The goal of sharing our compulsion is to find co-conspirators

At Project Nexus, our focus is to enable leaders to understand their compulsion and sharpen their ability to share it. This is important, because it connects who we are with why we lead, giving each of us our best chance to lead with conviction, imagination, and sustainability. For example, there is little value in leading a group of people over 70 if your compulsion is to make a difference as a pre-school teacher.

This can sound very self-focused. But the sharing component isn’t just about telling someone your compulsion and stories—it’s also about listening to their response.

Listening, in this context, is much more than just noticing whether they understand you. It’s primarily about listening for connection. Do they share your compulsion? Do they see what you see? Why do they hold their opinions about your compulsion? In this respect, it’s less about our compulsion and more about deep listening to their response.

My favorite way to practice this deep listening is called looping, a technique from Gary Friedman at the Center for Understanding in Conflict.

His work offers a powerful way to prove to the other person that you’re not just talking, but really listening and trying to understand them, even if they profoundly disagree with your compulsion.

So, after you’ve shared your compulsion, follow these four steps of looping:

First, listen to what the other person is saying in reply. Listen for what seems most important to them. What are they agreeing with and why? What are they most upset about? What do they want to tell you underneath what they’re saying—listen for metaphors, strong words, and the stories they might add that you never mentioned.

Next, use your own language to play it back to them and see if you’re understanding them correctly. Summarise what you’re hearing in your own words.

Third, check if you got it right. Literally ask, “Is that right? Am I missing anything?” Be genuinely curious. Really want to know the answer.

What Gary talks about, and what I find in practice, is that when the fourth step goes well, people add to or correct what I’ve said back to them, or they agree or disagree with me. This response is so important because now we are both deeply listening to each other. We’re starting to understand each other, and we’re starting to trust that each of us wants to understand.

And this understanding is the goal of sharing our leader-compulsion. Because when we share, we’re really searching for co-conspirators—people who might join with us and change the world. If you share, and they say no, after going through that looping deep listening, at least you know they understood you. However, if you share and listen and deeply understand each other, and they say, “I totally agree,” now you have a co-conspirator to work with and the beginning of a movement that might change the world.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​