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Connect with Tamila Gresham and Simon Mont
Episode Transcript
Lisa: So welcome to the Leadermorphosis podcast, Simon, Tamila, so happy to have you here.
Simon: Thanks for having us.
Tamila: Happy to be here.
Lisa: So we were talking before we started recording about what could be a juicy opening question, and we landed on this one, which is, how do you think we can organize ourselves to face this current moment that we’re in, in the world?
Simon: Now that you’ve asked it, it seems like a ridiculous place to start a conversation. I’ll take the first pass, Tam. We think of in terms of three big categories. We need a way of seeing, we need a way of being, and we need a way of working together. So we need seeing is some way of making sense of the world that allows us to understand the underlying dynamics that are creating the world that we are experiencing and allow us to see how we might shift those dynamics and to be able to see a vision that inspires us forward. So there’s some way of seeing that we need.
Then there’s some way of being that we need. We’re all out here, humans. It’s complicated. There’s a lot going on. There’s thoughts, there’s feelings, there’s known, there’s unknown. There’s a lot happening inside our somas and our body minds as we navigate the world. So we need some way of balancing and being a human that allows us to orient toward what we’re seeing and what we’re experiencing. And then we need a way of working together, which is some way for us as individuals to find actions that allow us to collaborate to create the worlds that we long to see. So I think we need seeing, being, and working together. What would you add to that, Tamalyn?
Tamila: Well, I think those are definitely the three important branches. And Simon and I, through years of working with organizations and developing tools and really being in the thick of it with folks, have developed an offering for ways of seeing, ways of working together, and ways of being that we hope are useful and helpful for organizations to meet this moment. And we call it Comprehensive Organizational Development and Analysis, or CODA for short. And yes, that is a music pun, given that we call ourselves Harmonize. We like to use a lot of music metaphors.
So we call it CODA. And we have included lots of different tools and frameworks inside of the different branches of organizational development, as we call it. So those ways of seeing, those ways of being, and those ways of working together. So with our ways of working together, we really focus on all 10 dimensions of the organization, which includes things like the structure, your culture, the analysis, even your placement in the world, your practices, processes, policies, those kinds of things. And really making sure that those are aligned with folks’ values and the things that they want to actually see in the world.
And then in terms of ways of being, we have found that embodied awareness and inner sovereignty are really critical to us showing up and working together in good ways and collaborating well together. And then in terms of ways of seeing, this is like my favorite part of CODA. We talk a lot about analysis and how we engage with the world. And our big tools around that are, one of Simon’s favorite things is fractals. And so we have a map, we’ve mapped fractals as best that you can in our eight nested layers of human relationships, where we’re just talking about those different layers and areas where we come into relationship with one another and with other living beings. And really thinking about how we’re interacting with each other and what our experience is on all of those different layers. And the lens that we use to really assess that is something that we call Power, Belonging and Justice, or PBJ for short. And Power, Belonging and Justice is the analysis that the entirety of our framework of CODA is rooted in.
Simon: Listening to ourselves and then trying to distill, I think it’s like, how do we meet the moment? We need to see, work together and be. And in order to see, we need to see that reality has these different layers. There’s our personal experience, how we are as individuals, our interpersonal experience, how we’re relating to one another, our organizational experience, how we’re existing inside of groups, our systemic experience, how groups are relating to form infrastructures like capitalism, food distribution, the ideological layer, which is all of the different collective consciousness and stories that we tell about what’s happening. Then there’s the world layer, all of this is happening on earth with all of the beings and physical realities in it. There’s an all layer, the spiritual, ancestral, cosmic dimensions, and then there’s a source layer, life itself and the ineffable from which it springs.
We have to see all of that, and then we have to be in a way that allows us to not work from a space of conditioning and reaction and trauma, a space of deeper sovereignty so we can figure out how to align our actions with something greater. Then we need to work together ways of existing inside of organizations, structures, practices, policies, to allow us to do that so that we can all start acting in a way that’s in alignment with this highest vision of what we might be able to see.
We think that the real tuning forks there in terms of where we’re on or off that alignment are thinking about power, which is who can do what, belonging, who’s in and who’s out, and justice, who’s getting hit by things. If we think about all of that together, then we can start to work together. Then CODA becomes like a tool set and a toolbox to try to help create those things.
