Three months later than planned, my third book, Approaching Difference Differently, is in the layout process. This is a momentous staging post – for the first time I have a sense of it as a book, rather than a Word document.
In general, I’m not good with ‘later than planned’ and everything about this book has been … delayed. Some of this is down to me, mostly related to the complexity of the book. Some of it’s down to the availability of the specialists who are helping to bring the book to publishable standard. However, the most recent delay arose from a tussle with my personal tendencies and habits.
You see, there was a plan: the draft manuscript would be professionally copyedited in July and go into layout in August for publication in October.
However, the copyedit was more complex than I’d envisaged … and, whilst I worked at great intensity, I was unable to play my part in meeting the deadline for handing over to the layout specialist. Feeling the responsibility of my commitment to her, I tried to work even harder, becoming heroic in my efforts. This is a pattern: Ah! There I am again!
As the deadline passed with good-natured agreement, a sense of pressure grew within me. As well as my inner drive to complete this stage of the process and ‘tick-it-off-the-list’, I was uncomfortable that I was ‘messing with’ the workflow of a self-employed specialist. I’ve been on the receiving end of this experience and I didn’t like being the cause of it. In addition, I realised that, immersed in the detail of the copyedit, I’d lost contact with the ‘wholeness’ of the book. In the editing process, each change made sense in and of itself, but I was concerned about the coherence of the accumulating changes. I had a strong urge to review the manuscript again.
The crunch came when I realised that I simply couldn’t sustain the pace and intensity of my efforts.
There followed a few days of crisis. I see myself as someone who meets their commitments and deadlines and it was difficult to accept that I couldn’t do this. I took some time to pause, centre, reflect, breathe – and to reconnect with what matters: doing justice to the material in the book.
Eventually, in a more spacious frame of mind and body, I emailed the layout specialist to ask when she’d next be able to work on my book if she brought forward other projects. We agreed on October. My system settled: I could proceed more slowly and review the manuscript again. Difficult though this decision was, the book has benefitted immeasurably – as have I.
The irony is that one of the themes of Approaching Difference Differently is going slowly. The book focuses on embodying dialogue practices in our leadership conversations so that we can engage with differences generatively rather than divisively. However, it takes time, attention and application to be able to do this and, when I spell this out, clients often say: ‘we don’t have time for this’. And yet, they seem to have endless time to fight fires when a conversation isn’t fit for purpose.
There’s a paradox here. Much organisational activity is characterised by moving ‘at pace’. There isn’t time to slow down and embrace new leadership practices that initially, have uncertain results. And so, we persevere with current practice, despite its limitations. It seems that the discipline of slowing down may be the hardest aspect of embodying dialogue practices.
The choice to go slowly can be even more difficult if we have a personal ‘at pace’ tendency – we want to get things done, to crack on, to hurry. I was in the grip of such a habit as I strove to stick to the timetable I’d set. My attachment to the plan was the cause of my distress and, eventually, I recognised the pickle I’d created for myself. I was then able to draw on the practices that are central to my life and work, and create space to consider other options. I loosened the grip of the ‘at pace’ tendency, and so could go slowly.
Contemplations
- What aspect of your leadership might benefit from going slowly?
- How might you remind yourself to pause, centre, reflect and breathe?
