Leandro Herrero – What I learnt from the monks: a little anthropology of leadership and space in one page.

Another Daily Thought from Leandro Herrero that I am tempted to simply cut and paste completely. The whole thing is worth reading. I have blogged on my other site a fair about both the positive side of monastic practice and the risk of romanticising monasticism with the attendant danger of spiritual pride.

Monasteries were, of course, key institutions in the development of Western institutional life and culture. We often like to think that we have moved way way beyond learning from the communal life of monasteries. Of course, the themes and patterns of human interaction recur in superficially different guises:

There is something special about creating space. For me, leadership is mainly architecture: create the conditions, find the spaces, protect them, make them liveable. Architects also have maps, and compasses. The leader needs to provide maps (frameworks, such as the non negotiable behaviours) and navigation tools (a value system). But, above all, it’s about space.

Providing spaces for people to breath, to growth, to deliver something, to get better, to think critically, to interact, to collaborate, to travel together. This is all about space. Space is the psychological sister of place. Space may be only, or mainly, mental. As such, it is a precious asset. No wonder the word space has been often associated to the word sacred. As in sacred spaces. To provide space, to create and protect spaces for others, is something a good leader does. It’s a great deal of his servant-ship.

But we, sometimes, are not very good at this. We take over other people’s spaces by insisting in discussing, wanting to ‘go deeper’, being intolerant with leaving things open, dictating our own terms and providing unreasonable borders to their spaces.

At a threshold point of two people living together in one place, they may come to inhabit one single space. It requires a lot of maturity to live in one single space with others. Occupying one single place, is the easier part, space is not. Indeed, that single space may end up being too much to ask. It may be better to have separate spaces to respect, often overlap. Psychotherapists have known for many years that a temporary split, or making tangential connections for a while, may be the solution to some problems. Un-bundle the spaces that have become blurred, that is.