Happy Friday Leaders, Readers, and Casual Observers.
If you didn’t get to tune into today’s live, you can watch or listen to it in the above video. I dove into several topics, most of which I touch on here in the Weekly Roundup.
It’s been a good week for me, and for Cultivar.
I wouldn’t say it’s been ground-breaking, more ground-enriching. I’ve been composting things and figuring out things that need figuring. I’ve had a few realizations on internal things I need to move through in order to continue pushing the needle forward. More about that later.
Earlier in the week LinkedIn was abuzz regarding “quiet cracking,” and I put my two cents in on both platforms. Quiet cracking, of course, is corpo-speak for burnout, phrased as such to put the blame onto the employee rather than the systemically toxic conditions they are working in or under.
There’s an underlying message that I think is in the bedrock of this issue, and it’s one I think we all know too well:
Feelings. Big F.
Feeling disconnected, inauthentic, and unimportant, or on the flip side, feeling connected, authentic, and important.
Let’s see if this message is as ubiquitous as I think it might be, through a set of questions:
How many of the organizations we work for only want us to feel connected, important, and authentic, not actually be those things.
How many leaders inspire us, empower us, and cultivate us not in their image but in that of our own potential?
When you experience and think through these very necessary emotions, are they measured through internal or external barometers and metrics?
For many many years, I chased what felt good when measured by my organizational and societal cues. Getting good performance reviews. Feeling accepted by my peers and higher ups. External Validation.
I very rarely stopped to ask myself what I truly wanted. Even when my wife would ask me to do so, I’d retort back annoyed something to the effect of “well whats wrong with wanting to measure myself by those standards, what else am I going to measure it with?!”
How many times have you heard “align with values,” “get on board”.
How often have we thought we were making a genuine connection at work, only to find it was performative bullshit;
Our contributions “mean so much”, but not enough to allow for flexibility in meetings when we need to deal with a family emergency, mental overload, or are questioning our role.
Even our feelings of this arena are extracted and externally framed rather than regeneratively dealt with. “I love that energy, lets bring that forward,” or “You know, I’m not sure that’s a healthy way to look at things, you should use that to fuel self-improvement.”
But toxic leaders never circle back to discuss the level of personal worth you are putting into delivering that energy, or not being able to get to a better mental spot.
Yesterday I was faced with feelings of uncertainty, not because of scarcity, but because of potential, of both knowing my capability and realizing how I seen I am by some people for it.
When this acknowledgement, a map of opportunity and impact was presented to me, I wanted to retreat, and go back to the comfortable framing of what I could achieve in my current conceptualization of Cultivar, versus the dream of impacting how leadership development is viewed on a generational scale.
As I touched on at the start of the week, “Not chaining yourself to assumptions and ideals about who you wanted to be or who you thought you should be. Focus on who you are now, and where you go from here,” can be a tough challenge for anyone, let alone leaders.
I’m facing that daily, because as I am starting to realize, I am growing, daily.
I am not the same person today that I was yesterday, nor will I be tomorrow. But the mind resists that self-conception.
If you feel uncertain, like an imposter; when you ask yourself “What am I doing?!”, remember:
When given the opportunity to grasp the hand of Potential and step onto the path towards discovery and fulfillment of purpose, we far too often pull our hand back, diminishing ourselves forever by thinking, “I am not worthy”.
If Potential offers out her hand, you are worthy; she would not extend it otherwise.
Until next Time,
Chris
Seed Catalog:
A collection of things I’ve found throughout the week that pique my interest, inspire me, or relate to the themes I’ve noticed this week; varies between non-fiction, fiction, poetry, music, art, cinema, etc.
The Nature Principle, Richard Louv:
Project Management Matters:
When projects fail, it’s tempting to pin the blame on execution. But as we’ve seen, the challenge arrives on the scene much earlier. It shows up in expired assumptions, overwhelming or misleading information, or in capability gaps that ambition refuses to acknowledge.
Demystify Culture:
“Your people's identities are anchored in the present and past. Their sense of worth comes from relationships they've built, successes they were part of, and the meaningful work they've been delivering.
Change creates a divide between what was and what will be. People don't just resist the new approach—they're protecting their self-worth.”
Cosmopoetics:
A quote from a recent LinkedIn post by a recently discovered, newly favorite author and intellectual of mine, Báyò Akomolafe:
By 'experience', I don't mean 'your' or 'my' experience. I do not mean something 'personal'. Experience is not interiority. It is not “what happens inside me.” Or what happened to me. It is the dynamic condition by which 'me' comes to be legible in the first place. I push against a Cartesian sense of an inner stage where the self has private access.
Experience is shape. I think of it as the geometry of the biopolitical. A fold in the fabric of the world that accommodates, that permits certain becomings, certain relations, certain subjectivities. Experience precedes the subject. The sovereign “I” is an after-effect, an accommodation.
The categories “student,” “teacher,” “author,” “thinker” stabilize only because fields of experience have congealed in particular ways.
Experience is collective and more-than-human. It is not simply human perception: it is shaped with microbes, satellites, soil, algorithms, atmospheres, furniture, history. It is a relational event.
Contour Lines is my more-often published and anecdotal format newsletter. I use it to explore intersections between my personal and professional arenas while building Cultivar. If something I touch in resonates with you and you’d like to chat, feel free to reach out!