Lisa: Yeah, lots to unpack there in what you both shared. Just like a reflection that comes to mind for me is, so often this kind of movement, if you want to call it that, is referred to as like the new ways of working movement, which is just one of those kind of three dimensions that you mentioned. So it would be better named the new ways of seeing, being, and working movement, right?
That’s inspiring to me and you’re really, to use a music metaphor, singing from my hymn sheet because I’m really, really interested in, there’s so much written about and so much shared out there about like, you know, holacracy, sociocracy, these different systems and tools, nonviolent communication and so on. But I meet so many people that struggle because it’s not enough, like because it’s still the same us with all that conditioning, as you said, in terms of who we are as individuals, how we relate to each other and so on. So I’m really inspired by what you’re doing because you’re bringing together a lot of things in a very holistic way. And that I think is really needed.
Tamila: Thanks for saying that. Yes, that’s really flattering. And it makes me think because when Simon and I think about our framework of the different layers of human connection that he was just speaking about, and then power, belonging and justice, the way we sort of see it is that all of us in the movement that you’re referencing Lisa are working on one or more of those layers of human connection. And what we’re focusing on is trying to tinker power, belonging and justice. We might not be talking about that, talking about it in that way at this moment, but we’ve found that to be really, really, a really useful offering to help us organize ourselves and our work towards, you know, a better world.
Lisa: Yeah, I wonder if you could say something more about power, belonging and justice. And I keep thinking PBJ, I keep thinking peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I don’t know if that was intentional or not. I would say something about that, because I know both of you have kind of backgrounds also in kind of law and kind of black feminism and education. And so how did you kind of arrive at this kind of angle, I suppose, or kind of focus?
Simon: Oh, yeah, I get to do it? Awesome. How we arrived is a complicated thing. I don’t know how we got there. But I think the reason that we got there is because we think it distills down this kind of a lot of conversations about what liberation are and what equity are and what freedom is. And we think it’s more precise, actually, than what we see as the most popular language, which is diversity, equity and inclusion is out there a lot in the world. And diversity, equity and inclusion, its history very much kind of comes from inside of a dominant way of thinking and is very easy to be co-opted.
So when you think about diversity, you might think about, you know, what are the races of the people around the table? Cool. That’s important. But when you think about power, you think about who gets what decisions are getting made at the table. Who’s at the table? And even once they’re at the table, how does the ability to impact what is happening at the table flow? And then that sense of power, we have to look at it, not just about identity, which is relevant, but also ideologies. You know, if you can have a woman at a table that is voicing the very same patriarchal concepts as a man. And if we have the look, the lens of diversity, we might be like, oh, there’s a woman here. But if we have the lens of power, we can say, and the lens of that, it’s not just an individual issue, it’s an ideological issue. We can clearly see that a particular ideology is still the one that has power in that situation.
Right? So power allows us to really see how things are being created and who has the agency to do what in a way more specific way. And then belonging, right? People talk about inclusion. And if you’re talking about inclusion, you also have to talk about inclusion in what? If we are all included in the colonizing army, we still have the colonizing army, right? And it’s all diverse and the rainbow of all different people are all waging war against someone else. It’s like, that’s really not the move.
So when we think about belonging, we’re thinking about not just who’s in the in group and who’s in the out group, but we’re also thinking about what brokers being in the in group and out group. If to get inclusion, I have to be in the army and be willing to kill someone. That’s a certain set of belonging, whether it’s to get belonging, do I have to voice an anti-racist politics? That’s a different way of brokering belonging. And then we get to also see that relationship between power and belonging, which is who can do what that might jeopardize their sense of belonging, right? There’s some people who, if they say something because of whether it’s identities or backgrounds or ideologies, they’ll kind of be kicked out of the group, which really limits what can be said in the group, who’s safe and who’s not.
And then when we look at belonging, we’re also looking at the distribution of resources. So to be included might to be in the room, but to belong, to truly belong to a group is to share in the abundance that groups created. So we look at belonging on like a United States economy scale and we see who is belonging, who’s getting the benefits of this abundance. We see that most people are actually excluded from belonging in the United States economy as full people.
