When errors such as these surface, blaming seems to be a natural reflex in many organizations. Even those individuals who wish to learn from mistakes fall into naming culprits. Once we figure out who’s at fault, we then try to find out what is wrong with the supposed offenders. Only when we discover what is wrong with them do we feel we have grasped the problem. Clearly they are the problem, and changing or getting rid of them (or simply being angry at them) is the solution.

There’s a problem with this common scenario, however: Where there is blame, there is no learning. Where there is blame, open minds close, inquiry tends to cease, and the desire to understand the whole system diminishes. When people work in an atmosphere of blame, they naturally cover up their errors and hide their real concerns. And when energy goes into finger pointing, scapegoating, and denying responsibility, productivity suffers because the organization lacks information about the real state of affairs. It’s impossible to make good decisions with poor information.

In fact, blame costs money. When the vice president of marketing and the vice president of R&D are blaming each other for quality problems in product development, they can’t focus on working together to bring the best products to market. Their finger pointing results in lost sales potential.

Blame rarely enhances our understanding of our situation and often hampers effective problem solving. So how do we avoid the tendency to blame and create organizational environments where we turn less frequently to blame? Clarifying accountability is one option. This process of assigning responsibilities for a situation in advance can help create a culture of real learning.

Accountability comes from clear contracting, ongoing conversations, and an organizational commitment to support accountability rather than blame. The contracting focuses on tasks to be accomplished, roles to be taken, processes to be used, standards sought, and expected results. Periodic conversations over time review both explicit and tacit contracts in order to verify shared understanding. This communication becomes most useful when people are willing and able to discuss their common difficulties within a larger setting that values accountability.

The Differences Between Accountability and Blame

The dictionary helps clarify the differences between accountability and blame. To be accountable is “to be counted on or reckoned on.” To blame is “to find fault with, to censure, revile, reproach.” Accountability emphasizes keeping agreements and performing jobs in a respectful atmosphere; blaming is an emotional process that discredits the blamed.

A focus on accountability recognizes that everyone may make mistakes or fall short of commitments. Becoming aware of our own errors or shortfalls and viewing them as opportunities for learning and growth enable us to be more successful in the future. Accountability therefore creates conditions for ongoing, constructive conversations in which our awareness of current reality is sharpened and in which we work to seek root causes, understand the system better, and identify new actions and agreements. The qualities of accountability are respect, trust, inquiry, moderation, curiosity, and mutuality.

Blaming, on the other hand, is more than just a process of allocating fault. It is often a process of shaming others and searching for something wrong with them. Blaming provides an early and artificial solution to a complex problem. It provides a simplistic view of a complex reality: I know what the problem is, and you’re it. Blame thus makes inquiry difficult and reduces the chances of getting to the real root of a problem. Blame also generates fear and destroys trust. When we blame, we often believe that other people have bad intentions or lack ability. We tend to excuse our own actions, however, because we know firsthand the challenges we face. The qualities of blame are judgment, anger, fear, punishment, and self-righteousness.

The Organizational Consequences of Blame

Blame Slows Information Flow and Reduces Innovation. People sometimes use blame as a strategy to get others to take ownership of problems. But this approach often backfires because people begin to equate acknowledging mistakes and surfacing bad news with punishment. When this happens, two reinforcing sets of behaviors may emerge: one by managers who are ostensibly seeking information and then punishing those who bring bad news, and the other by groups of employees who hide information and try either to protect each other or to blame each other. People who feel compelled to protect themselves can’t admit mistakes-and therefore can’t learn from them. Under these conditions, individuals spend time denying problems rather than solving them, and

The Reinforcing Cycles of Blame

Blame causes fear, which increases cover-ups and reduces the flow of information. The lack of information hinders problem solving, creating more errors (R1). Fear also stifles risk taking and discourages innovation (R2).

As shown in “The Reinforcing Cycles of Blame,” blaming leads to fear, which increases cover-ups and reduces the flow of information by stopping productive conversation. The lack of timely and accurate information about an organization’s current reality hinders problem solving, leading to more errors and more blame (R1).

Blaming and the fear it generates also discourage innovation and creative solutions. Frightened people don’t take risks, which are essential for innovation. Lack of innovation, in turn, leads to an inability to solve problems effectively and an increase in errors (R2).

Blame “Shifts the Burden.” In a “Shifting the Burden” situation, a problem has multiple solutions. People often grab onto the most obvious, short-term fix rather than search for the fundamental source of the problem. The lack of a permanent, long-term solution reinforces the need for additional quick fixes. Blame is a fix that actually diverts the blamers’ attention away from long-term interpersonal or structural solutions to problems (see B1 in “The Addiction to Blame” on p. 3).  Although blame provides some immediate relief and a sense of having solved a problem (“It’s their fault”), it also erodes communication (R3) and shifts the focus even further from accountability (B2), the more fundamental solution.

Blaming can also be addictive, because it makes us feel powerful and keeps us from having to examine our own role in a situation. For example, Jim, a brewery manager, got word that things were slowing down on line 10, a new canning line. He left his office and headed to the plant floor. “Grady, you’ve got to get this line going. Get with it,” he told his line foreman. Grady replied, “Jim, you know those guys on the last shift always screw things up.”

This is a familiar conversation to both men. Each walks away thinking something is wrong with the other. Jim thinks, “That Grady, I give him responsibility and he just can’t get it together.” Grady thinks, “Why is he always on my case? Can’t he see this is a tough issue? He’s so simplistic and short-sighted.”

In this scenario, Jim can walk away feeling relieved because he knows what the problem is-Grady is a lousy supervisor and may need to be replaced. Grady, on the other hand, can blame Jim for being a shortsighted, run-the-plant-by-the-numbers manager. Both get some initial relief from blaming each other, but neither solves the ongoing problem.

Moving from Blame to Accountability

How, then, do we move from blame to accountability? Even within carefully designed systems, people may fail at their work. And even with a knowledge of system dynamics, we still often look for an individual’s failure as a way to explain a problem. One leverage point is to understand the organizational dynamics of blame as described above. There is also leverage in changing how we think about and conduct ourselves at work.

There are three levels of specific behavioral change in moving from blame to accountability-the individual level, the interpersonal level, and the group or organizational level. First, individuals must be willing to change their own thinking and feelings about blame. Second, people need to become skillful at making contracts with one another and holding each other accountable for results. Third, groups need to promote responsible and constructive conversations by developing norms for direct conflict resolution between individuals. These behavioral changes-and the use of systems thinking to focus on the structures involved and not the personalities-can help create a constructive organizational culture.

Individual Level

Below is a list of ways to start breaking the mental models we hold about blame. When you find yourself beginning to blame someone else for a chronic problem, refer to this list and to the sidebar “Distinctions Between Blame and Accountability” (see p. 4).

1. Remember that others are acting rationally from their own perspective. Given what they know, the pressures they are under, and the organizational structures that are influencing them, they are doing the best they can. Give others the benefit of the doubt.

2. Realize that you probably have a role in the situation.Your behavior may be influencing this person’s behavior and may be producing some unintended effects. Keep in mind that you will tend to justify your own actions and point of view and discount the other person’s perspective.

3. Remind yourself that judgment and criticism make it very difficult to see clearly. Judgments are mental models that limit the ability to take in new data. They tend to increase the likelihood of anger and make it difficult to learn. The following questions may help stretch your thinking and ease angry feelings. Ask yourself:

• What information am I missing that would help me understand this person’s behavior?
• How might this behavior make sense?
• What pressures is he or she under?
• What systems or structures might be influencing this behavior?

4. Use a systems thinking perspective to explore the pressures on the players involved. Notice that there are some larger forces at work that are probably having an impact on both of you. For example, when organizational goals, strategies, and values aren’t clear, groups will sometimes work toward different objectives. A group that values customer service over cost will conflict with a group that is trying to lower expenditures. Identify some key variables and their interrelationships, and ask, Is this situation an example of a vicious cycle, “Shifting the Burden,” or “Accidental Adversaries”?

5. Be willing to be held accountable. This means that, when an issue comes up, you are willing to consider whether you have lived up to your end of an agreement or expectation. Ask yourself:

• Did I have a role in this situation?
• Did I take some actions that seemed right at the time, but that had unintended consequences?

6.Work constructively with your anger. Sustained anger may point to personal issues that have been triggered by the current situation. Broken agreements, mistakes, and blame all have difficult associations for most people. However, in a learning environment, constructive resolution of conflict can also lead to significant personal growth. The guiding questions here are:

• What am I learning about myself in this situation?
• What does this remind me of?
• What new behaviors or thoughts does this situation call for that may be a stretch for me?

Interpersonal Level

Initial Contracting. At the beginning of any working relationship, it’s vital to come to some basic agreements defining the nature and scope of the work, specific and yet-to-be-defined tasks, deadlines and related outcomes, processes or methods to be used, interim checkpoints and expectations at those checkpoints, standards, and roles.

