning to understand it more myself, so no wonder others were not understanding me. There were so many times when people made up stories in their head that were not accurate about my words, actions or intentions. This was exhausting for me because, just like everyone else, I have a deep desire to be understood.
It was really helpful to learn this, because I learned a lot about myself and how I could improve myself and where I’d likely continue my difficulties. I also learned my personality type, INTJ-A, and this played a large role in understanding my communication patterns as well. I write about my communication patterns with this and Asperger’s in more depth under my experience with non-violent communication and I encourage you to read that if you want a deeper understanding. During these times of great difficulty in the workplace, stress and anxiety, I was generally always trying to meet my needs for effectiveness and efficiency, for stability and structure, for ease, support and clarity, for flow and for competence and contribution. In my own personal life, I was trying to meet my basic needs for autonomy, freedom and space, for order, security and safety, for harmony, presence, leisure and sleep, for shared reality, growth, peace, making sense of life and to belong and to be understood.
There was so much struggle that I didn’t understand at the time, that I’ve started to understand with each passing experience of working with a team. Moving up to Asheville, North Carolina was a sort of a fresh start, although some of you came with me, which I was so excited for. I’d made a lot of improvements in my communication, but found myself disappointed at how much I still struggled. In the Spring of 2021, we took a training in compassionate communication together and that was the single greatest move in creating more harmony. Yet as many of my teammates in Nashville know, there was still a lot of pain and hurt feelings. Everything I have shared that I am mourning today was still happening. Even though I was practicing my communication as much as 20 hours per week reading this book, Non-Violent Communication six times, taking every class available, practicing with many of you, going to compassion camp together, there was still so much miscommunication. I often was not able to communicate in the way I so deeply wanted to. There were so many times that I was so tired of myself. I remember just being so tired of myself. I tried really hard and after three years of trying, I realized that I was just not up to the task. I came to the realization that managing people was not my gift. It was not my role. At least not for now.
I realized that a big part of this was that I didn’t even want to be managing people. My goal was to be of service to Earth and managing a team was a way of accomplishing that. This was a big realization as to why I struggled with it so much. It wasn’t really in alignment for me with what I truly wanted to be doing. I learned that it was all just too much for me. I learned that I could not provide for the needs of everyone and by the end of 2022, I decided I’m not willing to be in a position where I’m not able to do it full justice. What I would love for you to know is that I really was doing the best that I could. What I think very few people realized fully is that when they were suffering, I was suffering, too. I was rarely oblivious to the pain that others were feeling and I generally did try to listen and understand. And there was rarely a time where the pain that I stimulated in others didn’t stimulate pain in me, too. Others may have often seen me as cool-headed and calm, but I had anxiety coursing through my entire body.
I don’t minimize the pain that others felt, but I probably suffered the most from my own communication patterns. Although I mourn, I do not have any self-hatred or self-judgment. I truly believe that I was doing the best that I knew how to meet my own basic needs, while striving for the well-being of others to the best of my ability. If anything, although I mourn, I am mostly grateful for the opportunities for learning and growth and for having made it this far, at the age of 37, when many of us in this dominator society never break free from our communication challenges. I celebrate all the connections we have had and all that we have accomplished together. I celebrate the feelings of compassion, love, warmth and gratitude that I know many of you have for me. And I’m truly grateful for all the healing that we have had together, both through struggles and through times of deep connection and joy.
I’ve learned that no matter how you structure an organization of service, at the core are human beings and at the core of each of us are emotions and basic human needs. I’ve learned it is essential to focus on making sure that each of our basic human needs are met and to put a lot of energy into feelings. I would not have said that just a few years ago. Now it is a core belief of mine. What I mourn the most is that some of you have followed me for years and had such high hopes for our time together. Some of you have the highest respect for me and dedicated a lot of your time to me. I mourn that you didn’t receive the highest level of appreciation, consideration and respect from me and that you often received much less than that. I really was hoping to be able to write this letter to you with more precision and brevity. I value your time and I acknowledge that this letter is a commitment of your time to read.
