The pandemic has upended life globally, and everyone has been affected in some way. What’s more, according to an article from Yale Medicine, we are collectively experiencing the same critical human emotional struggles, from the long-term effects of loneliness and isolation to deep exhaustion, fear, and crippling anxiety. It’s no wonder, then, that authentic connection with each other is the most valuable emotional currency there is today. For many, authentic connection is the ability to say, “This is hard, and I am struggling,” and to give others a safe space to express the same. Sounds simple, right? But just that admission—this is hard, and I am struggling—is tough for most people to admit even now. And if you’re in a position of leadership, being vulnerable can be even more difficult.
Creating Space for Vulnerability
As a leader trying to balance vulnerability with navigating unknowns, I read two Harvard Business Review articles: One is about the collective grief we’re experiencing, and the other is about effective crisis leadership. According to the articles, we should continue to make safe spaces for people to share openly that they’re struggling, tired, scared, and stressed. When we do this, we are reinforcing that they’re not alone, and we’ll continue to make it through these challenges as a community. There is a term for the type of leadership that allows people to be vulnerable: holding. It’s what leaders, whether in our classrooms or on our teams, do when they allow individuals to express difficult emotions while also being honest about the work to be done and the challenges they’re facing.The term “holding” originated with British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott to describe how parents build resilience and a sense of security in their children, particularly during times of uncertainty. Gianpiero Petriglieri writes in an April 2020 article “The Psychology Behind Effective Crisis Leadership”:
Caretakers who held well, Winnicott noted, did not shelter children from distress and turns of fate. But they buffered children enough that they could process distress and helped them find words to name their experiences and ways to manage it. …Good holding, in short, not only makes us more comfortable and courageous. It makes us. That was Winnicott’s major insight, one as revolutionary now as it was then.
It’s pretty remarkable that a good parenting insight can be so incredibly impactful in the broader working world of adults. This convergence of parenting theory with work-life theory is particularly relevant for those of us working in schools—highly emotional places by nature where both viewpoints that of a caretaker and a working adult can be readily applied.
Practicing the Act of Holding
As a school leader at The Alexander Dawson School (NV), I know the struggle with vulnerability. In a typical year, we want our school community to see us as emotionally stable, reliable, resilient, and capable. Magnify this want by 100% during the pandemic. What happens when leaders find that, as the pandemic grinds on, maintaining their steadiness and resilience begins to seem impossible? After trying, and failing, to maintain even the thinnest veneer of steadiness and resilience with my colleagues, further along in the pandemic, I opened up to them about how emotionally challenging pandemic work and family life had become and spoke honestly about how my lifelong challenges with mental health made it all the more difficult to find my emotional equilibrium. In turn, my colleagues shared many of the ways they, too, were personally struggling.The judgment I’d imagined receiving from this group of people I deeply respect never happened. I realized the support, compassion, and care they showed me was the very definition of good holding, and we agreed that supporting one another emotionally—holding—needed to be a priority, and that support was uncomplicated.
What good holding looks like on Dawson’s campus varies. For middle school students, advisory has become the place where good holding is deliberately practiced. Daily emotional wellness check-ins with students specifically address the affects the pandemic may be having on them and their families, including the fear, stress, and anxiety it is causing. For faculty and staff, grade and department-level teams ensure emotional wellness check-ins became a part of every meeting—sometimes an entire hour is spent “holding” one another and that meeting’s original agenda and task list go untouched, and that is completely OK. As leaders, we know that on certain days (following a large quarantine, for example, or a COVID-positive colleague becoming very ill), allowing for vulnerability and practicing deep listening with our team will be the only thing we accomplish.
The leadership lesson here—and although this lesson isn’t new, it felt new this school year—is to practice being honest and vulnerable no matter how hard and scary it is, to make sure to connect even when shame about not performing my best makes me want to retreat, to accept that it’s OK not to be OK right now, to listen well, and to consider where hope still resides. When I think about where I most often find hope personally, it is in my capacity to love fiercely and care deeply. At school, hope is in the people I work with every day, each member of the faculty, staff, and administration.
Feeling Cared For, Seen, and Heard
Regardless of our age or profession, we are thinking and feeling human beings who need and rely on one another for support even in the best of times. That need and reliance are only magnified during times of crisis, and this is where good holding helps all of us to feel less alone and more secure; to feel cared for, seen, and heard; and to relate better and more honestly to one another. It gives us the courage to continue onward in the face of adversity because we feel that we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves. And good holding doesn’t need to be complicated or prescribed. At its very essence, good holding in leadership comes down to two fundamental things: listening well and creating space for others to be vulnerable whenever they need it. And right now, that need can be constant. That’s why there is no better opportunity to practice the act of holding one another than during this long, dark, and hellish pandemic.As the waves of crisis continue to pound us, and as I practice being honest and vulnerable about my struggle to remain afloat, I’ll strive to practice this concept of holding and know that my colleagues will be there to hold me, too.
