Example: How a shift in perspective can shift a situation

July 26, 2008 / / One comment

We are all hardwired to respond to subtle social cues. Smiles, laughter, yawning — are all contagious. Studies have shown that when we are in tune with others we unconsciously adapt our body/language to be compatible with theirs.

This unconscious mimicry of physical expression tends to invoke a similar emotional or psychological effect: Someone smiles at us and we smile back; their good feeling becomes our good feeling. To test this premise, smile now and notice how it lifts your spirits. (It feels great and it’s also good for you: professor of psychology Barbara L. Fredrickson hypothesizes that positive emotions can help undo the damaging effects of stress.) This mimicry is considered a biological/psychological/sociological foundation of empathy.

A colleague shared an insight from her own experience. In contrast to her husband, who is outspokenly judgmental, “Barbara” has always kept her thoughts to herself. However, as she has become more aware of her own faults, she had become less judgmental and more compassionate towards others: her perspective changed, and her thoughts and quality of being followed.

Because she had never shared her thoughts, she had assumed that this “internal” shift was completely private, until a family member appreciatively noted how much less judgmental she is “nowadays.” Although she had never said a word, her attitudes had come through in her body language, eyes — her whole presence. And, that had affected the way that people felt around her.

It’s easy to imagine how Barbara’s earlier judgments might have created some subtle or not-so-subtle distance in those relationships, and how this distance would have made it more likely that she would continue to judge and find fault; it can also lead to others judging her negatively in turn: “She is always frowning at me!”

In turn, her new attitude of compassion has clearly strengthened her relationships, creating a more positive dynamic. Although the analogy of dance might be a bit over used today, we might imagine that they are all doing a different dance together. This is about more than feeling good (a good in itself): putting on our practical “ends-oriented” hat, we can also notice that the before and after situations have very different potentials, for example, in terms of what the participants might accomplish together.

Similarly, as leaders, our perspectives and thoughts affect the way we “show up,” the dynamics of the situation, and ultimately, its potential.

This is something we all already “know” from our own experience. However, our cultural emphasis on “doing” often blinds us to how a shift in our perspective (“our being”) can transform a situation in ways that no amounts of “doing” under the old paradigm could accomplish…

Practice
1. Begin to notice how the way other people “show up” affects you, and how you are inclined to “show up” with them.

2. After you have some experience with practice #1, you might begin to notice how differences in the way you “show up” affects others and the situation. A constructive experiment, if you are not already doing this regularly, would be to practice actively looking for the positive in others and notice how it shifts the dynamics of the relationship and situation.

Please feel free to share your experiences here.

Category: All Posts, Change, Communication, Culture, Leadership, Teams /

Creating a virtuous cycle (recap so far)

July 18, 2008 / / No comments

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…

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How perspective draws out or diminishes human potential

July 8, 2008 / / 2 comments

One famous experiment that really illustrates how perspective can draw out or diminish human potential is the experiment first conducted in the 1960s by American teacher Jane Elliott, who went on to become an anti-racism activist.  In this exercise, she praised brown-eyed children as “hardworking” and “intelligent,” and dismissed blue-eyed children as being innately less hardworking and intelligent. In light of that premise, she institutionalized a set of privileges for the “superior” and “more deserving” brown-eyed children, such as extra food at lunch, restricted access to a new jungle gym, and extra time at recess.  In contrast, brown-eyed children were not allowed to drink from the same water fountains and were made to wear a paper armband.

At first, the children resisted the new order. However, after Ms. Elliott provided the pseudo-scientific explanation that the greater intelligence and better work ethic of the brown-children was related to their higher levels of melanin, the children came to accept this view, with dramatic results. The “superior” brown-eyed children became arrogant and bossy and treated blue-eyed students with disrespect.

Even more dramatic was the effect on the self concept and performance of each group: The brown-eyed children began to perform better academically, even doing well in areas that had been difficult for them in the past. In contrast, the blue-eyed children performed more poorly, even in areas where they had previously done very well. They also became more timid and submissive.  

