Step 51 Up the Tribe Triangle: Reconnection & Recommitment
Very simply, individual and group success requires commitment and connection. Sustainable success requires recommitment and reconnection. As leaders we must be aware when these core requirements within ourselves and our team show up and respond decisively and skillfully when they do.
The foundation of sustainable success for your family and organization was built on a shared vision for the future, a shared set of values that gets you there and shared missions that are transparent, collaborative and reciprocal. All of that led to kinship and all the power and resiliency of those robust relationships. It is a very common mistake of leadership to think that once the alignment work and kinship work is done that its actuallydone. This is never the case. Like every other system in the world, that foundation will tend toward entropy and will need revitalization.
Recommitment
“Motivation is what gets you started. Commitment is what keeps you going.”
-Jim Rohn
For athletes and other professionals, recommitment is an accepted part of the success process and is built into their life strategy. They know that things are going to knock them and their team off course and setbacks happen. These challenges may include the loss of a valuable team member, addition of a new team member, changes in their industry or unavoidable personal challenges such as loss or injury. Even boredom and burnout are normalized as an accepted part of their journey and actively addressed with recommitment. That is the nature of life and the pursuit of success.
Each one of these setbacks is a form of stress and trauma. Some will be small inconveniences and some will be major events that force us to reexamine our foundation of alignment and how well our kinship system is working. This does not invalidate your foundation to the shared vision you are working toward or your values. It means you facing a challenge. More often than not, struggles will be a lesson on the need to recommit to those things not, abandon them.
Recommitment is a skill like any other and it will get better with time. Understanding the need of recommitment and both how and when to utilize it is a primary driver of sustainable success in all the relationships and practices of your life. Your primary tool for dealing with these challenges is the kinship function of resiliency and recommitment is a primary function and driver of resiliency. Even resiliency practices themselves require regular recommitment or they will slip into disuse.
You cannot have ongoing commitment without recommitment. The commitments we have to our vision, organization and each other are only as strong as our ability to recommit. We are living in the attention age and there have never been more forces clamoring for our focus and resources. Recommitment to our larger purpose in the world is the strategy to combat these distractions. Your team may be resistant to regular recommitment but simply talking about them is revitalizing and one of your central functions as Head of Culture.
May is National Recommitment Month which is an opportunity for leaders and organizations to reflect on their vision, values and goals with the collective support of a large amounts of people across the country. This is a chance to sharpen your saw and regain your focus on the significant, purposeful direction you are heading. I propose that every month be recommitment month with additional recommitment enacted after every major success and, particularly, after every failure.
Reconnection
FEAR can mean Forget Everything and Run
or it can mean Find Everything and Reconnect.”
-Sanjay Patel
People change. You want them to and this is an important part of the culture development journey. Your culture is the behavior of your people and for your culture to change and grow you people must also. As you and your people transform, paths will begin to diverge. Some people will need new challenges and responsibilities to match their new sills. Some of your people will require more peace and control to match their new priorities. To keep diverging paths connected you will need to reconnect.
As your people grow, they will begin to find new levels of authenticity in how they express themselves and how they need to be communicated with. Almost all disagreements and relationship fractures come from a failure to communicate clearly and skillfully. Misunderstandings are the source of almost all conflict. It is worth revisiting the communication styles chapter in this book when you see inevitable conflicts appear in your family and team.
We are changing too. Leadership changes us and so will every decision, action, defeat and victory you experience. It will be impossible to have not changed if you have done even a few of the Tribe Leader writing challenges.
When we reconnect with our tribe we reconnect to ourselves.
People will come and people will go. This is a natural and unavoidable part of being part of a team. Reconnection is vital for managing the addition or departure of people from your tribe. Successful onboarding of new people and taking care of people after the exit of others is vital for maintaining kinship in your family and team. Have any arrival or departure of people be an automatic trigger for a reconnection ritual.
Kinship is an intimate thing. Many people have not experienced it since their time in the military or team sports as a youth. Many have never experienced kinship and it can be both a euphoric and overwhelming thing. For some of those people, it will be an easy backslide into shallowness or even isolation. Reconnection is the maintenance work to keep the engine of kinship running and producing results. Revisit and reflect on what reconnection traditions such as celebrations and public acknowledgments you have established in your culture. Even modeling the transparency of asking for help and appreciations are simple but profound acts of reconnection.
“All things are connected like the blood that unites us.
We do not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”
-Chief Seattle
Recommitment and reconnection are an endless process and it can feel like the Greek character Sisyphus endlessly pushing his rock uphill only to see it roll back down after all his effort. The stoics interpreted that story not a punishment but as an example of a life of profound meaning and noble struggle. The sun must rise again every day without complaint and this is what you signed up for, Tribe Leader.
Click here to watch the video of Step 51: Recommitment and Reconnnection
Leaders Must Write and Speak
Answer these questions in your journal by really writing them down. Discuss them with at least one of your most important people and really listen to their response.
Where are seeing or feeling symptoms of disengagement or burnout in yourself, family or team? What important thing do you need to recommit to? Your aspirational vision for the future? Guiding values that get you there? The meaningful shared missions you are working on? Your team needs to hear this as much as you do.
Where are you seeing or feeling symptoms of conflict or distance with your family or team? Have you or your people changed and need to be reconnected and appreciated? Are there communication tools that need to be sharpened to resolve and avoid conflict? Does your team need a celebration tradition to reopen the flow of vitality and kinship?
Ubuntu,
Philip Folsom