with guest author Laura Derocher
Imagine a women’s leadership retreat about love, originally scheduled for the glorious island of Molokai, Hawaii. Now imagine that retreat morphing into an online Zoom gathering due to shelter-at-home guidelines during a global pandemic. You might expect that gathering to lose luster, be dreary and boring, its juiciness dampened by technology and distance. Not so. We felt deeply connected, as we explored six ways to transform our relationship to leading with love.
Who are we? Karen was one of three women who led this 2020 Women’s Wisdom Retreat entitled, “The Power and Gifts of Love.” She partnered with Effective Action business consultant Dianne Morrison and Dynamic Vitality™ movement specialist Dr. Suki Munsell, PhD. Laura was one of 30 retreat participants, deeply motivated to explore and foster love-based leadership.
Karen and Laura launched their careers during the business climate of the early ‘80s. We learned how to navigate within that culture, often minimizing emotional intelligence while developing the skills to succeed. At the same time, we each participated in movements to promote more conscious, sustainable and heart-centered ways to generate organizational and leadership success. Love was a subtext, seldom mentioned in a business context. Yet it was often so clearly missing then, as it is in this time of continual uncertainty and extended social distancing. Now, more than ever, learning how to lead from love is vitally important, both personally and at work.
Multitudes of authors and songwriters, from Rumi to Kenny Loggins to Bell Hooks to Elizabeth Gilbert have defined and written about love. Conscious leaders around the world are exploring the question: Is Compassion Practical for Everyday Work Challenges? Karen’s blog from July 2019 captures the spirited conversations from the Wisdom 2.0 LinkedIn Compassion Conference.
The purpose of this retreat was not to define love, but rather to explore the experience of being love as our natural state. We learned that love happens in the in-between. Love doesn’t happen so much in what is said as in how it’s said. Not so much in what is planned but in how the unplanned is handled. Not so much leaders knowing the right way to go. Instead leaders creating a dynamic culture that encourages everyone to face challenging situations with equanimity, while activating the voice and wisdom of love in its many expressions - kindness, appreciation, compassion.
We explored love as being with ourselves and others, as we suspend judgment, listen without fear, and step outside stories about right or wrong. We remembered the experience of love as a fearless state of being, a place to come from, not somewhere to go or get to.
Here are six of the many leadership lessons that emerged from this fruitful, enriching retreat. May these lessons inspire confidence in leading with love.
1. Enter into Love: Discover Your Preferred Doorway
Sometimes people think they haven’t experienced or don’t really know love. A few retreat participants said as much at the beginning of our week. Instead, we discovered that different people experience love differently, preferring and opening different doorways into love.
Karen led us through her model: The Five Doorways to Love. Through discussion, we realized that we usually access love through one or two of these doorways, but not necessarily through all of them. Singers, painters, and writers access love through their art (the creativity doorway). Others found the easiest connection to love when interacting with colleagues, friends, family, or pets (the relationship doorway). The dancers, runners, and yoga practitioners experienced love through movement (physical doorway). Life-long meditation and religious practitioners found and re-found love through their spiritual experiences (the transcendent doorway). The contemplative among us cultivate love through solitude and reflection (the interior doorway).
Regardless of which portal we preferred, we came to know that they are all doorways into the same bountiful love. By the end of the retreat, women who were unsure about their experiences with love felt personally stronger, more capable in the realm of love. Recognizing the validity of their own gateway, they expressed more confidence in connecting love and leadership.
As a leader, recognize the diverse doorways into love. By affirming different preferences, you help others anchor their experience of love and increase their ability to mindfully and confidently bring that love to the present situation.
2. Come from Love: Handle the Difficult and Unexpected
As in every retreat, there were a few moments where one participant or another felt reactive as she conveyed her worry about the pandemic, touched into grief over a recent loss, relayed how hard it is to balance the demands of work and home, or voiced frustration at microaggressions in the workplace. In each instance, Dianne knew that these women wanted to be heard, not denied or fixed. She showed us how to handle reactions with care and active listening, while not letting the situation escalate.
Dianne then led us to discover what happens when we bring love to that which we fear. We learned how to explore our fears and to even embrace fear with love. One participant envisioned a particularly challenging situation at work. When she “washed her fear with love” it altered her perception of herself and everyone involved.
We recognized that love is transformative and builds bridges where there were chasms. Dianne and Karen reminded us again and again, that it’s a choice we each make when we decide to come from love.
Choose to come from love, listen without making wrong, provide suitable space for expressing frustrations, and remember that everyone experiences unforeseen reactions from time to time. Coming from love, leaders can more confidently handle the difficult and unexpected.
