Home: what does it mean for the leader?
‘Home’ when you’re an asylum seeker
I recently had the opportunity to spend time with a newly-married couple – one of them Iraqui Kurdish and the other Iranian Kurdish in origin – who had arrived in the UK, at different times, as asylum seekers. In the time that the husband has been here, after a journey from political persecution that was traumatic (both psychologically and physically), he has studied both English and law from scratch. His English is now excellent, and he has qualified as a lawyer. He is contributing to both UK society and to the economy. His wife spent 9 years in Norway before they were able to marry a few months ago, and she only recently arrived in the UK. Her English is improving and she wants to train as a dentist. Both of their families and all of their long-established friendships remain in Iraqui Kurdistan. Meanwhile, they are creating meaningful and settled lives in the UK, albeit they haven’t yet found other Kurds with whom they connect.
It struck me forcefully that the notion of ‘home’ for this couple isn’t simple, and seems to me multifaceted: where they consider ‘home’ to be may vary from context to context, albeit that they are working hard to make the UK their home in a geographical and logistical sense. I’m curious: what does ‘home’ mean for them?
I’ve also been wondering what they – indeed, any of us – will tolerate or sacrifice in order to find home. What danger, isolation, loneliness or lack of rootedness is acceptable? What might we cling on to from any previous sense of home that we have had?
‘Home’ is more than geography alone
The need or wish to leave ‘home’ can be a part of what I have come to realise is a complex notion: sometimes ‘home’ is somewhere you need to leave for reasons of your very survival, not just physical, but also perhaps mental, political or spiritual.
While ‘home’ might be a physical space, it can also be a location in time (a past time and its associations with experiences or people – happinesses, ease, safety, peace, relationships) in which one feels at home, but which may have long since passed.
For some leaders work is ‘home’ in the sense that it provides the basis of their sense of identity, competence and / or status which others recognise them for. Equally their colleagues may feel like family.
And importantly, home can be a knowing of oneself, a clarity about who one really is, and a feeling of not only familiarity, but also ease with that, as well as home in terms of a knowing of the systems one exists as part of. This is, it seems to me, critical for the leader if they are to lead with assurance, with empathy and compassion, with insight and versatility, and with the capacity to recognise and manage the challenges of complexity.
The impact for – and of – the leader who is (or isn’t) at home
When an individual leaves the home in which they grew up, they may do so because their stage of maturity makes that appropriate, when circumstances contrive to make that leaving unavoidable, when safety demands it, or perhaps as an experiment.
In my experience of working with leaders and observing leaders I’ve been struck that when the leader is not at home in the figurative sense, they lack the rootedness and stability that come with feeling ‘at home’ with themselves. A well-developed sense of self-awareness, and an awareness of the systems they form part of, almost implicitly bring a sense of acceptance of both self and system which can be very steadying to be with, including through turbulent, difficult, challenging or uncertain times. And my sense is that that acceptance is a significant component of the leader feeling at home and being at home.
By acceptance I don’t mean complacency. Rather this being at home enables an open attitude of curiosity, learning and a willingness to take measured risks and to experiment, which all create broader possibilities – an expansion of ‘home’.
Importantly, the leader who isn’t at home with themselves – or who has left home and not found an alternative – in the sense of not being self-aware and systemically-aware, will find it harder to be open to learning, to a broader palette of perceiving or engaging with possibilities, to being an adaptive leader, or to uncertainty or emergence. The result for them personally could be a lack of balance or stability, inconsistency or feeling adrift, a lack of perspective, confusion or lack of direction, a lack of capacity to see reality for what it is, and an unwillingness to engage with even measured risk. Being and feeling at home is the converse of any and all of this.
The impact for the leader’s teams may mirror the impact for the individual leader – and likewise for the effectiveness of both.
This summer I participated in a mindfulness meditation retreat themed ‘Trusting the Way Home’. Both during the five days of the retreat and since, I’ve experienced a sense of stability and acceptance which have re-set my perspective. It’s only just occurred to me, in the writing of this piece, quite how the impact was connected to my experience (some of it subconscious) of finding my way towards a reinvigorated sense of home.
The essence of ‘home’
While I creep towards what I think ‘home’ means, it’s seeming to me that safety, ease and a relative sense of personal peace are contributing factors. That peace is a platform for energy and an expansion into more of what one might be.
Now I’m interested in what the hidden paradoxes and complexities are that I haven’t yet seen or understood.
Photo by Ritchie Valens on Unsplash
