Pillar Four: Ritual
Our intention in creating Endings for Beginnings is to build a hub of resources to support leaders and their organisations to start conversations about brighter beginnings and healthier organisations, facilitated by better attending to endings.
This is the fourth in a series of posts, taking an initial dive into the practical application of our Four Pillars of Better Endings for better beginnings: Reality, Emotion, Accomplishment and Ritual. These Four Pillars first appeared in an article that we shared with leaders in July 2020.
RITUAL
This work is most usefully done, after you have attended to Pillar 1, Reality, including the messy stuff, and Pillar 2 Emotions, and Pillar 3 Accomplishments. It is also best done with support.
A ritual is a formalised, collective and sometimes institutionalised ceremony, a series of actions in a prescribed order. It can be seen as a performance, and act which is lived through emotion and not thought. The most ancient ritual we know, across all faiths and cultures, is the ritual of the ultimate goodbye, in the death of a loved one. These rituals have been created to give us a sense of safety and structure around how we do that and support us in moving into a future without that person.
Rituals come in many forms from events to celebrate mergers or completed projects, or the leaving ‘do’, or the making of a speech or a ceremony to present an award or gift. Schools do it well for their students; offering their young people yearbooks, graduation or prize giving ceremonies, proms, T-shirts with all the class names. The military also have their way of acknowledging loss through ritual.
Rituals can be used in organisations to acknowledge feelings, acknowledge loss, give an unspoken place for difficult emotions such as sadness or guilt. Rituals also celebrate what has been and equally offer a place to celebrate and acknowledge what will be next. One pre-pandemic example from a client was a mug that was produced for everyone post merger who went on into the new organisation, it said, “we survived the cull”. In that collective gift and brief phrase an emotion was captured and acknowledged with wry humour.
A gentler example. A leader who was retiring and loved hiking was given a beautiful acknowledgement by his department who planned a walk along Hadrian’s Wall with him. He started the walk with his boss, and his colleagues surprised him by popping up and joining him for different parts of the day’s journey along the way.
As a result of the pandemic, it has been very challenging for many of us to find ways to ensure these rituals take place. We have seen some creative and moving examples of individuals and organisations finding ways to do so. Even if they have felt unsatisfactory compared with how they would be done before lockdowns and physical distancing, it has still been so important that they take place, and some kind of ritual has almost always been better than nothing. It is worth noting too, that it is never too late to do this work, and we anticipate many rituals being a part of how we adjust post pandemic.
There are many ways we can use everything we have learned from the first three pillars to say a proper goodbye to something, in the form of a ritual of some kind. In doing so we are able to turn our energy and attention more fully to the future because the accomplishments, facts and emotions have been given their rightful place. And as with the Accomplishments Pillar, if you are not able to do this work now, or even if years have passed since the opportunity for the ritual was missed, it is still work you can choose to quietly do yourself that will have impact.
So let’s complete the work you have been doing across these four blog posts by looking at some questions on this fourth pillar of Ritual. We are aware as we offer this, that this is an area that people often choose not to go towards for the very reasons that we wrote the original article, in that as well as being work that releases energy, restores or embeds pride and sense of strength and builds relationships, it can also be painful, challenging and emotive work. We encourage you if you choose to do this work, to seek support if you think you need it. We encourage you to work on you, not use it to work on others unless you feel safe and qualified to do so.
Start with you. Work safely. Seek support.
What are all the ways you have ever witnessed or heard of an ending of any kind being acknowledged? List them – create a resource – maybe ask some other people.
How would you love to be acknowledged when you leave?
What rituals would offer acknowledgement of an ending amid some of the messy tricky stuff? And what might honour the Accomplishments you noted in Pillar three.
Write a 'letter that doesn't get sent' that acknowledges all Four Pillars.
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