When Elliot reversed roles the following week, she received similar results, in reverse, although the discrimination was noticeably less acute: those who had experienced the pain of being deemed “inferior” seemed less inclined to inflict that experience on others. Eventually, of course, she concluded the experiment and the students experienced a rather emotional reconciliation…

It’s not difficult to see how a similar dynamic can be found with the whole range of “isms” (racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, etc.).

This is not to say that we all have identical interests and aptitudes; but a key take away might be the extent to which perception, expectations and the structures we create actually invoke or suppress human potential.  This is also illustrated by the example in which a “low-performing” student was accidentally noted as being “gifted” in the transfer to a new grade. The new teacher, believing child was gifted, gave him/her attention, encouragement, challenge; the child excelled academically.

As leaders, the “halo” effect is a reality for us, isn’t it? And, in contrast, some people seem to do worse and worse.  How much is the person and how much is due to our own leadership style (or the culture or organizational environment)? 

Some questions that might be interesting to explore around this topic are:

* What is your perpective/perception regarding others in your organization (especially those over whom you have some power and influence)?

* Is anyone going “up” or “down”? What are the dynamics surrounding that?

* What beliefs do you have/does your organization have regarding superiority and inferiority of different people?

* How are these beliefs reflected in your organization structure?

In upcoming posts, we’ll explore some successful applications of this principle, going into greater depth on the dynamics. We’ll also explore how organizational structures and roles shape our personalities and experience, with an eye towards the practical implications for leaders and organizations…

Category: All Posts, Change, Communication, Culture, Design, Diversity, Education, Ethics, Leadership, Organization, Rewards /

How can perspective shape reality? (philosophical reflections)

July 3, 2008 / / No comments

In my last post, we considered how our perspectives can shape the conditions that reinforce our perspectives — how they help shape our realities.  For those of us raised in a Western culture, this idea can take some getting used to. Our ideas (and hence experience) about ourselves and the world have been strongly shaped by Newtonian physics (1), which imagines the Cosmos as being built-up from tiny particles — each separate from the other. Consequently, we tend to think of ourselves as essentially separate from each other and the rest of the world, selecting elements of our experience that conform to our belief, and taking actions based on this assumption (including the development of institutions) which tend to reinforce experiences that support this worldview.  In this way, we can be seen to substantially build the worlds of our experience.  Organizations are one of these worlds of experience.

However, an emerging paradigm, which might be termed the systems view, based on the new sciences, holds that this idea that we are separate — islands, is an illusion.  As Einstein famously reflected, “A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in space and time. He experiences his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a sort of prison for us, restricting us to our personal decisons to affection for a few persons nearest to us” (qtd. Laszlo 2007, pp. 50-51). 

We both shape and are shaped by the larger Cosmos because we are not separate from it.  In the weak form of this idea, there are millions or billions of causal threads that connect us to others, such that they shape us and we them. In the strong form of this idea, the world is imagined as holographic in which each part contains the whole; because we are continuous with the whole, we are each the the totality of the Cosmos, from our unique perspective. 

For this reason, the scientific ideal of the objective detached observer can only be approximated: as observers, we are part of the system that we observe. Therefore, both our observations and our responses to our observations affect the system, including ourselves, in gross and subtle ways. 

For most of us, this is a really unfamiliar way of thinking about and experiencing the world, and it is more comfortable to make a mental note of it and continue on with our day. Neurologically, our brains tend to prefer the ideas we already have: each time we reinforce an existing belief, we experience chemical rewards. On the contrary, when a settled worldview is challenged, we experience the uncomfortable sense of needing to “find our feet” once again — to reintegrate our knowledge and experience so that we once again inhabit a coherent and integrated reality; it takes energy, work. For this reason, we tend to resist changing our perspective unless/until the old one become too painful or dysfunctional.  (No wonder change is hard — no one little thing shifts in isolation: the whole system must adjust…)

