The Power of Holding Space: Leading Through Liminal Space and Workplace Change with Heather Plett

I’m a person with trauma. I step into these situations that are absolutely going to activate me. I don’t want to not go into these situations, but I want to have the support system in place that allows me to do that. And so one of the people that is my support system is my business partner. She’ll be the one getting the text or the call or something after a situation like that.

And we unpack it and we co regulate. We shouldn’t be doing this work alone, for one thing. We have finding our support systems and recognizing. Becoming more self aware of our own needs and our own nervous system activation.

Carolyn: Hi, welcome to evolve a new era of leadership. I’m Carolyn Swora, your host, and we’ve got a fabulous guest today. Her name is Heather Plett, and she is author of an award winning book, the art of holding space, a practice of love, liberation, and leadership. Now. You might be wondering, what does that have to do?

[00:01:00] What does holding space have to do with leadership? Well, it’s in the title. So, we’re going to find that out in this conversation. I believe that holding 

space is the competency that leaders, when they’re able to practice it, bring it into their work. It is transformational in how you lead. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna hear from Heather about how she found her way into the space.

I’m going to ask her questions about that and and also just explore how you all as leaders, how we all as leaders can become better at holding space. She also has another book called Where Tenderness Lives on Healing, Liberation and Holding Space for Oneself. I haven’t yet dug into that one. And she’s also the co founder of the Center for Holding Space.

Heather has. Been around the world, speaking, facilitating. She’s a writer. Her work’s been [00:02:00] translated into a whole bunch of different languages and her work has also been in really notable publications like Harvard business review and psychology today. So excited to have Heather on the show. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

 All right, Evolve listeners and watchers for those of you watching on YouTube. I am so excited for our guest, Heather Plett. She is a fellow Canadian and I have been dreaming the past few nights about my time that I get to spend with her and just so excited, Heather, that you could come on the show and welcome.

Heather: Thank you. I’m delighted to be here.

Carolyn: Yeah, well, I was telling you before we pressed the record button that I came across your work. I don’t even know. It was a click out of a click out of a click and as soon as I read like the first sentence on your website, I thought, oh, my goodness, Heather is doing incredible work. I have to have her [00:03:00] on the show and I know you’ve written these two incredible books, one of which I have gotten through and you just have a recent book.

But maybe we could start off and you could share with us what is the legacy you’re leaving behind for all of us? Or continuing to build, shall I say? I don’t want to say leaving behind, but continuing to build.

Heather: Yeah, well, I, I often say in some ways, I didn’t find the work, the work found me like it was, it was like a legacy wanted to be left in the world and, and, and picked me because I I had been kind of seeking my way when I was starting my business, like 14, 15 years ago, and really wanting to help people Find their way in life, find their path, find a way to a truer, more authentic life.

And then this work around holding space. I’d been a facilitator. I’d worked in leadership for many years and I’d been kind of a little burnt out from leadership quite honestly and. And then found my way into this work that I absolutely loved, which [00:04:00] was hosting conversation circles. I studied with teachers in the circle way practice and, and learning to hold space for really meaningful, important conversations and transformation and, and healing and growth.

And so that feels like guiding people in their in their personal. Human development and also teaching other people to guide people and serve as, as people who hold space for transformation feels really important. And  involve just very recently, it’s. It’s starting to expand into not just holding space for human evolution, but holding space for planetary evolution.

I’ve really kind of been immersing myself in Joanna Macy’s work around the great turning. And so I really feel like practicing these skills, learning these skills of holding space is also what we need in order to transform our world and change our cultures, change our systems, heal our systems so that they can grow up and face the [00:05:00] next, Level of challenge of what we’re, what is needed in the world.

So that feels like a really important kind of calling or, yeah, legacy, whatever you want

Carolyn: Yeah. You know, as you were talking about and sharing words about like healing  and and your experience in leadership. My experience thus far in my work as a leader at one point in the corporate world and as a practitioner now has been for a long time, this concept of leadership and healing or growth.

We’re like, no, we’ll keep those separate. I’d love to hear your experience and how you’ve seen things change in the past 10 years and why holding space isn’t necessarily something that people think is sort of on the fringes anymore.

Heather: Yeah. I mean, like you, I, I worked in leadership roles for quite a few years in federal government and then in nonprofit and fairly high levels in both places and was always seeking kind of, I mean, what you write about a trauma informed, I didn’t use that [00:06:00] language at the time, but maybe a soul informed or a, you know, a, you know, a heart centered kind of way of leading and kind of floundering and facing, bumping up against a more patriarchal model, a more, you know, the leader has to know everything, the leader is, as, as I sometimes use Margaret Wheatley’s work about she, she says, changing our model of leadership from hero to host.

And so I got really, I trained with Margaret Wheatley for a bit and, and, and the other of her peers and. in that kind of community of work, learning what does leadership look like if it’s not built on a kind of patriarchal model. And we begin to see ourselves as guides and hosts and, and people who hold space for transformation.

So we don’t have to have the answers. We don’t have to be the ones that holds the vision and guide everybody towards the vision, but we can be the ones that, that 

support people to thrive and thrive. And offer guidance, but it not with the, you [00:07:00] know, with humility and not with the, we have to be the confident ones that know the knowledgeable ones all the time.