It’s also helpful to discuss what to do in the event of a misunderstanding, a lapse in communication, or a failure to keep an agreement. Imagine possible breakdowns and design a process for handling them. If breakdowns do occur, be prepared to remind others of the plan you had prepared.

When lapses do take place, they need to be brought to the collective attention as soon as possible. Misunderstandings and broken agreements often promote anger, frustration, and blame. Allowing unaddressed misunderstandings to fester can hamper productive conversations. By contrast, raising issues early can minimize escalation of problems.

Accountability Conversations. Once any project or working relationship is under way, it’s useful to check in periodically on the state of the partnership through accountability conversations. You may or may not have clear recollections of the initial contract regarding the task, roles, standards, processes, and expected results. Either way, it’s productive to establish or reestablish these agreements and explore what is working or not working as you take action together to create envisioned results.

Accountability conversations aren’t always easy. However, the skills they require can be applied and developed over time. Some of the basic tools of learning organizations come into play here-the ladder of inference, for example, can be used to create a conversation of inquiry rather than inquisition. The accountability conversation is also the perfect setting for practicing left-hand column skills to surface assumptions blocking honest and productive discourse. In addition, admitting the tendency to

Distinctions between blame and accountability

Here are steps for initiating an accountability conversation:

1. Find out whether the person you are working with is interested in seeing problems as learning opportunities. If so, when a problem occurs, include other people who are also interested in the situation. Other people’s perspectives can be helpful because often two people in conflict are actually mirroring the conflict of a larger system within the organization.

2. Create a setting that is conducive to learning.

• Allow plenty of time to address the issues.
• Reaffirm with each other that the goal is to learn, not blame.
• Establish confidentiality.
• Be truly open-minded.
• Listen hard to the other person’s perspective

3. Have a conversation in which the two (or more) of you

• Clarify your intention for the meeting.
• Identify the data and any assumptions or conclusions you have drawn based on that data.
• Identify the pressures each of you is experiencing in the situation.
• Identify any stated or unstated expectations. If implicit agreements were not jointly understood, this is a good time to clarify and reestablish shared agreements.
• Analyze the problem from a systems perspective. Clarify how your mutual beliefs and actions might be related and are perhaps reinforcing each other.
• Identify some new ways to address the problem.

Group Level

How people talk about one another in an organization affects the levels of accountability and trust. Often, because people are reluctant to discuss accountability issues directly, they go to a third party to relieve their discomfort and get support for their point of view. The complaint does not get resolved this way, however, although the person with the complaint gains some relief. Bringing a complaint to a third party to clarify a situation can be a much more productive alternative.

To see how this works, let’s take a situation where Tony is angry with Lee because Lee wasn’t fully supportive in a meeting. Tony complains to Robin that Lee is unreliable. Robin sympathizes with Tony and agrees that Lee is unreliable. Tony and Robin now feel closer because they share this point of view. Lee does not yet know that Tony has a complaint. Later, though, Robin, busy with other projects, puts off one of Tony’s requests. Now Tony complains about Robin to Lee, and Robin doesn’t get the necessary feedback. Over time, all of these relationships will erode.

What is the alternative to this kind of dysfunctional blaming and resentment? The solution is a deep commitment on the part of all these people to work through their reluctance to give and receive difficult feedback. In addition, they need to learn how to hold one another accountable in an ongoing way. Now, when Tony is angry with Lee and goes to Robin, the purpose is to get coaching on how to raise the issue with Lee, not to get Robin’s agreement on what is wrong with Lee. In addition, Robin’s role is to make sure that Tony follows through on raising the concern directly with Lee.

To resolve conflict directly:

1.Bring your complaints about someone else to a third person to get coaching on how to raise your concerns.
Valuable questions from the coach include:

• Tell me about the situation.
• What results do you want?
• What’s another way of explaining the other person’s actions?
• How might the other person describe the situation?
• What was your role in creating the situation?
• What requests or complaints do you need to bring to the other person?
• How will you state them in order to get the results you want?
• What do you think your learning is in this situation?

2. Raise your concerns directly with the other person. Reaffirm your commitment to maintaining a good working relationship and find a way to express your fundamental respect for the person. The ladder of inference can be a helpful tool for focusing on the problem. Start by identifying the data that is the source of your concern. Then spell out the assumptions you made as you observed the data and any feelings you have about the situation. Finally, articulate your requests for change. During the conversation, remind the other person that reviewing the concern is part of learning to work together better

3. Let the coach know what happened.

4. Outside of this framework, refrain from making negative comments about people

5. For listeners who frequently hear complaints about a third party and want to create a learning setting, it can be helpful to say something like: “I’d like to help, but only if you want to create a constructive situation. We can explore these questions; otherwise, I prefer not to listen to your complaints.”

Organizational Accountability: The IS Story

Systems thinking provides useful tools for surfacing and breaking reinforcing cycles of blame within an organization. In the story below, a group was able to use causal loop diagrams to help them move beyond blame and craft a constructive, long-term solution.

The Information Systems group of a manufacturing plant was meeting to discuss their lack of progress on a large project to overhaul the department. Initially, the IS group decided that top management’s actions caused the group’s ineffectiveness. The plant management team (PMT) kept adding projects to the group’s already full plate. Members of the PMT responded to “squeaky wheels” by giving otherwise low-priority projects the force of their support. Also, the PMT didn’t reinforce plant wide policies the IS group had developed. Most important, the team didn’t give group members the support they needed to stick to the IS overhaul they had committed to, and wouldn’t give them the budget to hire the additional staff they sorely needed.

But when the group mapped out their current situation in a causal loop diagram, they gained a new perspective on the problem. They found that the situation resembled a “Success to the Successful” story, in which two or more projects or groups compete for limited resources.

The diagram “Success to the Squeaky Wheel” shows how, in this case, the IS group’s attention to urgent requests diverted resources away from prioritized items. Because rewards for completing urgent requests were heightened, the urgent tasks continued to receive greater attention (R2).  At the same time, the rewards for and focus on prioritized tasks decreased (R1). Finally, as people realized that urgent requests received greater attention than prioritized items, the number of “squeaky wheels”-or people promoting their own agenda items to management-proliferated. This development was followed by an increase in management’s efforts to get action on those agenda items, which further promoted urgent items over prioritized ones (R3).

After examining the causal loop diagrams, the group realized that they had played a role in the stalled progress on the overhaul project. Although IS team members encouraged each other to blame the PMT, no one in the group had given the PMT feedback concerning the impact of their requests and lack of support.

Armed with a systems view, the group identified several actions they could take to shift these unproductive dynamics. They decided to tell the PMT that they recognized that the IS overhaul was a top priority for the plant as a whole. They would point out that they couldn’t make progress on the overhaul if they continued to respond to “squeaky wheels. “The group would also let the PMT know that when they received additional requests, they would ask:

• How much of a priority is this request for you?
• Are you aware that there is a tradeoff in priorities?

The group concluded that they would issue a memo to the PMT describing their priorities and soliciting the PMT’s support of those priorities. They would also request that the PMT clearly communicate the priorities to the rest of the plant. In the memo, they would indicate the tradeoffs they were making and identify how their choices would help the company as a whole. The group felt that, with the PMT’s support, they would have the authority to focus on the prioritized project instead of responding to urgent requests.

Conclusion

Developing accountability skills is challenging; it takes courage and the willingness to learn new ways of thinking and acting. So why is moving from blame to accountability worthwhile? Because blame is like sugar – it produces a brief boost and then a let-down. It doesn’t serve the system’s long-term needs and can actually prevent it from functioning effectively. On the other hand, developing accountability skills and habits on every level of your organization can be an important element in maintaining your organization’s long-term health.

Marilyn Paul, PhD, is an independent organizational consultant affiliated with Innovation Associates, an Arthur D. Little company. She has sixteen years of experience facilitating organizational change. One focus of her work is peer mentoring and capacity development.

The post Moving from Blame to Accountability appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

The answer is usually unspoken but real. Coaching is something I do to improve another person or team; it’s part of my job. Learning happens to me; it makes me feel vulnerable. Learning focuses on my weaknesses, pressuring me to change the way I think and behave. Besides, I’m a professional, with established competencies and knowledge. I’m paid to get results, not to learn.

Thus, managers’ most common response to the growing demand for corporations to become learning organizations is to scramble to be the teacher, not the taught—the coach, not the coached. But, to be an effective coach, an individual must understand the nature of learning. And to understand learning, a coach must be actively engaged in the learning process and personally familiar with the kinds of vulnerabilities and obstacles a learner experiences.