For this reason, I don’t want to gloss over this really key idea of how perspective shapes reality (or its complement, that perspective is not the only determinant of reality!). As promised, we’ll continue to look at examples of how this works in practice. My hope is that, as the power and utility of this emerging paradigm of reality for addressing felt pain in organizations becomes more clear, that attraction and pleasure become the stimulus for learning and growth. We still experience the tension of the integration and reconciliation of new knowledge, but it’s now part of a larger, exciting process of discovery…

A big goal — we’ll see how I do 🙂

So, next time, we will continue with the promised topic of how our perspective can draws out or diminishes the potential of ourselves and of others — which is (clearly) key to leadership and organization.  This will lead us a discussion of the power of the situation (or structure) and some insights on diversity and creativity. Eventually, we’ll use these various insights to build our Wheel of Freedom …

Notes 

(1) I hope you will forgive this oversimplification – if there is time and interest, we can expand on the topic of how our understanding of self and world have evolved, and the areas where culture has yet to catch up with new advances in science – especially “new” physics and biology.

References

Laszlo, Ervin. Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything, 2nd ed. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2007. 

Newberg, Andrew and Mark Robert Waldman. Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth. New York: Free Press, 2006. 

Category: All Posts, Change, Leadership, Organization, Philosophy, Science /

How perception creates reality

June 27, 2008 / / No comments

In my last post, I described how our perspective can shape the very conditions that reinforce our perspective; in this sense, we tend to create our realities. In that post, I used the example of how my fear of being unsafe on cliffy moutain roads actually caused me to become a more unsafe driver; the more afraid I was, the less safe I became. Becoming a safer driver did not involve forgetting that the lanes were narrow and that the drop off steep; on the contrary, being aware of these conditions rationally constrained my driving. For example, I didn’t speed or try to pass. However, by keeping my focus on what I wanted rather than I didn’t want, I materially improved the odds of my achieving my objective.

This is also true in a more subtle sense. For example, earlier we discussed organizations based on Theory X.  Theory X assumes that people don’t really want to work, and that the manager’s job is (essentially) to create the “unnatural” conditions under which “workers” will be productive. Organizations based on on this philosophy rely on supervision and control, rewards and punishments to stimulate productivity. Motivation is driven from the outside, which is another way of expressing the idea of “control.”

Operating within this perspective, it would never occur to us to “enrich” the work environment to make it more intrinsically satisfying, because the possibility that people *may be* self-motivated and want to contribute will not have occurred to us; in fact, that possibility would be eclipsed by our belief that people are inherently lazy.

Not surprisingly, as leadership coach Robert Hargrove (1995) points out, organizations with this perspective, create the very conditions that discourage employee enrollment, and generate passivity (endorsing the assumptions of Theory X).

Now imagine that things aren’t working very well — which given that current conditions require organizations to become more creative, proactive and adaptive, would likely be true for this kind of organization. Given these beliefs, the most likely response of a leadership team influenced by Theory X thinking would be to tighten controls. This would *tend* to further decrease commitment and increase passive compliance — a classic organizational wheel of fear.

In my next post, we will consider the very interesting example of the power of our perceptions in shaping both ourselves and the self-perceptions of others. This can be very subtle, yet it shapes personal, family, community, organizational, national and world histories.  Then, in subsequent posts, we’ll begin to apply these insights to our wheel of freedom and creativity.

Hargrove, Robert. Masterful Coaching: Extraordinary Results by Impacting People and the Way They Think and Work Together. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 1995.

Category: All Posts, Change, Coaching, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Partnership /

“When driving, keep your eyes on where you want to go”

June 20, 2008 / / 2 comments

steering wheelIn earlier posts, we talked about how our “wheel of fear” (Britten 2001) can lead us to take actions that perpetuate the very conditions we are trying to alleviate with our reflexive actions and the wheel of being (Christie 2008) which shows how both our “wheel of fear” and “wheel of freedom” (Britten 2001) are driven by our perspectives.

In today’s post, we’ll begin to explore the wheel of being, and in particular, the role of perspective in shaping our actions and our experience of the results of our actions, in a practical and grounded way.