And so that that was really, I really wrestled with it a lot when I was in leadership. And so it was really drawn to the, to this kind of model of leadership. And I do see a lot more people having those conversations when I started looking for those things. I remember. Kind of casting a net with all the people I knew working in leadership, asking these questions can we get together and talk about this, this, you know, transforming how we lead?

And there was very little openness to it because people just didn’t really get it. And it wasn’t in the conversations at that time. But now it certainly is changing. And I think a lot of people are realizing. Like we’re burning out our leaders because we’re not supporting them. We’re, we’re putting them out there on the frontier to kind of figure it out on their own.

And then they, and then they get completely emotionally and psychologically spent or they turn into narcissists because they don’t have the necessary emotional growth going on. So, [00:08:00] I mean, I want to be in a world that elevates leaders that are emotionally mature and, and, and have really You know, walk through the fire of that kind of learning to become more compassionate and, and yeah, emotionally advanced kinds of people.

Yeah.

Carolyn: I, I know when I found Margaret Wheatley, it was so inspirational for me. In fact, I, I created my own title, which I’ve done a lot in my career, but this one was inspired from her work. And I call myself a human spirit igniter

Heather: Oh, yeah.

Carolyn: and it was directly related to her, you know, warriors of the human spirit spirit.

And yeah, I think her work’s incredible. I think that’s, that could potentially be where I started really hearing or reading and understanding more about what does a system look like? And, you know, for a long time, Heather, I didn’t, I didn’t understand that I was a person in a system.

Heather: Right.

Carolyn: I felt like I had to do it all and take it all on.

And it’s so interesting , I was speaking with someone this week and they said something about, Oh, you know, my leaders [00:09:00] suck, like something like that. And I was like, well, do they really, do you really think they get up in the morning and they, they’re going to go to work and I’m going to be like a real jerk today.

And this person stopped and they said, No, I guess you’re right. And I said, maybe it’s the system that sucks.  And, and, you know, I think holding space in your work, there’s, there’s such an opening for it right now.

Heather: I think so. I hope so. I mean, it’s been to be totally honest with you that with the pandemic and some of the surrounding things around that has actually seen us. I have a downturn in people responding to the work, but I think it’s starting to shift again. Now, a few days post pandemic, it feels like we all got a little bit burnt out and people didn’t want to do that kind of deep development work for a while.

And there was people that were writing articles, but how after. pandemic. We just wanted to party. We didn’t want to think about deep stuff. And, and I did sense that in the response to the work, but I think now there’s this waking up and there’s this [00:10:00] realization of, oh, something’s missing here. And we are, we’re failing ourselves.

We’re failing our children. We’re failing our, you know, Our earth and and we have to grow up and I’ve recently been immersing myself in Bill Plotkin’s work. I don’t know if you’re

Carolyn: I haven’t, no, I 

Heather: soul craft and he has this model of human development called the eco soul centric Wheel of development, and he talks about how essentially what he says is that 75 percent of adults don’t actually ever advance past adolescence and we need evolved humans.

We need genuine mature adults and it’s, it is our systems that. block us, that keep us stuck because they keep us addicted to stuff. They keep us in egocentrism, capitalism, patriarchy, all those models keep 

us stuck. And, and so an, immature person feeds into an immature system and, and they remain, they kind of become code, enmeshed kind of relational relationship.

And [00:11:00] so, We need humans to evolve and become more emotionally mature and advance psychologically so that we can evolve better systems that actually support a more mature and grown up version of, of our culture, our system, our, yeah, our society.

Carolyn: Well, and that, that’s, I mean, that’s really why I called my book Evolve. Cause I realized personally, How stuck I had been. And I thought, well, if I’m this stuck and I’m, you know, pretty educated and have privilege in my life, then what about all the other people like me? Like we’re in roles and positions where we can make change and really create and lead into better systems.

And to your point, the better, I didn’t realize how much I was connected personally and my evolution, my maturity, how that was connected to the health of our planet either. I was very ignorant to that. 

Heather: I don’t think many people realize it. It’s it’s been a growing awareness for me and a few years back. So when I first started the holding [00:12:00] space work, When I very, the very first time I wrote about it, I had a blog post go viral and that’s what really kind of launched this work into the world.

I wrote about my mom dying and how we had a palliative care nurse holding space for my, for her, but also for the, my siblings and I and my mom’s husband, as we, as we supported mom and her dying in her home. I wrote about that and it went intensely viral all over the world. There was clearly a hunger for it.

People were, were. We’re looking for some guidance, some wisdom around it and so I started out writing this holding space, you know, as a way of supporting grief or trauma or whatever, but it just keeps deepening and growing. And then after that, I realized, oh, well, I have to. I have to. to deepen my capacity to guide people in holding space for themselves.

And so I did my own real deep personal work around trauma healing and that’s what my second book was. And, and, and then after doing that work, since that’s come out, my next kind of calling in this work feels, feels like turning towards the [00:13:00] planet. And I, you know, a few years ago, I kind of said, I said to my Teaching team.

I said, I need to go spend more time in the woods. This is my next step in this work. We need to evolve people in relational spaces with nature. And we need, we need, we need to see ourselves as part of nature. We need to. Build old space for a world in crisis and hold space for ourselves to really face the grief around this and the fear around this and and be present for whatever needs to evolve in the next, whatever century or whatever, as we change in order to face The harm that we’ve done essentially, like to, to come face to face because some of holding space is genuinely seeing your own shadow, seeing your own culpability, culpability in a broken system.

