Tag: Ivan Cleary

Wintering: Finding Light in the Darkness

I belong to an online group that meets once a month to share their stories of chronic illness and healing, both orally and in writing.  These Creative Meetups are sponsored by the Health Story Collaborative (HSC) and are designed to enable participants to access the healing power of storytelling.

In our December Meetup,  Jennifer Harris (our facilitator) introduced the theme of the winter solstice and the related concept of moving from darkness to light.  The winter solstice is the time of the year when we experience the longest night and shortest day, signalling the transition from Winter to Spring.  The event occurs at different times in the Northern Hemisphere (December) and the Southern Hemisphere (June).

Throughout history, the symbolism of the transition from darkness to light, represented by the winter solstice, has been celebrated around the world through rituals and festivals.  There is also a very rich core of poetic expression around the theme of the winter solstice revealing the embedded sub-themes of rest, recuperation, replenishment and transformation.

Winter too is a time of transition for animal and plant life.  Animals, for example, often withdraw from the bitter cold of winter and undergo some change in their habitat, feeding and outward appearance.  They will prepare and change to meet the challenge of winter and, in some cases,  hibernate so that they can survive.

The challenge of winter and wintering – moving from darkness to light

Katherine May, captures the essence of the challenge of transitioning from darkness to light in her book, Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times.  She recounts her personal story of dealing with darkness in her life and her struggle to discover the light that would lead to her transformation.  Katherine initially treated the advent of darkness in her life as a source of humiliation but came to realise that the darkness, like the transition from day to night, is “inevitable”.

Darkness for Katherine descended in the form of illness- undiagnosed autism and depression, as well as death in the family.  She found the resultant involuntary period “lonely and painful”.   Her tendency, like that of many others, was to withdraw, hide from public view and “show a brave face” whenever she could not avoid appearing in public.    

Ivan Cleary, Head Coach of the Penrith NRL team, who suffered from depression during his football coaching career, found it a “humbling experience” and sought to hide the fact and withdraw from interaction with people.  However, he found strong social support through his wife, Bec, and family members.  After his second bout of depression, he learned to share his story with others and to model openness about his condition for the welfare of his players.  Katherine, too, found that sharing her story, rather than hiding away, was healing.  In telling her story to others, she found that there was a “shared thread in their story and mine”.

Learning to invite winter in

After a period of resistance, Katherine learned that “wintering” was a process of reflection and renewal and she gained a sense of “its length and breadth”.  She began to understand that wintering was “not the death of a life cycle but its crucible”.   She was able to recognise the wintering process and “engage with it mindfully and even cherish it”. 

Katherine realised that inviting the winter in involved acceptance of her current health condition (and the nature of the human condition) while making adjustments to achieve ”a comfortable way to live till Spring”.  She found that wintering could create insightful and profound moments in her life.  Katherine concluded that “wisdom resides with those who have wintered”.  Novelist Olga Tokarczuk reinforces this view in her book, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, when she has a key character conclude that “sometimes I think that only the sick are truly healthy”.

My own recent darkness

Over the past month, I have experienced a personal winter and attendant darkness.  My daily life was upended by several concurrent events:

  • A friend and colleague dying of cancer
  • A close friend and co-author/co-facilitator (over 16 years) suffering a major stroke
  • A serious illness of one of my adult sons
  • A major flare-up of my MCAS-fuelled dermatitis resulting in a visit to the Emergency Department of a hospital.

As a result of these events, I have experienced grief, sadness, frustration, panic, and debilitation.  The social support of my Creative Meetup group, where I have shared my story online, has helped me cope with these challenges.  I am slowly emerging from the darkness as I acknowledge and accept my condition and begin to reach out to let the light in.

 Letting the light in

During our Creative Meetup session focused on the winter solstice theme, Jennifer suggested that we write a letter to ourself, our body and/or the year ahead about what it means to let the light in.  I found that I was able to identify some ways that the light was beginning to penetrate my darkness:

  • Discovered the power of intentional breathing  
  • Became aware of a new hyper-sensitivity to soy products
  • Discovered that an infection from a tick bite contributed to my flare-up
  • Gained a referral to a specialist allergist to understand and manage my MCAS
  • Received strong support, TLC and understanding from my wife
  • Revisited the healing power of nature through Louie Schwartzberg’s visual meditations incorporated in 21 Days of Gratitude
  • Drew on the inspiration of my son’s resilience
  • Obtained medical assistance from the hospital Emergency Department.

Reflection

It appears that wintering is a natural part of the human condition.  Our normal tendency is to deny our condition and to hide it from public view, whatever form our darkness takes at different stages of our life cycle. However, if we engage our winter mindfully and embrace its learning opportunities, we can experience renewal and growth, increasingly realising our human potential.  Katherine reminds us that there can be “a quick onset” of winter or a “slow drip”.  Whatever way it occurs, we can use the inherent challenge of darkness to grow in mindfulness and emerge into the light, wiser and more resilient. 

I created the following poem after reflecting on our discussion of the winter solstice and reading Katherine’s book on “Wintering”:

Letting the Light In

The darkness engulfs me:
a major stroke suffered by a close friend,
the death of a colleague,
serious illness of a relative,
MCAS flare up – dermatitis gone mad,
the light blocked out.

Wintering brings wisdom, resilience and regeneration:
without winter, there is no transformation,
without breath, there is no life,
without darkness, there is no transition to light,
without challenge, there is no growth,
without sickness, there is little wisdom.

Letting the light in:
accepting what is,
seeking out glimmers,
searching out options,
acknowledging the power within and without,
accessing agency to accelerate healing,
admiring the resilience of the healing journey of others,
savouring accomplishments achieved under difficulties,
connecting with others to gain strength.

