E02 | From Fragmented to Whole: Leading with Clarity

Do you ever feel like you're showing up to work as only a fraction of yourself — distracted, scattered, and constantly putting out fires? You're not broken. You're fragmented. And there's a difference.

In this episode of Reclaiming a World That Works, co-principals Crystal and Carol of Whole Human Collective explore what it really means to lead from a place of wholeness — and why so many leaders are operating in a fragmented state without even realizing it.

They unpack how fragmentation shows up in day-to-day leadership through distraction, tunnel thinking, and loss of clarity, and why your values are a key compass for navigating difficult team dynamics. They also explore how a coaching conversation can be the "island of calm" that helps you find your footing again, and the power of appreciative inquiry in shifting from problem-focused to possibility-focused thinking.

Whether you're a senior executive or an emerging leader, this conversation will invite you to ask: what pieces of yourself have you left behind — and how could calling them back change everything?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

And it and it becomes a day-to-day grind of survival rather than thriving. So that is also your team, the people who work most closely with you, they're intuitively seeing that and understanding it, but not knowing necessarily why. So the leader ends up being more isolated, less understood. Perhaps there begins to be resentment with the team. There's all kinds of outcomes from being fragmented that are not the ones that we're looking for in a workplace that is healthy and nurturing or effective.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

There it is. Welcome back to Reclaiming a World That Works. Carol, it's good to have you back again and have this conversation. Good to be here. Thank you. My name is Crystal, and I, along with Carol, am one of the co-principals over at Cole Human Collective. And we are so looking forward to this conversation today.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yes. It is, it gets to the heart of what is going on for most leaders and teams in the workplace. It does. It gets right in there. So yeah, let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Yeah. Okay. So today we're going to be talking about the difference that the whole human coaching lens really does make for leaders and for teams, because they are, you can't be, they can't necessarily be separated because you're not a leader without a team, but you are also not a team without the ability to know cohesively what's going to happen. And the best way to be the best team is to understand what it is to show up as your whole self in that team. So in our first episode, Carol, we started, we asked a question of people. Do you remember what that question was?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

When do you feel most alive as a leader? And then we looked at what are those pieces, those underlying pieces that have you feel like a competent, capable, complete leader.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's a really great way to actually get us, and it's part of what we're going to be talking about today, to get us to think about what is working through the lens of appreciative inquiry. But today we want to invite people to consider an even more in-depth question. And that question is how do you feel, how can you feel that way more often? When you think about when have you been at your best or when have you felt the most the most connected as a leader? And how can you feel that way more often? What would it take to open up to that and to maybe shift some things around so it would be possible, not through harder work, but through a a different way of seeing yourself and of being in the world?

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Yes. Because some of what happens when we're at work is that we we've talked about it in various conversations, but we walk into the workplace and we take on whatever mask or persona that we need to. And what happens often when we're true to ourselves, when we actually get a moment to consider, is that we don't feel like we are fully or wholly who we would like to be in that workspace.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Yeah. I guess I mean in the past we've called it that you feel fragmented. Yes. And and some people, maybe for some people, that is a way that they have survived situations. That's how they've navigated things, is fragmenting pieces and some people, you know, compartmentalizing. But fragmentation does have a cost, I think.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Oh, yes, absolutely. If we look at it, we look at the basic fundamental to the to the word fragmentation. What we're talking about is that pieces, that a whole, whether it's a cracker or a human being, is broken into crumbly little bits, and that none of the pieces feel like they connect back together again. And that fragmentation really has an impact on us both at work but also at home. We begin to second guess ourselves, we begin to not feel authentic in what we're saying, we begin to take on and accommodate other people. There's a lot of different ways that fragmentation shows up in our lives. But as we look at that, the the opposite of that, if we flip it over to being whole, whole means that we have integrity. It means that we are a complete object without all those pieces broken off and scattered to the universe. So when we look at being a whole leader versus a fragmented leader, we begin to see that may be some of what's at work here, some of what the how when you feel really good, maybe this is one of the keys to what that looks like.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Yeah, and you know, that's really interesting because I think that one of the things that might the people might reach for in the beginning is that we we we can be very, we can think in terms of dichotomies. So if I'm not being a whole leader, then I'm broken. Like the opposite of wholeness is considered to be broken, but that's not what this is this conversation is because it's not about something to be attained, right? Like when when you're fragmenting your life, it means that it's it's there's you feel scattered. So I know for myself, when I think about in particular times in the past when I was fragmented in my in my leadership. I mean, even it happen it can happen to anybody at any time. It's just it can it can just happen. Life happens. Yes. Oh yes. But in, you know, but in our in our coaching, when we when we invite people to consider like what would the whole version of you show up as, it's not like you're you're fixing what's broken. It's like you're calling back those pieces that have been scattered. And that's a very different, that's a very different place to approach things from.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Well, when we consider, and this is what we often do in our coaching conversations, is ask people about their strengths, especially through the lens of their values, what they see is they've sometimes dropped off some of those strengths, some of those pieces that serve them, in order to think that they need to move ahead in a different direction. Right. And so part of the conversation is to take a look at what are those pieces I may have left behind. How would they serve me now? What's missing in my conversation with my teams or in my relationship with my peers or managing up with the people ahead of me? What are the pieces that are missing that would make this conversation easier or make that performance evaluation more effective? What is the feedback that I would want to give to this person that, if I was being all of who I am, would come across as authentic and honest?