People who know me well know that I’m not a big fan of cliffy mountain roads. My father was almost killed on a road like this as a child, and he passed his fears on to me. Some people can nonchalantly cruise along the edge of a multi-story drop off without thinking twice, but I’ve always been focused on the edge, the areas where there is little margin for error, and on the drop. Further, I was also aware that being nervous about it made me a less safe driver. As I tightened my grip on the wheel, I became more rigid, and less flexible and responsive to conditions. In general, when we’re in fear, we tend to react rather than respond.

In recent years, I lived in a mountain community where I needed to drive this kind of road on a regular basis. At about this time, I heard a really practical bit of information: When we’re driving, we tend drive towards what we are looking at; therefore, the best way to stay on the road is to keep your eyes on where you want to go. I put this advice into action, and immediately found that it to be very useful. Keeping my attention on where I wanted to go substantially changed my experience: certainly, I was still aware of my surroundings, but the road seemed much more comfortable and drivable. As a result, my confidence increased, and I became a much safer driver.

If you think about, this is also true in the more general sense: we tend to move towards what we are focusing on. For example, it’s often been said that in dealing with their problems, organizations sometimes lose track of their vision, with the result being that their problems multiply.

In upcoming posts, we will continue to explore just how our perspective shapes our realities. It’s more than perceptual in that we respond in both subtle and non-subtle ways that can create or reinforce the realities we perceive.  When we’re really clear on this, our way off the hamster wheel of fear and on to our wheel of freedom — which is also the “wheel” of creativity — becomes obvious.

Britten, Rhonda. Fearless Living: Live Without Excuses and Love Without Regrets. NY: The Berkley Publishing Group,

Category: All Posts, Change, Creativity, Leadership, Organization, Vision /

Leaping off the hamster wheel of fear

June 15, 2008 / / No comments

For many of us, the “wheel of fear” (see: http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2008/05/30/getting-off-your-wheel-fear/ ) is like a hamster wheel.  The path is well defined; we put one foot in front of the other and … find ourselves somehow back where we started.  So, how do we get off?

As Anthony Robbins observes, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” And we behave in habitual ways because it makes sense and feels natural to us. Therefore, getting off the wheel involves doing something counter-intuitive and learning to see things differently.

The process is more than intellectual; it’s not about learning a new model. It literally involves a shift in perspective and experience, that involves our intellectual, bodily, emotional and spiritual selves.

This process can be mind-bending, but the payoff is big — you experience a new sense of freedom and possibility: playing with perspective brings us to a highly creative space.

To jump off the “wheel of fear” and onto our “wheel of freedom” (Britten 2001), we can begin either with shifting our perspective or shifting our behavior. We can see why this is so, by considering the “wheel of being” below.

Wheel of Being 

Where you might begin depends on your orientation. If you prefer to understand something before experimenting with it,  you would likely choose to begin with Perspective. If you are more empirical, you might experiment with a new behavior, and see where that leads…

We’ll continue in my next post!

Britten, Rhonda. (2001). Fearless Living. NY: Penguin.

Category: All Posts, Change, Coaching, Creativity, Leadership /

How does your “wheel of fear” shape your leadership strategies in times of stress?

June 6, 2008 / / No comments

In my last post, we talked about our personal “wheel of fear” – how it works, and how to develop awareness of our wheel of fear as a first step in getting off of it.  Organizations, too, have their “Wheels of Fear.” One might be: We are experiencing intense competition that threatens our survival. Therefore, everyone needs to work harder and longer. People who aren’t enrolled should not be in this organization. Sound familiar?

But suppose this reaction actually represses the changes that are needed in order to successfully adapt to the new conditions? For example, what if successful adaptation actually required people to become more thoughtful and creative?

For this reason, it can be very useful to develop an awareness of you own reaction or response to stress, and how this shapes your leadership strategies in difficult times. I invite you to the following experiment:

  1. If you have not already identified your wheel of fear, I invite you to do so. The series of questions that coach Rhonda Britten uses can be found in the post: http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2008/05/30/getting-off-your-wheel-fear/   (If you are interested in learning more about this model, you can find more information on Britten’s book, Fearless Living: Live Without Excuses and Love Without Regret, in Recommended Reading).
  2. After you become aware of your own patterns, it might be interesting to consider: how does your personal wheel of fear affect your leadership strategies in times of stress? 

