At the relational level, the Rough Ashlar is revealed through feedback, friction, and the way our unfinished edges land on other people. This episode explores how to invite honest feedback without collapsing into people-pleasing, how to ask better questions that generate real insight, and how compassion grows when we remember that everyone else is also in their own rough ashlar phase. Here, growth becomes a shared project: our work on ourselves is informed and refined by the people around us.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Use specific, open-ended questions to turn feedback into real relational insight
• Build a trusted “feedback team” to help expose blind spots and growth opportunities
• Remember that others are also rough ashlars, and meet their unfinishedness with compassion

💬 Featured Quotes

(All quotes verbatim from the transcript, with start timestamps.)

• 0:00:00 — “The relational interplay of the rough ashlar is very, very interesting when you start to sit down and think about it.”
• 0:00:12 — “There is a lot going on when people give you feedback or when you solicit feedback or when you interact in the world that it's really difficult to put names and causes and origin stories behind all of the things that are happening.”
• 0:00:29 — “If you're trying to create meaning in this world and understand what's happening, you need to begin to develop relational understanding with how your behavior might be perceived and that could be creating outcomes and etc. etc.”
• 0:00:58 — “Those feedback loops first and foremost as we talked about in the previous episode can be done on your own. It can also be done with other people. You can ask for feedback on how you might handle the situation differently.”
• 0:01:50 — “The questions that you are going to want to ask like a good diagnostic, a diagnostic, are questions like how might I have approached this situation differently.”
• 0:02:30 — “You are looking for logic and a rational understanding of a situation and if you are pursuing self development you will get a social capital based response or emotional response where folks are reluctant to give you honest and genuine feedback.”
• 0:03:21 — “In the same place, that relational component of the rough ashlar, this is also the origin story of compassion.”
• 0:03:54 — “You are on your way from one place to another and so when we find someone whose behavior really drives us crazy, again look inward first to find out if there's opportunities there to grow.”

🔗 Explore Related Episodes

• The Fellow Craft Mason Series – Part II: The Work of Connection
  Explores the relational dimension of the Fellow Craft’s journey, focusing on connection, social capital, and how our work interacts with the people and systems around us.
• Staying Unfinished – Holding Tension Between Work and Result
  Reflects on living inside the ongoing process of growth, echoing how relational feedback keeps us aware that we and others remain works in progress.
• The Lodge and the Open Space: Making Room for Growth
  Uses the image of the Lodge as prepared space to explore how we create room—internally and communally—for honest conversation, feedback, and transformation.

Creators & Guests

• Brian Mattocks - Host