SPEAKER_02 7:32

And this is interesting because last week I remember we were in one of our wayfinding coaching calls with a client and we were talking about their values and how those values were showing up in ways that when they probably first of all, when they heard it, spoken back to them, they recognized it in a different way. But one of the things that that through the course of that conversation, I remember us discovering is that you have these values. So when you showed up in this situation, the reason that you felt almost wrong footed in your in your leadership and in your conversations was because you were those values are coming. You're speaking through those values, but you're not recognizing that those are the values you're speaking through. So what is happening is you can't hear the difference from someone else to be able to understand how to hold it in a place, honestly, from a place of wholeness, because when when you don't when you're not fragmented, then you can recognize, for example, let's say, for example, one of your values is connection or like connection or teams, like in and you come into a conversation, but you come up against someone whose one of their values is individual achievement. So coming into a team scenario in that, when you show up as a whole leader, you recognize, okay, I have values that may not be coming that this leader may not be able to connect with. So you're you're you're more capable of listening closer, of recognizing that number one, this is not personal, but when I lean into these values, what can I bring to this conversation, to my leadership? It's going to help us to find a way forward together.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Right. Yes. And it requires a degree of self-understanding and self-awareness to even be able to discern the difference there. Because I think many of the leaders that we speak to are pretty good at looking at their team members and determining what are going to be the most effective ways for them to communicate. But sometimes that drops out the presence. They're trying to accommodate, they're trying to speak to this person in their language, but something is lost in the translation.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

And what I was speaking with a leader this week, and one of the things that was happening is she kept repeating the same things, but nobody was hearing her. Nobody was actually getting what she was meaning because she wanted collaboration with her team. She wanted them to be able to collaborate, but also be accountable. So they were hearing two different things. They were hearing, oh, I need to pass this along to somebody else. That's what collaboration looks like. But what she was really asking them to do was to work together. But she was not communicating it well because she thought she needed to word it in a way that they would hear it. So the whole communication thing just kind of fell apart. And I think what what you were saying is that the values, if we're not careful in how we're communicating them, can be misdirected. And then all of a sudden there's becomes a conflict or an upset in the room instead of a cohesive clarity, which is what everybody is looking for. Totally.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Yeah. I also think that values are a part of wholeness, right? And they they and and value, we all know that like your values can shift and change, but but at the core they are pretty inherent to who we are as a human. And that whatever your values are, they're your values. And they're important because they're your values. But when they when you feel fragmented, that can feel like a threat when you come up against someone that doesn't have the same thing. Or when we um when we are not, when we don't feel in alignment with who we are at the core, then that's when we can have wobbles in leadership. And that's in the work that we do and in our coaching, that's probably one of the ways that I would say where things become obvious pretty quickly in conversations when we're working with leaders.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Well, and we see leaders who are in that mode of having feeling like they have to do more and more. And so that the experience of being fragmented often comes from trying to have too many pieces that are in front of you. And it and it becomes a day-to-day grind of survival rather than thriving. So that is also your team, the people who work most closely with you, they're intuitively seeing that and understanding it, but not knowing necessarily why. So the leader ends up being more isolated, less understood. Perhaps there begins to be resentment with the team. There's all kinds of outcomes from being fragmented that are not the ones that we're looking for in a workplace that is healthy and nurturing or effective.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Yeah. And I think that so it's interesting because you said you said a word that we would not normally associate with the workplace, and that's nurturing. I know that we have worked with a lot of people, and it's and it feels like it's more so as of late, where it's becoming very evident that people are truly living with trauma from their, whether it's their everything from their evaluation, their performance evaluations to just the reality of humans being kind of squished into not squished, but that are are that have to fit roles that are already predetermined and not necessarily knowing how to always show up as themselves there. Yes. So when we think about this concept, because I would say that the fragmentation is to help give people an understanding, feeling fragmented and feeling whole are two very different feelings. They don't have to be complete opposites like black and white, because there are elements that we're always going to be growing and learning about ourselves. But what are some of the symptoms or the signs that you're seeing to be very that people can see as that being self-evident that they're they're operating in that maybe in that fragmented state? Yeah, in that fragmented state often or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Well, one of the things that I see that we see quite often with our with especially senior executives, is that they are distracted because there are so many things coming at them from so many different avenues and angles, and text and email and phone calls and everything that it that is taking a piece of them away. That's when they be, I think the symptom is or or the recognition of the symptom is that they don't have the concentrated ability to focus. So they are bouncing from one thing to another, they're not effectively finishing or completing a task, they are called in so many and pulled in so many different directions that they don't feel that they are having a complete conversation with any one person. And that time, whether it's 10 minutes or half an hour, that is often supposedly dedicated to a one-on-one with their teammate, with their teams, gets pulled apart as well. So the one-on-ones become less effective, the team meetings become less effective. There is so much that is that they are called upon to do that at the end of the day, if they're completely exhausted and wrung out because they have not felt, I mean, they probably didn't accomplish half of the things that was on their list to begin with.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