Like, We are all contributing we can’t just call it the boogeyman and blame the boogeyman. No, we’re all contributing to a broken system that [00:14:00] is damaging our earth. So what are we going to do about it?

Carolyn: And, and you can see how we’re really stuck in this cycle because when we have trauma, you know, and grief could be in there as well, it sits in our body. And, and for me that there was so much sitting in my body. And I understand now, as I’m on my healing journey, that it was a big part of why I couldn’t move my body through the world in the way that I wanted to in my heart.

Heather: hmm.

Carolyn: I couldn’t, I couldn’t be active in the ways that I wanted to be active if, if if you know what I’m saying. And so it really takes courage. It takes it takes a lot of humility too, to really dig into this work. It’s not easy. And It’s, it’s really, you know, leaders who are in roles and organizations.

And as I said, have the privilege of that. It’s not a nice to do anymore. Like really it’s, it’s a real calling for, for people to say, Hey, like we will, there’s, there’s lots of, there’s, there are [00:15:00] people like you and I, and many other great practitioners that can help guide and be there and hold space. As we walk into this next stage.

Heather: Yeah. And I like, Oh, I a hundred percent agree. Like it’s, and this is why I have this new little body of work. That’s just coming out probably next work next week around what I call the core needs triad and, and it’s, I introduced it a little bit in, the first book, but it’s really evolved since then. I talk about, you may have seen the spiral of authenticity, which is really a journey inward to explore our, our, ourselves, learn ourselves, witness ourselves.

And then a journey outward, it’s kind of based on a labyrinth journey and I’ve been really wrestling with, okay, so why do so many of us come to this midpoint in our lives where we kind of wake up to, I’m, I’m stuck. I’m not living authentically. I’m not living really in alignment with the values that I think I have.

what is this about? Why am I in this place? And so I wanted to [00:16:00] examine like. What is it that that gets us there to that place? And some of us turn towards that and choose to go into what I call the spiral of authenticity many of us turn back and say, nope, that’s too dangerous. And what is it that compels some people to stay back and allows some people to move forward?

And so I unpacked what I believe is kind of the core needs that hold us back. And some of that is around safety and belonging that if. If we are clinging to what feels like safety and belonging, it’s going to feel too dangerous. And if, if, if becoming a more authentic self is going to risk our safety and belonging, if we haven’t fully evolved our, our capacity to find safety and belonging in the world, even if we’re rejected by our family of origin, by our religion of origin, our communities.

And so it’s, it’s that breaking away, it’s that an initiation into a different place, but we have to be, have to do our healing work so that we’re grounded enough in our bodies, as you say, to access safety [00:17:00] and belonging from a more integrated place so that we have the courage to step into that place.

Carolyn: Yeah. It’s I mean, I mean, I’m just thinking of all that I learned about through polyvagal theory and cues of safety and how I’d never paid attention to any of that. It was just, it was just sort of this, I’ll say mindless walk through life. And I don’t want to say mindless, maybe like just sort of constant movement forward.

Cause that felt the safest. and and now I know that that was, you know, an adaptive strategy. 

And I think it is for so many of us to just keep moving.

Heather: Well, it’s the path that’s laid out for us. What’s the question you ask every high school graduate is like, what’s your career move? What’s what are you going to learn so that you get a career that pays the bills? We’re not asking. How’s your soul? How’s your heart? How’s, you know, are you healing your trauma?

What are you doing about you, about mental health support in your life? Those aren’t the questions we’re asking our kids in high school. We’re asking them about their, their [00:18:00] career path. And so, if that’s the way that you’ve been, you’ve been kind of conditioned. It’s the path you take because it feels like that’s what gets you the safety and belonging.

I, I, you know, and some status in the world is get a good job, make your way up the corporate ladder and that’s going to, but, and this is one of the things I unravel in this model. I’ve just Created the series of little videos around it is that what we find out some point in midlife is that actually we’ve, we’ve evolved this identity.

That is a false identity and really, it’s not even giving us legitimate safety and belonging. It’s a false safety and belonging because it’s based on a false identity. It’s like building a house on a false foundation. It’s It’s not going to stand. And so that’s a huge period of disillusionment then when we suddenly realized that all of the safety and belonging we thought we had is conditional.

It’s based on us functioning in this certain way that keeps the people around us [00:19:00] happy, that keeps our systems happy. And it’s, yeah, it’s fractured and, and it leads to, I mean, I mean, it leads to a whole lot of stress later in our lives and even like mental breakdowns and yeah.

Carolyn: And then that gets handed down to our into our communities and to our children. Yep. That’s exactly why I wrote that book. Exactly. Why? Because I thought I am passing things down that I did not intend

Heather: Oh, I’ve had the same

Carolyn: Yeah, 

Heather: three daughters 

and I’ve, I’ve, it so clearly. Yeah.

Carolyn: yeah. You know, when you were talking about safety and belonging Again, you know, as I was entering into this field and really doing, you know, leadership development in in vertical leadership development, like that increasing capacity this notion of safety, I thought. Was pretty interesting, right?

Cause we hear a lot about psychological safety and now I’m learning like, hey, physiological safety is what in our nervous system is doing. And I wonder what your perspective is on that line between [00:20:00] safety and discomfort and how do we walk that line as leaders?

