Leaders that come to me often struggle with:
1) Wanting to operate more calmly and confidently (in all areas of their lives)
2) Wanting to act and speak from a place of truth and authenticity while honoring the variant interests of diverse stakeholders
3) Wanting the ability to make swift thoughtful decisions.
Each of these is an example of leaders struggling with “receiving”. Here are a few more examples of types of leadership activities related to receiving.
1) Receiving and acting on feedback
2) Listening to understand vs listening to reply
3) Truly accepting that there are competitive threats, while staying nimble and committed to the company’s values
4) Letting product and vision evolve based on the needs of the customers and market
5) Hiring a senior leadership team, that is smarter than you are
6) Seeking out personal blindspots proactively
7) Creating alignment among people with divergent opinions or perspectives
8) Ability to remain calm and clear in chaos, and when control seems to be slipping
To better understand the significance of this, it’s important to see receiving in contrast to “giving”, which is the learned behavior, conditioned tendency, or inherent strength most leaders tend to exercise because it’s most explicitly expected of them.
It’s rare that my clients--high-performing leaders who’ve excelled up until this point in their career—come to me with problems in the “giving” area, but it’s very common for them to come to me with “receiving” problems (they might not know it, but that’s usually where we end up).
It took me a while in my own journey and in the journey with my coaching partners to truly appreciate what the DEEP key drivers are. Especially with senior executives, and founders I’ve found that the confidence they bring to the table is more often a protection mechanism rather than the true ownership of one’s whole self. More often than not confidence is used to save us from the potential mistakes we could be making, rather than emboldening us to trust our decisions EVEN IF they may not always be right.
Sit with it for a moment. The difference is subtle, and significant.
So, how does one diagnose that they have a problem related to receiving?
A lack of trust and relatability.
We still often miss the intentions set by leaders and managers to invite others in their team to add their thoughts, experiences and thought-provoking questions through questions such as: “Hey… I am operating from and am my own experience. Who can add theirs? What am I not seeing that I should take into consideration before moving the org into this or that direction?“A traditional definition of power.
Because of the traditional nature of power, many of us are socially conditioned to to give (the right answers). The muscle of receiving in an honest, curious, and inquiring way decays over time.Physical (somatic) reactions in moments that would otherwise invite you to receive, such as: compliments, gifts, surprises (of all sorts), critical feedback, actual attacks etc.
Reaction can be (but are not limited to): knot in the stomach, tightening chest, nervous body, shoulders shrinking down, avoiding eye contact, rushing the interaction for it to be over
Moving into a balance between receiving and giving
As human beings, we all experience some form of social conditioning and formulated habits. So, we often create our own unhealthy patterns around the energies of giving and receiving. This happens subconsciously, often based on how we experienced early role models in our lives and their relationship to both energies. Often we may feel comfortable being in a habitualized state of giving, because we want to feel appreciated, seen, understood, needed, validated. At the core of it often resides a belief that to receive love, we need to be giving our energy to the other, or doing things in order to get loved in return. And then there are some of us that feel more comfortable receiving, because the vulnerability, open-heart center and energy required to give is overwhelming. It creates the space that others may use to take advantage of you, and it depletes the energy of giving almost entirely. We become less certain about what we have to offer, what we stand for, and what is important to us because we take whatever is available to us from others to protect ourselves (and heart). Additionally, while giving often times comes with the idea of never expecting anything, receiving often times comes with the expectation that others owe you something. Both can co-exist in different parts of our lives marked by different relationship dynamics. For instance romantic relationships and work relationships.
This all may seem counterintuitive at first, if you’ve been thinking about giving and receiving in a more conventional way for most of your life. It may be interesting for you to investigate whether you have tendencies to give or receive, when exactly they show up, what the triggers are, and how these tendencies developed over time. It’s a beautiful self-awareness experiment.
Cultivating a balance between giving and receiving liberates you to accept that you are the center of all visions, ideas, promises, and expectations. You can rely on yourself as a source of idealism and action at the same time. You nurture your own giving and receiving, set healthy boundaries, while knowing when to invite others in to help you grow.
This in turn develops much healthier relationships with others. When we’re better receivers, we :
Gain an intuitive understanding of when it feels right to ask for something, or when we should do it ourselves resulting in mutual respect, reliability, and trust.
Gain an understanding of our own abilities resulting in empowering others to do the same
Are able to lead with more compassion since we are not filling our own giving or receiving cups first, but instead sensing what the situation requires. This is where self-awareness has an immediate effect on our ability to lead and drive actual (operational) results.
Allow ourselves to become humbler, and perform an act of love by offering a chance for others to give (Chopra, 2019)
As a giving leader, we need to honor the people around us who want to return the value of giving to us.
Giving others the permission to give to us might be the highest form of giving after all ;) .
My business mentor posed a powerful question recently: What are we afraid of when we are put into a position to receive?
I can tell you this: As an avid giver myself, I went into a long journaling session with myself and had to come to terms how I was taking way from the depth of some of my relationships by not being able to receive the way I’d like to see my best self do.
Oh, and I highly recommend you doing the same.
So, I am closing it off today with few journaling questions for you to investigate your relationship with both energies further. This will surely be an ongoing topic and can be unpacked in multiple ways. So, we all start here.
What does giving and receiving mean to you?
What comes up for you as you ponder this? Which body parts give you the most feedback?
What opens this up for you?
What would change in your life and in your work if you’d allow yourself to give or receive more?
Which relationships would benefit? Why? How?
Happy journaling and let me know how this all sat with you,
Franzi
UPDATE:
Ted (my husband) and I are still gathering all the resources we received to support our fellow humans in Afghanistan. I will be sending this out as soon as we have a sharable version of it. This will be an open document and everyone can add other organizations worth supporting.
I am also in the middle of setting up our first bravespace radio and am inviting middle east journalists and other investigative journalists that can roll up the topic from a culturally, and politically-sensitive place.
Somatic Exercise:
When faced with high-stake decisions or when overwhelmed and in need for a release, which area in your body can you go to that is relaxed and offers you a silent/calm space? How can this area support you?
Example: I often find that others and myself included name their legs. By focusing on our legs we can let it flow into the rest of our body or become aware what else this part of our body can do to us in its calm state, such as walking, stretching, laying down.
Give it a try. Our body gives us the tools we need to calm or energize ourselves if we just listen and try things out.
My first private bravespace
I had the honor to give a journaling session to a group of male CEOs and founders in Miami last week. The topic was mental and emotional health as a high-performer. You can find the presentation here. If this is interesting to you, and your team or community, I’d love to explore how bravespace can support you in driving more awareness, radical self-inquiry and personal development, as well as communal strength.
A personal moment:
We celebrated our eldest son’s first day of schooling last week. We chose a Montessori school for him. This also meant he would not be joined by any of his friends from kindergarten here in Germany. I ultimately knew it was the school environment that was better for who he is as a very free, creative kid who seeks his own learning experiences over explanations. On his first day the principal told us they would spend the first week leaning into non-violent communication and getting to know themselves and others in this new environment, I met a bunch of other parents who made a similar decision like we did, and his teacher is male, smart, kind, and exhibits many characteristics of sound modern masculinity, they grow their own fruits and veggies, and have great diversity. Why am I sharing this?
Always choose your tribe. I keep coming back to this. Even in environments where we seem to not have a choice (we’re not allowed to homeschool here!), we were able to optimize for the values we live in our family and find an environment that is an extension of this.
Stay true to yourself. Live your truth. Be your truth. Receive the good that is out there by choosing to believe that you can find it.