Margaret Wheatley 235 words, 31K views, 10 comments
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On May 3, 2018rahul wrote :
A brilliant and powerful question to pose, not just to leaders. I experienced this through two conflicts that arose: one with a conventionally powerful person, and the other with a tenant in one of my rental properties who occurs for me as a problematic and nasty personality. The powerful person occurs to me as everything Margaret Wheatley describes above, which is very much in contrast with the publicly projected persona. And yet in dealing with my nasty tenant, I found all sorts of horrible and mean thoughts about her occurring in my mind. Suddenly I realized the tremendous gift that I was receiving from having this difficult tenant: she was showing me my flaws and lack of integrity. I too project a public persona of being kind, generous, and easy-going but the thoughts in my head were downright mean, selfish, and manipulative / controlling. Oh how much I need to grow! How much I am just like that powerful person who is generating conflict with me! That was enough for me commit to being getting my head and heart in integrity with my persona and treating the tenant differently not despite her nastiness, but because of it. Truly priceless... and yet powerful people rarely receive genuine feedback from those around them. This brain death for empathy is the blindpot from which great wounds and re-wounds are inflicted upon everyone around them. Wonderful that Margaret Wheatley can whisper this question in their ears!
On May 3, 2018 rahul wrote :
A brilliant and powerful question to pose, not just to leaders. I experienced this through two conflicts that arose: one with a conventionally powerful person, and the other with a tenant in one of my rental properties who occurs for me as a problematic and nasty personality. The powerful person occurs to me as everything Margaret Wheatley describes above, which is very much in contrast with the publicly projected persona. And yet in dealing with my nasty tenant, I found all sorts of horrible and mean thoughts about her occurring in my mind. Suddenly I realized the tremendous gift that I was receiving from having this difficult tenant: she was showing me my flaws and lack of integrity. I too project a public persona of being kind, generous, and easy-going but the thoughts in my head were downright mean, selfish, and manipulative / controlling. Oh how much I need to grow! How much I am just like that powerful person who is generating conflict with me! That was enough for me commit to being getting my head and heart in integrity with my persona and treating the tenant differently not despite her nastiness, but because of it. Truly priceless... and yet powerful people rarely receive genuine feedback from those around them. This brain death for empathy is the blindpot from which great wounds and re-wounds are inflicted upon everyone around them. Wonderful that Margaret Wheatley can whisper this question in their ears!