Last Tuesday I really felt like a failure.
(I’m going to tell you the whole thing and hope that it’s maybe a useful parable to round out this month?)
The day after the long weekend, I already needed just one more day off.
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New here? This is the end of this month’s theme in a six-month cycle of focus areas around interdependent leadership.
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Yet again, on the Thursday before the weekend, I had failed to clear as much of the public email and voicemails for the service I manage.
I had a morning meeting with some senior people which subjectively turned into feeling like they were listing things that were not right in my areas of responsibility, and ways I hadn’t dealt with A Hot Topic in a good way.
I logged into all the inboxes. My two emails, the public email, the voicemail, Teams, work WhatsApp.
There was one email that had news that was just dizzying.
Another where I hadn’t cancelled a meeting with a volunteer and they’d shown up and I’d not realised until I woke up with a proper movie-scene startle on Saturday going, ‘Oh crap i didn’t cancel!’ and I hadn’t sent the apology email as I had planned.
And then five billion other messages of varying urgency, emotional tone and size of response.
Plus, in the background, all the life stuff (two sets of Death admin, rental house search, Thailand surgery admin) and the world.
And I just froze.
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I’ve been watching my freeze response the past couple of weeks.
There are two people who used to be among my absolute closest people who have ended their relationships with me in recent times. One of those endings had given me more grief than I felt when my Mum died.
I’d decided to go back on Instagram on 31st March, not really realising it was Trans Day of Visiblity (and my five-year name change anniversary!).
Whilst there, I saw a picture of one of the ex-loved ones and a mention of the other.
Whilst still physically breathing and standing and walking, I could feel my insides breathe in and not breathe out.
I’m kind of fascinated with movies where people have to hide from monsters/killers/whatever, but absolutely cannot watch them when I’ll be on my own, and Zed in particular knows never ever to creep up on me or surprise me. In fact, my startle response is so strong, people around me have to make noise when approaching so I don’t yell, like that Catherine Tate character.
Sometimes I imagine what I would do if I heard someone in the house. Where would I hide? What would I do? What would my exit points be?
When I’m on my own overnight, I lock two doors between me and the rest of the house and absolutely can NOT watch anything that has a hint of danger.
But that sensation of holding your breath whilst they're searching the house?
That’s the kind of breath holding that I had after seeing those posts on Instagram.
That and the breath you breathe in and hold when you see the coffin coming out of the hearse the first time, just before you cry.
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So I was already frozen inside before the meetings, and the emails.
But afterwards, I was holding my breath to hide, holding my breath before crying, and also holding my breath like when you’ve just made a huge sudden mess, broken something precious that belongs to someone else, or when you’ve had the phone call saying you’ve been burgled. (Both real memories.)
Which meant: I spun.
I tried joining an online co-working session. That almost always works, but that day it did not.
I think I ate, did the dishes, had a nap.
All the things.
But still I was getting maybe one task done, but it was like a thousand alarms all going off at once.
I mean, weirdly, in an actual crisis, I’m great. Calm, steady, assessing. Ella Risbridger in A Year of Miracles, her beautiful cookbook written about food the year after her person died, talks about those of us who had emotionally turbulent childhoods being like sailors who find it hard to walk on land, but feel at home in the rhythms of being at sea.
But this felt like fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail.
Too many examples, too close together.
And I finally had the thought:
‘Oh. I’m actually failing at this job.’
The (perceived) reality of that hit me. I was 3.5 years in and was actually no good at this. I assumed I would be, and turns out, just was NOT.
Underneath that was a firm belief. Are you ready?
‘If I can’t actually do the job of being a senior manager, I therefore cannot coach people who are doing that job.’
So not only was I failing at my job, but it meant that my life’s work was built on a lie.
I allowed this to be true for a bit (spoiler: I do actually get my head on straight in a bit) then thought, ‘Well, I’d better find a way to actually do some work.’
I then remembered the doc I made for myself called Meg, would it help to…?
(This thread instigated by Anuradha of Sowing Post-Capitalist Seeds fame this week is wildly useful for the neurosparkly amongst us.)
I’d already tried counting the number of emails/VMs and putting a bean in a pot for each one and using that as a progress counter, but that doesn’t work very well for some reason. Maybe I should have done satsuma portions so I get a wee blood sugar boost as well. All I got with the dried beans was an intrusive thought about putting one in my mouth and sucking it.
So, I know it’s laborious, but I went through the inbox, and wrote what action needed to be taken for each email/message on a separate postit.
Then I used what I learned from working in McDonalds when I was 19. I served the customer in front of me: I just did the one postit, then the next.
It was enough to get some purchase, but I had to deliberately ignore my skin being gently on fire, the several alarms going off around me, the people banging on my windows and ringing the doorbell, the train I needed to catch and wasn’t packed for.
Metaphorically speaking.
However, the truth, my truth - and I think this is super important to end our lunar month of focusing on who we are and what we do - is that leading something isn’t just being inspirational/wise in meetings. It’s so often working out what to do from the overflowing bath with the taps stuck fully open, then actually doing it, whilst managing your emotions about the work, the outside-of-work work, and the world.
Later on, I got to speak to one of my sibling-friends and she talked me down from my sense of failure.
She reminded me
I’m post-covid, moving house, in the middle of grief, the first day back after a long weekend.
I’m really really doing my best.
I’m working within systems (within systems) that either slow or actively don’t want a human and humane workplace to exist.
No one embodies the platonic ideal of inclusive, interdependent leadership (I should know this from having coached all those people, but I temporarily forgot.)
We ‘succeed’ by persisting.
Obviously, this helped, and then it led me to think about telling the story of this day. So here we are.
END OF PARABLE.
[Epilogue: I watched myself coaching someone on Friday and, well, I noticed that I can still coach ‘despite’ me being a ‘failure’. ]
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We’re coming to the end of lunar month one of our six month cycle!
I hope you’ve gotten something from the energy of reflecting on Self, work, emotions and sacredness, even if ‘all’ you’ve done is read my emails.
We transition in the next couple of days to month two which is about how we grow more useful lenses on complexity and mess.
See you there.