What does giving birth have to do with making leadership decisions?
(Trigger warning: birth stories – nothing bad but if you prefer to skip this one, go for it)
You might have seen that I posted on LinkedIn about the underrated leadership skill of accessing the energy of allowing…here is the fuller explanation.
Often our anticipation of risk or pain is the most powerful thing stopping us from doing the things we want to do or know would be the right things for us.
For example, imagine holding yourself back from taking an unpopular decision because you’re afraid of the potential conflict. Or holding back from applying for the big job because you think it would cost you too much to make a success of it.
My argument is that with the proper preparation and practice, you can get into the energy of allowing – it’s a counterintuitive way of approaching hard things.
Here’s a real life example of what I mean (it’s potentially Too Much Information but it’s my most vivid experience of this so I’m going there). When I was pregnant with my daughter I was determined that I didn’t want to get on the pain relief and medical intervention escalator. My thinking was that there must be a good way to have a natural birth. Women have been giving birth for thousands of years without epidurals and screaming in hospital beds, like they show in the movies – I just didn’t buy it.
So I spent 9 months preparing. I researched, I listened to audio books. I found a podcast of positive birth stories. I did physical exercises and mental visualisations.
The main thing I discovered which felt 100% true for me is that my body was meant for this. I also subscribed to the view that most of the ‘pain’ involved in contractions would be much more manageable for my brain to accept if I put it in the context of:
· Time – for your average labour you’re looking at just 60-90 seconds of intense sensation at a rate of 4 contractions per 10 minutes by the last hour of labour. That’s 5 minutes of intensity for 5 minutes of rest – I reckoned I could handle that. Surely your average marathon runner has a worse time of it?!?
· Existing experiences – I discovered that the burn in your thighs from holding a 90 second squat with your back against a wall and your legs at 90 degrees as if you were sitting gives a pretty good indication of the type of feeling you’d get across your abdomen during contractions. I could practice that and get used to feeling of the burn.
· My beliefs – I cultivated the belief that the sensations I was going to experience were natural and actually a sign of my body doing everything it was meant to. This is how I kept it out of the stress response and allowed blood to flow to the group of muscles that were busy working to stretch and push rather than sending blood to my extremities for a stress induced flight or fight response.
· Trust in my people – I appointed my husband as the Guardian of the Oxytocin. That’s the hormone and neuromodulator that plays a significant role in both the initiation and regulation of labour contractions as well as bonding between mother and baby. So for a smooth and steady labour I needed to keep the oxytocin flowing and minimise anxiety. Now, one of the things that typically gets me riled up is medical professionals asking questions. So my husband took the role of point person in answering the midwife’s questions and protecting me when she asked if they could bring a group of students in to observe because they’d never seen such a calm natural birth.
I also trusted in my baby. I discovered that the labour process is actually initiated by the baby, not the mother. So I had to trust that she knew that it was the right time and we could do it together – this seemed kind of radical considering how helpless we are led to believe babies are but it really resonated with my values of dignity and respect.
Through all of that preparation I was able to allow my body and my baby to do exactly what they needed to do that day. I had such a calm labour that the Birth Centre nearly didn’t admit me because the Midwife didn’t believe I could be so close to engaged labour and still so calm.
My daughter was born at 2:17 by waterbirth. No pain meds. No undignified hospital bed with legs akimbo and full medical team standing around – just both of our bodies being allowed to do their jobs.
Now, am I saying that other alternatives aren’t as good? No – I think everyone needs to make their own decisions and I don’t have any judgement about people using pain meds or c-sections etc but I knew those things weren’t what I wanted to aim for. And I say ‘aim for’ because I also went into the whole experience knowing that aiming is all I could do and if something went wrong I would need that medical team to do their stuff.
So, what does all this got to do with leadership?
I believe that with preparation and practice you can get into the energy of allowing too. Let’s go back to our example of taking an unpopular decision. If you were determined to be a strong and confident leader via the energy of allowing:
1. How could you prepare and practice?
2. How could you put the experiences in the context of time? E.g. a day(s) of uncomfortable conversations vs months or potentially years of discomfort for all involved in you avoid the conflict or don’t tackle the situation.
3. What existing experience can you draw on to support yourself? Maybe you make tougher decisions in other areas of life or in a past role. Can you remind yourself that you’ve done something similar or related before and survived the discomfort and intensity?
4. What are the beliefs you’re holding onto which might spark your stress response? What healthier beliefs can you cultivate to support yourself? Maybe you believe that the person involved can’t handle your decision or that they can’t cope with more change. Maybe you could cultivate the belief that it’s overall more compassionate to deal with the issue head on than let it linger and have a longer term and potentially larger impact later on.
5. Who can you trust to protect you and do their part in this challenging season? Perhaps you have a colleague or sponsor you can trust with this. Perhaps you can pre-brief other managers to be able to answer questions or nip gossip in the bud.
When you can allow intensity and discomfort you become unfucking stoppable (excuse the language but I’m really serious!). It’s so much easier for you to do the hard thing than be stopped by resistance, anxiety, denial or inappropriately forcing.
My daughter is 5 now and I’m still cultivating the energy of allowing when it comes to things like making money in my business. I’m committing to cultivating the energy of allowing in 2023. Are you?