Heather: Yeah, that’s a really good question because I, and I wrote about this in my book. I talked about safe space versus brave space because when I was first holding, you know, exploring this concept of holding space and, and Learning and practicing as a facilitator and recognizing that, oh, there’s a shadow side to safety and that is comfort.

If I, if I cling too much to safety, and we hear this in the, in the zeitgeist, people wanting to be in safe space. And I started to explore that concept and came across some writings, particularly in academic settings. And I can’t remember the originator of the concept, but there was some writing around that.

Actually, what we want to do is hold brave spaces, not safe spaces, because if we try to promise safety for 1 thing, you can never guarantee everybody’s going to be safe because we never know what’s going to trigger 1 of the people in the room based on their own trauma. So, instead of that, when I. begin a gathering, for example, I will invoke brave space and say, look, we, I [00:21:00] can’t guarantee you safety, but I don’t, I also don’t want you to cling to safety because safety is going to keep you in a place.

That’s stuck yes, we need to return to safety and. I’ve studied a fair bit around attachment theory, how we all need a secure base to return to, and we need to sometimes revert back to that, you know, hide in our retreat spaces in our homes or something. But if we stay there, then that’s the stuck place.

And so we have to also then stretch ourselves and say, okay, how can I step out now in bravery and. And, and a leader needs that balance, the, the secure base, but also the, the capacity to launch from that space into a more brave place. So, I, I see it kind of as a balancing act it’s a movement back and forth, almost a flow system where, okay, this is going to require a brave act.

And then what am I going to plan for after this? That’s going to make me feel safe. Okay. So I have to do this really brave thing, but for supper, I’m going to go have a meal with a really good friend who can help me unpack and [00:22:00] just feels really safe. So it’s, it’s finding that way of balancing the, the two places or the two needs.

Carolyn: I’ve never heard anyone position it that way. And. I think it’s so helpful, right? Cause our nervous system doesn’t want to be in this state of activation. Cause when we go into a newer space or when we are stepping into be brave, like our system is going to be, our nervous system is, is, is on alert.

Right. And you know, we can sometimes, I think, misunderstand like, Oh, I’ve got to go up and stand in and be courageous and brave and daring and, and stay there forever. Right. Like Like it’s, and, and what, what I’m hearing you say is. No, we’re going to have that moment and then we’re going to come back and that was discomfort.

Heather: yeah.

Carolyn: And I don’t need to stay there and keep my nervous system in this activated heightened state. Come back to what is as I keep saying, like cues of safety or like what is a safe, a safe place for me to unpack and process that experience. I think that’s such a, and the shadow side, I hadn’t, hadn’t heard [00:23:00] that said before either.

I love it. 

Heather: I, I really wish more leaders understood this. A, A, I wish more leaders understood their own nervous systems, because I don’t think we’re not, I think of all the years and I took a lot of leadership development programs as I was, especially going up in government, because there was funding for training.

So, I was seeking out all the leadership training I could find. And nobody ever talked to me about my nervous system or about how to soothe myself if I got anxious. And, and I, and I wish people had the skills. And I think of, so I used to, I worked in communications and so I would, I would do these big press conferences often with high level government leaders and I would run the press conferences.

So support them and, and And often host them or whatever was required and I would work with these high level leaders that had to step out in front of the media. And some of them were, it was a really anxiety inducing thing. And I remember this one leader and I like, he would sneak into the bathroom to have a drink before [00:24:00] going.

And so I, I was always the one next to him that could smell it on his breath. And And to me, I just think it’s really unfortunate. He didn’t have that capacity to understand. Oh, this is going to activate my nervous system. So what are some healthy ways to make sure before and after this press conference?

I have the supports. I need to soothe myself and it takes some humility because it takes me admitting this is going to activate me and and I need a support system. And I I now have a business partner for the last few years, partly because of that, because I recognize.

I’m a person with trauma, I step into these situations that are absolutely going to activate me. I don’t want to not go into these situations, but I want to have the support system in place that allows me to do that. And so 1 of the people that is my support system is my business partner she’ll be the 1, getting the text or the call or something after a situation like that.

And we unpack it and we co regulate So. We shouldn’t [00:25:00] be doing this work alone, for one thing, we should have finding our support systems and recognizing, becoming more self aware of our own needs and our own nervous system activation.

Carolyn: Yep. Heather, I feel like we are, are on similar paths. I’m, I’m just a few years behind you, just the journey with grief and, and death. And you know, I had to, I had to bury my first husband when my kids were four and five. And so I remember a time in palliative care it was in the hospital and, I did not know what this notion of holding space meant, and yet, I was doing it in a lot of ways.

I was doing it emotionally And there’s so much grief in our workplaces. That’s sort of the bridge where I wanted to take it is so much grief, ambiguous loss, like Pauline boss’s work around ambiguous loss was so striking to me. It was like, Oh my gosh, we’re all walking around with this. Can you define for us in a leadership way 

what does holding space actually [00:26:00] mean?

Heather: Well, the most basic definition that’s in my book is that holding space is the practice of walking alongside someone without judging them or trying to fix them or directing them or and it’s withholding our own baggage, our own Desires for the outcome, it’s, it’s letting go of the outcome so that they can evolve into their own outcome.

