"It Starts With Uncertainty"

[ MARGARET WHEATLEY and PEMA CHÖDRÖN discuss how organizations can acknowledge their confusion and trust in the goodness of the underlying order.]

Pema Chödrön: But even when we’re talking about the enlightened state, the path still seems to be one of waking to each moment as honestly as we can, and being willing to communicate with other people without feeling shame about exposing our defects. Because when we are willing to expose our defects, we expose some kind of heart to other people. Curiously enough, people respond more to our honesty about our imperfections than they do to our perfections. When we’re honest about our difficulties with a project, or with another individual, or whatever, everyone in the room sort of resonates with the bravery of someone who’s courageous enough to express their pain. It’s so fascinating that that’s what inspires people.

Margaret Wheatley: The experience of really listening to another human being is the source of our willingness to love them. Someone just gave me a t-shirt that says, “You can’t hate someone whose story you know.” That works at every level. The difficult issues in our society will not be resolved until we can listen to people’s experience of things like racism and sexism—just listening without trying to defend ourselves.

In organizations, we’re blinded to the power of honest communication because we fear it will take us down the road of guilt and accusations, that it will fracture our relationships rather than heal them. We really don’t want any more meetings because all we’ve done for years is accuse and yell at each other, trying to push our own agenda through this very dense resistance. We can’t see the power of these very simple processes that would bring us to this great place of opening to one another. Yet when we finally realize the truth of who we are, and really hear people’s stories, it truly changes our capacity to be together.

The first thing that arises when we open up to each other is a great sigh of relief. We realize that we’re not the only one who feels bewildered. When we hear that nobody knows the answer any more, that none of the old ways work, that we don’t know what the new way is, then confusion has a higher value than certainty. Uncertainty is more appropriate to a world that is so perplexing to us. When people hear that, they relax.