This essay is an invitation to formulate, communicate, and stand grounded in your firm beliefs for the changes that you see are most needed within yourself, within your industry, within your organization, within your ecosystem, country, or our shared world.
I call it: “What’s my crazy?“
Why “crazy”? Because often enough in my work I witness people who need to first be pushed to the furthest edges of their physical and emotional capacity before they muster the courage to start saying what needs to be said.
They delay the most crucial realizations, conversations, and decisions either because they fear becoming too successful/influential/joyful or they fear what will happen if those conversations and decisions go poorly.
This fear is okay. AND for the sake of growth, it is crucial to ask: At what point does the cost of it become too big? At what point does it limit me and my leadership to and for others?
For some it’s a narrative-based fear: they think they are too loud, or too much, or too bossy, or too crazy, or too ambitious, too inexperienced, or too incapable. There is a part of them that is called to take up more space, but they are not picking up the call just yet. They are not ready to fill the space with their presence, but they can feel that it’s coming.
Somatically, their bodies shrink a lot ahead of big opportunities, shoulders go up, pupils tighten, legs get heavy, or they have a hard time facing—like, literally looking at—the things that are in front of them, whether good or bad. Yes, even too much joy might make them feel overwhelmed and anxious. This is often a sign that the nervous system (NS) is in a state of freeze or fawning - so-called dissociation (from the body). The body and NS have a hard time distinguishing what’s positive, joyful, fun, or what’s truly dangerous, risky, or threatening. There is a sense of control that the body needs to uphold because the NS doesn’t perceive relaxation, ease, joy, or silence as a safe place to be.
I also witness another type of leader: those who share all the time, who take up so much space that it’s hard for others to listen or speak, who are so visionary and impatient in their relentless pursuit of life, that it’s hard to follow them. Everybody wants to be surrounded by him or her, but the day-to-day reality often looks like a constant catch-up game or the desire to be seen by them. Frustration, impatience, and an obsession with progress often hinder those folks from being truly present and understanding what the challenges and opportunities are in the here and now. When we become obsessed with the horizon, we may never touch the sand or very realistically see the overwhelm in someone else’s eyes. These folks love change but often struggle with the transition part of the change. I often say that transition is the felt experience of change. It’s the part where we face our demons, our conditioned tendencies, where our body shows us the ups and downs of the big vision and ambition or standards with which we’re leading our life.
None of it is bad. Not at all in fact. It’s just a reminder, that everyone gets to work on their own “leadership body“ in different ways to find a level of homeostasis that allows us to move in and out of those demanding states with more ease - also called emotional fluidity. If I know myself better, understand who I am, what my tendencies are, how I respond emotionally to certain triggers, I cannot only work on it (ideally), we can also lead in a way that our tendencies do not become the problem of others.
Let that sink in for a moment: “How am I complicit in creating the situations that I don’t want?”
Back to the top and coming full circle: I chose the word “crazy” because sometimes it takes the little frantic, kinky, oblivious side of us to trust that our voice or our intuition matters.
Crazy helps us to test things out, have conversations we never had, lead a team exercise that we never used, or sit in silence for 2+ minutes looking at each other.
Crazy means we are okay with our audacity, and calling out the things that we see without asking for permission… or even better: waiting for it.
Crazy also means for some, to just do the opposite of all their conditioned tendencies.
Like how does it feel to just listen today? How does it feel to nod at everyone passing? How does it feel to share an appreciation for the person in front of me?
Crazy might mean to just take another road home, bring home cake for dinner, or binge-watch a show with your kids even though it’s Sunday night and tomorrow is a school day. Just because the coziness, giggles, and joy was the exact thing that everyone needed.
What’s your crazy? What are you allowing yourself to feel, explore, witness? What is your kinky crazy self saying that needs to be said? What am I saying that is not being heard, and so my crazy finds a more direct, colorful, creative to say it?
And from that place: What becomes available from this newly gained perspective? Was it really that crazy after all, and might it just be your new empowered normal?
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What’s my crazy? (part 1 — part 2 coming next week)
My crazy is that I don’t think we help leaders to get better by helping them what to do, how to do it, or with whom.
Of course, there is a time and place for everything. But in the grand scheme of it all, I believe we need to invest in leaders by supporting them in noticing their reactivity, separation, avoidance, attachment, and self-deficiency. I want to bring them on a journey where radical self-inquiry (reflection) and somatic awareness (understanding their body’s language) give them the leadership body that engages the whole self – physiological, emotional, social, intellectual – in ongoing, repeated practice.