Developing Learning Capability

Learning, coaching, and building a learning culture are critical to the success of modern businesses. Because learning increases our ability to perform, the capacity to grow capability is becoming indistinguishable from the capacity to grow wealth. However, unacknowledged resistance to learning and coaching can make it difficult for us to realize the ideals of the learning organization.

As children, we were naturally engaged in learning in everything we did. Thus, as adults, we don’t really need to learn how to learn, as much as we need to remember what we once knew. We need to unlearn some of the attitudes and practices we picked up from our formal education that seriously undermine our natural appetite and inherent capability for learning.

The Inner Game approach (see “The Inner Game” on p. 2) is about unlearning the personal and cultural habits that interfere with our ability to learn and perform. The goal is simple, if not easy: to give ourselves and our team’s greater access to our innate abilities. The approach can be summarized in a simple formula:

Performance = Potential – Interference

“Potential” includes all of our capabilities—actualized or latent—as well as our ability to learn; “Interference” represents the ways that we undermine the fulfillment or expression of our own capacities.

Diminishing the Obstacles to Learning

We can achieve increased capacity for performance and learning either by actualizing potential or by decreasing interference—or by a combination of both. In my experience, the natural learning process—which is how we actualize potential—is gradual and ongoing. By contrast, reducing interference can have an immediate and far-reaching impact on learning and levels of performance. Thus, a successful model for skill development must take into account the phenomenon of interference.

But beware: The barriers to learning are often well guarded and may become even more entrenched when challenged. Coaches must generally be gentle in their approach to surfacing interference to learning and performance in an individual or team. Hints, suggestions, and indirect probing, though they may seem to take longer than a more direct approach, are usually more successful over the long run.

I learned a great deal about interference and how to help people work through it while coaching tennis and golf—two sports in which the obstacles to performance are difficult to disguise. And I have continued to find these sports excellent examples for exposing hidden obstacles to learning and performance. In addition, tennis and golf show the kinds of results that can occur when one succeeds in diminishing the impact of interference.

One of my favorite examples is what I call “the uh-oh experience.” A tennis ball is coming toward a player who thinks she has a weak backhand. As the ball approaches, she thinks.

“Here comes a probable mistake.” She tightens her muscles, steps back defensively as if to avoid the threat, then slashes jerkily at the ball. When this action results in either an error or an easy shot for the opponent, she confirms to herself, “I really do have a terrible backhand,” and unwittingly sets herself up for the same results on the next similar shot.

If a coach tried to correct each of the elements of the player’s stroke that were incorrect, it would take months of “learning.” However, if the coach worked at eliminating the player’s negative self-talk by focusing her attention instead on perceiving the details of the ball’s trajectory, most of the positive behavioral changes would take place without conscious effort. Working at changing a player’s perception instead of his or her behavior saves time and frustration for both student and coach.

Below is a partial list of obstacles to growing capability:

• The assumption that “I already know.”Professionals often feel that they must present the appearance of already knowing everything and already being perfectly competent. This is an obstacle to learning that young children do not share.
• The assumption that learning means remediation. For many people, the suggestion that they should learn means there is something wrong with them or their level of performance.
• Fear of being judged. We learn this early, through teachers and parents who used judgment as a means to control behavior and effort.
• Doubt. The uncertainty we feel when we face the unknown is a prerequisite for learning. Young children are not embarrassed by not knowing something. However, as we age, we are taught to feel stupid or incompetent if we lack knowledge or experience or are unable to perform up to expectations. We are especially vulnerable to this feeling when faced with the challenge of unlearning something. The prospect of acknowledging that we might have invested time and effort in a perspective that is no longer valid can seem especially threatening.
• Trying too hard to learn and to appear learned. This phenomenon is a derivative of fear and doubt, and leads to constricted potential and mistakes. Our errors then confirm ours self-doubt and bring about the very outcome that we feared.

Revealing the barriers to learning and performance can be an important first step in maximizing an individual’s or a team’s potential. To find the greatest leverage for reducing obstacles to learning in the workplace, I believe we should start with our definition of work itself. The way we see “work” has an impact on how we perceive everything we do in the workplace.

What Is Work?

If you ask executives the meaning of the word work, they focus on work as doing something—as accomplishing a goal, such as providing a product or service. In other words, to many people, work means performance. But definitions that equate work with performance can be limiting, especially in the current business environment.

Are there other results of work? When I ask executives this question, they generally offer responses that refer to two other distinct aspects of work. One is the domain of experience: How you feel while working is also a result of work. While working, people feel satisfaction, meaning, accomplishment, and challenge, as well as frustration, stress, anxiety, and boredom. Everyone at work experiences feelings that range from misery to fulfillment.

A second set of answers fall into the category of learning: While working, you can grow, develop know-how and skills, and improve your ability to communicate, plan, and strategize. Like performance and experience, learning is a universal and fundamentally human result of work—people of all ages, cultures, and levels of expertise are either learning and growing or stagnating and “devolving” while working. Adults can learn while working, just as children learn naturally while playing.

The Work Triangle

How are these fundamental results of work—performance, experience, and learning—related? They are unquestionably interdependent. If individuals aren’t learning, their performance will decline over time; if their predominant experience of work is boredom or stress, both learning and performance will suffer. These three results can be represented in a mutually supportive “Work Triangle,” with performance at the apex, and experience and learning at the base angles (see “The Work Triangle” on p. 3).

When I ask a group of executives, “Which of the three work results gains the greatest support and encouragement in your work environment?” their response is overwhelmingly, “Performance.” I then place my marking pen at the center of the Work Triangle and slowly draw a line toward the performance apex. “How much more priority is performance given over learning and enjoyment?” I ask. As the pen reaches the top of the triangle, a voice usually says, “Stop there.” In response, the majority chants, “Keep going,” until the line has gone past the apex and is several inches outside the triangle. There is a general chuckle and a sense of a common understanding of corporate priorities.

In the competitive world of business, it is easy to see why performance may be given priority over learning and experience. But what are the consequences of pursuing performance at the expense of learning and experience? In any but the shortest timeframe, the consequences are dire: performance itself will fall. And what will be management’s typical response? More pressure on performance, resulting in even less time and fewer resources directed toward learning or quality of experience.

How does the emphasis on performance play out in practice? Take your average sales manager who meets weekly with his sales representatives. The conversation usually focuses on performance issues, such as, how many calls did you make? What were the results of those calls in terms of sales? What are your plans for next week?

But what if the manager were committed to his own learning, as well as to his team’s development? He might also ask: What did you find out from customers that you didn’t know before—about their resistances, their needs, their perception of our products, how we compare to our competitors? How are different customers responding to our latest promotion? Did you gain any insights into your own selling skills? What is the competition doing? What are you interested in finding out next week? Did you learn anything that might help others on the team?

Our definition of work should include the worker’s experience and learning, as well as his or her performance. The real value of this redefinition of work is that it includes me as an individual. I directly and immediately benefit from the learning and experience components of the Work Triangle. The “Experience” side of the triangle reminds me that I can’t afford to neglect personal fulfillment during my working hours in the hope of enjoying myself only during vacation time or on weekends. I can never replace the hours of my life I spend at work, so I need to make the most of them.

The “Learning” side of the triangle reminds me that my future work prospects depend on the growth in in my capabilities. Even if I’m fired from my present job, I take with me what I have learned, which I can leverage into productive and valued performance elsewhere. When my customers, managers, teammates, and the surrounding culture pressure me for performance results, the Work Triangle helps me remember that the person producing those results is important, too. I neglect my own learning and quality of experience at great peril to myself as well as to my future levels of performance.

The Tunnel Vision of Performance Momentum

The definition of work that focuses strictly on performance results at the expense of learning and experience produces a kind of tunnel vision that prevents workers from being fully aware and focused. I call this state of unconsciousness “performance momentum.” At its worst, performance momentum is a series of actions an individual performs without true consciousness of how they relate to his or her most important priorities. Some call this mode of operation “fire-fighting.” Examples include getting so caught up in a game of tennis that you forget it is a game, or engaging in conversations that undermine a relationship for the sake of merely winning an argument. In short, performance momentum means getting caught up in an action to the extent that you forget the purpose of the action.

I don’t know of a more fundamental problem facing workers today. When individuals are caught up in performance momentum, they tend to forget not only important performance goals, but also their fundamental purpose as human beings. For example, my need to finish an article by the requested deadline obscures the reasons I chose to write the article in the first place, and dampens the natural enjoyment of expressing my thoughts and convictions. The person caught up in performance momentum neglects learning, growth, and the inherent quality of the work experience.

THE WORK TRIANGLE

The fundamental results of work—performance, experience, and learning—are interdependent. If individuals aren’t learning, their performance will decline over time; if their predominant experience of work is boredom or stress, both learning and performance will suffer.

