In the flow at the House of Beautiful Business
What I’m talking about when I’m talking about HtWW(A)A
One of the reasons Haruki Murakami’s book What I Talk About When I’m Talking About Running is considered a classic is its brilliant title. It promises vulnerability, surprise, layers, depth. About running but also not about running.
When I talk about How to Work with (Almost) Anyone – and, as you’ve noticed, I’ve been doing that a fair bit recently 🕺– I’m talking about more than a book, or book sales, or fabulous-one-week-left-bonuses, or even the Improve 10 Million Working Relationships mission that fuels my work.
What I’m really talking about is love.
In the end, the love you take / Is equal to the love you make.
Esther Perel nails it. Again.
When I think about the relationship I hope to have with the people I work with – whether as part of a team, or coaching them – I aspire to “fierce love”.
“Love” because I want to see them fully for who they are now and who they are becoming, and be a champion for that.
“Fierce” because I don’t want my own timidity and lack of courage to get in the way of that. I want to fiercely celebrate, challenge, embrace, encourage, and provoke them.
On a tactical level HtWW(A)A is about the ideas of safe, vital, and repairable; and the Keystone Conversation and its five questions; and the fifteen self-awareness exercises.
But really, it’s about being present and seeing the other person, and being seen in return.
It’s about what Martin Buber calls I-Thou relationships: “mutuality, directness, presentness, intensity and ineffability … a bold leap into the experience of the other while simultaneously being transparent, present and accessible.”
It’s about giving and taking love.
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