THE LEAFLET
February 06 2025
tear and repair, “they shouldn’t feel that way”, many motivations
TEAR AND REPAIR
Your muscles can guide your growth. When you’re lifting or you’re running or you’re doing yoga, you are strengthening your muscles. On a micro level, what’s happening in there is a bunch of small, healthy tearing. The fibers tear. Then, with food and sleep before your next tear, they repair. The torn-then-healed muscle is stronger than the muscle that is never torn at all.
Tear, repair - that’s the cycle.
You need calibration in both halves of the cycle. Tear too aggressively and you aren’t growing that muscle - you’re injuring it. Repair with too little time or too little fuel, and you also court injury.
When I’ve encountered wisdom in the workplace, it has often appeared as an instance of tear and repair. Usually, I’m seeing a leader model how to do both, one after the other, over and over, with confidence that the next is coming. Run like hell; recharge. Take a risk; learn from the risk. Sell with conviction; improve with feedback. Push the team hard; book a retreat.
Younger, more frightened people (me, often, when I was watching these wise leaders) fell prey to a narrower gospel. Worship in the House of Tear or in the House of Repair but never across the schism. I was a devotee of hustle culture or self-care culture, not a more patient, more pragmatic contributor that allowed each their season, let them play moon and sun to one another.
If a relationship feels flat, it might be a sign you haven’t risked a tear (recently) and need to try. It might be a sign that you’ve yet to repair an old injury, however slight. Either way, you might be pretending the wheel of tear and repair doesn’t have to turn to move forward.
-eric
Read the rest here.
“THEY SHOULDN’T FEEL THAT WAY”
When you’re a leader who has risen through the ranks in your own organization (or maybe were part of a founding team there), you may look with skepticism and even contempt at the concerns of newer folks. If you’ve done your job well, those newer folks are probably stepping into a markedly better situation than the one you started with. The context, the culture, the opportunities, maybe even the workplace amenities, are nicer and more dependable. You might find yourself wondering, “What is there even to complain about? They should have seen what it was like [when I started / in year x / when we were holding this place together with duct tape and a prayer etc etc].”
An underlying take here, from you, the self-righteous veteran, might be, “These newbies - they shouldn’t feel that way.”
I cringe a little when I type that. It’s not so far from a direct quote ... of myself.
If you’re reading this, you almost certainly see how self-defeating “they shouldn’t feel that way” is. And you probably see how much more useful it is to try out a few of these lines of inquiry:
Why do they feel that way?
What can I learn from them?
What can they learn from me?
What choices from both of us will make us all better able to do the important stuff we’re here for?
(If it helps with the thought exercise, you can replace “leader who has risen through the ranks” with “parent” and “newer folks” with “your children” :warm smile emoji: :devil horn emoji: :dr becky emoji:)
-eric
Read the rest here.
MANY MOTIVATIONS, ONE OFTEN UNSPOKEN
When you find yourself at odds with a colleague, it can be tempting to simplify your model of their motivations. Unlike you – a nuanced, sophisticated, pragmatic pursuer of The Mission We All Share – they are just in it (this debate, this role, this line of work) for
power or
money or
status or
racial justice or
a sense of moral superiority or
etc
I’ve found it useful to release this over-simplified view. And to consider and wonder: what if, among the layered motivations they have, safety were the key driver? In other words, what if they’re afraid of something?
It gets especially spicy and helpful if I can then honestly ask and answer that question about myself. What about my preferred solution here makes me feel safe? What fear am I trying to allay with my preferences (in this debate, this role, this line of work)?
-eric
Read the rest here.
COMPELLING QUOTES
Couples therapist Terry Real on the gods we think we deserve:
In our hearts, we all think that we deserve the goddess or god who will deliver us from our childhood, even heal us and make it all better and give to us what we didn’t get. What we wind up with is somebody who is perfectly designed to stick it to us.
Podcaster Sahil Bloom on a question worth asking:
If you’re trying to make conversation with someone that you are intimidated by, ask what they're currently working on that they're most excited about. It's a simple question, but it gets them talking and animated. Ask follow-ups and listen intently.
Analyst of trying times James Baldwin on the importance of the writer in “Notes for a Hypothetical Novel”:
The importance of a writer is continuous; his importance, I think, is that he is here to describe things which other people are too busy to describe.
Keep going, keep growing,
Ben & Eric