Why Insight isn’t Enough
I’m a book lover. Beside my bed, is a pile of (mostly) non-fiction work. Depending on my mood, I’ll gravitate to a passage or chapter, often landing somewhere random.
Reading is a habit I have, when I’m looking for insight. Especially, when I want to be alleviated of my own uncertainty or discomfort, and I long for a quick fix or trick to help me sail through.
When I read for more information, I have a tendency to overfill my cup, such that I can’t remember what I read. In my heart, I recognize that don’t fully digest the words in my bones.
Despite this, I often experience the thirst for ‘more’- anticipating the ‘one thing’ that will make me a better leader. Maybe miraculously soothe my difficult conversation, assuage my guilt for my role in systemic racism, or ground my unbridled enthusiasm for jumping into ‘what’s next’.
Yet I realize that my collection of books at my bedside, and the obsession with information, is an illusion of where and how I’m growing.
The act of looking for ‘more information’ rarely invites long-term, sustainable improvement in my own leadership. Because no matter what I’m ‘working on’ or developing, my insights from new information are limited and partial.
While they may serve to reorient or challenge my thinking, insight, on its own doesn’t translate into sustainable behavior change.
The wisdom of working with your body
Many years ago, I was given the profound and simple practice of slow walking. It was in service to my development as a coach at the time, to support the development of a capacity to ‘stay in’ discomfort.
My tendency was to run, distract, and/or make peace- particularly through interpersonal conflict. I had read all the books and wanted to up my game.
Yet there was a ‘red light’ habit where I would tend to move ‘up and out’. When I did this, I lacked patience and deep presence in the midst of an uncomfortable experience.
Yet as I practiced walking slowly (reminiscent of my modern Butoh dance performance years ago), my nervous system began to settle.
I began to notice that my ‘head’ somehow felt further ahead of my body as I slowed down. As I slowed down in practice (and life/leadership), my head and body formed a new allegiance.
While I had read countless books on interpersonal conflict, until I also engaged my body and nervous system, I couldn’t catalyze the learning in an embodied way.
After working with my body over time, I was able to stay in my own somatic discomfort during conflict and move into new levels of listening, empathy, and intimacy in leadership.
Becoming a better leader requires insight + action
Becoming a better leader requires more than just insight.
What I’ve learned over decades with senior leaders, clients, and my own experience is that while insight can be stunning- it often doesn’t translate into long-term sustainable change.
We need both insight and action; in other words new ways of making meaning and embodiment.
With an Integral approach, transformation takes time, patience and both effort and surrender. Within an elegant architecture of practice, a leader refines their ability to both self-witness and builds capacities in precise areas of development.
This enables them not only to “see” or have insights about their leadership edge, but actually include and transcend it, thereby shifting their relationship to it and themselves.
Ultimately, for sustainable change and better leadership we include both insight and action.
This in turn, cultivates influence, integrity, and impact for a committed leader who wants to create social change.
Practice for You: How to develop sustainable change
Here is a series of reflection questions, to stimulate critical thinking of how you approach your own growth as a leader:
- When have you experienced significant change that’s felt sustainable? What’s enabled that for you? Why?
- What area of leadership or life do you feel most challenged by?
- What ‘edges’ of your capacities are you becoming aware of?
- Intuitively, do you feel like you need to sharpen/strengthen something or soften/surrender?
- Given this, what body-based or other practices could support you to move in and through this next leadership/life challenge?
- What would look differently for you 3 or 6 months from now, if you experienced this change in your life?
Xo
Jennifer
P.S. If you are interested in deeper coaching that helps you achieve sustainable, long-term change please book a free Discovery Session here.