3. Celebrate Love: Fan the Flame of Encouragement
We all have times when we aren’t feeling love. Maybe we are caught in a downward spiral of self-judgment. Perhaps we lost our tempers or didn’t work out for a week or two. A relationship ended. A big project failed, and we were blamed. It’s easy to focus on what’s not working, to fan the flames of being unloved or unlovable.
We encouraged the opposite. During the retreat women discovered how their lives change when they focus on where they do feel love. By cataloging the love that is present at work and home, affirming the times we stopped judging ourselves, we transformed a limited relationship with love into a growing, evolving series of opportunities to encourage love. By the end of the retreat, women were cheering and celebrating each other’s breakthroughs, witnessing each other in dramatic, positive, 180-degree changes of heart and mind.
Consciously, openly, and enthusiastically celebrate the natural, practical presence of love. Experiencing love and acceptance helps others to reprogram old patterns into new opportunities for positive regard. Shared jubilation is a gift that motivates and fans the flames of more love.
4. Program Love: Mind Internal Messages
We got really honest in answering these two questions:
What internal conversations keep you from experiencing love?
What internal conversations steer you into more love?
The energy-tone generated by each set of answers was palpable. The first, what keeps us from love, led to stories of hopelessness, shame, contraction, anger. “What’s wrong with me? I am not enough. I’m a failure. I’m not loveable.” Ugh. Who hasn’t said something like that to herself?
Our internal conversations can also generate a different reality. We discovered that when we said things like, “I’m competent. I’m always learning. I’m kind. I welcome warm relationships,” the experience took us from feeling like we were in a jail of shame into a universe of possibilities where we confidently offered and received love.
We’ve been conditioned to think that criticism motivates change and drives performance (think of our teachers with their red pens). Instead, constant criticism tears down morale and confidence, disconnects teams and restricts innovation. As we strengthened the positive internal conversations we do have and can have, everyone’s face lit up with smiles. They felt more confident, happier, more resilient. We discovered that appreciation for the good amplifies what works and creates a positive leadership mindset.
Lead others to self-love by encouraging positive self-talk. Support personal transformation by helping others become aware of the internal stories they carry. Catch them doing the right thing. Help them determine what they can let go of and shift their focus to repeating the stories of capability and success.
5. Embody Love: Feel Love Through Physical Movement
Dr. Suki led us in 30 minutes of daily exercise. We explored how movement connects us to our life force and opens possibilities for change. Creator of Dynamic Walking and a master of dance and Qigong, Dr. Suki guided us to find within our physical center a nurturing and safe place – a home base. We came to recognize how our movements can take us away from ourselves, our center, or into being love.
Guide people beyond their logical minds and into their centered awareness in their bodies. When things aren’t working, take a break to move or go for a walk together. Even simply standing can encourage awareness of what is stuck and where there is an opening.
6. Voice Love: Affirm What’s Lovable in the Other
On the last day of our retreat, as we had been each day, we were placed into small groups. For this particular activity, Laura partnered with a young woman she hadn’t partnered with before. Our task was to share for several minutes by working with the prompt, “What I love about you is…” Huh? How was that going to work? We had met just five days prior. We had observed each other only in the large group, online. Still, the words that poured forth from this observant, sage soul brought out in Laura a deep sense of being seen and appreciated. The words, saturated with love, drew tears. “Wow! She could see when I’m radiating my highest and best?” Checking back with the large group, many experienced something equally validating.
Offer reflection and create opportunities for teams to reflect what they appreciate about each other. Hearing what someone loves about us affirms the good in us and makes us want to reveal that goodness even more.
Even without hugs, without beach time or Hawaiian sunsets, we had a delicious retreat. We concluded that love doesn’t require us to change who we are; it invites us to be who we are. Love connects us with others and elevates our state of being so that the choices we make create the future we most want for ourselves and the community of all life.
Love is a mindset that transcends boundaries. As leaders, whether online or in person, let’s confidently infuse the spaces, the places between our words and actions, with love. We will help others to thrive, enjoy positive results, and we will have done more of what we came to do: love.
Karen, Dianne, and Suki will lead another online Women’s Wisdom Retreat on The Power and Gifts of Love, October 19-23, 2020. They are also planning a live retreat on Molokai, Hawaii beginning April 24, 2021. Visit the Wisdom Connection for more about these retreats. Visit Communicore Consulting to learn about Karen Wilhelm Buckley and her consulting and executive coaching.
Laura Derocher is presently pivoting her work, creating a third career chapter. This follows chapter one as a communication and training professional, and chapter two as an inspirtainer and singing teacher. Stay tuned for her upcoming offerings which will synthesize communication, vocal power to heal and transform, women’s empowerment, and radical recovery of the authentic self.