And that brings us to this justice concept, which is we have to look at how the impacts of things are hitting different people. And this is where identity markers, social identity markers can be really, really helpful to see what’s happening. You know, how are things being hit hitting women versus men versus non-binary people? How are things hitting different races, different classes? And then something we think is also incredibly important is that inquiry has to then be placed inside of a historical context.
When we look at the moment, we look at any moment, we aren’t just kind of popping out of nowhere. We are inside of an arc of violence that’s happening. So are we replicating that violence? Are we stopping that violence and what’s going on on that level? So if we see all of those things, we just think it cuts a little bit deeper than diversity, equity, and inclusion. And then we also think particularly power and belonging go more to the core of creative forces, right? We don’t create. The question about diversity and equity and inclusion isn’t a question about human creation. The question about power and belonging is a question about how do humans create together.
And we think that being really intentional that we are co-creating our world, we need to understand the underlying dynamics, and we need to create intentionally from the root is actually really helpful. And it also pulls us, power, belonging, and justice also pull us kind of deeper into this integrated space between the individual and the group.
Lisa: That’s so, that’s so clarifying and inspiring, actually, because I’ve had people say to me, you know, like, does moving towards self-managing teams automatically mean that you’re more inclusive? And I’m like, no. And also people find sometimes the opposite, which is to your point of like accidentally recreating, you know, structures that are just as limiting, right? That you can create a self-managing organization, which really privileges people who are, you the best at arguing, who have power and don’t realize it. So it can be just as harmful, actually, even if you change the structures to structures that you think are more liberating, if you don’t also look at this kind of ways of seeing ways of being peace, right?
Simon: Can I say one thing before I pass it to you? There was something that I heard really early on in my work in this, which is if you don’t design for the power structure that you want, you will get the power structure of the dominant society. And I think that this idea of open space and self-management, if you’re just like, cool, go for it. There’s no structure to prevent the complete replication of the thing that you want. There has to be something else. Because the structure is really only focusing on that one part of the way that we work together, but we’ve got to be aligned on those ways of seeing and being as well.
Tamila: I think that’s why that PBJ lens and being able to think at that level is so critical because that allows us to go that next layer where it’s not just, oh, well, let’s try on a different management structure and maybe that will change and fix whatever issues that we’re having inside of the organization. Because at root, what we think is happening is actually something is misaligned regarding power, belonging, and justice. And PBJ is the layer that we think we need to attune to and align around.
So not just that structural layer, because you can get into a shared leadership structure or shared management and you can still see all of those different problems arise because power, belonging, and justice are misaligned. And that’s also where our sense of the dimensions of organizations comes in as well. So when we look at that organization, we don’t just see an organizational structure. And holacracy in some ways, it’s one of its primary interventions is at the organizational structure level. But we see that structure.
We also see a cosmology and analysis. How do you make sense of your world and discern what is going on? Placement. How do you understand yourself geographically, both physically, geographically, but also your place inside of your ecosystem, the purpose of your organization. There’s people inside of your organization. There’s a culture. There’s the structures. There’s practices. There’s policies. There’s processes. And then there’s relationships.
So all of those things are happening all at the same time inside of an organization. So if I come in and make a structural change, a breakdown on the people relationships level might throw the whole thing out of whack and any other individual things. So we feel like you have to kind of like look holistically to figure out what’s going on. For example, we worked with one group for years and we started, it was started as a conflict.
And in the conflict, we were able to like up-level the relationships and the cosmology and analysis. They’re all started talking the same way, seeing the same way, understanding what shared leadership might be and these underlying causes and power belonging and justice. They kind of got that. Then we spent a long time developing a structure, really beautiful, elegant structure, super cute. And then a certain breakdown in people and relationships made it so that the structure actually, anytime somebody tried to use the structure, it started to break down because the people weren’t onboarded enough into it. And there was a shadow happening in terms of the people, people’s relationship to structure itself. And then that started breaking down the system.
Lisa: I wonder if that’s a good moment to kind of call in like conflict resilience, because I know that’s one piece of what you’re kind of offering. And I guess in a way, that’s kind of a fractal of many of the things you’ve been talking about, right? So, what are your thoughts on conflict and how this kind of seeing being ways of working kind of relates to conflict and relationships inside an organization?