The tunnel vision that results from performance momentum is difficult to escape when individuals are working in a team that confirms and enforces the focus on performance. Any activity that is not seen as driving directly toward the goal is viewed as suspect. However, when a team or individual sacrifices the learning and experience sides of the Work Triangle to performance momentum, long-term performance suffers. More important, however, the individual suffers. And because the individual constitutes the building block of the team, the team suffers as well.

Balancing the Work Triangle

A simple method for assessing the balance among the three elements in the Work Triangle is to evaluate the way an individual or team articulates performance goals in comparison with learning and experience goals. It is revealing that many employees, when asked about learning or experience goals, are vague and express less conviction than when discussing performance goals. Setting clear learning goals is a good way to begin rebalancing the Work Triangle.

However, the distinction between learning and performance is often blurred. Even individuals who have worked on plans for the development of their competencies often fall into the trap of expressing their learning goals in terms of performance; for example, “I want to learn to focus more on the customer”; “I want to learn to reach higher sales quotas”; and“ I’m working on learning how to get a promotion. ”The general rule for distinguishing between learning and performance goals is that learning can be viewed as a change that takes place within an individual, while performance takes place on the outside. Learning is an increased capacity to perform; performance is the evidence that the capacity exists.

A good way to focus on learning goals is through the acronym QUEST.

Q—qualities or attributes you might want to develop in yourself or others

U—increased understanding of the components of any person, situation, or system

E—development of expertise, knowledge, or skills

S—capacity for strategic, or systemic, thinking

T—capacity to optimize what you do with time

Teams and individuals can use QUEST to help form goals regarding what capabilities they want to develop. To be most effective, these objectives should support immediate performance goals but at the same time apply to many future performance challenges.

Coaching: A Conversation That Promotes Learning

When executives list the qualities, skills, and expertise they want from employees, they often list intangible attributes, such as creativity, accountability, sense of humor, team player, problem solver, and so on. So, how can you get the qualities and capabilities you want from people? The first response to this question is usually, “We have to do a better job in hiring.” Clearly, it is important to hire capable people. But the real question is how to build the capabilities in the people you have hired, and how to keep those qualities from diminishing.

Unfortunately, the tools of managing performance are not particularly useful for promoting or developing important qualities and core skills. And it is difficult to imagine a course that teaches the rudiments of initiative or cooperation. So what is left? The word I use for the capacity to promote such desired attributes is coaching.

Coaching is a way of being, listening, asking, and speaking that draws out and augments characteristics and potential that are already present in a person. An effective coaching relationship creates a safe and challenging environment in which learning can take place. Coaches know that an oak tree already exists within an acorn. They have seen the one grow into the other, over time and under the right conditions, and are committed to providing those conditions to the best of their abilities. Successful coaches continually learn how best to “farm” the potential they are given to nurture.

A primary role of the coach is to stop performance momentum by calling a time out and providing questions or perspective that can encourage learning. Actual learning happens through experience—taking actions, observing the results, and modifying subsequent actions. To turn a work experience into a learning experience, a particular mindset must be established beforehand. Establishing this perspective can be done through something I call a “set-up conversation,” which an individual can conduct alone through self-talk or with a coach. The set-up conversation helps make the learner aware of the possibilities that the imminent work experience could yield. In conducting one of these conversations, the coach asks questions that aid in focusing the individual’s or team’s attention.

At the end of a work experience, the coach and individual can hold a “debrief conversation.” During this interchange, they might “mine” the gold of what was learned and refine questions to take into the next work experience. In this way, experience itself becomes the teacher. The coach’s role becomes helping the learner as valuable questions of the “teacher” and interpret the answers.

Coaching is very different from what we are generally taught as managers or teachers. We cannot teach work teams and individuals how to grow capabilities—in the sense of the transference of information in a class-room environment. Nor can we build capabilities through managerial techniques—for example, requiring certain abilities and rewarding employees when they display them or punishing them when they don’t. Neither can we measure learning, because we can’t directly observe it. In sum, it is the learner alone who controls the process and perceives its benefits. Managers don’t even need to reward employees for learning—if learning indeed takes place, it will lead to improved performance. And employers generally award bonuses, raises, and promotions based on an increase in a worker’s performance results.

Employees and managers cannot afford to wait for their corporate cultures to become learning cultures. Workers benefit from an expanded definition of work that includes learning and experience goals, and therefore must make the commitment to achieve those objectives. But companies also benefit from this new perspective on work. Wise are the corporate leaders who recognize that redefining work in this way is a difficult task, but that the company and its shareholders also gain advantages from a balanced Work Triangle. The best managers will provide what support and resources they can to the effort, and will make it their mission to shape their workplace into an optimal learning environment. The payoff will be improved business results and a corporate culture that attracts employees who equally value growth in capabilities.

Tim Gallwey is credited with founding the field of sports psychology. His four best-selling books on The Inner Game have deeply influenced the worlds of business and sports. For the last 15years, Tim has spent most of his time working with companies that want to find a better way to implement change. This article is based on a working progress called The Inner Game of Work, to be published in 1998 by Random House.

Editorial support for this article was provided by Janice Molloy.

The post The Inner Game of Work: Building Capability in the Workplace appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

One reason is that each team member brings to the group fundamental differences in his or her way of working and seeing that are usually not recognized and accommodated. These differences can create discomfort or conflict that consumes energy rather than releasing it for creativity and new learning. When the differences are known and understood, however, they can be utilized for superior team functioning.

For example, imagine that a four person team has been assigned the task of creating a human resource development training program for their organization. It becomes clear from the outset that each member has a distinctly different point of view. Even before they get into the assignment, one team member wants definitions — he wants to know precisely what is meant by the terms “human resources” and “development,” and what the long-term purpose of the training is.

Another person believes it is more critical to know what has been done in the past — she wants more data to set the context for considering next steps. She asks what has worked in the past and what the measurable results have been.

The third member of the group is most focused on assessing and promoting the comfort level of each team member, including himself. He wants to feel that the group is harmonized before they discuss the task. He is concerned with the individual relevance of the proposed program, and the personal implications for the people who will participate in it.

Finally, the fourth member of the team simply wants to move forward. She can’t understand why the team doesn’t just begin with something innovative and untested. It is evident to her that human resources requires sustained development, so she thinks, “Why all the discussion? Let’s put out some ideas and take some action.”

As each team member works to resolve his or her own needs, conflict builds within the group. None of the members can understand why the others are not “hearing” them. The frustration gradually builds until it reaches a point at which the group may not be able to address the task effectively.

Human Dynamics

Underneath the dynamics described above are some fundamental distinctions in the way people function. The study of Human Dynamics, which began in 1979 and has involved more than 40,000 people from over 25 cultures, is devoted to understanding these distinctions. It has resulted in new awareness — both of individuals’ unique personality systems and of the interactions of these systems in the larger contexts of the family, the classroom, the workplace, and the community. With such an understanding, we can begin to build on the synergy of different learning processes to enhance our dialogues and to create more effective teams and organizations.

The Core Universal Principles

Human Dynamics focuses on exploring the interaction of three universal principles: the mental, the emotional (or relational), and the physical (or practical). Each of these principles is critical in the development of a complete and balanced person.

The mental principle in the human system is related to the mind — to thinking, values, structure, focus, objectivity, and perspective. The emotional principle is more subjective. It is concerned with relationships — with communication, organization, feelings, and putting things together in new ways (creativity). The physical principle is pragmatic. It is the making, doing, and operationalizing part of ourselves.

These three principles combine in nine possible variations to form distinct ways of functioning, which we term “personality dynamics.” Five of these personality dynamics predominate in Western cultures, while two of the five predominate in the Far East. Each constitutes a whole way of functioning, characterized by distinctive processes of learning, communicating, problem-solving, relating to others, contributing to teams, maintaining well-being, and responding to stress. Each has distinctive ways of handling change, and each has a characteristic path of development.

The personality dynamics appear in every culture, characterize males and females equally, and can be observed at every age level. One of the many distinguishing features of the Human Dynamics perspective is that it is possible to identify the personality dynamic in childhood, even in infancy, thus providing invaluable information for parents and teachers on the specific educational and developmental needs of their children and students. Part of the research has involved tracking the development of children over the course of many years. The personality dynamic remains consistent over time, but is expressed with increasing maturity.

It is essential to understand that Human Dynamics is a developmental paradigm. Every personality dynamic has an embedded capacity for maturation, though the path of development toward wholeness is distinct for each. A spiritual dimension, termed the Deep Capacity, is also recognized. Maturation involves integration and development of the mental, emotional, and physical aspects of each personality dynamic, and fuller expression of the Deep Capacity.

Another distinctive feature of the Human Dynamics approach is that no testing is required. People identify their own personality dynamic through a process of discovery, and are helped to recognize the personality dynamics of others through sensitive observation and participation.

