I’d originally gone to grad school to hone my skills as a clinician. I planned to focus on addictions and workplace concerns. I took a sharp dogleg turn when the defining moment of Marv’s tragic death occurred.
I spent roughly the next twenty years working with trauma, teaching skills to cope with sudden or ongoing or unfurling moments of change to create space for others to explore their own defining moments.
Throughout this process, I’ve had to turn and face my fears, anger, and resentment, often begrudgingly, to learn to access the courage required to simply be with life’s twists and turns.
I’ve come to slowly appreciate and accept that life is constantly shifting.
The flow of life encompasses loss and change, even though we’re often caught off guard and surprised that events are not as we planned.
My family was painfully altered nearly 30 years ago, and we still feel the loss of Marv not being with us - to laugh, explore, and grow together.
As for my sister, Shawna, well, her story is her own. As you'd expect, she has grappled every day with her defining moment of Marv’s illness and death.
Defining Moments & Leadership
Not surprisingly, I’ve been thinking a lot about defining moments lately.
Daily, I hear versions of stories like my own – personal, life-changing - but what seems to be on the rise is a mounting collective sense of anxiety, even panic. The existential nature of what we’re confronted with today is immense.
We could attribute some of it to the lingering effects of COVID and its role as a defining moment in the workplace. And our personal life experiences are important to respect. Yet, there’s more to notice and feel, to turn and face, and address.
A defining moment is more than a simple moment. Rather that single moment is the spark - the exact moment you recall when the shift occurs - with unfolding and lingering experiences that prove to be pivotal, shifting whatever trajectory you were on, changing the world as you knew it.
As a leader, it's essential to turn and face the ripple effects of defining moments - both individual and collective - within your organization or family or community.
A defining moment sets the course, shapes the story, and sears in the multitude of details of that moment – your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.
Both confusion and clarity arise. The same is true for others within your organization.
Defining moments typically have at least a tinge of unsettlement in them, if not a lot of drama. We’re required to face our fears, uncertainty, and new possibilities as we grapple to make sense of life now - after a defining moment.
As leaders, we’re given an opportunity to shape the impacts of the larger defining moments in front of us.
My experience has shown that singling out priorities for action, whatever that may look like in our day-to-day lives, can focus our collective attention and move us into more sustainable action.
Leaders can turn defining moments into defining collective experiences that result in growth and positive outcomes and renewed trust.
With that in mind, I’ve been wondering what I’ll do, and what you’ll do, "with your one wild and precious life’ amid today’s complexities.
Tell me, how will you choose to address defining moments?
