My President started a series of all-administrator meetings in early June - shortly after graduation - with a rather blunt assessment of our college-wide dynamic: We don't talk to each other enough. We don't talk to our faculty, our direct reports, or our colleagues. No one gets enough conversation, and we are all guilty of not initiating that dialogue.
As this series is about to culminate in my being sequestered for three out of five days this week, surrounded by my administrator colleagues -- a network of extraordinary humans that I deeply admire -- I scan the landscape of my life and all the circles that I move through with the echo of these words reverberating. We don't talk to each other enough.
I often blame e-mail, at least for the lack of work-chat with my teams. I'm starting to wonder, though, if there is a more subtle and powerful demon at play here. Perhaps it's a form of perfectionism, but I'm landing on the term "complete-ness." I like to finish things, and I've been trained to value that pretty highly. Building on my Ephesians essay, our culture loves to reduce us to objective transactions, especially at work. Email is an area where I feel very imperfect because it is perpetually incomplete. I don't think I've ever had "Inbox Zero" in my entire career after, maybe, the first month in any position. The job I had immediately prior to Dean gave me some of those moments, but that was also a place where I was discouraged from building relationships. In fact, in an earlier position, my attention to long-game relational leadership, planning, and processes was explicitly critiqued. My refusal to respond to toxic e-mails was weaponized against me, and I was fed a story that continues to haunt me: that my value as a leader is less so long as that inbox isn't zero. Thanks to that story, I can spend a full day in meetings, engaged in hours of thoughtful, creative, challenging but ultimately encouraging and insightful conversations, and leave with a stinging feeling of frustration.
Why? Why I am supposed to loathe this extended dialogue where my thinking is truly tested and stretched? Because it leaves no time for e-mails? I've realized that this reaction only breathes life into another corrosive part of our culture, which loves to tell us that talking and connecting with people isn't really work. The number of written replies outweighs the depth of your relationships. We prioritize jumping at every ping and answering or forwarding it immediately over being a present listener and truly learning the stories of the people right in front of you.
Malarkey. Communal work is God's work. For me, nothing is more important.
I'm proud to serve others and answer their questions. It genuinely feels good to be able to do that in a written message, or even a long thread. But it's more important to build people up, share experiences, and align our hearts towards a greater purpose. The Spirit sings in chorus, and anywhere that we can lay down the conditions for people to be fully authentic, open and wholehearted, honest and free - that is where inspiration and dedication are born. It is where the best work emerges, yet it requires investment in the messy connections that cannot be calibrated by a number of read, unread, or folder-dropped notes.
No, I'm not breaking up with my inbox. We are probably inseparable at this point; the workplace will never return to hand-scrawled memos. I will continue to work on our relationship, and find the boundaries that can bring us into harmony. But that requires letting go of the guilt I've been trained to feel. I need to prepare my inbox for days of neglect -- probably three of them this week -- and I need to be OK with that. I also need to prepare those around me so they understand that a lack of response does not mean a lack of care. I'll invite them to set up a time to call or meet once I'm freed from my sequester. Together, we'll walk toward the beautiful synergy when the inbox become a springboard for conversation, rather than its substitute.
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