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1.5 | What have you learned/observed about your relational presence in regard to these qualities (confidence-humility, precision-flexibility, stillness-sparkliness)?
Below, you will see the Session #1 reflection questions. Please answer these questions at the bottom of the screen.
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55 Replies
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I am going through a period of many learnings and new projects at work, and this has significantly increased my ability to fully engage in meetings in a sparkly way. It was important to recognize that I like and need challenges and new studies to keep me motivated. I’ve also felt more confident about my role in the organization, something that had been a bit stirred up in the past few months. About my humility, I think that hasn’t changed much, I’ve always found it very easy to expose my vulnerabilities to the closest team when necessary.
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When I’m in a meeting, I can see how at times I become less or more flexible. I allow myself to go from stillness to sparkliness and appreciate these changes as an opportunity to invite others to participate in the conversation with me.
I can recognize how each conversation has endless paths and can take multiple shapes, so I don’t need to be precise or still all the way. I can blend and bring new tones to the conversation.
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I learned that real confidence comes from the heart space and includes humility in it, as much as real humility also comes from the heart and includes confidence. Just learning that was a big shift for me internally. I noticed the sparkliness and the stillness also meet in the middle, one can penetrate the other and make sparkliness more down to earth and stillness less dull. So, in the end, I learned that the extremes of these can feel fake and without substance, but when they complement each other they make each somehow stronger, or maybe more truthful, or real. The precision-flexibility pair, on the other hand, felt very different. I noticed I carry a sense of rigidity around the meaning of precision.
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Reflecting on the practice, I learned that although I have come (if later in life) to listen to my body, I do so intuitively and not systematically. In meetings and in classes I can read, navigate and orient as needed, a room rather effectively. But I feel that I would be able to do so with a much greater positive impact on all those present, if I could gain these insights from my body more intentionally. As our practice encouraged us to do, I have asked myself in the past weeks if I was feeling confident-humble, precise-flexible, still-sparkly, but this always happened after the fact. I would like to be able to create more space within me, before and during inter-personal interactions, to pro-actively sound my body for these insights in the moment, instead of doing so after each occurrence for “after the fact” reflections.
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I am aware of the qualities. I try to go into a meeting with an intention to be one of them. My default qualities is sparkliness and confidence. Sometimes flexibility will show up as will humility. Usually people are looking to me for answers on some very tough questions so I really try to instill confidence. However, I am aware that sometimes stillness is needed and I need more of that. In the opening weekend I was able to do stillness in a breakout room and thought it could be very useful. I need to slow way down.
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I tend toward humility – sometimes to a fault. Sometimes people don’t give me credit or they assume that I don’t know what I do know. I tend to ask questions that I know the answers to, to help people reflect and see a different perspective. This might come from being a high school teacher
I go back and forth between precision and flexibility and tend to have a still presence more than sparkliness. -
I too am often humble to a fault; I need to continue to work on and develop my confidence to speak up and share my achievements when they are worth voicing.
Because I often operate in ambiguity, I lean towards flexibility, though I can often balance that with precision when necessary. And I would say I’m more still than sparkly.
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I am experience imposter syndrome and confidence is foreign to me, I tend to go overboard on the humility to compensate or camouflage for the lack of confidence. I’m also highly rigid and inflexible, gravitating towards precision, but I’ve been able to ease some flexibility into my work relationships (a little less into personal relationship). I’m all sparkle and I think that ties back to the imposter syndrome and wanting to be likable so that no-one notices how flawed I am. The stillness is scary, it feels like I am completely out of control.
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I have been paying attention to what the group or meeting needs of me before starting speaking and also paying more attention to what comes out naturally
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This is a harder prompt to respond to for me. I feel I exhibit each of these 6 qualities throughout my day, both professionally and personally. I definitely tend towards some more than others, but am still lacking some awareness of WHEN im actually in one or even both of these qualities.
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Yesterday I played around with stillness- sparkliness with two back to back meetings, both of the same nature, simply management check in meetings. For both, this added an extra depth and attention to my conversation that really helped me stay engaged and present. I started with sparkliness. I came with energy and optimism, and I noted how the other person began to mirror that. I felt maintaining this energy was a challenge, but at the same time helped me stay present and consider mindfully my responses. When it came time for my next meeting, I tried to switch to stillness. I found it hard to turn down the sparkliness initially. But it felt good to be able to come to calmness, to be able to choose that freely and then see how capable I was of engaging in an alternative way. All in all, this revelation of emotional freedom is new to me. That I can be confident and humble, each intentionally. I can be still, and sparkle, one at a time, I can choose which I wish to be.
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My work is quite ambiguous most of the time so being flexible is my go to strategy, privately I generally still but if I need to sparkle I can, but I’ve noticed it doesn’t feel very genuine. I actually wish I was more “sparkly”. I tend toward being humble when it relates to work and more confident outside of work situations.
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I realize that I tend to lean into what a team/group/person needs at the moment – more confidence? flexibility? sparkliness? you got it. Instead of creating what was needed from me, I tried to be more in tune with what I was authentically feeling. This felt unusual and strange to me and made me realize how much of my professional interactions are about what others need from me, and very little focus on how I am actually feeling at the moment.
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My defaults are in the humility and stillness ends of the dimensions, so I tried boosting the confidence and sparkliness for a couple of the meetings I led this week. I was mostly happy with the results: I enjoyed the meetings more, and we finished more quickly than we typically would. I incorporated some humor, which I think people appreciated, but at times I also felt that I was driving the meeting fairly hard (to stay on schedule!) so that I’m not sure if someone disagreed with something we were proposing they would have stepped up to say so. Part of my “humble” style is to seek input from others, where in my “confident” style, I led with what I expected the final result would likely be and sought more confirmation. (As I write this, I’m concerned that my meeting may not have been as successful as I thought….)
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I have been leaning into stillness—not reacting and deeply listening. This is counter to my natural ‘sparkliness’ (which I feel is sometimes counter to the culture where I work), so I’m trying to give myself the freedom to play with both. That said, when playing with stillness, I tend to feel more deeply present and available to support others.
I generally struggle with exuding confidence (a la imposter syndrome). I tend to shine the light on others and sacrifice my own confidence in so doing. I would like to find a better balance here—being authentically humble without giving up my own strength.
As for precision and flexibility, I tend to be very detail-oriented and precise and would like to see the same in others. Prior to this program (and now increasingly so), I am trying to be more flexible in my expectations—focusing more on the why and the what of a project vs. the how.
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