But I don’t know how to express this more concisely while also trying to show you that I truly see you and truly have heard you. And also while trying to truly be seen and heard and hopefully understood as well. The purpose of this letter is to create healing for you and for me. And if there is any healing that you’d like to pursue, I’d like to pursue it with you. Whether it is simply to be heard and to share your perspective, to share where I still have not seen you, to receive empathy from me, to try to understand me more. Whatever it is that would create healing for you.
I am committed to compassionate communication and to the best of my ability, that is what I will try to bring to you in our relationship. Whether that is through working directly together, maintaining a small connection, or just keeping each other in our thoughts. I have listened a lot over the last few years and I have found patterns in how my communication is received by others. I am committed to increasing my skill level and improving my communication to meet the needs of everyone with whom I’m involved. If you have not taken compassionate communication but like the sounds of it, I would love to offer you the book and or “Non-violent Communication 101” with Steve Torma as an extension of my love for you and my desire for your well-being.
At the heart of this is not overcoming what I don’t want to be, but practicing what I do want to be. So I am dedicated to: remembering that all conflict involves people trying to figure out how to get their needs met and remembering that each of us is trying to meet our basic needs at every moment; staying empathetically connected to each other’s feelings and needs, with the belief that we can always find solutions when staying in this state of consciousness; to practicing gratitude daily so that I can more freely provide appreciation; and to celebrate the small things and celebrate our little successes.
[Deep breath] So that’s the letter of mourning. So my friends, I have had a lot of struggle. There’s been a lot of people who have had pretty hurt feelings and there’s a lot of people who have felt disempowered and sad and disappointed and frustrated and some people who have experienced trauma working with me, and so it’s been a great struggle. And I’m sure most of you know that that’s never my intention. I have no intention ever of putting people down. I’m way beyond that. You know, I didn’t grow up with the compassionate communication skills. I didn’t grow up with empathy. I grew up in a very dominator society of, like, who’s right. It was always “Who’s right?” and there was so much correcting of each other. And, I really do dive into that in my experience with non-violent communication, so I definitely recommend reading that, if you want to hear more of that.
So yes, there’s been a whole lot of struggle and it’s been a place of deep grief for me, because I care about everybody that I work with. I genuinely do. And it’s also a great struggle to know that, you know, I’m trying so hard to be of service and then so much of my time and energy goes into trying to heal the struggles and relationships. And the last years there’s just been … it’s been a real challenge. It’s been a really big challenge. And it’s also really painful when people who come to work with you, who respect you, end up just having, you know, negative thoughts and some based on reality, and then others when we’re hurt, we tend to create stories. And there’s definitely been some stories, and that’s really painful, for stories to be circulated in the community, my close communities in Asheville and St. Pete.
You know, I don’t know how much stories there are, but it’s painful to imagine. There’s a couple painful things that I want to mention. Like, one of my teammates one time said that I was just a capitalist. You know, she also thought that I was exploiting her, and that was really painful to hear, because it’s just absolutely not my intentions and not what I’m doing. So, sometimes things got spun out of control and, you know, I actually just heard this recently, but one of the teammates actually was telling other teammates that they were in a cult. And I just learned this a couple years later. And that one is just … it’s just like … what is going on?
I take some responsibility that I wasn’t creating a place of such a level of compassion where people’s needs were really met. I take responsibility that there was that struggle, but I don’t take responsibility for people coming up with that kind of story in their mind. So, I take responsibility for myself and my actions, but I don’t take on responsibility for everything. I genuinely don’t. So, a couple other things that I do want to acknowledge with the house in St. Pete there. I had a fair bit of conflict with the landlord. I don’t usually use that term. That relationship ended with him basically ending the agreement early and being really unhappy with me. So a lot of miscommunication there. And then, we also volunteered at a farm for a few months and put in so much of our time and energy and somehow that relationship with the farm manager ended with them just not speaking to me. And that was a place of deep pain. A very deep pain. I experienced that back in 2021.
In 2023, I worked with a teammate to build up the “Grow Your Own Toilet Paper” initiative and the “Food Forest Starter Bundle,” and we had really great things going on at first and that collapsed. So, the continuation … even after the St. Pete and the Asheville house … the continuation of challenging struggles continued. And then a close friend of mine, who was also a colleague, actually after I spent a few months staying with him, he really decided he didn’t want to be my friend anymore. The way that I was not what he wanted in his life and that was very deeply painful. And so much of that was a matter of, honestly, miscommunication, misunderstanding, not being able to communicate, and I really tried. I really tried. And that was very painful. I held that for a while as a deep pain. And I know a big part of that is, I just look at it not with any blame and not with guilt or shame, but just knowing that there were some needs of his that weren’t being met. And the feelings that arose from that, and I take responsibility for my part in that.