It is important to note that each personality dynamic is of equal value. Anyone of any personality dynamic may be more or less intelligent, compassionate, skilled, or gifted. It is the way in which each dynamic functions that is entirely distinct.

The implications of recognizing these distinctions for the development of learning communities is profound. People really do learn, communicate, relate, and develop in fundamentally different ways. Awareness and understanding of the distinctions offer new opportunities for self-understanding and growth; for improved communication and positive relationships; and for teamwork that utilizes the gifts of each member in conscious synergy. Each whole system potentially complements the others, enhancing the overall functioning of a team or organization.

Personality Dynamics

Below are thumbnail sketches of each of the five predominant personality dynamics, with particular emphasis on their functioning in teams:

Mentally Centered. The mentally centered plan from the top down, from the abstract to the particular, and back again. They usually have a gift for long-range perspective and for logical planning to achieve long-term goals. They ask the essential questions, often beginning with “Why?”

Their sensitivity to basic principles and precepts enables them to offer “course correction” should a group begin to stray from its purpose or vision. Because of their natural objectivity and affinity for perspective, they are often able to articulate the principle or overarching consideration that unifies seemingly disparate views.

However, they may often be silent in a group. One reason for this is that they typically feel no need to articulate a point if someone else is making it. Also, because they process internally, think logically, and like to articulate their point of view precisely, they may have difficulty finding space to contribute in a less orderly group process. Their silence should not be interpreted as aloofness or non-involvement. They can be helped to contribute if asked questions.

Phrases commonly used by mentally centered people include: “What exactly is the purpose?” “What are the long-term implications?” “What exactly do you mean by…?”

Emotional-Mental (also called Emotional-Objective.) Emotional objective people are emotional about their ideas, which they often express with great intensity. One of the main functions of this group is to initiate; they light the fires of new endeavors. Movement is their inner directive. They want to establish the direction of a task, its purpose and value, and then move into action as soon as possible, learning as they go. They are usually adept at creating beginning structures that allow a process to take form.

Theirs is a brainstorming, experimental, open-ended “R&D” process in which new possibilities and lines of inquiry are offered and explored, typically directed toward the short-term future. It is often assumed that this group wants to “take charge,” when in fact they are usually simply living their natural function of breaking new ground.

The processing of emotional objective people is primarily external — they think on their feet. In teams, this group frequently begins the discussion, facilitates the interplay of ideas, and wants to keep the process moving forward. Phrases you may hear from emotional-objective people include: “Let’s put all the ideas on the board and prioritize.” “The details can wait–first let’s create a general structure.” “It’s good enough.” “Let’s go!”

Emotional-Physical (also called Emotional-Subjective). Emotional subjective people respond to tasks (as to all of life) in a personal way. They feel the personal implications of any undertaking, both for themselves and for others who may be involved or affected. In order to explore, understand, and become comfortable with these implications, they need time to engage in extensive intrapersonal and interpersonal processing. They require dialogue that involves exploring their own feelings and those of others, as well as related personal experiences, while at the same time dealing with the problem or assignment itself. They learn most readily through interpersonal exchange.

One of the core motivations of emotional-subjective people is to create and sustain harmony. In a team situation they therefore have a double task — that of maintaining group harmony while simultaneously addressing the team’s purposes and issues. Emotional-subjective people are usually highly insightful regarding the “people issues” involved. They are highly intuitive, but are not always able to explain these feelings rationally in the moment. Given time for processing, the emotional-subjective person will usually come to a rational understanding of his/her intuition and be able to recommend an appropriate action. The intuitive capacities and creative skills of emotional-subjective people are natural resources that organizations often waste.

Phrases that are familiar to emotional-subjective people are: “Is that comfortable for you?” “I need time to process before I can take another step.” “My gut feeling is…”.

Physical-Emotional. Physical-emotional people are natural systems thinkers. In any undertaking, they spend the longest time gathering data, assimilating and synthesizing it — an organic process that mostly takes place internally, and takes its own time. The result, if sufficient time is allowed, is a plan or product that is detailed, comprehensive, and systemically linked.

On teams, physical-emotional members are often people of few words, preferring communication that is factual, down-to-earth, and pragmatic. It is sometimes difficult for them to contribute to a team process if the pace is not sufficiently deliberate, but because they see and think in terms of whole systems, they may have a great deal to say on any particular issue if they are given the opportunity. They absorb enormous amounts of factual information, and their capacity to remember detail is usually prodigious. They are capable of summing up the content of any meeting because they are natural recorders of everything said. However, they may not be ready to give their conclusions regarding the meeting until a later occasion, when they have had time to assimilate all that has occurred.

Phrases you might hear from a physical-emotional person include: “I need some sense of the parameters.” “Can you give me more context?” “We need to expose them to the actual experience, not just talk about it.”

Physical-Mental. The physical-mental group shares many of the characteristics of the physical-emotional group. They, too, are pragmatic, need a considerable amount of context, and take in a great deal of information. However, they are more selective of the data they take in and begin to structure it more quickly around the purpose, which they want to clearly establish from the beginning. Like the physical-emotional, they think and plan systemically, but in less detail. They therefore tend to move to action more quickly.

Like the mentally centered, they have natural gifts for objectivity, structure, and long-range strategic planning. Unlike the mentally centered, however, they tend to work from the concrete to the abstract — from current reality to future outcomes — so they gather more factual detail. Phrases you might hear from a physical-mental person include: “What is the purpose?” “What is the current reality?” “Let’s make a model to clarify this…”.

Human Dynamics and the Five Disciplines

Human Dynamics provides a foundation of human understanding and development that facilitates implementation of each of the five disciplines identified by Peter Senge as crucial in building learning communities.

Systems Thinking. Human Dynamics offers the opportunity for including in any process the most fundamental system of all, the human system. Human Dynamics looks at people as distinct learning systems. Each individual is acknowledged as representing a specific whole system of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual interaction and expression. Further, each personality dynamic system is recognized as functioning as an essential component of an interactive system that includes all of the personality dynamics. Not only are the needs and gifts and processes of all of the individual personality dynamics taken into account, but so is their dynamic complementarity. Groups on any scale, whether a family unit, project team, organization, or even the human race, can be viewed as a system of interaction of the different personality dynamics.

Mental Models. Human Dynamics demonstrates how each of the personality dynamics operates from a fundamentally distinct experiential base. Therefore, each brings to any discussion or endeavor a specific perspective and set of assumptions that differ from those of the other personality dynamics. One purpose of the Human Dynamics work is to make these distinctions clear, so that an individual’s words or actions can be understood in the context of that person’s basic “way of being.” This helps assure greater mutual understanding and more empathic communication.

Personal Mastery. Every aspect of Human Dynamics is concerned with personal mastery, beginning with the most essential requisite of all — knowledge of oneself. Human Dynamics programs involve a voyage of discovery — about oneself, others, and the different processes of communication, problem-solving, learning, and developing, and about what can be done in light of these discoveries to optimize how we live and learn and work together.

Human Dynamics looks at people as distinct learning systems. Each individual is acknowledged as representing a specific whole system of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual interaction and expression.

Shared Vision. The quality of a shared vision depends upon the visionary capacity of the individual participants. From the perspective of Human Dynamics, the capacity for vision is an attribute of the mental principle. However, the vision must also include people’s needs (emotional principle) and a way to bring the vision into being (physical principle). Combining exercises for the development of the three principles in a visioning session can produce a much more inclusive and qualitative personal or collective vision, in which head, heart, deep aspiration, and actualizing intent are all represented.

Team Learning. Awareness and understanding of the different personality dynamics is an essential ingredient in qualitative team functioning.

The team developing the human resource training program, for example, would have begun their process at a completely different place of understanding, respect, and empowerment if they had had a framework for understanding each other’s ways of learning and operating. This particular team was fortunate to have the diversity of perspective of one mentally centered, one physical-emotional, one emotional-subjective, and one emotional objective person. However, without a framework for understanding and integrating their distinct gifts so as to achieve a common goal, the group became mired in a frustrating and unproductive process.

Not only can existing teams learn to function more harmoniously and productively, but balanced teams can be consciously assembled in which the various personality dynamics are all represented. As many organizations are currently discovering, such a team can turn its attention to almost anything with success because the results will integrate the natural gifts and way of seeing of each of the personality dynamics.

When teams (or families, groups, or communities) are conscious of the distinctions, the differences become assets rather than liabilities, and the performance of the team indeed becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Human Dynamics programs are currently being disseminated in the fields of business, education, healthcare, and community development.

Sandra Seagal is founder and president of Human Dynamics International (Topanga, CA) and executive director of Human Dynamics Foundation. Both organizations are devoted to the development, empowerment, and sustainment of individual and collective human potential.

David Horne has been involved in the development of Human Dynamics since 1983.Together they coauthored Human Dynamics: A New Framework for Understanding People and Realizing the Potential in Our Organizations (Pegasus Communications, 1997).

