Meet, Reveal, and Align and Act: Embodied Action and Generative Change

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Barcelona for the first of a two-part training in embodied leadership. The training was also a good excuse to catch-up with a longtime friend, Dino Zafirakos and to meet his wife and two other coaching colleagues there in Spain. Dino is also a coach, and we co-lead, co-teach, bounce ideas off one another, and talk through scenarios and viewpoints. I’d recently been asked to think about the three iterative phases of relationship systems—Meet-Reveal-Align and Act—and a rainy day with forced sofa time was perfect to do just that. When I said, “Dino–help me think of a metaphor for “Meet, Reveal, Align, and Act,” he pushed it back to me and said, “What is a physical action you could do to embody that concept.” (So yes, he is a bit of an eye roll, but that is a story for another day.)

The thing is, Dino’s pushback was remarkably helpful, and it helped my thinking to move in new directions. “Meet,” “reveal,” and “align and act” are all verbs, and our verbal sparring reminded me to treat them as such. Thinking this concept through helped me to ask these questions:

• How can we embody the iterative phases and wisdom of Meet-Reveal-Align and Act?

• How can we share that learned, physical wisdom with the systems we serve?