Simon: Okay. We fundamentally understand conflict as a breakdown. We fundamentally understand conflict as when the way we’re working together isn’t working. And that’s because there’s been some breakdown and power belonging injustice. So, that’s the root of a conflict. We might feel it as I’m triggered, or we can’t talk about the thing that we want to be talking about, or things feel really weird or whatever.
But underneath it, there’s this breakdown in terms of the way that we’re working together. And we can expect to hit those breakdowns because the world is filled with conflict. The world is filled with these breakdowns and misalignments. So, that means that every conflict then becomes an opportunity for us to attune more deeply to what wants to happen, right? It’s what is actually coming forth through the world. What’s the possibility here that we can unleash?
And then conflict resilience becomes the ability to meet that moment in a way that is transformative. It unlocks that possibility and allows you to keep functioning while you’re doing it, while you keep functioning while the conflict is happening. And it’s essential because anytime, right, if we have a vision, we have a mission that we want to do, and we need to create interventions or programs or products to get there, there’s going to be a whole set of dynamics that we’re going to have to face in order to get from point A to point B.
The more resilient we are, the more of those dynamics we can meet and unlock the possibility within. The less resilient we are, the more likely we’re going to hit one of those dynamics. Something’s going to break down and shenanigans ensue and we’re not going to get to where we want to go.
Tamila: And for Simon and I, to bring it full circle, the nested layers of human connection and power belonging and justice, we really use those to map what’s happening inside of a conflict and see the layers and see where there might be possibility to unlock, right, potential on the other side. And Simon and I often come into conflict, obviously, because conflict is inevitable and we work so much together.
And something that has really contributed to our conflict resilience together and our ability to get through those things is these tools that we’re talking about in terms of being able to understand, oh, is something going on for me personally? Is this an interpersonal thing between me and Simon that we need to work through? Is there just something in our structure, in our organizational, in our organization that’s creating it? Are there systemic things that are playing out? Like, is capitalism just hitting me really bad and that’s what’s coming through? Is it an ideological misalignment, right? Or is there something that’s happening on those world, all, and source layers that are getting in the way of our field together, right? So that really helps us see through those things and we’ll actively start talking on those layers when we’re in the middle of a conflict and it’s really, really useful.
Lisa: Yeah, I can totally see that. And I, again, I speak to a lot of people who are exploring, you know, new ways of working together and they leave conflict till last. You know, one of my favorite episodes of this podcast was with Miki Kashtan, who said, like, the five kind of core systems that you want to look at, reimagine, are, you know, like, decisions, how a decision’s made, how’s information distributed, how are resources distributed, how do you create feedback loops, and how do you engage with conflict? And whenever I’ve talked to people or done workshops, that’s always the one where they’re like, yeah, not that one. We’ll deal with that one when we come to it, which is why I really like this concept of conflict resilience and not conflict resolution or, you know, like, it’s to, like, build that muscle rather than wait for conflict to happen and then you don’t have that muscle at all. Like, then it really can cause a breakdown because you’re not sort of prepared or, you know.
Simon: For us, conflict resilience is first, almost every time, right? Because what are the odds you’re going to have a conversation about distributing power without hitting conflict? That part. Right, and the deeper we can engage that conflict, the deeper we can get in there and actually be able to be with it and find what wants to come forward, the better we’re going to get.
Otherwise, if we skip it, we’re going to, what are we going to do? We’re going to think, we’re going to feel like things are weird in our organization and, you know, there’s these things underneath the surface and people talk about distribution of power or engagement or inclusivity. Then we’re going to go to a sociocracy workshop. We’re going to pull a structure. We’re going to spend a year and however many thousands of dollars trying to build sociocracy. We’re going to get there.
We’re going to realize sociocracy didn’t really address the issue because we haven’t actually talked about everyone’s personal feelings about power, everybody’s personal relationships about things. Then we’re going to have a conflict and we’re going to chuck out sociocracy. The whole point was we weren’t actually sure that sociocracy was the perfect outgrowth of that moment in time, the right intervention for that group at that moment in time for that thing. No shade to sociocracy.
It’s often a great intervention. But if the issue is that everyone is projecting their own power and mommy issues onto each other, sociocracy is not gonna do anything. That’s too extreme. It’ll do something. It’ll create a new context for the projection and those dynamics to play out. But like at some point we gotta get real. We have to find a way of being together that works.
