Before It Breaks: The Conversation Most People Avoid Having

That treasure – relationships. Human-to-human connection.

Without it, without connection, touch…we break down. 

Literally. Break down and apart. Fracture into pieces. Plagued by demons. Another statistic on the mental health register. 

Relationship is the beginning of all things. A dysfunctional relationship often the ending of many.

There is no isolated atom. There is no atomised individual. Nothing happens without relationship.

Yet we assume relationship. We assume a relationship is just as it is.

Time invested in the quality of the relationship, in the human-to-human connection, is assumed as secondary to goals, achievements, profit, and doing the thing.

Time invested in the context of relationship, the field, the spaces between, assumed as not worthy of our attention.

Until, of course, the relationship breaks down.

Until the words get ugly. The power plays begin. The money tug-of-war starts. 

Until we get lost in sleepless nights and worry about the disintegration of relationships. Consumed in the energy it takes just to manage the next step of the relationship.

Escalation to wars. Killing fields. The relationship and the conversation hostile, consuming, so far removed from the first connection that peace seems impossible.

It is important to remember that we are in a relationship with everything. 

To our homes, the ground we walk on. The air we breathe. Our food. The birds in the garden. The plants. Our digital devices. The vehicles we drive. The computers we type on. Our toothbrushes. 

I marvel at how we have come to assume so much about relationships. How we take it for granted. 

Take IT…for granted. 

Right there in our language might be the clue. 

Take – a one-way relationship, absent reciprocity.

IT – a thing, not a who. Objectified. Once, twice, three times removed. And in the removal, of lesser concern. 

Indigenous people often see trees, plants, animals and earth as a who in their language. Revered as we would a brother or sister. Imagine if we all did that? If each tree were a brother or sister. Each bird? Each plant?

For granted. Entitled to relationship. No investment, no care. Expected. 

The hubris we humans have cultivated through our stance of entitlement. What we expect as normal. Walking the earth as if the earth owes us rights to walk, to take, to exploit.

Relationships. The framework of everything. Get the relationships right and everything else is easy. 

Invest in relationships, take the time to care for them, nurture them, grow them. Do this as a priority and as the most important business strategy you could employ.

We are so busy building the thing. Making the money. Keeping the business afloat. Changing the world out there as our relationships fall apart. 

Especially the most essential relationship of all. 

The one with ourselves. 

We screw ourselves over, cut sleep, eat junk, fail to move our bodies, live on stress and ignore the small sound of our soul crying to be heard. 

“Give me sweet time. No-thing-ness. Let me sleep for a week. Help me find laughter again, joy, delight, spontaneity. Pull me up from the black hole of social media and endless screen time. Listen to me…listen listen..your life is calling, but you insist on jamming the frequency that leads the way.”

But how do we do this, you might well ask?

1. Come home to ourselves. We build the conversation with us. We pay attention. Create space. Unhook from screens. Rest. Play. Listen…most of all, listen. To the deep calling of our soul. We say yes to all that nourishes and no to all that diminishes, including people, environments, businesses. We be the model we long to see in the world. Live integrity. Be our word. Treat ourselves and others with deep and abiding respect and reverence. 

2. The ground. Any relationship is sacred. Let us begin there. Not just the person or the animal or technology on the other side of us that forms the elements of the relationship…but the space between, the field and glue that holds us in relationship, or has us blow apart or collapse into a messy heap. Attend to this. Not as an afterthought. But as a primary act. 

As you would with anything you consider sacred. 

Walk the earth as a sacred act. Swim the oceans in reverence to the sacred. Sit under the shade of a tree and know the sacred. Only when we engage in a sacred relationship with all life do we get a sacred life, one filled with daily awe, beauty and respect.

3. The direction – Purpose of the relationship. Consider the primary relationships in our lives. Family, friends, business partners, work colleagues. Are we all in these relationships with a care for something bigger than self? If so, what is that? 

For example;

A family might be in relationship to enable the very best for each family member and the family as a whole. Rarely do we think of things like this when we begin the journey of creating family. Or when we awake to the realisation that we are a part of a family and might choose if this family serves the best for us or not. 

Colleagues at work are in relationship because each needs a job.  What is the job? Does it matter to each individual? If not, what does matter? Pride in our work? Being kind? Demonstrating respect? Each finds their own reason that makes valuing these relationships an outcome. 

Business partnerships come together for a reason. Name the reason. Name it without any possibility of ambiguity between the partners, even if the partnership is well established. Find the differences and find the connections. Choose the purpose that encompasses both, or agree that this is not possible and separation is appropriate.

There is always a purpose to relationship. More often than not, the purpose is never discussed, rarely agreed upon, and taken as an assumption. Which means the purpose for one is different from the purpose for the other. Herein lie the seeds of relationship breakdown.