Possibility comes from a place of knowing what we are capable of, when we know how to regulate ourselves in hard times, how to inspire ourselves from within, how to feel great to ask for help, how to feel grounded in saying no and and and. Possibility comes from walking through the obstacles and knowing that they will become lighter as we walk through them.
My crazy is that I don’t think leaders of today’s organizations, teams, families, and communities - big and small - need to optimize how fast they can perfect “up and to the right”.
Related to the one above: Leaders need moments to stand still and go deep. We help them by deepening their own presence, morale, vision, and self-talk. When we feel and see ourselves, we can finally get out of our own way and start serving the way our companies, teams, and communities deserve it.
We support them by healing and nurturing 5 freedoms in particular (and in no particular order as it always depends on the context a person comes from and with):
1. Freedom of health
2. Freedom of relationships
3. Freedom of money
4. Freedom of purpose
5. Freedom of time
My crazy is that I don’t think we need more productivity tools to grow an organization’s reach.
We need to know who we are as an org/team, why we are doing what we are doing, what is not being said, who is not showing up, where we’re going and why it is not clear where we’re going. And then we let that be infiltrated into any process, any piece of communication, any meeting until it lives in the organization’s muscle.
Think of your team, your startup, your organization as a human body.
I’ve recently asked a potential client - a new CEO of a growing supplements company in Europe (which he took over) - what chronic illness his company has. Without much feeling or thinking, he immediately said: “Throwing up constantly. It’s like we’re purging all the time.”
We sat still for a moment until both of us said: “No wonder you’re struggling with growth.”
Instead of asking him where the vomiting comes from, I asked him what it is that triggers the gag reflex and what it consumes that bothers the whole system so regularly.
Everything just unfolded from there. Within 60 minutes the long-term plan was there and he knew for himself what to do.
Hint: 90% of the time it’s conversations that need to happen that unlock everything else, or present the next layer of healing that needs to happen organizationally.My crazy is that I believe that most founders are not the best CEOs, especially after the first 5-10 years, true PMF, and/or growth beyond a B-Round.
If you are a builder, if you identify yourself as a builder, if you want to keep building then you have to learn how to grieve your participation at the helm of the org to celebrate a person who is a much better fit to move the company to contain excellence.
Containing (maintaining) excellence is a very different skill than building it.
I’ve seen many founders growing into the skill of containing excellence, and I have also seen many whose spirit broke trying.
The lesson here? Doing the right thing sometimes comes at the cost of understanding how we are complicit in creating the circumstances the organizations can’t seem to get out of (or beyond). Especially if we control the majority of decisions.
Alternatively, find a builder role within your own company, move onto the board in an executing function, or become VP of what you’re extremely good at.
This is (kinda obviously) just an example of many other ways that leaders or managers get in their own way. Reflect for yourself where this dynamic shows up in your life.
My crazy is that I don’t think mental health is an afterthought, a reactive pill to swallow when the symptoms of burnout are already creeping in.
I think many will agree with me here, and yet many lack the commitment to making the shift. We need to raise the standards and make mental, and emotional health a non-negotiable practice in organizations that are meant to thrive amongst the wild economic and socio-economic realities we are witnessing. Athletes don’t run themselves down and then show up to the grand finale expecting that they’ll nail it.
Leadership is a practice, and most of it happens internally, every day, over and over again. So that we have the emotional, mental, and physical strength to see the opportunity when it arrives and the spiritual stamina to go after it.
Practice is the foundation for learning and mastery.
My crazy is that the most powerful leaders are those who understand their energetic influence in the room. And no - I don’t mean power. I mean presence, attitude, mood.
We need to invest in leadership development programs that teach leaders about the interconnectedness of their mind-body system, nervous system mastery, and how to relate skillfully to their own emotional landscape:
1. The mind and body are not separate from each other but function and act in unison (enabled by the vagus nerve).
2. The brain is influenced by experiences of signals carried by the nervous system from all parts of the body (the vagus nerve produces 9 pieces of information/internalized wisdom for every piece of information coming from the brain)
3. Emotions and moods predispose how we think and act.
4. The history of our experiences and practices conditions our perceptions of the world and shapes our capabilities.
5. Communication is not just the transfer of information – it is the interaction of people that produces interpretations, emotions and moods, and body reactions.
Schedule some time into your calendar to identify your crazy and the things that you are excited to act upon, put it out there, and trust that this is the message that you’re here to share. It may support you in shedding light on this question: Are you moving in purpose, with purpose, or on purpose?
Next week, we will come back to this and learn more about the advantages of embodied themes for 2024 vs. rigid goal-setting.
All the love, all the power,
Franzi
P.S. If you want help getting clear on your crazy, reach out and schedule a call with me. I have new 1:1 and group coaching slots opening up in the new year.