Lisa: Yeah, yeah, and it’s hard to hear that because then is the moment where a year in people go, oh, I guess people just do wanna be told what to do after all. Let’s go back to hierarchy. That’s clearly like the best. Well, actually…
Simon: No. All right, we have to say some heresies here. Hierarchy as in like top-down, rigid kind of hierarchy. I’m not saying hierarchy in itself is evil because I know that’s… One of the things we do talk about a lot actually is the concept of congruence. Like congruence between what you’re trying to accomplish and the organizational form that you take.
If we were trying to train a bunch of brain surgeons and one of us was a brain surgeon and the rest of us were not brain surgeons, that dictates a particular organizational form and a particular flow of power that we need to be real about. Whereas if we were trying to cultivate a space of shared belonging and inquiry together, it’s a very different organizational form.
And I think that what some people do is we’re not thinking super rigorously about what is the form that actually meets the function that we’re trying to achieve. If we go too close, like, ah, hierarchy, bad, self-management, good. It’s like, there’s way more nuance in there. And I know that you know that. And we’ve talked about that a whole bunch before, but I couldn’t resist.
Lisa: No, I’m glad you made that distinction. I wonder then, what’s your, in Harmonize then, how are you, given that you have this amazing suite of tools in Coda, what’s your kind of approach right now of how to support people to engage with this, right? Because this is a totally different way of approaching this. It’s much more holistic than what people are used to. So how do you invite people into that, I guess? How do you support them on that journey?
Simon: I got a thread, you want it? I think we try to begin where people know they have a problem and try to work towards solving and addressing that problem in a way that shows how it’s connected to all of these other things and starts cultivating the kind of awareness and way of seeing and being that allows people to work together more, right?
Oftentimes we’ll get called in because there’s an acute conflict or some ways we’re like, you know, we need board development. And it’s like, cool, structure, organizational layer, structure. We’ll get in there and be like, oh, there’s an analysis thing happening here too. So we’ll try to touch that and continuously zoom out and help people see the whole context that they’re in. But really ultimately, there’s a job to be done. There’s a problem to be solved and often we’re there to address that thing. So we try to address it in a way that plants that seed. And the sequencing then becomes really important.
Tamila: And I feel like I’m the one who keeps beating this drum of our tools. But when we’re talking about sequencing and figuring out, okay, what do we need to move first? And what do we need to then move after that? We are really going back to those layers of human connection and power belonging and justice and figuring out.
So for the example that Simon’s talking about, when we come in and there’s a live conflict, but we’re able to see through discovery underneath, oh, there’s a mismatch in analysis here. They are struggling to deal with polarized issues, right? Those kinds of things come up, or maybe there’s something going on in terms of political analysis, in terms of identity.
And it’s like, we need to be able to look at power belonging and justice and also the 10 dimensions of their organization to sort of figure out what do we need to move first? What do we need to talk about now? And then what can we come back around on the other end and fix up? Because there are situations when, so like if people don’t have a structure that’s working for them and that’s creating a lot of conflict, but also underneath that, that conflict might be coming from mismatches in analysis, right?
We could spend 30 hours just talking to them about political analysis and making sure everyone’s got shared language. But at the end of those 30 hours, the structure still isn’t there, right? And that’s, so we’re trying to figure out power belonging and justice helps us figure out, okay, what’s the actual cause of this? And let’s address that first and then address all of the other things that sort of rippled out from that source.
Lisa: Hmm. So interesting, isn’t it? Because to your point earlier, Simon, about diversity, equity, inclusion, so often that’s like a kind of afterthought or it’s this sort of little bonus thing that we try and do on the side. It reminds me a bit of like corporate social responsibility. Remember that, CSR? But here it’s like PBJ is like at the core of everything. That’s sort of, am I right in saying that? Do I interpret that right?
Simon: It’s unavoidably at the core of everything because if you’re forming an organization, you are using power. People are doing things. You’re not forming an organization without it. You are using belonging. You are using the brokering of in-group versus out-group inside your organization and inside of teams, inside of what’s welcome and what’s not welcome. Different people are mediating in and out in different ways and resources and benefits are distributing differently. And you are implicating justice because you are hitting people in different ways and your project is inside of history. There’s no way out of it. You’re inside of power, belonging, and justice whether or not you want to acknowledge it. So the more that we understand that, the more we can actually create together.
