On letting go of outcomes and ego, staying in the process, and what a potter’s wheel teaches you about leading and living well.
I went back to ceramics this month after a two year break.
In a moment of optimism or perhaps overconfidence, I booked onto the intermediate class rather than the beginners which were all full. I am by some distance the least experienced person in the room and I am certainly the newest to the potter’s wheel.
I did not produce a single thing worth keeping in my first three hours.
At the end of the class, I gathered every attempt into a ball, wrapped it in plastic, and packed it away in the cupboard, painstakingly cleaned the potter’s bowl, washed the table and with nothing to show for efforts I left. Ready to start again next week.
Around me others were continuing with long term projects they had started in the previous term and were packing away their quite awesome creations or putting them on the drying rack.
And sitting with that in the car on the way home, with the absence of a finished thing, a few limiting beliefs, along with a healthy dose of imposter syndrome, (with three hours of effort that produced nothing to show) I felt something I hadn’t expected.
Relief. And something close to flow state if not joy.
Ceramics is, at its heart, a practice in letting go.
You can arrive with a great idea and ambitious expectations. With a shape in mind, a purpose, a product, or an image of what you are trying to make, as those around me were all doing and that intention does matter. I am not saying it does not for one minute, because it gives you direction, something to move towards. But from the moment your hands meet the clay, the process begins to have its own logic, it’s own organic life direction, and certainly it’s own ideas.
You wedge the clay first, kneading it thoroughly to remove air bubbles that will cause it to explode in the kiln. Then you centre it on the wheel, which requires a particular kind of pressure and concentration- firm and patient at the same time. The intensity causing me to forget to breath at times yesterday.
Then you open it, pull the walls up, shape it. Or use tools such as the simple rolling pin to flatten into plate like entities. Perhaps you join two pieces, add extruded clay to form an edge and try to work the piece to “satisfactory” if not your personal idea of perfection. Then it dries, it is trimmed, then bisque fired and then glazed. Then fired again. Maybe there is some extra decorating in there too.
At every single one of those stages, something can go wrong. The walls can collapse, or the base can crack. You can trim too deeply as a woman in my class did last week, ruining three beautiful bowls she had spent the previous session making. She had gone just a fraction too far on each one and they broke cleanly in her hands.
And then there are the things entirely outside your control. Someone else’s piece exploding in the kiln and taking yours with it. A glaze that behaves differently than expected – a regular occurrence for me new to the world of glazing. The particular mood of the fire that day. We are at the mercy of all of it. The prevailing energies that have different ideas.
You prepare as well as you can. You can bring all your skill and your attention and intention. And then, at a certain point, you let go. Because you have to. It is futile to cling tightly to that which is outside your circle of control.
Why we struggle to let go
Most of us have been trained through our education, by organisations, by the culture of productivity and output to measure the value of effort by its result. The finished product or the delivered project. A visible, measurable thing that can be pointed to and assessed and proves something about you or your ability.
Which means we have also been trained to experience the process as merely instrumental. A means to an end or something to get through on the way to the outcome. As such we pay little attention to it and value it even less. The goal is the focus.
But this creates a particular kind of suffering. Because so much of what actually happens in work, in relationships, in life is not within our control. We can prepare and of course this is my job as a coach to others. We can plan and we can bring our full skill and attention, yet still the piece can crack. The project can change direction and the outcomes we were working towards can shift or disappear entirely.
When we are attached only to the outcome, every one of those moments feels like failure. Like something has gone wrong. Like we have not been good enough.
When we are invested in the process however, when the doing itself has meaning then something altogether different becomes possible. We can respond to what is actually happening rather than what we planned. We can adapt, learn, begin again and we can gather everything into a ball and come back next week, curious rather than defeated. Knowing our worth doesn’t depend on it and validated rather always producing something valuable.
What this looks like in organisations
The cultures that struggle most with uncertainty are almost always the ones most rigidly attached to outcomes and their plans. To the version of the future that was agreed in a boardroom six months ago and has since become untethered from reality. Forcing something to fit or work that is no longer relevant.
Leaders in those cultures spend enormous energy trying to control what cannot be controlled and experience every deviation from the plan as a threat rather than information to be gathered.
The cultures that navigate change well are very different and not because they plan less or care less about results. But because they have also learned to value the quality of the process itself. The thinking and the beauty of creativity. The collaboration and the learning that happens when something goes unexpectedly awry along with the capacity to adapt without losing their footing.
This is not about lowering standards or abandoning ambition. Far from it. It is about understanding that the path to “excellent outcomes” runs directly through excellent processes and that excellence in process requires presence and attention, not just planning.
The leader who can stay fully in the process feeling curious, responsive, undefended is the one whose team can too. And that quality of presence is where the best work actually happens. Mistakes lead to better results and learning and sustainable growth. A letting go of the ego which opens the way for collaboration.
Beginning again
There is something quietly radical about gathering your failed attempts into a ball and starting over.
In ceramics, unfired clay is endlessly forgiving and nothing is wasted. Everything goes back into the process and in fact I brought a bag with me from over two years ago that I reconstituted with a bit of water. Clay is evergreen in this way. The attempt that collapsed becomes the material for the next attempt carrying with it everything you learned in the making of it. Embodied learning.
I find that genuinely moving and at the same time I find it instructive. Perhaps why I find myself coming back to ceramics rather than other art forms which also call to me.
Because most of us are not nearly as willing to begin again as we need to be. We hold onto the failed version too long, defending it, trying to rescue it, unwilling to acknowledge that it has run its course because beginning again feels like admitting something. Like loss or perhaps just not being good enough.
But in ceramics and, I would argue, in most things worth doing, beginning again is not loss. It is the process working exactly as it should and I remind myself time and time again, enough is good enough!
For individuals
- Notice where you are so focused on the outcome that you have stopped being present in the process and what that costs you
- Ask yourself: if this didn’t produce the result I planned, would the doing still have had value? Often, honestly, the answer is yes
- Consider what you are holding onto that might need to be gathered into a ball and begun again without that being a failure but a new beginning. Sometimes there is power in knowing when to move on
For leaders
- Examine your relationship with plans that have stopped reflecting reality. Are you adapting, or defending?
- Model process over perfection – let your team see you learn from what goes wrong, begin again, stay curious rather than controlled
- Create space for the unexpected – not every deviation is a problem. Some are the most important information you will receive
For HR and culture leaders
- Look at how your organisation responds when things don’t go to plan – is the culture one of learning or one of blame?
- Build process quality including reflection, adaptation, psychological permission to fail and begin again into how you measure and develop leadership
- A culture that only values outcomes will eventually stop taking the risks that produce them
Closing reflection
I will go back to that class next week. I will unwrap my ball of clay, wedge it carefully, centre it on the wheel, and try again. I have no idea what I will make and in all probability I may make nothing worth keeping.
And I am, genuinely, looking forward to it – trying more and more to let go of attachment.
Because somewhere in those three hours of trying, failing, collapsing, beginning again, something is happening that has nothing to do with the finished piece. A kind of attention and a kind of presence. A kind of learning that only comes from being fully in the process without needing it to produce anything in particular. Along with the reminder that I am not behind, perfection is not reality and being there is enough.
The doing is the thing.
Not as a consolation for not getting the outcome. As the whole and beautiful point.
Something I’m finding useful right now
Asking at the start of a piece of work “what would I learn from this even if the outcome didn’t go to plan?” It quietly shifts the relationship with what follows.
A reflection to sit with
Where in your work or life are you so attached to a particular outcome that you have stopped being genuinely present in the process of getting there? And what might you be missing as a result?
A quote
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
Maya Angelou