Now more recently, this summer my friend Brent, and I can mention his name because Brent and I are so solid, and he’s just one of the most solid human beings I’ve ever experienced and spent substantial time with. This summer, he walked with me … we walked together for a big portion of my walk really, Washington and Oregon. And he was there, one of the core people in my life and just so incredibly supportive. And during the walk, my books arrived in Port Townsend, and he was there to help me with distributing the books. He was working hard, just helping me, just volunteering, being of service. And I was so stressed and so anxious with trying to get all the books out and managing the walk … from Canada to Los Angeles, that I was so in a place where I was not compassionate and I just remember coming across as such an a-hole, just my … it was just like, “Wow! This is still in me?” It was so painful. He experienced it. It was like he was thinking, like, “I don’t even want to be around this guy.” It was painful for him, painful for me, and it was a moment of just, here it is, it’s 2024. I’ve been practicing compassionate communication for three years, and I’m still doing this? Oh, it was very painful. When I asked Brent for feedback, he said I came across as short, kind of a dick, coming across as operating from a place of ego sometimes, and also condescending. If I heard those words a few years ago, it would have been to be expected, but it was very disappointing for me to hear that in the summer of 2024. It was very disappointing.
Now, on this trip, I also got feedback from some of the hosts that I stayed with. Many people hosted me, and in Oregon, one of the hosts gave me the feedback that I was being rude, and that was a bit of a shock. I heard what they were saying, and it was painful to hear. What I heard was that I was a guest in her house and not meeting her needs for contribution, for gentleness, for compassion, for care, and it was painful to hear that. Because here I am, a guest in someone’s home, and they’re experiencing me as rude.
Then another host said that they didn’t feel a connection with me and that they actually felt really disconnected. So, continuing to struggle with communication, my struggle there was just that with this walk, I’m so tired. You know, I’ve been doing a lot of work, and I’ve also had a need for autonomy and solitude and connection with myself, and it’s been really hard to manage that while staying with hosts. So, after getting that feedback, I realized the best thing for me would just be to not stay with people and just camp.
I write about that in more depth in my post, A Message of Gratitude and Mourning to My Hosts. Then one other experience this summer that was very disheartening was someone came out to do some videos with me. I felt really solid about our communication to a large degree. Overall, I felt like I had practiced a lot of patience, gentleness, and compassion. And they ended up pretty unhappy, and they actually threatened to sue me because they felt like their time wasn’t valued. There was definitely miscommunication on both parts around that.
But here I am, in 2024, and I have done all this work, and someone who I brought on as a teammate for a short-term project, at the end is wanting to sue me. So, regardless of my responsibility — how much of that was me and them — at the very … no matter what it’s showing is that I still have a lot of work to do with my compassionate communication skills with hiring.
One thing that I struggle with is hiring. I’m not good at hiring people; it’s not my skill set, and I don’t want to be doing it. It’s a very big struggle. So, I want to acknowledge that I’ve had a very high turnover with my teammates over the last years. High turnover is often a sign of an organization that’s not being managed really effectively, and I think that’s true. I’ve had a lot of struggles with managing. As I shared, it’s not my great skill set.
That high turnover … it’s definitely, truthfully, partly my inability to manage a team very effectively. And it’s also because I haven’t had the resources to provide; the money is just limited. It’s also because most organizations that I know have pretty high turnover. It’s part of working with young people and it’s also part of working with volunteers. But definitely, my challenge with managing plays a role in that.
Now, a recent feedback that I’d like to share is actually from my teammate Daniel, who I’m working with right now, who’s editing these videos that you’re watching. We’re doing this truth series together. We just spent a little bit of time in Monterrey. So, “Hey, Daniel!” Daniel and I have worked very well together and have had a really meaningful relationship. We’ve had our struggles as well, but we’ve had a lot of healing and connection, and it’s been really beautiful.