The post Human Dynamics: A Foundation for the Learning Organization appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

We use the term “Habits of Mind” to mean having a disposition toward behaving intelligently when confronted with problems to which we do not immediately know the answers. When humans experience dichotomies, are confused by dilemmas, or come face to face with uncertainties, our most effective actions require drawing forth certain patterns of intellectual behavior. When we draw upon these intellectual resources, the results that we produce are more powerful, of higher quality, and of greater significance than if we fail to employ those patterns of intellectual behaviors.

Employing Habits of Mind requires a composite of many skills, attitudes, cues, past experiences, and proclivities. It means that we value one pattern of thinking over another, and therefore it implies choice making about which pattern should be employed at which time. It includes sensitivity to the contextual cues in a situation signaling that it is an appropriate time and circumstance to employ this pattern. It requires a level of skillfulness to employ and carry through the behaviors effectively over time. Finally, it leads individuals to reflect on, evaluate, modify, and carry forth to future applications their learnings.

Research in effective thinking and intelligent behavior indicates that there are some identifiable characteristics of effective thinkers. Scientists, artists, and mathematicians are not the only ones who demonstrate these behaviors. These characteristics have been identified in successful mechanics, teachers, entrepreneurs, salespeople, and parents — people in all walks of life.

Habits of Mind

Following are descriptions and an elaboration of 16 attributes of what human beings do when they behave intelligently (see “16 Habits of Mind”). These Habits of Mind are what intelligent people do when they are confronted with complex problems. These behaviors are seldom performed in isolation. Rather, clusters of such behaviors are drawn forth and employed in various situations. When listening intently, for example, one employs flexibility, metacognition, precise language, and perhaps questioning.

Please do not think that there are only 16 ways in which humans display their intelligence. It should be understood that this list is not meant to be complete. You, your colleagues, or your students will want to continue the search for additional Habits of Mind by adding to and elaborating on this list and the descriptions (for an example of an additional list, see “13 Habits of a Systems Thinker,” compiled by the Waters Foundation).

1. Persisting

“Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.”

— Marabel Morgan

Efficacious people stick to a task until it is completed. They don’t give up easily They are able to analyze a problem to develop a system, structure, or strategy to attack it. They employ a range and have a repertoire of alternative strategies for problem solving. They collect evidence to indicate their problem-solving strategy is working, and if one strategy doesn’t work, they know how to back up and try another. They recognize when a theory or idea must be rejected and another employed. They have systematic methods of analyzing a problem that include knowing how to begin, what steps must be performed, and what data need to be generated or collected. Because they are able to sustain a problem-solving process over time, they are comfortable with ambiguous situations.

• Managing Impulsivity“. . . . [G]oal-directed self-imposed delay of gratification is perhaps the essence of emotional self-regulation: the ability to deny impulse in the service of a goal, whether it be building a business, solving an algebraic equation, or pursuing the Stanley cup.”

  —Daniel Goleman

  Effective problem solvers have a sense of deliberativeness: They think before they act. They intentionally form a vision of a product, plan of action, goal, or destination before they begin. They strive to clarify and understand directions, develop a strategy for approaching a problem, and withhold immediate value judgments about an idea before fully understanding it. Reflective individuals consider alternatives and consequences of several possible directions prior to taking action. They decrease their need for trial and error by gathering information, taking time to reflect on an answer before giving it, making sure they understand directions, and listening to alternative points of view.

• Listening to Others — With Understanding and Empathy“Listening is the beginning of understanding. … Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening. Let the wise listen and add to their learning and let the discerning get guidance.”

  —Proverbs 1:5

  According to Stephen Covey, highly effective people spend an inordinate amount of time and energy listening. Some psychologists believe that the ability to listen to another person, empathize with them, and understand their point of view is one of the highest forms of intelligent behavior. Being able to paraphrase another person’s ideas, detecting indicators of their feelings or emotional states in their oral and body language, accurately expressing another person’s concepts, emotions, and problems — all are indications of listening behavior (Piaget called it “overcoming egocentrism”).

  Peter Senge and his colleagues suggest that to listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow your mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed and hear beneath the words to their meaning. This is a complex skill requiring the ability to monitor one’s own thoughts while, at the same time, attending to the partner’s words. Honing this behavior does not mean that we can’t disagree with someone. A good listener tries to understand what the other person is saying. In the end, he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with.

• Thinking Flexibly“If you never change your mind, why have one?”

  — Edward deBono

  An amazing discovery about the human brain is its plasticity — its ability to “rewire,” change, and even repair itself to become smarter. Flexible people are the ones with the most control. They have the capacity to change their minds as they receive additional data. They engage in multiple and simultaneous outcomes and activities, draw upon a repertoire of problem-solving strategies, and know when it is appropriate to be broad and global in their thinking and when a situation requires detailed precision. They create and seek novel approaches and have a well-developed sense of humor. They envision a range of consequences.

  13 HABITS OF A SYSTEMS THINKER

  The Water Foundation has identified 13 Habits of a Systems Thinker. For detailed definitions of each, click here.

  • Seeks to understand the “big picture”
  • Observes how elements within systems change over time, generating patterns and trends
  • Recognizes that a system’s structure generates its behavior: focuses on structure, not on blame
  • Identifies the circular nature of complex cause and effect relationships, i.e. interdependencies
  • Changes perspectives
  • Surfaces and tests assumptions
  • Considers an issue fully and resists the urge to come to a quick conclusion
  • Considers how mental models (i.e., attitudes and beliefs derived from experience) affect current reality and the future
  • Uses understanding of system structures to identify possible leverage actions
  • Considers both short- and long-term consequences of actions
  • Finds where unintended consequences emerge
  • Recognizes the impact of time delays when exploring cause and effect relationships
  • Checks results and changes actions if needed:, “successive approximation”

  Flexible people can approach a problem from a new angle using a novel approach (deBono refers to this as lateral thinking). They consider alternative points of view or deal with several sources of information simultaneously. Thus, flexibility of mind is essential for working with social diversity, enabling an individual to recognize the wholeness and distinctness of other people’s ways of experiencing and making meaning.

  Flexible thinkers are able to take a “macro-centric” perspective. This is similar to looking down from a balcony at ourselves and our interactions with others. This bird’s-eye view is useful for discerning themes and patterns from assortments of information. It is intuitive, holistic, and conceptual. Since we often need to solve problems with incomplete information, we need the capacity to perceive general patterns and jump across gaps of incomplete knowledge or when some of the pieces are missing.

  Yet another perceptual orientation is “micro-centric” — examining the individual and sometimes minute parts that make up the whole. Without this “worm’s-eye view,” science, technology, and any complex enterprise could not function. These activities require attention to detail, precision, and orderly progressions.

  Flexible thinkers display confidence in their intuition. They tolerate confusion and ambiguity up to a point, and are willing to let go of a problem, trusting their subconscious to continue creative and productive work on it. Flexibility is the cradle of humor, creativity, and repertoire.

• Thinking About Our Thinking (Metacognition)“When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.”

  — Plato

  Occurring in the neocortex, metacognition is our ability to know what we know and what we don’t know. It is our ability to plan a strategy for producing what information is needed, to be conscious of our own steps and strategies during the act of problem solving, and to reflect on and evaluate the productiveness of our own thinking. Probably the major components of metacognition are developing a plan of action, maintaining that plan in mind over a period of time, then reflecting back on and evaluating the plan upon its completion. Planning a strategy before embarking on a course of action assists us in keeping track of the steps in the sequence for the duration of the activity. It facilitates making temporal and comparative judgments, assessing the readiness for more or different activities, and monitoring our interpretations, perceptions, decisions, and behaviors.

  Metacognition means becoming increasingly aware of one’s actions and the effect of those actions on others and on the environment, forming internal questions as one searches for information and meaning, developing mental maps or plans of action, mentally rehearsing prior to performance, monitoring those plans as they are employed. It involves being conscious of the need for midcourse correction if the plan is not meeting expectations, reflecting on the plan upon completion of the implementation for the purpose of self-evaluation, and editing mental pictures for improved performance.

• Striving for Accuracy and Precision“A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is committing another mistake.”

  — Confucius

  Embodied in the stamina, grace, and elegance of a ballerina or a shoemaker is the desire for craftsmanship, mastery, flawlessness, and economy of energy to produce exceptional results. People who value these qualities take time to check over their products. They review the rules by which they are to abide; they review the models and visions they are to follow; and they review the criteria they are to employ and confirm that their finished product matches the criteria exactly.

  To be craftsman-like means knowing that one can continually perfect one’s craft by working to attain the highest possible standards and pursue ongoing learning in order to bring a laser-like focus of energies to task accomplishment. For some people, craftsmanship requires continuous reworking. Mario Cuomo, a great speechwriter and politician, once said that his speeches were never done — it was only a deadline that made him stop working on them!