I invite you to share your experience!

Category: All Posts, Coaching, Creativity, Leadership /

Getting off your “wheel fear”

May 30, 2008 / / 2 comments

Think for a moment about something that scares you (not too much!). Now suppose you had the confidence that you could absolutely handle that situation. What happened to the fear?

In this sense, we might notice that our fears of external events and people, reflect our fears about our own abilities to adequately respond to challenging situations. 

Coach and author Rhonda Britten (2001) describes a “Wheel of Fear” in which we hold a perspective of a situation as being threatening and take habitual, reflexive actions that, in the end, create or perpetuate the very conditions that threaten us. For example, Britten writes about a woman whose deepest fear is “being incompetent.” This woman is attuned to any cues in her environment that might suggest that people have doubts about her, and feeling the fear, her reaction is to take on additional commitments that she can’t meet, leading to more fear and more projects! This cycle actually creates the incompetence it fears, and needs to be broken.

We will discuss a variety of good coaching strategies for breaking this cycle. The formula Britten suggests involves developing an awareness of our deepest fears about ourselves and the strategies we use to avoid them. Usually, these fears and responses (and the beliefs behind them) were established when we are very young. Becoming aware of them as adults, tends in itself to help create a positive shift in perspective: 

1. Identify your fear/trigger: “If someone I love, respect, or admire thought I were __________, I would be devastated.

2. Identify your core negative feeling: “If the people I care about thought I was (the trigger you identified…) _________, I would feel as though I were ________.”

3. Identify what you do reactively to avoid that feeling: “When I want to avoid having people think I’m ___(trigger), I react by ______________. ”

4. The wheel: When this doesn’t work and I end up feeling ______(core negative feeling), then I ____________. (Britten, 2001, pp. 48-56)

As Britten points out, this is also the cycle of addiction, including workaholism.

I invite you to give this a try, and let me know your experience.  

References

Britton, Rhonda. (2001). Fearless Living. NY: Penguin.

Category: All Posts, Coaching, Leadership /

What is your organizational “wheel of fear”?

May 23, 2008 / / No comments

In my last post, http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2008/05/16/trust-as-an-enabler-of-change/ we talked about how fear can both prompt and frustrate change. Presently, macro forces, prominently including global competition and outsourcing, are increasing fear and insecurity, while requiring organizations to become more creative, collaborative and adaptable.  However, it seems the actions we take from a perspective of fear are often maladaptive.

For example, one common response to fear is to become more controlling. It might be useful to notice two things about control that can undermine our effectiveness: First, when we attempt to “control” others, we take away some of their free will and dignity. And, second, when we are controlling, is there an implied threat of force? For example, what if people don’t comply –what action will we take then? And how does the threat of force tend to effect the quality of your relationships?

As a result, the people we would control are likely to both feel threatened and the need to re-exert some control of their own. As Hargrove (1995) points out, this tends to show up as a lack of enrollment, a lack of trust, and other subtle and not-so-subtle forms of rebellion. Although control can indeed get results, we pay a price for them. And as people become less enrolled, do we not then see the need for more control, more force? We find our selves on a “wheel of fear” (Britton, 2001) — a non-virtuous cycle that can lead to plummeting morale and, to the degree that we rely on organizational member enrollment, diminished organizational effectiveness.     

Biologically, fear invokes our “reptilian brain” which is concerned with survival, but which isn’t very smart, which helps explain why our reactions to fear tend not to be very intelligent.

In our next post, we will begin to explore some strategies for moving off our “wheel of fear” and onto our “wheel of freedom.”

References

Britton, Rhonda. (2001). Fearless Living. NY: Penguin.

Hargrove, Robert. Masterful Coaching: Extraordinary Results by Impacting People & the Way They Think & Work Together. SF: Pfeiffer, 1995.

Category: All Posts, Collaboration, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Science, Trust /
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