Turning Over Rocks

As individuals and organizations we often do not show everything that we are. Some times we do this for good reasons, waiting for the right moment to reveal important information or to keep trade secrets. Sometimes we don’t because it would seem to be inappropriate in a social situation. Other times we do not show ourselves for less noble reasons including a desire to create a false image in someone else’s mind of who we are as a person or organization or to manipulate a situation to meet our own ends. .

We also hide ourselves from full view of the world for many unintentional reasons. When we lack a full awareness of who we are unknown aspects of ourselves take up residence in our internal darkness.

This is consistent with the thinking of Carl Jung who speaks of the shadow side of each of us as being comprised of repressed feelings, weaknesses and instincts. In this thinking the deeper that we have repressed these feeling the darker and denser our shadow becomes.

We also hide things of which we are ashamed. There are many sources of shame some self inflicted others passed onto us as children in our families but these feelings remain active in our lives as we advance through life.

Organizations also hide behaviors. Often referred to as explicit or implicit behaviors we look to an organization to see what they say they do (explicit) versus what we see them do (implicit). It is not uncommon for conversations about these types of behaviors to go underground and becoming the unspeakable.

Anyone that has ever tended a garden or explored a forest knows that dark damp places under rocks tend to be fertile and teeming with life. Not always pretty life but active life. In our lives and in our families and organizations life is growing in the darkness as well.

What would it take for you turn over these rocks to find the hidden life underneath? What would it take for you to speak the unspeakable?

That which is hidden in the dark to both others and ourselves has the ability to exercise power over us. It is not required that you broadcast what you find in the darkness but some of it may well be worth dragging into the light.

Values At Work

We all have values, whether we know it or not. Values in this case are defined as enduring beliefs or ideals held by groups or individuals that guide us in differentiating what is right and wrong about our behaviors. Values are influential in guiding actions and outcomes.

Values are interesting to me. Its one of those things that everyone has but few stop to examine. They are always present but not always explicit. Becoming aware of the values that guide us in our decision-making and behaviors is essential work. We can only truly understand our motivations when we understand our values.

Leaders cannot dictate values and parents and teachers cannot mandate them. We learn them from our culture. We learn what is acceptable by seeing how others behave. When I am new or uncertain about those around me behaving the same way they do makes me feel safe.

We also must always beware of professed values. People and organizations like to lay claim to high standards driven by noble idealized values. When carefully scrutinized they often do not hold up. That is to say that lots of groups and individuals espouse certain beliefs but when their actions are closely examined, what they say they do, is not really what they do.

As a manager I learned long ago that my employees would demonstrate every behavior I did, good and bad. Parents tell me the same thing happens with their kids. (My mother really used to seriously say “do as I say, not as I do” and it didn’t work.) You can tell me what to do but if you don’t do it, I don’t have to either. In hierarchical situations when I demonstrate the same behaviors you do, how will you ever tell me what I do is wrong?

Sadly people in influential positions who are unaware of their values, or who have chosen values not in the best interest of those they represent do untold damage. Currently in our culture greed is the most common example of this. When leaders of our country practice greed (or any other negative action or vice) we are given permission to do the same.

If we are interested in positively influencing others with values we must demonstrate personal integrity by aligning our values with our actions. Minimizing the difference between what I say I value and taking actions that are visibly driven by those values makes me a better person by increasing my personal integrity.

Early in my teens I was required to memorize the Scout Law and often use it as an example of enduring values. It reads:

A Scout is:
Trustworthy
Loyal
Helpful
Friendly
Courteous
Kind
Obedient
Cheerful
Thrifty
Brave
Clean
Reverent

Though I have had difficulty with some of them (obedient, clean and reverent come to mind) and have always thought that “fairness” was missing, one could do a lot worse than try and live by these values.

Others will come to know us by our values. They will know if we were kind and considerate, generous and truthful. We will be remembered for our loyalty and our integrity, our hard work and our sense of humor. We will be known for these, not because of saying that this is who we are, but by taking actions that demonstrate it.

Personal Mastery

Time to deepen and broaden what I am trying to do with these writings. My idea of how to accomplish this is to show a little bit more of who I am and how I tick. I also have a strong sense that it is time to lighten up a bit, at least that’s my personal sense after reviewing what I have been producing. Taking things “to seriously” is a criticism that I have heard all my life, so my sense of needing to become lighter is undoubtedly a reflection of dragging that piece of baggage around for a number of years.

Interestingly other feedback from those who are close to me is that these writings are very much “my voice” and do reflect the way I speak of these issues. More importantly is the suggestion I should not confuse being “to serious” with the genuine sense of concern and care I have about the current state of the world in which we live.

I do hold true that a conscious effort to “manage” our awareness and our actions can help us to challenge personal default behaviors and autonomic emotional responses that create a lot more problems than they solve. I am also deeply concerned that our reactions to stimulus are being manipulated and managed by groups and organizations with self-serving agendas that do not benefit us as individuals, communities and families.

When I think about it I could never be too serious about such important issues.

What I am writing about today, all this about being too serious, and hearing my own “voice” brings me back to the notion of Personal Mastery. Not Self Mastery as in self-control although this is important, I am speaking of Personal Mastery as defined by Peter Senge in his landmark book “The Fifth Discipline.

