Connection Policy: On Romance & Sexuality in Leadership

Notes / Clarifications from Discussions:

Acknowledging the mitigation of risk:
Risk itself is not just “risk,” it’s an expression of our being greater tuned in to the culture and more awareness of the impact our individual actions have on our team and the practice itself—that a full integrity of our leading includes care for the practice itself and ask how it wants and needs to be expressed. It’s also recognizing that there are almost always more powerful ways to work with that very same sexual energy and attraction that have less negative side effects.

More on the intention:

We hope this will hold leaders to an increasing rigor with respect to acting out their pain, eroticized wounds, hiding their deeper self behind blind submission and/or deferring responsibility to rules (which is often an ‘acting in’ instead of an ‘acting out’) or using sexual energies to get other needs met; while holding and seeing the innocence that drives these energies as well.

While at the same time allowing for the beauty and expression of sexual energy and attraction, and seeing that in the extreme prohibition leads to abuse—these parts of our Being beg for expression and when not given a healthy outlet, they’ll find a more nefarious, less conscious way to be lived and known. The willingness to feel and admit these things is a huge part of the transformative work. And because sex is unique in our Western/European culture (at minimum), it holds a lot of potential transformative power when skillfully worked with. Finally since we cannot protect anyone from all dangers (and attempts to do so usually backfire, as classic and contemporary myths like Sleeping Beauty and Disney’s film Frozen show so masterfully), our best effort is to nurture the inner resources, strengths, and capacities that each human already has.