Courage to be seen

Written By: Whitney Warne

"I almost called in sick today."

She had arrived for the second day of her team's emotional intelligence training. I'd greeted her with a soft smile, reigning in my natural people-centered enthusiasm and keeping my volume low.

Yesterday had been rough for her, and not in the way you might imagine when you first read that sentence.

Her team had rallied around her, listened to her, asked her questions, and encouraged her feelings, but try as she might, this sweet, quiet SX 5 couldn't help but cry every time she shared. With each sharing opportunity, you could see her bolstering her confidence to speak, taking everything inside her to voice the one or two lines that eventually left her lips. 

Carol [not her real name for privacy] works with numbers, preferably and almost exclusively in the background.

She was not only quiet in volume but also energy. She sat at the front of the room, and at any moment, I could have taken one step and touched her; however, even with that proximity, at times, I forgot she was there. She learned long ago to neutralize herself so that people couldn't notice her, no one would ask more of her, and no one would try to get to know the person who calculated their numbers so perfectly. 

But she'd met her match.

I clocked her, and I knew the magic that lay within.  

Five years ago, I didn't have any Type Five friends. Type Fives are the Quiet Specialists, Investigators, Researchers. They are a private data-driven type, preferring people in concept to the demands and messiness of a real-life, flesh-and-blood human. 

Fives desire to conserve time, resources, and energy, instructing themselves to constrict rather than connect. Fives constrict what they say, and what they agree to. They are frugal with their resources and what they are willing to offer outside of themselves. This comes from the Five's fear that there is never enough and conversely, that they are too much for anyone else to handle; therefore, they contain the messiness of their humanity while they watch the rest of us flail about using our mess as a badge of honor. 

And this feeling…this feeling of being too much and not enough at the same time is what came pouring out of Carol's eyes every time she shared with her team.

It was all that pent-up fear releasing itself; the fear that if she said anything, anything at all, she would be found out, revealed, exposed. The deep fear that if people knew her, then perhaps she would inevitably be rejected. 

Carol is married to a fellow introvert who had attended a previous training of ours. She went home after Day One and told her husband she didn't want to return, that it was too much. Too many feelings, she didn't want to share all that, and to my surprise, he encouraged her to return. 

"He said you picked on him the whole time and that I should come back anyway."

"Oh, did I?" I responded, smiling back. "I guess it could be seen that way. From my perspective, I was including him. I wanted to ensure that his team got to see the magic he tends to keep locked inside." 

Carol averted her gaze but nodded. 

"Is that what you're doing with me?" She asked. 

"What do you think?" a Cheshire cat-sized grin spread across my face. 

"Carol, you don't see this because you're in fear every time you share, but your team adores you. They hang on to your every word. They want to see what's locked up in there. They want to see what you have to say. They are curious, not to take anything from you, but to see and understand how they can be part of your process."

She stared at me steadily and nodded, "Okay." 

And that was it. She took her seat and prepared for Day Two of our training. 

The Day Two content this team's leader had chosen requires vulnerability, even more than Day One, where we practice self-disclosure about our Enneagram types where the language is laid out by the system.

But on this day, we were going through my "Radioactive Responsibility" content.

This content is designed to build individual ownership and responsibility within a team or organization. During our half-day together, we process one personal tragedy-to-triumph story through the lens of personal responsibility. The share is structured through a series of prompts that are designed to create a compassionate road to releasing long-held feelings of guilt, fault, blame, or shame.

Honestly, I was worried about Carol, but I always have a tiny voice of hesitation about this content. I worry that it's too much, requires too much, and goes too deep.

This fear of mine has been found wanting over and over as the proof pours over me in the form of gratitude. Without fail, every single time I deliver this content, I have a line of people waiting after the training to tell me thank you and to share the freedom they feel. I get to see renewed brightness in people's eyes and a hunger to maintain that feeling, the feeling they got from sharing something hard, and realizing that in fact, it did happen for them. Good things did happen because of that horrible moment. I get to feel the freedom that personal responsibility provides when it's integrated and utilized. 

I always demonstrate the narrative activity, walking through a time in my life when things went wrong and I didn't have control; what was hardest for me, how I blamed others and then myself, and then finally decided to do something about it. The "thing" I did in response to my tragedy changed my life and the lives of many others for the better. I chose to own one of the worst moments of my life, and in doing so, I created a pretty great outcome. 

And then, I walked people through their own stories, allowing them time to blame others, then themselves, feel the power of the good they created for themselves, and last but not least, the good that tragedy has supported them in creating for others. 

The response is resounding.

“Wow, I've spent so much time blaming them that I didn't see all the good I've created from that moment" 

“It felt good to go back and process that moment with a neutral person.”

“I feel a sense of relief.”

“I get it. I get to choose how to respond to disaster, I was extending my suffering.”

But as I walked through this content this time, I kept my eye and internal energy on Carol, gauging her, clocking her, making sure she was okay. 

You see, for me, there is always a touchpoint in the case. The person who might appear the most resistant are usually quiet, but sometimes they are combative. I feel their resistance to the process, and I empathize with the resistance to themselves they are displaying externally to me without even being aware they are reflecting an internal conflict.

When they start to open up and buy into the process, these are the people who are the key to creating a team wide shift because the quietest ones usually are people who have a lot to say to change the culture but haven’t said it.

Carol was partnered with a super sweet Type 2 for our disclosure activity. There was a lot of competition to try and be chosen to be her partner. Whether Carol was willing to see it or not, her team was hunger to get in deeper with here. 

We'd come to the close of the day and at the end of each training, I ask people to share what they are committed to moving forward. The commitments around the room where inspiring. 

And then we got to Carol.

She stood up, as I’d asked everyone to do and turned to face her team. I was right next to her.

She paused and took a deep breathe in. I gently put my hand on her back and said, “I'm right here. You've got this" 

Early that day, we'd talked about how a hand on the back is sometimes all the support and help a person needs. A hand on the back feels like true compassion. It says, "I'm here, but I trust you’ve got this."

And with my hand on her back, Carol's eyes were watering as she said, "I am going to be me, and I'm going to be okay with people knowing me." 

I looked at her team, a team that had entered the start of our training in conflict.

A team that existed in an ecosystem where some voices were massively overvalued in comparison to others.

Where hierarchy ruled and grunt work drooled, and Carol does excellent, impeccable grunt work. 

Her team was all staring at her intensely. Half of the room matched Carol's misty eyes. We were all 100% with her at that moment. That one sentence that may have seemed like nothing for someone with my personality style to say out loud was everything for Carol to say out loud.

Her team got it.

They got the courage it took to share, even if they wouldn't have needed the same amount. 

They understood her, and at that moment, even though it was just my hand on her back, I felt like maybe Carol knew, she'd just gained 18 new hands that would be there whenever she needed them.