Lisa: Yeah, and the in-group, out-group thing, immediately what comes to mind that happens so often is the people who are really excited about self-management, for example, and the people who are kind of hesitant, resistant, a bit scared. And it becomes this us versus them, like, oh, those people dragging us behind. And over there is like, oh, there’s people who like listening to podcasts and reading business books. So, yeah, that’s so true that it’s unavoidable.
Simon: And I think, yeah, we see that polarization in a lot of different ways when there’s these groups that get into a camp and point a finger at the other one and tell the story about the other one. And almost every time that happens, we found that there’s actually both groups have something really useful to say. And the more that we can increase our ability to listen deeply for what they, the light and the signal of what they have to say, usually the better we can create something new together.
And that’s really where those shared ways of being and seeing come in, right? Because we want to be able to allow people to engage and relate to the structures that we create in ways that are natural and good for them, right? In ways that align with who they want to be. And so you’re pointing to a very real problem when it comes to shared management, because we all show up to work for different people and we all show up to work for different reasons, right?
I might want to come and be inside of this job and have a lot of decision-making power. And I might also just want to come and do the exact thing that’s on my job description and then go home, right? And both of those are legitimate ways of relating to work. And we have to be able to have those conversations with one another to understand how everybody wants to be able to contribute. And then make sure that we have those shared ways of being in work together that are going to allow people to operate in those ways.
Lisa: I’m wondering what’s like a question that each of you are holding in your own personal journey with this? I really like to ask guests, like what are you learning and what’s kind of a learning edge for you in all of this right now?
Tamila: Oh, let’s see. So in all transparency, the thing that is the most difficult that I’m working through is how do I operate and manage and remain in integrity with myself in a larger world where the vast majority of people, unfortunately, are not really operating. We’re not allowed to take the time and space, nor is our education system really in a spot where we are helping people really think through the embodied awareness that you need to make true choices in your life. And not just be in a place where we are just doing things out of like socialized conditioning. Right?
And how to be in that space when I’m not being paid to help people build those ways of like being and knowing themselves, right? Because it’s fairly difficult. I’m sure we’ve all had that experience when you’re in conflict with people or in a difficult moment with folks and people are having difficulty really meeting the moment. And having their own self-awareness and owning the ways that they’ve contributed to a thing. Right? We can get into defensive spaces and projecting and pointing at each other.
And my biggest hope for humanity is that we can actually all develop, right? Inner sovereignty and self-awareness and have that embodied awareness so we can really engage with each other as a community. That’s really my hope.
Simon: Yeah, I think mine’s related. I think there’s like a very personal, very intimate question that I have, which is, can we do this as humanity? What are we really working for? And is some of the motivation of my life scrambling, trying to fix something that might not need fixing or might be beyond fixing when I look kind of just at global scale shenanigans.
So there’s that small thing. And then, yeah, and you know, to what extent am I trying to operate as a first responder in a collapsing organization that’s trying to do something good? To what extent am I trying to build a hospital that can heal many different types of organizations? To what extent am I trying to work on, you know, the birth pathway of organizations, of how are we coming in and creating things in ways that are new? And to what extent am I trying to build a movement to help people do all of those things? And to what extent should I be relaxing and allowing things to die and grieve?
And so I think that that’s very real for me. And then I think in the context of choosing to do this work, there’s the question that I think is really like, how do we hold humility? How do we hold true humility? And the way that I was taught about what humility is, is that it’s accurate estimation of your role in a moment and a willingness to surrender to that role regardless of what it is. Which means that humility is as much about me recognizing your brilliance and deferring to it as it is about recognizing my brilliance and expressing that. I have to be able to do both.
And in order to do that, I have to have some level of discernment about where each of us are brilliant and what’s happening. Like right now, the brilliance that Lisa is expressing is the like continuous engagement in its space over time with perseverance and inquiry and genuine value of people, like a particular like listening type of brilliance. That’s what’s happening. And it’s out of my deference to that, that I’m trying to express my role, which is like talk a lot version, right? That’s what’s, that’s what, that’s the brilliance, that’s what’s happening here. And I think that it’s hard to be humble. I think it’s hard emotionally to figure out how to be humble for myself and others. And I think it’s hard cognitively to figure out how to be humble.
