Because our conversation on vicious and virtuous cycles is multi-part and spread out over time, I thought it might be helpful to briefly recap the previous discussion and look ahead.
Earlier we talked about the downward spiral that master coach Rhonda Britten calls the “wheel of fear,” a vicious cycle in which our fears prompt us to perceive particular aspects of reality and take actions that ultimately perpetuate our fear. We also considered how our personal wheels of fear can shape our leadership philosophies and organizations in ways that can create the problems we seek to overcome.
I also promised to talk about the antidote — a strategy for “leaping off” the hamster wheel of fear in order to begin to create a virtuous cycle, which Britten calls the “wheel of freedom” in which we recognize and leverage strengths, and invoke and develop potentials — of both ourselves and others.
This topic is particularly relevant for down economic times: Because these times tend to trigger stress and because our reaction to stress can either help or make conditions worse, it is useful to understand the dynamics of both kinds of cycles and how to shift from a negative cycle to a positive one.
To get off the wheel of fear, we need to take action which is “counter-intuitive.” Towards that end, we are considering some principles that we can use in our “wheel of creative freedom” towards 1) creating the conditions that best support our visions, and 2) optimally engaging the conditions we experience.
The first principle we are exploring is “perception creates reality”: our perspective tends to shape the psychological and social realities that confirm our perspectives. Towards this end, we considered how our perspectives with respect to Theory X and Theory tend to generate different kinds of organizations and dynamics (which endorse those theories), and how the beliefs that we hold about ourselves and others can either nurture or suppress and diminish the potentials of ourselves and others.
Coming up, we’ll be continuing to explore the power of perception and belief, and for those who like to understand things before they experiment, how and why that works…
Leave a Reply