That’s kind of the starting point. But then I mean, I’ve written a whole book and I have 8, 8 month training program. So it goes a lot deeper than that. And. And what I’ve recognized over time as I’ve taught this is that I started writing about it as an external practice, holding spaces, walking alongside somebody else.

And then I started to realize, Oh, wait, it’s probably like 90 percent an internal practice. It’s not really about what I do for that person. I mean, it is, but it’s what I’m doing internally so that I can walk alongside someone. It’s the learning to soothe myself. It’s the [00:27:00] learning  to. To heal my own baggage so that I’m not projecting stuff onto them.

I’m not, I’m not going into anxiety over there. I’m, I’m, I’m staying calm in the face of their anxiety so that I can help co regulate them. It’s, it’s learning yourself and holding space for yourself, which, which is really the critical work for all of us to do.

Carolyn: Yeah, I think I saw this on one of your blogs to hold spaces, to release attachment to outcome and to learn, to sit with discomfort and ambiguity.

Heather: Exactly.

Carolyn: And when I think of what leaders are dealing with, this is what we need to be doing more of in our workplaces.

And I don’t see many competencies attached to how well do you hold space leader?

Heather: No, and we, we’re really trying to, because I have worked in the leadership for many years, but I haven’t really learned how to how, like you say, how to place this as a competency into training programs and how to, how to, how to get, how to get this more into the conversation spaces and leadership is something that’s kind of on our, Our intention list [00:28:00] as, as the, the center for holding space, because I agree.

I absolutely think it’s a core competency and leadership and it’s an overlooked 1. and if more people were competent at it, I think we could evolve more mature systems and cultures and workplaces. And because people aren’t told that this is a skill set. I wasn’t and you weren’t like, we didn’t know nobody in our leadership.

Courses told us that we had to learn how to hold space for people and then we get faced with these really difficult situations. I remember in leadership to I had, I had employees who had really horrible tragedies in their lives. I had, I had employees that were. Coming at me and projecting things out of their anger at the world.

And so I was, I was suddenly the, what I call the shock absorber for their pain. All of this stuff that comes at you when you’re a leader and most of us are ill equipped for it. And so, yeah, learning that practice. And learning it for yourself, holding space for yourself, knowing the [00:29:00] boundaries that you need, knowing the ways that you need to take care of yourself so that you can show up for the difficult decisions you need to make and the hard places you need to be.

It’s all really really critical. And I think we’ll become more and more critical in a world that is increasingly complex yeah, yeah, with the challenges we face ahead of us.

Carolyn: You know,  I, I, I do have a handful of leaders that I work with and they might not use the word holding space. they maybe will use the word facilitate group discussions or sort of be present to help guide. Like these are some ways that it comes out.

And what I’m finding is they recognize it cognitively  and, and, and now we’re back to that, that circle. It’s well, there’s a lot of stuff we’re holding on to in our bodies. And you know, this is where I think the, you know, the fabulous work of. all these people before me around embodied leadership is, is is a piece that really deserves more attention 

from people in [00:30:00] positions of power.

Heather: yeah, and it brings to mind, I, in my early, early days as a leader, I’d been, I’d been promoted into a director position in the federal government years ago. And we had these really intense, it was a regional leadership team across the, the Western provinces, and we would come together a couple of times a year for these really intense 2 or 3 day meetings to make decisions about our region.

And there was this 1 time when we’d had major budget cuts, and we had to make these really tough decisions as a team for 2 or 3 days in this stuck stuck in a room together, making these hard decisions about staff. We would cut programs. We would cut things that we were passionate about that. We had to choose to give up because of the budget cuts.

And we had to make this collective decision. And. It was so intense. And at the end, I, I, we were about to close the meeting and it just felt so incomplete to just walk away. And so I turned to the, to the director general and I said shouldn’t we just at least go around the room and [00:31:00] express something about how we’re feeling about this?

Because I just, I looked around the room and I see all this grief and like genuine pain over this. And. Yeah. One of the other leaders, one of my peers turns to me and he’d been in a director position for years and years. So, I mean, I think he thought himself far advanced for me and kind of looked down at me and just turned to me and said, feelings have nothing to do with management.

And that was it. It just shut it down and nobody else like I could see everybody else just sort of shuts down and we just left the room and it kind of felt like a trauma moment where we chose to just carry this out in our bodies, instead of collectively processing what was in the room, we just all carried it out in our bodies, probably took it out on our kids or, you know, our families.

But we were not willing to process it in the room. And I think what a missed opportunity something like that is.

Carolyn: One think of how many of those moments are going on all the time. and You know, you, I [00:32:00] noticed you use the word management, we don’t have, and, and I would say that’s true. There’s no room for feelings in management. However, we’re looking for leaders and we’re talking about leadership a lot more of the time I find than, than managing.

Heather: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that was his language. Not the way that he, that he expressed it. Yeah.

Carolyn: Now I, there’s a concept it’s, it’s at, that’s related to holding space, which is this notion of liminal space. And again, I don’t think that’s a word that’s out there in the, in the business vernacular as, as prevalent as maybe it could be.

How would you define it and what does it how does it relate to holding space?

Heather: Yeah, it’s something I talk about a lot. because after my post went viral and people started wanting me to talk about holding space. I thought, well, I need to get better at defining what is the space we’re holding. So I went looking for some definitions that felt useful to me when I came across this concept of liminal space.