I know. That kind of breaks my heart, to be honest. That kind of does break my heart because I'm familiar with that that feeling of also you can have a stronger sense of being out of your depth when you're fright, when you feel fragmented. And and I'm completely convinced of how important it is to honestly have those kind of leadership conversations because I see on the daily how that helps to change things for our clients. But I've experienced that in the past as well. And one of the things that I would say is fragmentation also is like a lack of clarity. Like one of the things that I can tell for myself if I'm starting to reach that point of the overwhelm and the fragmentation is that it's I find it difficult to commit to an answer for something. Oh, yes. Does that sound familiar? Like when, or you want to almost like kick the can a little further down the road? Yeah, you know. You feel you need to be able to say, okay, I'm committing to this now and I'm moving, we're gonna move in this, and I can support this decision and support my team in this decision going forward.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Right. Yeah, there's a there's a Billy Joel song called Running on Ice, and there's a line in there which is like I put an put another fire out and turn around, and there's another burn building burning down. So, you know, I think a lot of leaders are feeling like that space of you know, the idea of running on ice, we just can't get traction. Yeah, and so there is this sense always of not getting done what needs to get done. Yeah. And that leads to a physiological response. There is a somatic response to that. Our bodies know we're in flight, you know, we've got to keep moving. And so the cost to us personally and individually is that we just are not ever calm. And one of the beautiful pieces that we've seen just in recent conversations we've had with executive leaders, is that coaching provides that space, that island of calm in the midst of a busy day. That's true. Yeah.

unknown 17:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

And what can get accomplished when you bring your nervous system down a couple of notches is you get back to that sense of who you are and why you're doing what you're doing. Yeah. And begin to put those pieces back together again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Yeah, because they're not lost, right? So no one is no one is ever truly lost. But when you are, when you feel fragmented, it's very, it's an feeling that's akin to to feeling lost. And when you start to recognize that you you don't need, number one, you don't need to stay in that state, but also to be able to just have an honest, I think the starting point is to be able to have an honest identifier of it and and give yourself the clarity that you deserve and sit that that is, you know, calling the thing the thing. Oh yes. And I I know that I think one of the the things that is becomes really when you you talked about, you know, attention span, but I also think in the same thing is that if people find themselves tunneling, that's also that's also an indication that you're you're fragmented. It's a symptom, yeah. It's because when you tunnel and you're obsessing over a problem, and you find, and and I have coached many people that they come into the conversation and they are completely problem-centric and problem-focused. And like anything, you just, if it's a problem, you just come in and you you get tighter and tighter around that, and you start to try to navigate everything based on what you perceive to be the problem. And that isn't just like tunnel thinking, that is a symptom of being fragmented in how you're approaching everything.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Yes, yes, because all that you can see is what you can see through that narrow, narrow hole. Yeah, yeah. And that doesn't give you any of the broader perspective that's required. And it also means when you're looking at problem-centric, you fail to see what is working. So, so much of our work with teams and individuals is based on that appreciative inquiry. Okay, let's look at there is a challenge, let's not fool ourselves. This isn't pretending that something is going to be well without any logic behind it, but really looking where there are resources. What are the pieces that you can count on in any given situation that then gives you the confidence to be able to address whatever is in front of you with that broader lens?

SPEAKER_02 20:33

Yeah. Can you think of what a conversation like that, how that would play out? If, for example, because we have these conversations all the time with clients, but using, and for those of you listening, this is a big core part of how we coach is called we use a methodology, a way of being as coaches called appreciative inquiry. But can you think of a time recently when you had one of those conversations with a client and how it shifted things?