One thing that Daniel vulnerably shared with me when we saw each other a couple weeks ago is that when he was filming me; he filmed videos with me in 2022 in Asheville for about five or six months, I think. What he shared with me is that when I was talking about compassionate communication on camera, he saw a disconnection between how I interacted with him and the team. It almost gave this sense of like, “Is he really who he says he is?”
That’s also what Brent told me this summer, which was really painful: that he questioned that, “Is he really who he says he is? Is this a show?” Daniel said it’s not with the sustainability stuff, it’s not with the environmental stuff, it’s when I was talking about compassionate communication. How I would turn on for the camera, but in my communication with him or the team, I would often be harsh, like I mentioned, short and such.
That was a really great feedback to hear from Daniel. To hear that and to hear that from Brent as well. What I realized with that is that I went from being considered void of empathy and really much emotions to trying to make this a large part of my life purpose, to operate from a place of understanding feelings and needs—my own and others—and to really make that the foundation of my life.
And so there’s a lag here and there’s probably going to be a lag of multiple more years. It was really good to get that feedback. Now Daniel and Brent are close people in my life and they were able to ask that question and say, “Is he really who he says he is?” But also remember seeing me as a human and not spin it out totally to where I’m some kind of fraud, which is what a lot of people do on the internet.
They hear one thing and they’re just like, “Oh, it’s all made up. He’s just a total fraud.” And then, even people that I’ve worked with more closely, where it’s not in alignment, they start to have this deeper idea that I’m not true to my being and to my mission. I can tell you that I am. The fact that I’m sharing this depth is just one of my ways of sharing that I am fully dedicated to this.
However many decades I have of being of service, deeply meaningful, connective relationships are at the heart of that. One of my goals in life is to get to the place where whoever I’m with, that’s the most important person to me in the world for that time. That’s something that Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers really turned me on to: that whoever he was with in that moment … that’s all that mattered. That’s where I want to be. I still have a lot of work to get there, but that is at the heart of where I want to be practicing empathy and compassion in all of my interactions. Again, I’m far from being there, but I’ve been putting in a lot of work and I’ve seen a lot of progress, and I really celebrate that.
So, to all of you out there who I have healed with, I am so grateful that we’ve connected. I’ve been able to connect with a lot of teammates this summer on this walk. Some of us have gotten to get together in person, and then others of us have gotten to connect online. There are more of you that I would like to heal with. So, again, if you are watching this and you’re wanting healing with me, please do let me know. You could send me an email.
I’m celebrating the healing that we’ve had together, and for so many of us, we’ve done compassionate communication together. I’m celebrating all the work that we’re doing. It’s so easy to focus just on the negative and remember the negative, but I hold on to such an amount of gratitude, appreciation, celebration, and connection for so many of us that have worked together and the healing that we’ve done.
So, I’ve healed a lot of relationships, and I’m so grateful, and there’s still more healing to be done. I’m dedicated to this healing, and I’m here. Now, just as important to healing my past relationships is making sure that I’m doing the work so that I bring myself to my current and my future relationships in a way that won’t need healing. There’s always going to be a need for repair. That’s a standard thing no matter how well we know each other; there’s always a need for repair and healing. But my job is to bring my life into the deepest state of truth, integrity, and transparency – to bring that to my relationships.
I want people to know my struggles and what they’re going to get. I have a letter that was written by one of my former teammates of the struggles of working with me, and I want whoever I work with to read this letter of mourning. I want them to read that letter of struggle. I’m trying to just be fully transparent: here are my challenges. Here’s what you can expect from me. I’m not hiding any of it. I’m not burying any of it. I’m putting it out there, and that’s what I’m going to continue to do. So, you all out there have my word, my commitment, to continue healing and to continue doing the internal work to bring my highest self to all of you. This whole series on truth and integrity is part of that.
So, I love you all very much. I’m very grateful for each of you, and I’m looking forward to continuing this journey together.
Articles referred to:
My Experience with Nonviolent Communication (NVC) / Compassionate Communication
The above is a transcription of Truth and Transparency: My Struggles Managing a Team, which is part of my practice of coming into full truth and transparency.
For the full series and depth to this practice visit: My Commitment to Truth and Transparency.