And liminal comes from [00:33:00] I think it’s Greek originally a word that a lemon, which is the space in between and it’s a concept that comes out of anthropology. Anthropologists were studying cultures that were better at honoring the transitions we go through in our life. And in particular like indigenous cultures, where.

Where a youth will go out on a vision quest before becoming an adult. So they were honoring those spaces in between , the youth and the adulthood. So liminal space is what’s it’s the space in between one story and the next that you’re evolving into. So there’s this, and the metaphor that I use for it is that the cocoon, the, the evolution of a Caterpillar into a butterfly.

it doesn’t go directly from caterpillar to butterfly, but it dissolves and deconstructs into a gooey mush inside this cocoon. And it needs that deconstruction phase in order to reconstruct as the butterfly. And so I’ve used this concept to help people understand the changes that they go through, the big traumas in their life, the big whatever, marriage, divorce, [00:34:00] changing a job, having a child, everything has within it a liminal space.

It has that kind of empty space of, oh wait, that old, nothing from that old story makes sense anymore, but I don’t yet know what the new story is. I’m becoming a mother or I’m becoming a teacher. I changed my job or something like that. And so there’s, it’s, it’s the understanding and I, some of it I base on, I don’t know if you know, Theory U work Otto Scharmer’s work of letting go and then letting come.

And then also William Bridges, who writes about transitions, who’s been a really helpful learning model for me too, is Let’s recognize that in between space. Let’s not rush. I think we have a bit of a cultural imperative to, to just get on with it. Just, you know, that, that linear movement towards a more successful future kind of thing.

And it’s a bit of a capitalist kind of model, but no, let’s actually take a step back and honor that. We feel a little lost in between a little confused, maybe a little sad. There’s maybe grief. There’s a lot of stuff that has to come [00:35:00] up in order for us to be ready for the next stage.

Carolyn: And so, what is liminal in our workplaces then? Because, you know, when, when I think of some of the changes you’ve talked about, there’s, there’s space, like there’s a, or time, there’s time maybe. How do we look at liminal space in a workplace context? Yep.

Heather: mean, a lot of workplaces will have like change management teams or, you know, like we’re, we’re always trying to manage change. And maybe if we took the management out of that title, for example, we’d recognize that it’s, it’s. Transition like processing or supporting teams rather than change management.

And it is about everything, there’s always change. There’s changes present all the time, whether it’s you’re hiring new employees, and now you have to adapt to having a whole new team. Your, your team is going through a liminal space because it’s having to re, re you know, reconfigure itself or you’re having budget cuts or you’re There’s, you know, or there’s liminal space.

Each of us individually has our own liminal spaces that we’re going through, and that impacts the workplace. So, [00:36:00] somebody goes away on maternity leave because they’re having a baby. Well, that’s not just a personal story. That becomes a collective story because now this, You know, the, the person is away and we’re filling the gap and there may be a new person there.

So there’s always, I mean, it’s kind of in some ways and I’m, I’m, I’ve been examining and evolving this concept of liminality. I really think there’s different types of liminality. There’s the. The kind of linear something changes, and then something else evolves. I think there’s also seasonal liminality where we go into a season of where we’re kind of lost.

Maybe it’s an organization that’s not serving the purpose it once served, and it’s not sure of its purpose anymore. And should it evolve into something new, or should it dissolve and no longer be an organization? So that’s a kind of season of liminality. And then there’s also. I think there are some of us who have a kind of calling for liminality.

It’s almost like we are the edge walkers who live in, in sort of a liminal cultural [00:37:00] space that are set apart to, to become the people who are in that kind of transformation work. Like you and I, in some ways, I feel we’ve, we’ve taken on a bit of positional liminality so that we can support this in the world.

So think there’s different ways of examining it as, as a. As, as an understanding and, and learning to hold space for that, learning to be again, with that discomfort of it and the ambiguity of it. Liminal

Carolyn: Or liminal guide, liminal host. 

Heather: Yeah, that’s a good one.

Carolyn: so Heather, here, I’m going to kind of share back to you and for all of us listening and watching to try and pull this all together. So tell me if it’s kind of all coming together.

Liminal space exists when we transition through change. There’s lots of changes going on in our workplaces. There’s lots of changes going on in our lives. And how we respond to [00:38:00] these liminal spaces, these transitions, can either be with awareness, with a connection to ourself, with humility I was going to say with reverence, but that maybe is getting a little bit too 

Heather: I think that’s, I think that’s

Carolyn: but reverence. And, and when we approach it from that place, we are more inclined to be able to hold space and let go of outcomes. That’s ideally where we want to be.

Heather: Yeah,

Carolyn: However, many of us are unintentionally in a highly reactive state. of focusing and skipping over the liminal space and skipping to, this is what the outcome needs to be.

We are going there. We need to be accountable. This is what we need to do. And like very task focused. If I, if I kind of sort of

pulled it all 

Heather: very much. 

Very much. And this is part of the reason we talked about how holding space needs to become [00:39:00] a core competency for leadership. And this is 1 of the reasons because if you don’t develop this as a core competency among your leadership, then you’re going to have a lot of resistance. You’re going to have a lot of fear that comes up a lot of activation.

