Leading During the Liminal
I’ve been a little mystified as to where you are going.
That was a comment from one of my readers who responded to my last blog about “Recovering My Voice.” The timing could not have been more perfect. I am nearly finished reading Susan Beaumont’s book, “How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You are Going: Leading in a Liminal Season.”
I am sure the title itself is mystifying. How can you even be a leader if you don’t know where you are going and don’t know the destination you are guiding people towards? Of course people are mystified about where I am going. I’ve never pretended to know where I am going. This is the time we are living in.
Beaumont describes the difference between the leadership of decision-making and the leadership of discernment. Discernment is a holy listening for God or Life or Soul to show up and point the way to the next step. The leadership of discernment is not about how to get someone to a certain destination; it is about teaching people how to listen for the deeper calling of Life and the Sacred to unveil that path as you go. It’s a little bit like being open to falling in love. You can’t plan that, but you can get your heart ready for it.
Discernment is the language and leadership presence needed during what Beaumont names as the “liminal season.” She describes the liminal season as that time between separation and reorientation. All of the great myths around the hero’s journey and coming of age rituals describe this psychological and spiritual process. In order to enter a new world or assume a new identity one has to sever past attachments and assumptions before arriving at the new destination or place in life. But in between is the very awkward season of having left one life, and before arriving in the new life.
It is the in-between period that is so uncomfortable for all of us—me included! I have experienced it in my forty years of professional life working with people and organizations. The most secure places are in the comfort of our old world or placing our trust in a well-crafted, point-by-point vision of a new world.
The not-so-subtle expectation on leaders seems to be making people feel good about the world we are in (even if dying) or laying out a crystal-clear blueprint for where we are going. The message is, “We will go with you as long as you can show us exactly where we are going, how we are going to get there, and how much it is going to cost.”
Unfortunately, those expectations completely disregard the uncomfortable, in-between liminal period. Beaumont defines that period this way:
A disorienting period of non-structure or anti-structure that opens new possibilities no longer based on old status or power hierarchies.”
People need leaders in this season too, but it is not the handholding that one does when people are holding onto the old world nor is it the take charge style of the visionary who “has all the right answers.” It’s the very uncomfortable, anxious and fearful in-between place where you are suspended between two worlds. Not fun for anyone!
I know everyone can feel the anxiety in my writing. There is a reason for this. I am anxious! I used the word “dizzying” in my last blog. Beaumont prefers disorienting. We are talking about the same reality.
I suppose this all might be so much easier if I could be that completely “non-anxious” presence walking with all of you in this in-between liminal period. It would be so much easier if I had already emerged from the suspended liminal space so I could just assure you, “Don’t worry. You will come out the other side.” But I am also in the liminal period. I am also leaving home in search of what home looks like on the other side of this. All I am really good for is being a companion on the journey and making some sense of the anxiety we all feel.ß
Where am I going? I don’t know. But I do know the only way to get there is to take a leap off the cliff and trust that Life will provide a parachute on the way down, to enter the wilderness and know that God will provide manna every morning, and to risk our current security in favor of discovering a deeper security rooted in the world that is just in front of us.
I don’t know where I am going. But I do know how to get you there.