Revisit the purpose of the relationship through a regular (bi-annual or annual at a minimum) conversation. Ideally, as the ongoing conversation, so beloved by both, that no schedule is required. Has it changed? Even the smallest nuance? Why? What has changed? Is the revised purpose desired by all? If not, what happens next?

4. The container. Structure, rules and agreements. People might be under an illusion that we do not need rules or agreements. That we can simply come together and do the thing we have come together to do. To have a porous container, a free-for-all, will not work. It does not hold its shape. It is not systemic. 

>>If you do not agree with this statement, check in with yourself. If someone treats you with disrespect, what do you do? Ask them not to? Step over it and let them repeat the behaviour time and again? Leave?>> 

You have a way you want to be treated, whether you have named it or not. 

You will get upset when someone makes a promise and fails to keep it, and then repeats this behaviour over and over. 

You will be bothered when your colleague does not trust you to do anything and micromanages your every move.

You will despair when someone changes the rules midstream, deciding that from now on, the money distribution will look like this. 

Step 4 is to name it. Not in an undifferentiated amorphous way, but clearly and cleanly. 

Give people the opportunity to choose to play by these rules or not. No coercion. Simply an invitation. This is how we work together. If each individual is happy with this and agrees to honour these rules and agreements, then they are welcome.

Not too loose, not too tight. Rules and agreements need to be just right. And they need to be regularly spoken to, adapted. For families, partnerships, communities…any relationship that matters. 

Many people want to step over this step. Their allergy to structure or rules has them see red. If this is the case, they could revert back to step one and look at the healthy rules and boundaries they might create to live their best life, for themself. 

In my life, I do not welcome hatred, racism, greed, carelessness, arrogance, cruelty, or bullying. Not from myself, or from anyone in my field. 

I will stand up and speak to a stranger who is bullying and being racist. I will name greed and anyone who lies, or is out of integrity, anyone who gaslights and manipulates. 

These are my rules, and this is my boundary. 

In Syntropic World, we are committed to Clean Communication, to being the model of change we seek to see in the world, and to living with full respect for all domains of value. (Synergistic Accounting.) Zero exploitation. Zero extraction to extinction. Zero colonisation.

Rules and boundaries do not always have to be democratically elected. Just as a parent of a child does not need the entire extended family to agree to the rules and values of their family unit and the way they raise their child, the steward of a Source Idea needs to be the fierce protector of the Pattern Integrity of the idea, and not everyone in the community is going to agree or like some choices. When the Steward Leader has created the rules and agreements and set the purpose to be clean, clear, and just, the need to move from democracy to authority should be a rarely needed event.

In Syntropic World, we call this relational agreement the Trust Manifesto, or Trust Agreement. It is designed to create ecologies of trust. The Syntropic Foundations Masterclass provides the background on how to create a Trust Manifesto tailored for your situation. In addition, Christine works with teams to co-create their own Trust Agreement. (Download the PDF here.)

 5. The conversation. The act of relationship.  The conversation is the relationship. No conversation, no relationship. When the sh**t hits the fan, return to conversation as the single greatest priority of any other act. 

In the Dare to Care Workshop – How to Speak the Radical Truth with Compassion, we teach several key tools to enable conversation when there is upset, from mild to extreme. Every one of us needs to continue to work on our relational conversation tools and skills. There is no arrival at mastery. There is always learning and getting better in our communication.

Stay in conversation. Know that the silence, the things we step over, the unspoken words that fester, the unspoken words that lance, is the killer of the relationship. 

It takes courage and commitment to speak. If we care enough about the relationship itself, we will find that courage. 

In an ideal world, we would have a team of support, wise coaches and mentors who will not let us step over, who will ask us to dare to care and speak our truth, and who support us in navigating the tricky territory of relational dynamics.

Bonus point #6. 

When we are doing important work, world-changing work, then investing in the relational dynamics is essential. 

In Syntropic World, we have a powerful tool, the Synergistic Audit, which asks people to nominate or name the value they have to bring to the enterprise, project or community in 6 domains, and for the value brought, what they expect to receive in return in 6 domains. Through this nomination, we get to offer the multi-textured, multi-skilled, multi- faceted elements of ourselves. A team of up to 12 people can take the time to witness the speaking out loud of their teammates’ audit, and get to present their own. 

Witnessing another human in their wholeness, and being witnessed for our wholeness and complexity, can bring people from a transactional relationship to a deep connection in a very short time. Rich, profound, human-to-human connection. No longer objects, colleagues, numbers, workmates, but people.

Investing in this type of process changes the bonds between from loose to tight, from chaotic to coherent, from entropy to syntropy, from team to synergy. *We are close to launching the Synergistic Accounting app to the public.