And I think that it’s particularly hard in the kinds of spaces that we’re talking about here about creating worlds together and understanding politics together and then navigating the psyche together, right? If Tamela looks at me and says, Simon, I think you’re triggered. And I look at Tamela and think, I think you’re telling me that I’m triggered as a defense mechanism because you’re triggered. What do we do? And what do we do about the fact that building the awareness of what to do and how to discern that set of circumstances is a learned skill that we all have different levels with.
And that gets really, really raw and really, really weird quite quickly when you have two people pointing a finger at each other and saying, you’re exerting dominant power over and you’re not taking responsibility. And it’s like, what do we do there? And as a practitioner, I have a question of like, how much do I listen and how much do I allow? How much do I express? How much do I try to occupy the position of the broker of that? How long do we spend on all of that?
And I think that it’s seeing humanity struggle with that question right there, especially like good, awesome people who are aligned with my vision of the world, I have the same thing, aligned with my politics, all like those awesome, awesome people just getting twisted in knots right there that I think is one of the reasons why I kind of come back to the question of like, can we? And I think harmonize at least for me is my coping mechanism for that question because I have realized about myself that whether we can or not, I’m not gonna give up because that’s who I am. So we’re just gonna keep plugging away at it because we have to, whether or not we’re gonna get there in the end or not.
Tamila: And I think I also wanna double tap on what you said, Simon, around humility and the two prongs of that, right? Especially the one where we have to recognize our own ministry and greatness and then be able to express that. And that situation that Simon is pointing to becomes even more complicated when we start throwing in identity, right? And societal expectations, right? Because me and this body expressing my brilliance is often not met with, oh, the humility, oh, isn’t this incredible, right? It’s not met with that.
And so we have to be able to understand those different dynamics of what’s happening and how to engage with one another inside of that conversation that Simon was talking about where it’s, I say he’s triggered and he’s like, well, you’re just saying that out of a defense mechanism. Really an understanding of power, belonging, and justice, right, and how that’s operating in the moment and that humility and the self-awareness and willingness to own your own thing. That’s the only thing that gets people out of that moment and through it to the other side. And so we’re just working hard on trying to build myself up and also support other folks in skilling up in that area as well.
Lisa: Thank you both for sharing so openly and articulately. I relate to a lot of what you both shared. So-
Simon: I was gonna say, what are the questions that you have in your trip right now?
Lisa: Mm, yeah, as I said, I relate a lot with what you both said and I smiled at what you said, Tamela, about Harmonize being your coping mechanism. I think also my organization and my colleagues, it’s my coping mechanism too and it’s worthwhile. Yeah, even if we don’t succeed in achieving the vision that we might have for the world.
It reminds me of when I interviewed Margaret Wheatley, I had this impression of, actually, I saw her at a conference and someone said something like, it feels like a lot of people are about to go off the edge of a cliff. How do we stop them from going off the edge? And she said so calmly, we don’t, we can’t. So you have to work with the people around you. Find your island of sanity, your island of coherence and work with that. That’s all you can do.
So yeah, I think my question sometimes is, yeah, when I see this small percentage of organizations, for example, that are really engaged in this and interested in this and see this work as important, it’s still a very small percentage, right? Even though it feels sometimes exciting that it’s like growing and there’s this growing sense of, yes, this is no longer so controversial anymore. It’s like people recognize like, yes, the way we’re working isn’t working anymore. And yet, yeah, sometimes it’s painful to see organizations that have kind of really toxic cultures continue to exist and make money and. Yeah, that’s sort of difficult to reckon with.
So yeah, trying to figure out what my place is in all of that and how I can make the most difference and also, yeah, not get sucked into overextending my own capacity limits too. Like, you know, there was a time of like, I have to put out a podcast every week because I have to grow my audience and then it’s like, well, hang on, but why? What for? You know, what is the purpose of the podcast? Well, actually, it’s to have meaningful conversations that spark things in other people. And that will happen whether I do, you know, one every week or I do one a year. I’m always fascinated in that discernment process where you’re like, okay, what is really underneath my motivation to do it every week, every month or whatever? How do you, how do you know when you’ve kind of like found a new layer of truth? You know, you’re like, oh, I should do it every week. And then I heard like something you’re like, oh, no, that’s not a part of myself I want to respond to. There’s this other thing. How do you know when, yeah, how do you know when you’ve kind of found that deeper layer for yourself?
