The group pulled from Robyn's story, was to trust what she knows...and the various ways in which we get information: from our gut, intuition, feelings, as well as our intellect. We called that the "know-her" and the conversation around this topic was how do we trust this know-her, and convey that to others?
How do you trust what you know to be part of a solution and to then convey that to others to allow for change?
How do you listen to yourself and others more fully?
We started with the statement of "only take advice from those who have what you want...and you have to know what you want" as a guideline to map out the enourmous amount of opinions a woman gets when asking for advice. This seed was more of a way to keep the advice in perspective, yet there is a need to also get multiple perspectives. What do do? What follows are more comments from our cafe in April about this question:
"Know what you're asking for...not to be rigid in what you want to hear. Look to where information is coming from and understand how it relates to what you want. Consider this person has a perspective...what can I learn from it? Seek a variety of role models to see what you want...sometimes it is about trying to solve a problem, deepen a question or to help you make a choice, so therefore I find I have to put a context or frame around the questions I ask when I seek advice"
Please share your practice around "What do you do and how do you listen to yourself and others more fully?"
How do I pay attention to myself and my work?
From the April 25 Cafe we explored this question and the seeds we brought forward follow. If I don't feel good, no one will feel good around me. We need to truly make the commitment to ourselves and need to recognize our role as a "role Models" for the future. One attendee remarked: "My daughter sees me and how I react...she mimics my behavior...good and bad...I owe it to the future to be what I value and that means taking care of myself and aligning my actions to my values."
In essence we can "pay" ourselves first in order to "pay" others, have to look at that as a beginning, to develop and commit to it. Another participant added: "Then to stay committed I need to ask other women to support me in this commitment."
What are you grappling with as you try to pay attention to yourself and work?
Please do write in the practices you engage in that helps to engage your soul at work. Some of the practices we noted at the last Cafe (October 17)
1) Emergent Teams: developing teams that were self-organized around either a problem, interest, or body of knowledge to leverage capability to better address an issue.
2) Paradoxal leadership: developing the awareness that current conditions today are not either or, but involve and/ with thinking.