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Mm-hmm. So one of the conversations I've had just this last week with that leader who was really struggling, and that was her language. And one of the pieces that I did in coaching her was to offer the observation that I'd heard this word more than once in our time together, and it was struggling. And what I asked her to do was to take a look at what actually she was struggling with, because that's a fairly strong word. I'm struggling as a leader, gives it, paints us a pretty, pretty dire picture of what's possible. And to actually shift and look at instead, in her last meeting with her team, she's got a pretty, pretty diverse team, where they had made headway. So it's simply it can be as simple as just shifting perspective slightly, just a couple of degrees, to be able to see oh, I'm defining this as struggling. But maybe this is where the progress actually is. And seeing that her language, because part of what we do when we're moving through the philosophies of appreciative inquiry, is look at how our language, how our words create our world. Yeah. And her describing her leadership as struggling was limiting her from seeing, being able to see, oh, I made progress here. Oh, I did call that person in. Oh, we actually did clarify a process in what we were working towards.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

And so all of us as a team are not, there's not as much effort as there was the week before. So as one of the beauties of coaching an individual or a team in as a whole is we get an opportunity to help them see things slightly differently. Put a different set of glasses on. Let's look at things from a different direction.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Yeah. I guess, you know, as we're rounding the end of this conversation, I think I would like to offer something to leaders that are listening, tuning in, wherever they find this, this conversation. And kind of a little bit of like an add-on to the question that we asked at the beginning, because the question that we asked at the beginning was how would how did we ask it again? I have it written down. How could you be more of that leader than the other thing? How could you be more of that leader? Yeah, how could you be more of that leader? And then, and then I guess maybe, you know, kind of what I would love to leave people with is how could you be more of that leader? And what does that look like? What would that look like for you? Because I think it's very important that just like when you're driving, the first one of the first things that you learn in driver training, at least in Saskatchewan, where I grew up, because it was a lot of one-way or uh single-lane highways, was that you um wherever you looked, wherever you focused was what you would drive towards, right? And at night, you had you when you're a young driver, you have to learn if a car's coming towards you, don't look into the headlights, you look on the lines on the side of the road, right? That's that and that served me for X number of years now. But that is how life is. To me, that is such a lovely metaphor of life, is that we we are literally going to drive to whatever we're focused, wherever we're focused on. We're gonna steer towards that. Yes. So, you know, when you think about when you think about what could what could changing that or shifting that, be being and feeling that more often, leading from that place more often, what could it look like for you going forward? That's a very different, it's a different feelings or a different vision, I guess, depending on on what people connect with. And I just want to offer that to leaders as you're hearing this, that you you're not, you don't have to stay in a fixed state. And we hear where we live and lead and operate day by day in a world that is always putting limiting language around everything we do. Yes. Yes. And the opportunity for us as leaders is to think differently about that.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

It is. And I love the way you're describing that because here's the difference. As a leader that notices that you're fragmented, because each of us is going to look at our calendar and go, oh, yes, I'm fragmented. Look at those days. Instead of thinking of it as broken, fragmented is slightly different. Because if we look at all the fragments, if we put them back together and we go back to our days of early arithmetic, the fractions all fit together into one hole. They all come back together.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

So that the fragments are pieces that you want to bring back. And so perhaps another question to people listening is what are the pieces that might have broken off, and pieces of that are fragmented that you want to bring back in for your being as a leader.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

I like that. Yeah, that's a fantastic question. That's a good question. And as coaches, we love good questions. We do. So if you if you've enjoyed this episode or any of the previous episodes that you have been tuning into, please don't forget to like and subscribe, and then you'll get notified of new episodes coming or share it with somebody that you think could use this insight that we have here. And if you want some more clarity, why don't you head over to wholehuman.global and you can take our leadership clarity diagnostic. It's a quick, quick little diagnostic that you can take, three to five minutes and get some insight on areas that you you have clarity on, or may have more clarity than you give yourself credit for, but some areas that are opportunities for you to lean into and grow into. And don't forget also, one more thing, Carol, can you tell us about what we have coming up in May? Because I am super excited about it.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yes. Well, one of the wonderful pieces that we have used in our own work is our education as coaches. So we are piloting a coach training program that will be applied for accreditation with the International Coaching Federation. Yeah. It is a level two program. So it is a full, complete education to become a coach. And if you want to take a look at that, we're going to have some links towards that. It begins May 2nd with a four-hour intensive on a Saturday. You can come and spend time with us in this wonderful journey of becoming a coach, which can add so much to your capacity as a leader, as a partner, as a parent. Coaching fits in every situation. Yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

Okay. Thanks for tuning in and joining us, and we will see you next time. Thanks. Bye.