according to script, almost

Ever have one of those situations where there are explosions all around you and you somehow get caught in the cross-fire? One of the hallmarks of getting better is learning not to take things personally when this happens.

But perhaps it's all because I've been present at the launching of any number of groups and there's almost always a pattern. Initially someone's full of energy and starts a group. As members join (which has to happen in order for there to be a group larger than one), the group changes and morphs, perhaps away from the founder's original vision. Some tiny straw makes the founder explode and depart with a great deal of drama. The group continues, or doesn't, changing with the tides as members come and go. Rinse, repeat.

I've been on just about all sides of this particular script, and it's just happened again, much to my great puzzlement. But I suppose it's all to be expected.

1. The group forms. Founder is full of enthusiasm.
A small group of technical writers recently started meeting in my town. We get together monthly to talk about -- well who knows what. It's partly social and partly professional networking for about an hour, once a month. The founder says she wanted a way to meet people in town and so she started this group.

2. The group starts to morph.
I had some ideas and figured our founder didn't want to do it all by herself (now I think she did). I proposed some ideas, thought I got a nod (which was perhaps more of a "what an interesting idea, now drop it" response), and went ahead and implemented them. The ideas involved making it easier to communicate with "members" by forming a mailing list, and then advertising the mailing list to more than the handful of people who knew about it.

A lot of people signed up for our mailing list, some from quite a distance away. I figure "the more the merrier" and if people want to show up, well, either they'll keep coming, or use us as an example to form their own group, or just remain connected to the very informal group as lurkers. I think those are the only options.

3. The straw is introduced.
I overstepped our founder's bounds and she let me know but in a "I wasn't expecting this, but it's FINE" way. I figured we'd get over it, the group would be stronger -- it would include more than two people -- and we'd move on. But no. This week, no message went out about our upcoming meeting on Saturday, so I really put myself out there and sent out a reminder (after waiting for a few days for a response to my query to the founder). That was the needed straw in the predetermined script.

4. Drama happens.
And yes, what happened was very predictable. I got lots of angry emails. I was appointed, without my consent, as the new leader of the group. A lot of messages went out to the group (and were delivered out of order, requiring more messages). I sent what I hoped were calm, mature responses to the founder only, suggesting that we talk about things and work them through. I got progressively angrier answers. I kinda stopped reading them (bad me). I just figured that our cofounder is battling a lot of demons and working through some of them with this particular situation as a convenient context.

5. The group continues.
So now that I've been appointed, I figure, why not go for it. Why share all the drama -- it's kinda boring anyways. We're meeting tomorrow. I assume a handful of people will show up as usual. I've sent a message to the group saying that we should do a level-set -- talk about whether we want to keep meeting, and if so, what we want the group to become. I figure that I don't want to run the group by myself (though I'm not sure why -- there's not much to it). But if someone wants to co-run it, we can see how that goes for a while.

6. We depart from the script.
And last night, I came home to a long phone message from our founder that was full of apologies. This was the part that did not go with the script. The founder said that she'd talked it through with a friend, she was very sorry to have dumped the leadership in my lap without my permission, and yes, she would like to get together and talk things out.

I take it that this represents movement and change for our founder, so I'm impressed with her for reaching out.

And can I say here that it represents some movement and change for me? Years ago, I would have gotten hooked immediately and would have joined into the drama. I would have tried very hard to understand what I'd "done" to provoke this response (because it had to be about me, yes?) and I would have tried to understand all the things that led the other person to their reaction.

I probably would have "risen" to the occasion (or more likely, fallen to it) and responded in an equally emotional and angry way. But this time around, I mostly knew that the reaction had very little to do with me. Emotionally, I was annoyed, but I was more interested in making peace and moving on. I also didn't want to drag our mailing list into the whole thing if at all possible. I won't say that I was entirely calm internally, but I hope I conveyed some level of peace throughout the proceedings.

And perhaps that all provided an opening for our founder. I may not know, and it's not important unless she wants to tell me about it. So onward.

And I wouldn't be surprised if the group remains exactly the same after all this -- a monthly brief get-together to talk about professional and local topics of interest. We'll see.