Flooding Overwhelmes Warrior

A setback. A reality check. A course deviation. A release. An admission. A near-universally appreciated change. A disappointing result. An opportunity to practice acceptance. An opportunity to practice forgiveness.

About a month ago, the organization I am employed by hired two exceptionally capable trainers to spend an entire day with everyone in the organization in a workshop to allow for reawakening of trust & the foundational steps toward revitalizing an organization that has been devastated from executive abuse, incompetent current management, & radical mission change without changes to resources. The workshop day was very successful, & all were motivated to move forward with the exception of one IBM trained Warlord (henceforth to be known here as the "Closed Heart Warlord") who refused to open any emotional gates & refused to discuss organization growth via increased trust. Because I am a professional trainer, & because I was familiar with & to the trainers, having been a participant previously in one of their workshops, my name was listed next to the short-term but immediate objective of finding ways to build inter-personal trust until the receipt of the official summary from the trainers. Despite the fact the the refusing Closed Heart Warlord declared herself in charge of making sure the agreements made during the workshop were hammered into a workable document for the organization to live by going forward, which of course would end up being worthless under her formulation, I did make progress over the next month in establishing some ground rules, getting some shift in behavior toward trust, & in keeping pressure on the Warlords to stay focused on what is needed to heal the organization. During last weekend, I accidentally happened across the calendar of the Closed Heart Warlord & discovered that she has scheduled herself to be out of town on the day of the "mandatory all-hands building trust meeting" during which the employees will be asking direct face to face questions to each manager, via an anonymous list with the questions read out by a neutral 3rd party. The purpose of this is to build trust through disclosure & open dialog which of course the Closed Heart Warlord refuses to participate in. The meeting is so important that a Big Biggie will be coming to watch the action. I have no doubt that the level of fear within the Closed Heart Warlord was so extreme that she had to "get out of town". I discovered this & made sure that the management knows about it and also indicated that imho it defeats the purpose of the organizational level trust building meeting & that it should therefor be postponed until the Closed Heart Warlord can be present to face her questioners in person. Today I was informed by my boss that my tenure as the short-term trust builder has come to a successful close and that I am to let the subject drop *:-) I am happy about that because it means I did not fail and fought a good fight, although the Closed Heart Warlord has won her battle to avoid the questions.

My practice now is to begin the process of forgiveness with the Closed Heart Warlord, which is proving very very hard to do, because at the moment I feel as though she defeated the organization, and that everyone will suffer because of her behavior. My advisors are right, I am free of the obligation now, but I am having trouble letting go (no surprise there). My wife also says I went too far, which makes me angry with her because it feels as though she is not trying to understand me & share my feelings, but of course I have work to do there too. My, I'm going to be busy *:-)

Still no word on our new grandson that is still enwombed, so we are listening carefully for the phone call that will let us know another family member has arrived.