You’re, you’re not going to be You’re, you’re going to be pushing through and ignoring the emotional experience of people. You’re going to be stepping on people, let’s face it and, and, and harm causing harm. And also you’re not going to evolve into the best that you can evolve into. The outcome will be determined by how well you hold space for the liminal space before that outcome.

I think.

Carolyn: I’m going to quote you on that, Heather. I love that, the outcome, but it’s true. I of,  there isn’t a company or a friend or a family member that isn’t experiencing some sort of change that is, is, is significant.

Heather: Yeah.

Carolyn: Yeah. Not just, I’m going to change the color of my nails today, or we’re going to change what we’re eating for dinner.

Heather: Well, and if I can just add to what I’m realizing, cause I’m, I’m sort of on the tail end of menopause. So I [00:40:00] think for many of us as in living in female bodies, we also have this kind of liminal period of our lives that are, it’s way more complex than many of us realize, and we kind of try to push through and yet we’re, we’re evolving into different.

People, different humans, and similarly, we had this period of becoming mothers and there’s a lot of talk now around this concept of matricence, which is the evolution into motherhood. So, we’re ignoring these whole periods of our lives. In service to kind of a capitalist framework

you know, and, and I also think we’re ignoring and the other piece of liminality that I’m, I’m exploring is liminality.

Like, We want to hang on to these black and white definitions, for example, of gender male, female, and that’s the way the world works. And there’s this whole liminal space in between where people are neither. On either of those polar places, and they’re inviting us people living in that liminal space are [00:41:00] inviting us to consider the world’s a lot more complicated and complex.

And if we’re not willing to hold space for that liminality within our culture, then we will always be an immature culture. And so I think liminality is a bit of a guide into a more evolved, mature culture.

Carolyn: Yeah. Oh, I love how you brought that all around full circle. It’s so, it’s so true. It’s so true.

Heather: Thank you.

Carolyn: Heather, I want to fly out to where you live right now and spend a few days with you. 

 Now before I pack my bags and ask everyone to come with me, where could we find your work as an intermediary step?

Heather: Yeah, the core place of our work lives center for holding space dot com. I also have a separate website, heatherplatt. com, but . I have less of my work hosted there. So if you’re looking for the books and the work center for holding space, we have lots of courses where we’re starting our next round.

We have. Our foundation program, the How to Hold Space Foundation Program, we run an [00:42:00] 8 month program every year, which is really our kind of foundation, we call it our foundation program for a reason. If you really want to dive into these practices and understanding of liminal space and holding space, that’s the place to start and it starts in October.

So people are welcome to check that out at Centre for Holding Space. We have also started a sub stack fairly recently called a tender space and we have a podcast. My business partner and I have launched a podcast. You can find that all at a tender space dot sub stack dot com and sign up for that. And if you, if you pay, sign up for a paid membership there, you’ll get access to the 10 videos.

I just referenced on the, the core needs triad, which I think is a really important new evolution of my work. Yeah,

Carolyn: what how do we spell center first of all? Cause I know we’ve got variations of that word. 

Heather: well, we use the Canadian spelling that C E N T R E. However, we own the URL for this C E N T R. So if anybody misspells it, it’ll still go to our website.

Carolyn: There we 

Heather: our bases that way.

Carolyn: Good to know. Good to [00:43:00] know. And, and what would be your last sort of parting words for leaders listening to this, who are like, whoa, liminal space, holding space. What do I do?

Heather: I would take say, take it 1 step at a time. And I, you know, I, 1 of the things after having taught many, many workshops where I introduced liminal space to see the light go on when people just begin to understand that concept is just 1 of the most beautiful things I experienced because it’s oh, you’ve just made sense of this chaos I’ve been in, or you’ve just made sense of the overwhelm I’m feeling.

That’s a place to begin like having. And And I remember when I first had my blog posts go viral, I got responses from so many people saying, Thank you for just giving me language for something that I’m doing intuitively. I understand, but nobody’s talked about it before. So start there, get a few concepts, learn a little bit about liminal space and then begin to explore.

You don’t need to get beat. I’m an expert at it, but you’ll be skin to evolve your own understanding of it and just [00:44:00] understanding that the next time you’re supporting your team and you see them go into overwhelm and kind of this fear around a change that’s going on. You can sit back and tell yourself, Oh, they’re going through liminal space like that alone.

Just that understanding is, is going to help you learn to support them better.

Carolyn: Wonderful. I really encourage people to go check out your work. Buy your books. I only bought one. I’m buying the other one after we get off this call. Now, before we wrap up are you game for the three evolved questions that I asked all the guests

that come on? 

Heather: Let’s go there.

Carolyn: So our first question is about self awareness.

it helps us feel connected. I think when we can hear each other’s stories and, and eye openers. So is there an anecdote, a short insight that you could share with us where your self awareness really expanded?

Heather: there’s been a lot over the years, but what’s most present for me is that I learned fairly recently that I’m neurodivergent and that came up because [00:45:00] My daughter one of my daughters was diagnosed with ADHD, actually two were, and this particular daughter started nudging me and saying, Mom, all of my characteristics that are ADHD characteristics, you have too.

And so when I started looking into it, and I finally. Yeah, I’ve gotten diagnosed myself. That was a huge eye opener to realize, Oh, there’s a lot of patterns in my life that are, are related to this and some good, some bad, some really challenging. And then some things it’s like, Oh, like I have, I have a lot of creative capacity, partly because my brain works that way.