Personal mastery as articulated by Senge is about creating what one wants in life and in work and in this is sense is an every changing discipline and practice. The elements of Personal Mastery include, personal vision, personal purpose, holding creative tension between vision and current reality, mitigating the impact of deeply rooted beliefs that are contrary to personal mastery, commitment to truth, and understanding the subconscious. Those with a well-developed sense of Personal Mastery tend to exhibit the following characteristics:

• They are purpose driven and know what lies behind their goals
• Their vision is clear and articulate and more than just a good idea
• They accept reality and do not see it as the enemy
• They continuously seek clarity, sharpening their sense of reality
• They are extremely curious and inquisitive
• They embrace rather than resist the forces of change
• They are connected to those around them and life itself
• They sense the larger creative process of which they are a part and understand that they can influence but not control it

This is what I want from myself, when I am at my best, and really humming along these are the characteristics I demonstrate. What is most clear to me is that without some sense of Personal Mastery, there is no chance that the self-dialogue about what is too serious and what is not, could never take place.

Bridging Differences

Have you ever noticed the natural tendency we have to spend time with people who are more like us than not? Much of the diversity work done in the late 20th Century was a focused effort to break this sort of dominance in the work place. Team development also requires that we hire people with styles and skills that different from each other for the sake of increased productivity. Work places though are controlled environments in which the issue can be addressed through regulation or in some cases legislation.

In our personal lives or in social settings we are guided by preference. This is where we seek out those who share our beliefs and behaviors preferring to spend time with those who think like us, look like us and act like us. We do this because it makes us feel safe and it makes us feel comfortable. It is somewhat effortless and natural but it can be limiting and may have significant consequences.

Conflict is often created by the differences between values and beliefs held by one group or individual and the next. When we choose to spend time with those more like us we reinforce what we believe as being right while those who disagree are judged as being wrong. In its extreme this sense of “rightness” and “wrongness” begins the process of dehumanizing those with whom we disagree. This is the process by which we turn people into “the other”.

In social science the concept of “the other” or “otherness” is used to describe the way that societies and groups exclude or exile those who do not fit societal models. “The other” is also a philosophical and psychological term used to describe a process of self-awareness through which we learn who “we” are by comparing ourselves to those who are different than we are.

This is the process of discrimination, the ability to tell the differences between things. Right or wrong is a judgment. When we make judgments about the differences between others and ourselves without questioning them without reflection we are headed down a path that history has taught us, may result in murder, war, and genocide.

Our tendency to create “the other” and make it “wrong” or “right” is rooted in our evolutionary need to survive. The old brain, that part of our primal selves that is tribal in nature, keeps reminding us that our survival is what matter most. In the societal sense of early human life the appearance of “the other” became an immediate threat to survival. Destruction of “the other” was essential if we were to have enough food for our existing tribe. Right or wrong decision-making was pretty clear-cut. After eons of evolution it should not then be surprising that we as humans are quick to judge right or wrong with a default belief that survival depends upon destroying those who are different.

We need to break this cycle, and I believe that begins with each of us. Speaking with younger people I have learned that they hold a much greater capacity for cultural differences than those of us in our later years ever did. This is where the diversity programs paid off. The Millennials are far more prepared to live in a “connected” world, far better equipped to bridge the differences between values and beliefs. They appear to hold a much larger view of the world, without a need to judge what they see. The need for judgment may come in time, and perhaps the idealism of youth will wane but for now it gives me great hope.

Managing Fear

We all live lives of endless possibility and most of us are free enough in someway to pursue an inexhaustible range of options in how we choose to live. When we honestly confront the knowledge that we live in a universe of unlimited choice it is common to experience significant levels of fear and anxiety. In response we often instinctively retreat to a more manageable scope of reality.

Sadly through this retreat we deny ourselves the experience of living fully and our gifts and abilities fail to fully blossom. When we react from fear we trade potential for perceived safety.

Albert Einstein understood our need to extend our thinking beyond self limiting beliefs when he wrote:

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Einstein in his wisdom shows us the way forward. Transcending fear and anxiety becomes possible when we shift our thinking beyond day-to-day life and grasp the whole that Einstein speaks of. This experience quickly teaches that we are not alone in our fear making it easier to safely open to possibilities beyond those that we normally imagine.

These are the behaviors that our families, communities, organizations, and the whole universe needs from us. Everything good that we ever wanted lives on the far side of our fears and in the words of Tom Petty “most of the things I fear never happen anyway”.

Stimulus Package:

Lots of thinking about stimulus these days thought I would offer my own.

There is no managing without understanding the connection between thought and action, between stimulus and response. Everything that I am as a Manager is informed by the continuous duality of need for thought and the need for action. Success requires that I get them in the right order.

To accomplish this I use a variation of an action-learning model. There is nothing really new about this thinking, it came out of the UK in the 1940’s, and continues to be applied

Whenever I reflect on what it is I am managing I find myself at some stage of this process. What is the stimulus, the idea or need that motivates my push to action? Then is the question what skills or resources do I kneed to take that action? This is followed by action and its results and then by learning. Learning is then captured and applied to my new thinking. The end product is learning from experience.



The message here is that none of us ever goes straight to action; every action is preceded by a stimulus. Between stimulus and response resides choice. Thinking about our processes by identifying the stimulus that precedes our action provides us with insight about who we are and how we operate. It also allows us to narrow the difference between what we thought we wanted and what we ended up with. This is an example of making better choices to get better results.