• Questioning and Posing Problems“The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advances.”

  — Albert Einstein

  One of the distinguishing characteristics between humans and other forms of life is our inclination and ability to find problems to solve. Effective problem solvers know how to ask questions to fill in the gaps between what they know and what they don’t know. Effective questioners are inclined to ask a range of questions. For example, they request data to support others’ conclusions and assumptions through questions such as, “What evidence do you have?”

  They pose questions about alternative points of view:, “From whose viewpoint are we seeing, reading, or hearing?”

  They inquire into causal connections and relationships:, “How are these people/events/situations related to each other?”

  They pose hypothetical problems: “What do you think would happen if …?”

  Inquirers recognize discrepancies and phenomena in their environment and probe into their causes:, “Why do cats purr?”, “Why does the hair on my head grow so fast, while the hair on my arms and legs grows so slowly?”, “What are some alternative solutions to international conflicts other than wars?”

• Applying Past Knowledge to New Situations“I’ve never made a mistake. I’ve only learned from experience.”

  — Thomas A. Edison

  Intelligent human beings learn from experience. When confronted with a new and perplexing problem, they will often draw forth experience from their past. They can be heard to say, “This reminds me of . . .” or “This is just like the time when I . . .” They call on their store of knowledge and experience as sources of data to support, theories to explain, or processes to solve each new challenge. Furthermore, they are able to abstract meaning from one experience, carry it forth, and apply it in a new and novel situation.

• Thinking and Communicating with Clarity and Precision“I do not so easily think in words . . . after being hard at work having arrived at results that are perfectly clear . . . I have to translate my thoughts in a language that does not run evenly with them.”

  — Francis Galton

  Language refinement plays a critical role in enhancing a person’s cognitive maps and their ability to think critically, which is the knowledge base for efficacious action. Enriching the complexity and specificity of language simultaneously produces effective thinking. Language and thinking are closely entwined. Like two sides of a coin, they are inseparable. Fuzzy language is a reflection of fuzzy thinking. Intelligent people strive to communicate accurately in both written and oral form, taking care to use precise language, defining terms, correct names, and universal labels and analogies. They strive to avoid overgeneralizations, deletions, and distortions. Instead, they support their statements with explanations, comparisons, quantification, and evidence.

• Gathering Data Through All Senses“Observe perpetually.”

  — Henry James

  The brain is the ultimate reductionist. It reduces the world to its elementary parts: photons of light, molecules of smell, sound waves, vibrations of touch — which send electrochemical signals to individual brain cells that store information about lines, movements, colors, smells, and other sensory inputs. Intelligent people know that all information gets into the brain through the sensory pathways: gustatory, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic, auditory, visual, Most linguistic, cultural, and physical learning is derived from the environment by observing or taking in through the senses. To know a wine it must be drunk; to know a role it must be acted; to know a game it must be played; to know a dance it must be moved; to know a goal it must be envisioned. Those whose sensory pathways are open, alert, and acute absorb more information from the environment than those whose pathways are withered, immune, and oblivious to sensory stimuli.

  Furthermore, we are learning more about the impact of arts and music on improved mental functioning. Forming mental images is important in mathematics and engineering; listening to classical music seems to improve spatial reasoning. Social scientists solve problems through scenarios and roleplaying; scientists build models; engineers use cad-cam; mechanics learn through hands-on experimentation; artists experiment with colors and textures; musicians learn by producing combinations of instrumental and vocal music.

• Creating, Imagining, and Innovating“The future is not some place we are going to but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.”

  — John Schaar

  All humans have the capacity to generate novel, original, clever, or ingenious products, solutions, and techniques—if that capacity is developed. Creative individuals try to conceive problem solutions differently, examining alternative possibilities from many angles. They tend to project themselves into different roles using analogies, starting with a vision and working backward, imagining they are the objects being considered. Creative people take risks and frequently push the boundaries of their perceived limits. They are intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated, working on the task because of the aesthetic challenge rather than the material rewards. Creative people are open to criticism. They hold up their products for others to judge and seek feedback in an ever-increasing effort to refine their technique.

• Responding with Wonderment and Awe“The most beautiful experience in the world is the experience of the mysterious.”

  — Albert Einstein.

  Efficacious people have not only an “I can” attitude, but also an “I enjoy” feeling. They enjoy figuring things out by themselves and continue to learn throughout their lifetimes. They find beauty in a sunset, intrigue in the geometry of a spider web, and exhilaration at the iridescence of a hummingbird’s wings. They see the congruity and intricacies in the derivation of a mathematical formula, recognize the orderliness and adroitness of a chemical change, and commune with the serenity of a distant constellation.

• Taking Responsible Risks“There has been a calculated risk in every stage of American development — the pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, businessmen who were not afraid of failure, dreamers who were not afraid of action.”

  — Brooks Atkinson

  Flexible people seem to have an almost uncontrollable urge to go beyond established limits. They are uneasy about comfort; they “live on the edge of their competence.” They seem compelled to place themselves in situations where they do not know what the outcome will be. They accept confusion, uncertainty, and the higher risks of failure as part of the normal process, and they learn to view setbacks as interesting, challenging, and growth producing.

  However, they are not behaving impulsively. Their risks are educated. They draw on past knowledge, are thoughtful about consequences, and have a well-trained sense of what is appropriate. They know that not all risks are worth taking! It is only through repeated experiences that risk taking becomes educated. It often is a cross between intuition, drawing on past knowledge, and a sense of meeting new challenges.

• Finding Humor“Where do bees wait? At the buzz stop.”

  — Andrew, age six

  Another unique attribute of humans is our sense of humor. Laughter transcends all cultures and eras. Its positive effects on psychological functions include a drop in the pulse rate, the secretion of endorphins, and increased oxygen in the blood. It has been found to liberate creativity and provoke such higher-level thinking skills as anticipation, the identification of novel relationships, visual imagery, and analogy. People who engage in the mystery of humor have the ability to perceive situations from an original and often interesting vantage point. Having a whimsical frame of mind, they thrive on finding incongruity and perceiving absurdities, ironies, and satire; finding discontinuities; and being able to laugh at situations and themselves.

• Thinking Interdependently“Take care of each other. Share your energies with the group. No one must feel alone, cut off, for that is when you do not make it.”

  — Willie Unsoeld

  Humans are social beings. We congregate in groups, find it therapeutic to be listened to, draw energy from one another, and seek reciprocity. In groups, we contribute our time and energy to tasks that we would quickly tire of when working alone. In fact, we have learned that one of the cruelest forms of punishment that can be inflicted on an individual is solitary confinement.

  Cooperative humans realize that all of us together are more powerful, intellectually and/or physically, than any one individual. Probably the foremost disposition in the post-industrial society is the heightened ability to think in concert with others and to find ourselves increasingly more interdependent and sensitive to the needs of others. Problem solving has become so complex that no one person can go it alone. No one has access to all the data needed to make critical decisions; no one person can consider as many alternatives as several people can.

• Learning Continuously“Insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

  — Albert Einstein

  Intelligent people are in a continuous learning mode. Their confidence, in combination with their inquisitiveness, allows them to constantly search for new and better ways. People with this Habit of Mind are always striving for improvement, growing, and learning. They seize problems, situations, tensions, conflicts, and circumstances as valuable opportunities to learn.

  A great mystery about humans is that we confront learning opportunities with fear rather than mystery and wonder. We seem to feel better when we know rather than when we learn. We defend our biases, beliefs, and storehouses of knowledge rather than inviting the unknown, the creative, and the inspirational. Being certain and closed gives us comfort, while being doubtful and open gives us fear. The highest form of thinking we will ever learn is the humility of knowing that we don’t know.

In Summary

Drawn from research on human effectiveness, descriptions of remarkable performers, and analyses of the characteristics of efficacious people, we have presented descriptions of 16 Habits of Mind. This list is not meant to be complete but rather to serve as a starting point for further elaboration and description.

These Habits of Mind may serve as mental disciplines. When confronted with problematic situations, students, parents, and teachers might habitually employ one or more of these Habits of Mind by asking themselves, “What is the most intelligent thing I can do right now?”

• How can I learn from this? What are my resources? How can I draw on my past successes with problems like this? What do I already know about the problem? What resources do I have available or need to generate?
• How can I approach this problem flexibly? How might I look at the situation in another way? How can I draw upon my repertoire of problem-solving strategies? How can I look at this problem from a fresh perspective?
• How can I illuminate this problem to make it clearer, more precise? Do I need to check out my data sources? How might I break this problem down into its component parts and develop a strategy for understanding and accomplishing each step?
• What do I know or not know? What questions do I need to ask? What strategies are in my mind now? What am I aware of in terms of my own beliefs, values, and goals with this problem? What feelings or emotions am I aware of which might be blocking or enhancing my progress?
• The interdependent thinker might turn to others for help. She might ask, How does this problem affect others? How can we solve it together? What can I learn from others that would help me become a better problem solver?

