SPACE TO THINK and to do are not lone endeavours, underpinning both is the ability to connect with other people and create rich, deep, trusting relationships. In the modern business world, where old hierarchies are breaking down and collaboration, partnership and the matrixed organisation are the norm, your relationships with other people are your main tool to get things done. Getting these right requires three things.
First, we need to Create Space to Check In. This is about your relationship with the most important person of all – yourself. In order to relate to and empathise with others, you first have to know what is going on for you. What are you feeling and why? We will see, in the example of Nick, that if we’re not careful our emotional responses can be out of kilter with what’s actually going on around us, and that to set things right we need to exorcise our demons.
Second, we need to Create Space to Share. Once we know what we’re feeling and why, we have to be able to share this with others. This goes beyond sharing ‘intellectual’ things like ideas and plans, and is about sharing your emotional reality. This can make us feel vulnerable and even scared, but it is the precursor to building the strong relationships we need. We will see how hard the Spirits Team has to work to recognise this and move beyond niceties and platitudes to bring to the surface what was really going on.
Finally, we need Create Space to Relate. Once we are able to connect with our own inner emotional life and the emotional life of those around us, we need to create space to really get to know other people; nourish and nurture those relationships that we need to do our jobs well. Amir, like Nick, has demons to conquer, and needs to fundamentally alter his basic assumptions about himself and other people.
In all three stories, we will see that there can be deep, troubling and longstanding issues getting in the way of our ability to connect to others. If we don’t make the space to identify and process these, we will end up sabotaging our own success.