Face The Current Reality
When we step back right now, and look at the larger picture, many people and teams are struggling to maintain a sense of commitment and love for the work they are doing. They have lost touch with the praxis and with the nexus. I know this, because many have shared with me that they feel a sense of isolation in their life at work, and at home. They also feel the weight of difficult decisions that need to be made, often with incomplete information, and having few opportunities to talk with others who understand the challenges of making these kinds of decisions. The result is a rise of cynicism and despair that is crowding out any sense of optimism and hope for how to move forward.
I think this problem reflects the convergence of two elements, creating what Thomas Beech, former CEO of the Fetzer Institute, called chronic sincerity. One element is being “overwhelmed with the seriousness, the weight, the importance of my work” and, at the exact same time, being “convinced that I alone carry the responsibility to make all things right,” i.e. a default to thinking that perfection is the solution to all problems, and that I am the only one who can create the perfect solution. I believe this is a common problem for people who care deeply about the mission of their organization, and about the people they work with each and every day. From my perspective, chronic sincerity reflects a loss of understanding that the fulfillment of the mission is a commitment to a collective process, not something that is going to happen because of an individual effort.
Given this reality, I believe we need to commit to gaining greater perspective, and investing more time in reflection and renewal. These three elements, perspective, reflection, and renewal, are critical choices one can make along the praxis. Furthermore, the discipline to continually choose these three elements generates faith, courage, and perseverance. Then, the praxis becomes a path of hope and optimism.
Nevertheless, it takes great courage to lead and to manage the known and unknowns of our current reality. It also takes courage to face reality, and to acknowledge that some days just “suck.” It is hard to keep moving forward when the problems keep expanding and the solutions feel nearly impossible to find or create.
Often now, I meet more and more people who are consumed by the inputs of their life, namely meetings, people, problems, news alerts, text messages, and e-mail. It’s a daily, if not hourly, tsunami of information, all calling for their time and attention. In particular, I hear it when they tell me: “I spend all my time doing paperwork,” and “I don’t get enough time with my direct reports or the people we serve.” They also share: “I don’t get enough time with my family,” or “I am not getting paid enough for all the stress this creates in my life.” The outcome of all these statements is best summarized by this statement: “I just feel drained, empty, and defeated by it all.” Thus, my call for the importance of perspective, reflection, and renewal seems idealistic, if not a comically absurd choice in a world that feels burdensome and cumbersome.
Furthermore, when people are in pain, confusion, and feeling powerless, the message they hear, consciously or unconsciously from others and the message they give to themselves is “get your act together and all will be well.” The reality is that we can’t always get our act together, because we don’t even know what our “act” is, let alone where to find it. This is why perspective, reflection, and renewal are so important. For by choosing these three things, we can create the time and space to find our act and come to understand our act, i.e. we understand ourselves, and we understand our own inner, hidden wholeness.
Our work as leaders has always been holistic and organic more than it has been mechanical engineering. We are in the business of creating outcomes and relationships, not just outcomes and getting more things done. For being “done” implies a termination and/or a conclusion rather than an on-going and holistic evolution and transformation. We need to understand and remember that our wholeness is always changing, growing and evolving. It is never a static equilibrium with no ongoing movement or motion. In short, our personal praxis and our collective praxis are interconnected, and each has the potential to strengthen the other.
Create A Circle Of Trust
However, if we want this to happen, we need to enter into dialogue about the inner life of our being, and the outer life of our doing, which is another vital part of the praxis. In order to do this, we need to find our people, and to gather with them in a circle of trust, respect, and listening. We do this not to be fixed, but instead to acknowledge where we are broken, and where we need to re-center our life in order to reclaim and maintain our hidden wholeness. For as we do this, we understand the timeless wisdom that Gandhi shared: “As I change, the world around me changes.” And right now, we need to change ourselves in order to change the world.
Still, as Fr. Bruno Barnhart reminds us, “We humans prefer a manageable complexity to an unmanageable simplicity.” The praxis to changing our lives requires us to create a circle of trust, and then to step into it. I was reminded of how hard this is for many people when I read a sign at a restaurant in Door County, Wisconsin: “There is no Wi-Fi password. There is no Wi-Fi. Act like it is 1995, and sit down and talk to each other.”
The challenge of sharing at this level requires us to be vulnerable, which is not something we like to do, or often choose to do. Yet, Brené Brown in her book, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (Avery, 2012), explains: “We can’t opt out of the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure that’s woven through out daily experiences. Life is vulnerable.” And the praxis will always involve uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Moving forward on the praxis also involves vulnerability. Thus, the building of safe spaces, i.e. circles of trust, to confront these feelings, and to engage in sharing about them with others generates the capacity to be centered, and to be grounded in clarity as we move forward along the path of translating the abstractness of the strategic nexus into a workable reality for all involved.
To be continued tomorrow.
© Geery Howe 2026
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