Archive for Science

The power of perspective

November 2, 2008 / / No comments

In Cultivating Strength (see http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2008/10/10/cultivating-strength/ ), we discussed how speaking our truth and postive thoughts and words literally make us stronger. In this post, we will talk a bit about a way of understanding the world, so that we can more easily see why this might be true.

The science of psychoneuroimmunology, which studies the intimate relationship of our minds and bodies, shows us that our subjective states have physical correlates. And other posts in this blog have discussed how our perspectives, thoughts and feelings help shape our social, and ultimately environmental realities, in both gross and subtle ways.

This is common sense: We know, for example, that stress can physically damage our bodies, and we usually easily notice when a person is joyful, anxious, loving, or angry. And, of course, our actions arise from the complex interrelationships of our thoughts and feelings.

Yet, culturally, we are generally taught (when we are taught such things), that mind and body are two entirely different spheres. In philosophical terms, this is called mind-body dualism. However, another, altogether different view has arisen from both our common sense experience and new sciences, such as psychoneuroimmunology. The psycho-social or process view observes that subjective and objective states might be thought of as two sides of the same coin. For this reason, the term “body-mind” is increasingly frequently used to refer to ourselves as unified beings, having both subjective and objective dimensions.

Cultivating Strength described how negative thoughts and feelings can weaken us. We know that unmanaged stress can have negative consequences for our physical, mental, emotional, social, financial .. health, and depending on our actions, for the health of the environment. Thankfully! conversely, postive thoughts and emotions can be healing. (For example, see professor Norman Cousins’ Anatomy of an Illness).

Our perspectives, which guide our perceptions, and hence thoughts and emotions are extraordinarily powerful with respect to the physical, social and environmental realities that we co-create. Yet, because our perspectives, or the way we view things, tend to be implicit — both in a physical and psychological sense prior to our actual thoughts — we are often not consciously aware of them and how they are creating our circumstances.

Therefore, it’s useful to exhume?! our perspectives to better understand how they are shaping our lives, and to decide whether we want to keep them as is, or whether other perspectives might help us create the kinds of lives (and organizations) we want.

To be continued!

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

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 /

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 /

Organization as Organism & Machine

May 9, 2008 / / 15 comments

In my last post we backed our way into a discussion of an emerging way of thinking about leadership and organization: the metaphor of the organization as an organsim. 

 http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2008/05/01/the-brain-as-a-metaphor-for-organization/

As we talked about earlier, metaphors are maps of the terrain that can yield some useful insights, so we don’t need to hold on to them too tightly (as an ideology). Rather, when considering a metaphor we might ask two questions:

  1. Does it have some basis in reality?
  2. Is it useful?

Whereas the organization as a machine metaphor can be seen to have arisen out of Newtonian physics (the view of the Cosmos as machine) and the industrial revolution, the metaphor of the organization as an organism has its recent roots in new physics and biology, and the framework of systems theory, which observes that the whole has emergent properties that can’t be fully explained by examining each of the parts. Rather these properties emerge as a result of the relationship and interaction of the parts. 

I’ll apologize in advance for this: A useful but gorey example that is often given is that you sacrifice an animal and examine each of its parts, you won’t find life; life is an emergent property of the whole animal.  The same could be said of  a well-functioning team: a quality emerges in the interaction that only exists in potential in the individual team members.

 Seeing relationships vs. parts requires us to shift our vision. Are you familiar with the famous cognitive optical illusion: the figure-ground vase? http://www.123opticalillusions.com/pages/Facevase.php

The image can be validly interpreted as two faces or as a vase. The one we see is the result of a mental interpretation, which may or may not be conscious. Once we’ve seen one view, it can be a challenge to see the other, because our current perspective is so obvious to us!  Yet, if we look for the other figure, as described by others (or the text), we can see that as well.  

And so it is with our metaphors of organization (and the cosmos). We might see the parts or we might see the relationships/interactions of the parts and the structures formed by those interactions.  As Westerners, our cultural history has attuned us to see the parts very well. However, most of us have not been trained to “see” the tangible reality of the qualities that emerge in relationship and how these materially influence what emerges as the whole.

Coming back to our earlier post on the brain analogy for organizations … Scientist Fritjof Capra (1988) observes that biological organisms often have some machine-like qualities (Turning Point, p. 266).  Our knowledge of these qualities has empowered the accomplishments of modern medicine. And, it is also true that biological organisms (and as it turns out, social organizations) also have emerging systemic properties. To “see” how relationships give rise to these properties, we need to shift our field of vision to look at relationships and patterns of relationship.  (This is where Riane Eisler’s concept of Partnership can be seen to be very relevant to leadership and organizational development).

This is just one example of how a shift in perspective can be extremely powerful in opening up a whole new set of tools and possibilities. And that is what coaching is all about…

Category: All Posts, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Philosophy, Science, Teams /

The brain as a metaphor for organization

May 1, 2008 / / One comment

In Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, Margaret Wheatley discusses the metaphor of the organization as self-organizing system.  From a biological perspective, we can see that successful systems dynamically both help shape and adapt to changing environmental conditions: the successful organization and environment evolve together.  Conversely, the unsuccessful organization might be seen as one that does not respond quickly enough to changing conditions in a way that promotes both its own flourishing and the flourishing of the larger environment.   

Waldrup’s article (see link below) might be seen as complementary to these ideas, in that, using the human brain as an example, it shows how successful complex systems can include specialization and executive functions. Although this article doesn’t mention this topic, it is also potentially instructive to note that the more researchers study the brain, the more “plastic” they are finding it to be, with respect to developing new capacities and connections. 

http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/stories/2003/03/09/mitchWaldrupTheBrainAsAMetaphorForOrganization.html

One of the reasons that I am personally excited about coaching is that it is an excellent method for creating these new connections at both the individual and organizational levels. 

Category: All Posts, Coaching, Communication, Leadership, Organization, Science, Vision /

Experience of Right and Left Hemispheres of the Brain

March 22, 2008 / / One comment

Below is a link to an awesome video, in which neuroanatomist Jill Bolte describes alternating experiences of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. 

This is important because in the West, we have extensively developed the left brain, associated with rational sequential thought, and modern organizations and approaches to leadership reflect this orientation.  However, it is the right side of the brain which sees larger patterns and is the source of our creativity, including creative leaps.  Therefore, learning how to integrate these diverse facilities — to draw on our inner diversity — can help us to see new opportunities and solutions to old problems.  

Coaching does just this, and therefore it is increasingly being recognized as a core leadership competency in contemporary organizations. And, there are many more interesting and exciting implications of this insight that we will discuss in this blog…

http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/jill_bolte_tayl.php

Category: All Posts, Coaching, Creativity, Diversity, Innovation, Leadership, Organization, Science /
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