So learning to understand my brain differently, I would say was a pretty significant awakening for me.

Carolyn: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Next question is about self regulation. And I have no doubt that there are practices and things that you do that help you stay centered and present. And is there, you know, one or two or maybe three that you can share with us?

Heather: I would say for this one, [00:46:00] primarily get out into the woods for me. It’s if I can go for a walk in the woods, like there’s a concept called eco regulation. I don’t know if you’ve heard that term, but we talk about co regulation when it’s one body with another body and eco regulation is regulating with the body.

The natural world with plants, animals. And so sitting in out among the trees, I live right close to a lake and there’s a little bench that, that I love to sit at just right at the edge of the lake under the trees. And that’s one of the best ways for me to serve, soothe my nervous system is being, being in nature.

Carolyn: yeah, I’ve recently reconnected with that and, you know, I didn’t realize this in this little community I live in. Well, it’s not a little community, but this little part of the community, there are all sorts of little paths and, and pieces of nature that I didn’t even know existed.

So it really, it really is.

And you know, I feel fortunate to live in a community that has that. And so. if, if, if those of you listening, you, you don’t have it around you.  There might be some, [00:47:00] there might be some little gems you don’t know about.

Heather: Yeah, I, I think even in big cities, there tend to be these little pocket parks where you can just sit under a tree. It doesn’t have to be, you don’t have to go out into the wilderness, but find a tree or even a houseplant. I fear some people with mobility issues get something green and in your space and yeah, connect with them or pets.

Like I think pets is another, I don’t, I’m not a pet person, but I know a lot of people co regulate with their animals. Yeah. Haha. Yeah.

Carolyn: yeah, last question. You took us there beautifully. You said co regulation. So the last the last. Question connects co regulation and music. And so I am a, I saw my first concert when I was four. So music has always been a very regulating force for me. So, I’ll invite you to share a favorite genre of music or song or artist that helps you feel connected to something bigger than yourself.

Heather: Yeah, Oh, I could go on and on with this question because I’m a big [00:48:00] music lover too. And I, And I, I’m, tend towards folk music, singer, songwriter, music. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve Winnipeg Folk Festival, where I came from originally, I’ve been I’ve attended every year for 38 years. It’s, it’s very, very faithfully because it’s also outdoors under the trees listening to music.

So it’s one of the best places for me. I would say I, yeah, yeah, folk music. One of the musicians that grounds me quite consistently is somebody called Luke Satel Singh. I don’t know if you’ve encountered his music. But he has one song. It became my song of the pandemic. And every time I listen to it, even now it tears well up because during the really, Oh, the really intense, overwhelming days of the pandemic, I would turn on this song.

It’s called suddenly nothing stays the same. And I would, I would go into my basement. I, I call it my messy art practice. I had this big, Big canvas and I would just finger paint on this canvas with this song playing and I would cry. I would get everything out of my body and this song just grounded me.

So I listen to it now and it’s still it’s still does that for me and 

Carolyn: can you say it [00:49:00] again? Nothing

stays the 

Heather: stays the same and then there’s another one also by him called nearly morning. So it’s about how it’s nearly morning. The dark place is almost over. You’ll get, you’ll get to morning soon. And so, yeah, his, I’ll turn him on, especially when I go into those kind of dark, scary places.

Carolyn: Oh, wow. Thank you. I’m going to, I’m going to check that out. It’s incredible. The, the people, I mean, I’ve asked every guest and I don’t think I’ve had single,

Person duplicate. Yeah. And just incredible different areas that, that or genres that we get to hear about. 

Heather: Yeah, 

that’s fun. You should make a playlist of all the

Carolyn: I, you know, I’ve thought of that. I have thought of that.

If my son’s listening, which he probably isn’t, he’s been doing some marketing coordinating work for me. And so I have thought about that, getting him to do that. Well, Heather, I’m just really so grateful for finding your work. I hope others can find it and really benefit from as well. And just thank you for coming on the show.

Heather: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

Carolyn: [00:50:00] Well, if you have stayed with us this long, you have now heard about 45, 50 minutes of a conversation about holding space. And I’m curious to think you’ve thought about it. Is holding space a concept that feels like, Ooh, woo woo. No, thank you. Is it something you’re interested in? Perhaps you’re like, yes, I’m doing it.

I want more. Wherever you’re at in your journey. is where you’re meant to be at. I will share with you that on my journey of writing this book, Evolve, of going into the spaces of trauma informed leadership and learning about the wisdom that lies in all of these unseen places. in our body, in our spaces, and how we can hold space.

These concepts of liminal space, of holding space, of trauma informed [00:51:00] leadership, when you’re ready to step into those, they can be transformational. And as Heather and I talked about, sometimes that line between discomfort and safety can be a little bit difficult to discern. I hope you choose to step into them if you haven’t already and know that there are other leaders like you who are curious and who are doing it.

And there is a community of people to help you and be with you on this journey. I want to thank you for tuning in to another episode of Evolve. We’re getting closer and closer to our hundredth episode into our third year and I really you being here and on the journey with us. don’t hesitate to reach out.

You can find me at carolyn. Swara. com and my book, evolve. The Path to Trauma Informed Leadership is available in some bookstores, depending on where you are and also [00:52:00] online Take care, everybody. We’ll see you soon.