I will stay on communication today. It has been quite a remarkable day which made communication very tangible. I’ll elaborate. There has been some movements within the academy which required coordinated communication streams. Due to circumstances, in a very short period of time we had to make a few quite serious moves together. We are working towards an event that will happen tomorrow, so, before that, some activities are happening to prepare for possible action. Let me get descriptive, for a bit, to provide some context, because it is interesting. One aspect is shared by all of is us and it is the fact that coordination is happening online. Another twist is my personal circumstances which add a spicy flavour in the pot. I am in the middle of nowhere, in the Georgian mountains, with my parents. I think that the combination of both elements allows for an addition layer of awareness with which all communication is done. What was curios about this particular situation is that it was urgent. We had to react quick, which helped to mobilise and forgive each others’ clumsiness, imperfections, half comprehensible messages, lack of clarity, uncertainty and other features good communication shouldn’t have. I found this lack of frustration, disappointment, mistrust and expectations very refreshing. As I noticed lightness, which was accompanying the process of building things together, I started to pay additional attention to it during the day. I feel when it comes to communication often it looses the lightness and space for making mistakes. Bad communication can be unforgiving and even cruel. I wondered, though, why today it was flowing so smoothly, despite the mistakes that are made along the way. My best bet was, that the reason is the focus of attention.
Usually, when we need to set up communication between individuals or groups, the main focus is on how to enable people to talk to each other. The framework is on the foreground and the subject matter is pushed aside. That is why there are communication strategies which can be applied in various situations, independent from content. Of course communication strategies quite often work but the joy and lightness of the process of building unique framework is gone. And this is exactly the tangibility of communication I was talking about. Moving around together, looking for the right tools to reach the shared goal. Reshuffling the background and foreground shifting from the framework to the subject matter, can open up new facets in building shared language of understanding. Important here is that the situation where the communication has to be put in place is unique. Including the awareness of the uniqueness into building the process is truly liberating. It opens up creative energies and induces the flow state. In the flow the amount of challenge corresponds with the amount of skills. The balance between the two has to be just right. If the skills are not enough for the challenge, we get anxious and if the skills level is too high and the challenge not sufficient - we get bored. What is interesting in the collective flow, is that the skills expand and the challenge becomes less pointy. Meaning that the challenge is not focused on one spot, but can be distributed among others. This ability to divide the challenge is nourishing for trust and the feeling of self-esteem.
I felt very much in the flow today, moving as one, clumsy yet passioned body. Most importantly the outcomes were very satisfying, not only as it worked, but also I experienced a deep and weird feeling of togetherness with bunch of people I barely know, being thousands kilometres away.