‘Who is Wise?’ 17 Reflection questions for Rebel Leaders on Queen Elizabeth II’s death
‘Who is wise? One who learns from every person.’ Pirkei Avot.
So what might a Republican, Rebel, Integral Leadership Coach learn from Queen Elizabeth’s legacy? And what might we all?
When you have conflicted feelings about someone, do you find yourself wrestling to figure out if they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’? ‘Worth keeping around’ or ‘need to cut them out’?
What if, when we have conflicting feelings about the impact of someone’s behaviours and choices, we don’t force ourselves to choose, but make room for it all? Perhaps there is something to learn when we see them in their complexity, rather than forcing a judgment or archetype onto them.
While social media catches fire as social media does, I have been quietly reflecting on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. Trying to hush the noise and be present with the spectrum of reactions it has evoked for me.
For a while it was all ‘BUTs’ - a tussle of values and commitments. The ‘good’ / ‘bad’ wrestle.
Until I softened into accepting them as ‘ANDs’…
As a woman leader, there are aspects of Queen Elizabeth’s leadership that I admire and am thankful for.
The feminine energy she brought to her role, and the way in which she became a female role model for many women. (I don’t underestimate the unmeasurable impact of men living with a female head of state in a patriarchal world, either.) Her subtle wisdom. Her intelligence and diplomacy. Her sense of humour. Her charitable giving and hospitality – which I once enjoyed at one of her garden parties as a staff member of a charity. They way she took on the challenge of bringing people together in difficult times, succeeding with grace where politicians and pundits failed. Her dedication to what she believed in until the very end. Definitely elements of my Rebel Leadership here.
AND As a Republican and social justice facilitator, her family’s hereditary position of power for me underscores that meritocracy in this country is a myth. I have learned more and more in recent years about the ways in which she upheld and shored up her family’s unearned privilege. Her family’s institution has sustained untold harm to entire nations and countless people, without taking accountability for that harm, far less dismantling the system that upholds it. I feel keenly the outpouring of pain and calls for justice and reparations from those from Colonised nations. And the outpourings and silencing and rage from those who will not hear a word against the Queen, that further marginalise those expressing their pain.
AND As someone living in the world of media and spin who never met her, I am acutely aware that I never truly knew her. Much less the choices she had to make. Or her much-speculated relationships with her family.
Precious few of us did.
AND As an inclusive leadership coach, an advocate for humans to become more just and compassionate human beings, I can see there’s room for it all. That’s what it is to be human. Perhaps our job is not to square a circle of right or wrong, Royalists and Republicans battling out ‘the truth’ on Twitter, but to let more and more broken pieces find a mosaic-like wholeness.
To be, or not to be: Learning from every person
The matter of Queen Elizabeth’s legacy is one that will be decided in the public sphere. But in private, as a leadership facilitator, I got to wondering what we might learn from this moment.
I turned to two things I can count on in uncertainty – my Jewish tradition, and my journal.
We are in the Jewish month of Elul. Preceding the High Holy Days, it is a time of deep introspection – of ‘accounting of the soul.’
A Jewish principle I hold dearly says:
‘Who is wise? She/he/they who learns from every person.’ (Pirkei Avot).
In other words, we must learn how to be from others’ positive examples.
(But also – the subtext whispers - how NOT to be, from the ways in which they fell short.)
Here are some reflection questions inspired by my own personal learnings from the Queen’s personal example – how to be more deliberately like her, and also deliberately less. You can infer which inspired which.
This is the integrating practice of learning from all people. Including it all.
1) Have a read of these questions, and pick two or three that resonate.
2) Write one at the top of each page, and fill the page with your stream-of-consciousness answers.
3) Read back and reflect. What have you uncovered? And what’s is one thing you’re learning that you can bring into tomorrow?
4) If you feel moved to share your thoughts with me, I’d love to hear from you.
In the coming year…
1. How might I ensure my name becomes synonymous with what I stand for?
2. How might I become more and more Sovereign of my own life?
3. How might I support others to become more and more Sovereign of their own lives?
4. How might I more unapologetically embrace and embody my power as a woman leader? Or if I am not a woman, how might I support, resource and remove obstacles in front of women around me to lead at their best?
5. Who are the honest co-conspirators with whom I can check myself, so that my mission and behaviour truly reflect my values?
6. In what ways do I defend or make excuses for continuing harmful behaviours - and what’s my next step to becoming more accountable for my impact?
7. When I realise I’ve got it wrong, what steps might I make to take accountability, repair the harm I have done, and correct my course?
8. In what ways might I use the privilege and power I have to dismantle and rewrite the injustices around me?
9. How might I deliberately forge friendships and co-conspiratorships with people from different lived experiences, with foundations in our equal humanity?
10. How might I open up my home and my resources in the spirit of hospitality and open-heartedness?
11. How might I use humour to highlight absurdity, subtly nudging the change I want to see into being?
12. What sacrifices am I willing to make to create the change I want to see?
13. What are the boundaries I refuse to cross, so that I can create change joyfully and without resentment?
14. What must I give up today to start caring less what others think of me?
15. How might I take steps to spend more time in nature - and what might this offer me?
16. How do I want to be remembered when I die?
17. How might I start to create that legacy, today and every day?
Rest in Peace, HRH Queen Elizabeth II.
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