Being gentle with myself:
sustaining my heart in the midst of heartlessness,
searching for hope in a poem,
seeking intimacy and connection,
finding sustenance in  writing poetry,
expressing chronic pain and frustration,
sharing my story with others,
adjusting my expectations,
savouring freedom and life,
meditating on nature.

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Image Source: Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Managing People with Confidence

I have been co-authoring a book with my colleague, Julie Cork.  The book, Managing People with Confidence (to be published in 2025), is based on our co-facilitated, longitudinal, manager development program.  We have conducted the 4-6 month Action Learning Program together for the past 16 years.  The book is based on our experience of working with over 2,000 managers and draws on the Resources Book that we have co-authored and provided to Program participants.

I found it intriguing to read Ivan Cleary’s memoir, Not Everything Counts but Everything Matters.  Ivan states very clearly that everything that you do as a leader/coach matters, whether you are in the public eye or not – it matters intensely to your team members.  In our Manager Development Program and co-authored book, we make the fundamental point that as a manager “what you say and do and how you say it and do it” matters – it shapes your team and your team culture.  We emphasise the need to manage mindfully – being conscious of the impact of your words and actions on members of your team.  Ivan reinforces this message by sharing his own learning experiences as a leader and coach.

There are many elements to Ivan’s book about how he led Penrith to three consecutive premierships (despite early career failures and depression) that resonate very strongly with our long established approach to managing people with confidence. Below are some of the elements that we have in common with Ivan when writing about managing people:

  • Consciously creating a team culture: Ivan spends considerable space in his book stressing  the critical importance of consciously establishing a team culture based on mutual respect, commitment and behavioural norms. Our Program emphasised this cultural element very strongly. We encouraged manager participants to think explicitly about the kind of team culture they are trying to cultivate and provided them with a model for developing a productive and mentally healthy team culture.
  • Building trust in the team: Ivan reiterates this time and again because it develops relationships and connection – so that people have a sense of belonging and become focused on the success and wellbeing of the playing team and all team members (including, in Ivan’s case, his Assistant Coaches and other staff).  He emphasises the importance of leadership accountability and authenticity, involving honesty and owning your mistakes.  We encapsulate these themes in our book by emphasising “congruence” – aligning your actions as a manager with your words.  It means not just espousing values but personally acting on them so that you model your desired cultural values in your own behaviours, in your words and actions.  This congruence, in turn, builds trust.
  • Giving positive feedback – in his early career, Ivan failed to do this and acknowledged in his book that it negatively impacted team members. He came to realise the power of positive feedback, acknowledging individual’s contribution to the overall positive team outcomes. The contributions will differ among players and non-playing staff but each person has a role to play for team cohesion and success and this needs to be acknowledged through positive, timely, sincere feedback by the leader/coach.  It’s through positive feedback that we build employee’s self-belief and self-efficacy.  In this way, we can also reinforce the desired values and related behavioural norms of our team.
  • Proving corrective feedback – failing to do this, can lead to self-deception and misconceptions on the part of an individual team member.  Honest, open corrective feedback reinforces cultural norms, builds self-awareness and helps people make the quality contribution that they are capable of.  Like Ivan, in our long-running Program and book, we have emphasised the need to provide such feedback face-to-face  and in private to facilitate understanding and acceptance of the feedback.
  • Being vulnerable to encourage openness by team members: Ivan shared with team members (and in his book) that fact that he had experienced debilitating depression and anxiety at various stages in his career as an elite footballer and coach.   By sharing his own vulnerability, he encouraged his team members to “speak up” about their personal difficulties and to draw on the social support of family members, friends and therapists.  As managers, we can build trust and openness in our team by acknowledging our own vulnerability and sharing strategies to develop positive mental health.
  • Developing individual and team resilience: by providing stretch and helping people to use challenges to build character and grow in confidence in facing inevitable setbacks.  In this way, we enable team members to grow and develop exponentially on all fronts – intellectually, physically and emotionally. In our Program and book, we provide specific strategies for building team resilience, through an approach we call “the 10 C’s”.  Managerial congruence is foundational to this approach. 
  • Delegating to team members and support staff: a fundament challenge for the leader/manager is to be able to “let go” to enable employees to grow and develop and learn  through their own mistakes.  In our book, we highlight the power of delegation and the disablement of others (and ourselves) that occurs when we fail to delegate.  Ivan acknowledged that he learnt the hard way by trying to do it all himself.  He recognises now that trusting others to perform and achieve builds connection, competence, respect and self-belief.
  • Mindfulness to overcome depression and anxiety:  Ivan stresses the importance of being able to stay in the present moment to avoid experiencing depression (by focusing negatively on the past) or anxiety (by focusing negatively on the future).  He discusses ways that different elite athletes have used mindfulness to restore their focus and concentration (away from negative-self-talk) in the middle of challenging encounters (with others or their own mistakes).   Ivan reiterates the importance of mindfulness for “high performance” and positive mental health.  Our own book and related manager development Program provides reflections and strategies to build managerial mindfulness, incorporating both reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action (the latter described by Ivan as “practising mindfulness in the middle of the football field” (e.g. joining our fingers to feel the warm of the blood flow in our hands).  He maintained that so much of his day as Head Coach with the Penrith NRL team is taken up with providing information to players or “mindfulness practices”. Mindfulness helps us to become grounded and firmly focused on the present moment.

Reflection

Both Ivan’s book and our manager development Program and book (currently in production) reinforce the power of mindfulness.  As we grow in mindfulness through reflection and mindfulness practices we can develop self-awareness, build resilience and grow in self-belief and creativity.

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Image by John Hain from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.