Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone

Dr. Michelle Buck to help us out. Buck is a clinical professor of leadership at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where she served as the school’s first director of leadership initiatives.

We must never tolerate dehumanization—the primary instrument of violence that has been used in every genocide recorded throughout history.

The first insight is the difference between lying and bullshitting that’s explained in the quote that opens this chapter: It’s helpful to think of lying as a defiance of the truth and bullshitting as a wholesale dismissal of the truth.

When I get to the point where I’m like, Screw this! It’s just too hard. I’m too lost! I hear Maya Angelou’s words again: The price is high. The reward is great.

That’s common enemy intimacy. I don’t really know you, nor am I invested in our relationship, but I do like that we hate the same people and have contempt for the same ideas. Common enemy intimacy is counterfeit connection and the opposite of true belonging.

He writes, “As a result, we now live in a giant feedback loop, hearing our own thoughts about what’s right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear, and the neighborhoods we live in.”

Joseph Campbell wrote, “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”

In all of my work, I choose to focus on “conflict transformation,” rather than the more traditional term “conflict resolution.” To me, the latter suggests going back to a previous state of affairs, and has a connotation that there may be a winner or a loser. How will this disagreement be resolved? Whose solution will be selected as the “better” one

One of the key pieces of advice I give my executive and graduate students is to explicitly address the underlying intentions. What is the conversation about, and what is it really about?