THE LEAFLET

January 25 2024

speechgiving mindset, apologies reconsidered, what this isn’t

SPEECHGIVING MINDSET

You are offering something. Your speaking is an act of generosity. 

You are inviting people to participate, even briefly, in a story of what is and what may be. People love stories and need them. How kind of you!

You are participating in a tradition that is much bigger and more important than you and how well or poorly you do this thing or how good you look or sound doing it. What you’re doing really matters; the fact that it’s you doing it, not as much.

Read the rest here.

APOLOGIES RECONSIDERED

One thing you’re modeling at pretty much all times is “how we use power around here.” If the model is, “tie yourself in a knot pretending you don’t in fact have it,” you’re likely to see folks you lead doing the same with whatever measure of power they have. 

Instead, it seems more useful to me to model a humane, effective, equitable use of power. You gather info, you make clear decisions, you solicit and visibly appreciate feedback, you set and maintain high standards, you make moves to support your people and unlock new levels and modes of power for them. 

You don’t apologize for any of that, so long as you’re doing it in accord with your team’s values, the law, and precepts of decency. Any time you do that stuff - or anything else - in violation of values, law, and decency, you definitely do apologize. 

Read the rest here.

WHAT THIS IS, WHAT IT ISN’T

When you’re talking to your team, you’ll often be making an affirmative case for something. There’s a new push, a new rule, a new experiment at hand. 

Useful over-communication ties the new thing to the old things: your mission, your values, your big goals for the year or quarter or season. You tell your people clearly: this is what this is and this is how it fits into what has always/already been.

I’ve found value in adding in a negative case, too. Tell your people what this isn’t, what this doesn’t mean. This can be a way to achieve precision and allay (or at least address) suspicion about your new thing. 

Read the rest here.

COMPELLING QUOTES

Evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar on our the limits of conversational cognition:

Dramatists, it seems, are constrained by the fact that their audience can only cope with four people in a conversation, and successful dramatists are very mindful of this.

Professor and biographer Imani Perry on historical criteria:

History, after all, has to be told to count as such.

Writer Robert Macfarlane on deep time:

When viewed in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert. New responsibilities declare themselves. A conviviality of being leaps to mind and eye. The world becomes eerily various and vibrant again. Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains ebb and flow. Stone pulses. We live on a restless Earth.

Keep going, keep growing,

Ben & Eric