We Each have a Growing Edge

If you drop a stone in a calm pool of water, the disturbance causes a series of ripples. One could call the outermost ripple, the one that's furthest from where the stone hit the surface, the "growing edge".

You have a growing edge too. Think of yourself as that whole series of expanding ripples in the pond. The outermost ripple is your growing edge, the extent of your growth to this point.

What kind of growth? Well, it's up to you. As a father, I am learning to balance involvement in the lives of my kids with their unique needs for space. I haven't mastered it yet.

As a facilitator, I am learning patience. I tend to keep charging forward on a topic or matter even though others see further opportunity for reflection. I know better and I'm trying to slow myself down, but, indeed, that's my growing edge as a facilitator.

What's your growing edge?

You probably have a bunch.

I have learned that there are three main phases involved in extending your growing edge. The first is the thing you are stuck on. In my case, I want to ask my kids too many questions--ultimately denying them the space they need. I have been stuck on that; old habits die hard, I guess. As for my impatience as a facilitator, I have been stuck on pursuing my own excitement for a topic without bringing others along, or even asking them if they are ready to move forward.

In this stuck phase, we don't even know of another possibility. Or, at least, we can't really simply just choose another possibility. We identify with the way we are.

But then comes something to educate us. We learn distinctions. We learn we are not stuck.
Perhaps somebody points out another possibility. Or we learn about the damage we have done from our stuck ways. What emerges from that learning is an unstuck person, someone who experiences the freedom to make other choices. This is the second phase.

In this second phase we have "disidentified" from being that stuck person and we find the freedom to be otherwise.

In the third phase we integrate the values of both previous orientations. I become a father who reads the signs and appropriately chooses to either ask away or back away. I become the facilitator who feels his desire to move forward and allows that to inform him of the need to check in with the group.

This is a handy way of seeing how growth works.

It even applies to classroom learning. Somebody walks into a session with the habit of handling the objections of other people in a certain fashion (phase one); he or she learns about the downsides of that habit and about another way of doing it that avoids downsides (phase two); and finally, with practice, integrates the motivation behind the habituated methodology with the modified methodology.

The neat thing is that certain things can be done by a facilitator (or coach, or educator, or therapist, or guide) to cause the discovery of the phase one stuckness, to smooth the way to disidentification, and to facilitate the integration of the two. When these things are done gracefully, it's a beautiful thing.