Simon: What a good question.
Lisa: I guess, I mean, my process with that was, I think, a lot of pushing against something, you know, like it was a sort of embodied sense, I guess, of like pace and like always there never being enough time and always falling short of something and just not feeling good. I mean, that thing you said about congruent, it was like an incongruence. And then through a series of, you know, conversations with people, coaching from some of my trusted friends and peers and, you know, reflecting and stuff. Yeah, I think, I think it was just an intuitive thing, I guess, of like, oh, actually, not doing that was very liberating when I let go of that.
And then thought, okay, well, how about I just have conversations when I feel really called to have them? And it feels ripe. And I just go by that instead of some schedule or arbitrary thing, which is usually competing, comparing myself to someone else, right? And thinking, well, this is my podcast. And if I did it in my way, what would that look like?
Simon: Yeah, I’m always fascinated to know, because it seems so important for us to like, learn and guide each other into knowing that layer of truth, like that layer, deeper alignment that we’re striving for. And it seems like even learning how to find it, then know when it’s there, it’s something that we’re all slowly fumbling towards.
Tamila: Yes, and I love this term that both of you have mentioned of inner, inner sovereignty. I think that’s really key, having access to choice. And I heard that, and what you just explained, Lisa, right, that moment of fighting, or recognizing the socialized choice, right, that capitalism tells us, right, I got to get this podcast out at this time, so they can get these, this audience and get this. And you stopped and said, No, right, like, what is it inside of me that I actually want? What is an alignment with my integrity? And what are my goals? And that was what you focused on. And that’s really beautiful.
Simon: Yeah. And have to have the deeper cut, right? The deeper cut of all the things that had to happen before that moment. So that when you found that deeper alignment with what you considered you, it wasn’t just a socialized nonsense thing. Right? I know a lot of people, the deeper alignment with what is truly me is I’m going to use my trust fund to vacation to Bali, right? It’s like, that’s real, right? Because we have, because we all have those, those, those quiet ego constructs.
And it feels like being real, it feels like when we’re really achieving alignment might be just dropping back into an ego construct again. That’s why I’m so fascinated. Like how, like things I thought were on it, a year ago, I realized are that now things I thought was my deeper truth yesterday, I realized was a conditioned nonsense. And I think that’s in some ways also like where, where the inquiry of like spiritual development, spirituality and healing and self reflection, and then that process always comes from me is like, cool, so how are we, what are the ways that we’re deepening our awareness to be able to know when we’re on it? And what and how do we know when it, what it feels like to be on it?
Lisa: So in trying to wrap up this amazing conversation, what would you like to share each of you with listeners of the podcast, people who are on their own journeys of new ways of seeing being and working? What would you like to offer them? It’s a final thought.
Simon: I think it’s it’s possible to look out at the world and see that many, many, many, many people are actually on the same trip with you. It’s possible to look out and see that, you know, some people believe in your thing and some people don’t and some people are being for real and some people aren’t. That’s real. You can do that. That’s an option that’s useful sometimes.
It’s also possible to look out and see even in places you wouldn’t have expected it, even maybe in your boss that is telling you that self-management is not the way or even in the political opposition, that it’s also a person wrestling with figuring out how to be in the face of the unknown and in the face of an unknown that looks particularly scary right now and unstable and is. Trying to bring a partial part of the problem together, part partial part of the solution, and it’s possible to see that person is carrying something essential that’s required, essential but partial. And it’s possible to see oneself as carrying something that’s essential but partial.
And when I do that, I feel a little bit more peace and I feel a little bit more hope. And I find nothing quite as exhilarating as locating a couple of different partial pieces and finding the way that they connect together and into a new possibility and riding that wave as a practice is really kind of a blessing to be able to to do.
Tamila: My offering, I think, is always joy. That we’re on a journey and it’s hard and in many ways never ending. I think. For me, the fuel that keeps me going and the thing that helps me find happiness and peace, even in difficult moments, is searching for joy and allowing myself to really tap into that in any moment. And sometimes that looks like laughing inappropriately at the wrong time, excuse me, the wrong time, quote unquote. But joy, I think, is what really keeps me in it.
