Self-Estimation
Tim Jackins’ introduction to his and Diane Shisk’s self-estimations at the 2013 World Conference of the RC Communities
The purpose of self-estimation is to unite a group with its leadership. At the World Conference, it’s about the job that Diane Shisk1 and I each do.
Leadership has many obstacles. Most of them consist of distress. We all have distresses about leadership, and this can prevent a clear understanding between the people being led and the people leading. So we need to make efforts to keep building this understanding. One of the ways we do this is with self-estimation (which, like many other RC ideas and practices that our lives have come to rely on, came from my father2).
In self-estimation, the leader gets to talk about his or her functioning in the leadership role. Other things are often referred to tangentially, but the emphasis is on his or her functioning in that role. I get to try to describe to you my picture of my functioning—the places where I think my work has gone well and the places where I think it hasn’t. Concisely. Then some of you get to talk about where you think I function well and where things could be improved. This is a useful process.
It’s not about whether you like me or don’t like me. That’s only tangentially relevant. It’s about how I function in my role. We try to keep our respective distresses from creeping in as if they were part of reality, and the people who speak to me, or to Diane, need to have that in mind. We will try to select people who have substantial ongoing contact with us and therefore a chance to have real information.
We need all of you thinking about us in order for us to function better and better. However, we will only be able to select a small number of you. It would be useful to have the thoughts of everyone here, but we don’t have a good way to make that possible. This is our best approximation of a full process.
Diane will select the people who will speak to me, and I will select the people who will speak to Diane. People will raise their hands to indicate they would like to speak. More may request to speak than we will have time for, so some of you will not be selected. That doesn’t signify much of anything except the limitations of our process.
So let’s do two minutes each way,3 and then you get to listen to me.
1 Diane Shisk is the Alternate International Reference Person for the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities.
2 Harvey Jackins
3 “Do two minutes each way” means take turns listening to each other for two minutes each.