No Way But Through

This message has been some time in coming.

I’ve been feeling a few different pulls on me the last 10 weeks or so. And for reasons I’ll get to explaining, I had decided to be quiet on here while I tried to cooperate with the competing currents pulling at my heart and mind. But in order to explain my silence, a few data points need acknowledgement.

Point 1: The programming that we imagined at Looking Bear has not materialized as we saw it six months ago. The webinars we (I) created were honest, but dry. They were an experiment with a medium that I’ve never personally been attracted to, but that we hoped might help communicate our vision. In the end, I felt that it sent us down a path toward creating and maintaining a platform that, although fine for some folks, led to unnecessary anxiety and expended energy that felt scarce. They didn’t play to our strengths and we felt no need to do something just cause its a common platform. So (at least for now) those webinars are no more.

Relatedly, we also decided that the learning cohorts were not a good use of current energy supplies because they, too, did not reflect the depth of spirit out of which we want to work. With both of these attempts, we learned a lot about who our community is at LBL and appreciate the conversations these provoked. We turned to retreats, confident that those were our best way forward.

Point 2: The retreats ended up being another story. Unbound: Bozeman was on track to be a success. We had lots of interest and a nearly full registration when we hit an unfortunate snag. This was very encouraging since we knew that this first retreat had a very high price point for most people. And, we believed that we had a donor who would be able to cover the scholarships we were advertising. Unfortunately, that funding fell through. Since nearly ever registrant we had needed a scholarship, we ended up unable to keep the retreat and cancelled the last day we could still get our deposits back. It was a hard and disappointing decision, but felt like the best way to proceed.

So, that retreat being cancelled meant that by the beginning of September, LBL had no scheduled programming. It felt like a good moment to pause and take stock. That coincided with a second factor…

Point 3: Elise and I have decided to move back to the Seattle area from our current home in Bozeman, MT. After a lot of family discernment and consultation with our confidants and mentors, and for reasons that are personal, we feel that the best place for us right now is to be in Seattle where I’ll be teaching as an adjunct professor of transformational leadership at Seattle University while continuing to develop Looking Bear.

As you might imagine, it was difficult to know what to say to the LBL community in the midst of so much personal and professional ambiguity. So, I decided to wait. But now, I believe that we know enough to share a few things.

First, we’re not going away (and never were!). LBL will continue to build a community of leaders who believe in dignity and wellbeing for all. I am grateful for my partner, Elise, and Looking Bear’s board who wisely and kindly continue to help me mold this thing.

Second, we have new, exciting, and refined programming coming that will be announced in January and February 2019. Some of that programming (like retreats) will be familiar. But some of it will go in completely new and creative directions. We can’t wait to share more!

Third, this is what the work is like. Sometimes you fail. And I’m not gonna try to tell you how we’re failing forward or failing up or something. I think, at least for me, that’s not a helpful way of dealing with disappointment. This kind of work is public, which means its failures and humiliations are public. It would not help anyone (other than me and my ego) to pretend that I haven’t been hurt or confused by the things that have bucked my plans or hopes. And it would be too convenient to tell you that innovation is always birthed by failure. Cause so is failure. This may not work. We may give up or do something else. And it would hurt to do so.

I guess what I want to convey is something that is all too often left out of the conversations about leadership: sometimes David beats Goliath, and other times he doesn’t. Sometimes you lose and you try again and you lose and you try again and you lose and you try again and you finally win. But often, you never win. Sometimes you do this work, not for the promise of a future glory, but because it is simply the way you want to be in the world. It is simply that you are David in a world of Goliaths. You may have faith, you may have fear; but you are who you are.

I waited to write this because I wanted to make sure that what I wrote was genuine. I don’t want to paint hope as inevitability, nor do I want to paint failure as destiny. I want to communicate that this work, the actual day-to-day work is full of real risk, where real pain and real humiliation are possible. Where living from your heart-out means that sometimes your heart is attacked. And that real vulnerability means that sometimes you don’t know if you’ll make it.

To find out who you are, there is no way around these times. There is no way but through. That’s why we walk together.