We are public servants at a time when our public is hurting. And evidence suggests their trust in our relationship is low. This obviously has an impact on our emotional wellbeing and can even lead to physical ailments as a result, absences from work, decreased performance which can show up in overall performance of our municipalities driving that decrease in trust, etc, etc - a viscous circle.
As a mindful leader one must be adept at recognizing this and take intentional steps to address the issues. In Marc Lesser's book Practice #5 "Connect to the Pain of Others" becomes especially powerful given the current state. The book suggests there are several ways a mindful leader can connect to the pain of others. All of which apply nicely in our context of public service and leadership in a government setting.
Cultivate community and connection
Creating a sense of community among our teams should be somewhat easier given who we serve. What we do on a day-to-day basis is create this sense of community and connection with the programs, services and amenities we provide. We see examples of community and connection virtually every day. We see and feel community at its best as well as when it is suffering, like now.
Just like we would encourage a conversation with our communities that we are all in this together and there are ways we can lean on each other in times of struggle, the very same thing can be said of our internal team of public service champions. I assume when we decided to pursue our careers in public service we embraced the extraordinary role we can play in empowering community wellbeing. This can be our collective rallying cry in the face of today's challenges. And we are better together if we want to see success. For us and for our communities.
"When we embrace public service genuinely we can accept legitimate criticisms of our sector as valid engagement intended to be used to improve the current state." - Kelly Rudyk
The book also suggests there are typically four main ways people generally inhibit their abilities to connect to the pain off others. All, again, very legit in our sector and meaningful for a mindful leader in our space.
Criticizing others shows up as we try and deflect the pain we are feeling. As our public criticizes us we can, at times, rush to criticize as a response. "They just don't know what they are talking about." "All they do is complain." Our response to criticism is something we have in our own control. As a mindful leader we can synthesize things down to what is really going on behind it. Where is the valid critique within the criticism. What can we learn from it?
Defensiveness is a natural response to someone acting out due to their feelings of pain - that they feel has a lot to do with your actions. At times, we can be triggered to disregard current state and circumstances and weave a story of all the good things we are doing. And yes, we are doing a lot of good things, this is true. However, there is also an opportunity to acknowledge our responsibility to listen, demonstrate some empathy and grasp our obligation to help. Look at things from the lens of the current situations and do not let history only dictate our actions.
There have even been times when I have seen
Contempt seep into the relationship between us and our public. And while I acknowledge there seems to be a next level of rhetoric and anger out there it does not give us the green light to feel these sentiments are not worthy of consideration. They exist. They impact us and our public. We should be trying to find out what is motivating this and see how much of that is within our control to impact. I grant that this can be difficult to do. We need to often times fall back to that sense of community and connection to motivate us.
And, finally, instead of trying to connect with someone else's pain there can be a tendency to Stonewall. Avoiding dealing with a situation by evading any legitimate response. Become strategically distracted by another issue at hand that we suggest is a bigger priority. If I don't see it then it is not there... Well obviously it is still there and it will only get worse. Anyone who knows me would recall me using the term "we get a dozen bricks before any bouquets". And I. totally get it that would it not be easier to just disregard all the bricks? Except they pile up. And by figuring out the root causes for more bricks, and planning out a way to address them we can take a bit of a hammer to them and turn them into dust.
These four ways of avoiding connecting with someone else's pain do not show up if we commit to something Lesser calls "looking under the hood". What he means by this is not just looking at criticism on the surface but finding out what is really going on. Getting very curious about how this pain can be informative to going forward strategically. We can even be very proactive and invite criticism at public forums, education sessions, etc. Mindful leaders are more and more comfortable with demonstrating some vulnerability. Sharing that we, as public service, do not always have all the answers BUT we are definitely excited about any opportunities to learn from our public. Learning everything - the good, the bad and yes, even the ugly at times.
In fact, when we are looking at the relationships within the realm of public service, it is fair to say that one of the common denominators between our public, our Council and our team is this idea of shared pain. Constructive conversations about shared pain can really bring us all together. Let's face it, things are pretty challenging right now. But we have a lot of things going for us too. That shared sense of community and connectedness can really help us out.