These Habits of Mind transcend all subject matters commonly taught in school. They are characteristic of peak performers, whether in homes, schools, athletic fields, organizations, the military, governments, churches, or corporations. They are what make marriages successful, learning continual, workplaces productive, and democracies enduring.

The goal of education therefore should be to support others and ourselves in liberating, developing, and habituating these Habits of Mind more fully. Taken together, they are a force directing us toward increasingly authentic, congruent, ethical behavior. They are the tools of disciplined choice making. They are the primary vehicles in the lifelong journey toward integration. They are the “right stuff” that makes human beings efficacious.

This article is adapted with permission from Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick, “Describing 16 Habits of Mind.” Click here to access the original article. The authors have a new book coming out, Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind: 16 Essential Characteristics for Success (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2009).

Arthur L. Costa, Ed. D., is an Emeritus Professor of Education at California State University, Sacramento and co-director of the Institute for Intelligent Behavior in El Dorado Hills, California. He has served as a classroom teacher, a curriculum consultant, and an assistant superintendent for instruction and as the director of educational programs for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Bena Kallick, Ph. D., is a private consultant providing services to school districts, state departments of education, professional organizations, and public sector agencies throughout the United States and abroad. Her areas of focus include group dynamics, creative and critical thinking, and alternative assessment strategies in the classroom.

The post Habits of Mind: Strategies for Disciplined Choice Making appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

In this changing world, it’s useful to think of leadership not as an immutable set of qualities but as an activity: the activity of engaging people to accomplish a common purpose. This process takes place within a particular social, political, economic, and technological environment — the features of which influence the effectiveness of certain styles and approaches to leadership. It is my contention that the environment has changed dramatically — in ways that I will describe more fully below — and that one of the new characteristics that leaders must adopt to be effective is that of vulnerability.

Vulnerability is not an attribute commonly associated with leadership. The word evokes images of weakness, fallibility, and defenselessness. Roget’s Interactive Thesaurus identifies nine synonyms for the word “vulnerability”: danger, dependence, exposure, infirmity, instability, jeopardy, liability, peril, and weakness. So why would anyone deliberately seek to be vulnerable? How can doing so possibly be necessary for leaders today? Isn’t living in the world dangerous and unstable enough without deliberately cultivating vulnerability? Before discussing these questions, let’s explore what I mean by “vulnerability” in the context of leadership.

The Discipline of Vulnerability

Pema Chödrön uses the metaphor of a room to describe how we often relate to the world. We create this room to suit us perfectly. It is the perfect temperature; the food is our favorite, as is the music. Only the people with whom we get along are allowed to enter this room. It is a wonderful environment, perfectly suited to us. But gradually the room turns into a prison as we become more and more afraid to venture out. The longer we stay in the room, the more threatening the outside So we take steps to for selves even more, padlocking the doors and shuttering the windows.

This is the position of too many leaders today. In a world full of perceived threats from all quarters, leaders tend to isolate themselves as they attempt to single-handedly eradicate all perils facing their organizations. In doing so, they cut themselves off from important sources of information and valuable relationships. In this new environment, the existing leadership paradigm — the “leader as hero” —  serves as a prison.

As Chödrön says, “Staying in this room is not productive of being a whole, healthy, sane, well-adjusted person. . . . It’s not productive of awe, wonder, curiosity, or inquisitiveness. It’s not productive of tolerance, and it breeds bigotry and racial hatred.” And then she adds, “Our life’s work is to learn to open the door.” Learning to open the door — for individuals, organizations, and even nations — involves cultivating vulnerability.

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge writes: “Each of the five learning disciplines can be thought of on three distinct levels:

1. Practices, which are the things you do
2. Principles, which are guiding ideas and insights
3. Essences, which is the state of being of those with high levels of mastery in the discipline.”

Using this framework, and thinking of vulnerability as a discipline, its essence is a sense of unguardedness and willingness to be changed. Principles or guiding ideas that support the discipline of vulnerability might include openness, transparency, “not knowingness,” trust, and compassion. Openness is a sense of permeability, a receptivity to influences from outside “your room.” Transparency is essentially a willingness to invite scrutiny and critique. “Not knowingness” is a bit harder to describe. The Zen Buddhist phrase “beginner’s mind” captures this principle well, in that it encourages us to approach each situation with a spirit of curiosity combined with a lack of certainty. “Not knowingness” is another form of openness — the openness to new ideas and ways of seeing the world. Trust involves yet another kind of openness — the willingness to engage in relationship with the other.

“The other” can be parts of oneself, other people, a higher power, or a process. Finally, compassion entails an openness to the suffering of others and the desire to alleviate that suffering. Embracing vulnerability through the application of these principles can be strengthened through a myriad of practices, some of which will be described later in this article.

The Call for Change

Why is vulnerability particularly relevant as a leadership discipline now? First, people around the globe are increasingly aware of the interconnectedness of all existence. Even in the most isolated settings, developments in communications technology have made it possible for people to quickly and easily learn about events occurring in other parts of the world. Such awareness then influences what they consider to be their sphere of concern. At the same moment, I can be troubled by the performance of my local school system, the bombing of the U. N. headquarters in Iraq, and the continuing heat wave in Europe. Knowing about these events inevitably expands my consciousness.

The globalization of the economy also compels individuals and organizations to operate as part of a larger whole. Even remote areas feel the economic impact of events occurring in other regions. For example, some months following the bombing of the World Trade Center, my husband and I were riding in a taxi on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. The driver started talking about September 11th and what a terrible thing it had been. As an American, I assumed that he was expressing his condolences for the loss of life in the U. S. As it turned out, his primary concern was the effect on his local economy of the drop in air travel following the attacks. This incident is but a small example of the powerful web of economic interconnectedness that characterizes our time.

Additionally, we have become increasingly consciousness of the interconnectedness of systems that were once perceived and treated as substantially separate. For example, there is more and more evidence that the phenomenon of “urban sprawl” contributes to a diminished sense of community and environmental degradation. When people must get in their cars and drive in order to carry out their daily activities, they no longer

Although the “leader as hero” may never be completely replaced, we now have other models to guide our behavior.

casually encounter fellow community members and they contribute to environmental pollution. Other examples abound. It is too early to know whether our rising awareness in this area will lead to changes in practices, but further progress will certainly be aided by a stance of vulnerability.

A second condition that calls for leaders to adopt a stance of vulnerability is the tarnished credibility of many major institutions, including the media, the church, and the marketplace. This may be a “good news, bad news” occurrence, setting the stage for citizens to require their leaders to act with humility, transparency, and trustworthiness. At this writing, it is hard to know what direction society will take: a flurry of laws, litigation, reorganization, and regulations intended to prevent such violations from recurring, or a more fundamental revisiting of our basic expectations about social institutions and their leaders.

A third condition, which is a potentially positive development, is an emerging civic re-engagement movement that seems to be gaining momentum. One example is the powerful Internet-based citizen participation vehicle “Move On,” which aims to “bring ordinary people back into politics.” It currently has an international network of more than two million online activists, which has taken action on a variety of political and social issues since 1998. In addition, more and more opportunities exist for large numbers of citizens to engage in dialogue and offer their views on important public developments. One such example was the historic “Listening to the City” event held in July 2002, in which 5,000 New Yorkers offered comments on plans to redesign lower Manhattan, rebuild the World Trade Center, and create a memorial for the victims of the September 11th attacks.

As a facilitator of this session, I was profoundly impressed by both the skillfulness of the process and the quality of the results. This event required a stance of vulnerability from everyone involved. Those who commissioned the process remained open to being influenced and were willing to modify the outcome to reflect the needs expressed by participants during the day-long event. Those who attended the gathering demonstrated trust that their input would be taken seriously, even as they entered into the dialogue with self-described “New York cynicism.” Those who organized the process were flexible and willing to make changes in real time, for instance, when the majority of participants balked at taking part in one planned exercise. The gathering truly demonstrated the qualities of vulnerability described in this article and, indeed, had an impact on the course of the rebuilding process.

A final condition brings us back to the point made earlier: that desirable leadership attributes will be influenced by the environmental context. In order to help leaders to operate effectively in this complex, interdependent, and heterogeneous environment, scholars are articulating a new image of leadership. Recent books such as The Spirit of Leadership by Harrison Owen (Berrett Koehler, 1999), Leading Without Power by Max De Pree (Jossey-Bass, 1997), and Leading Quietly by Joseph Badaracco, Jr. (Harvard Business School Publishing, 2002) emphasize the relational, subtle, and even spiritual elements of modern leadership. Increasingly, the inner work of leadership is being linked to outer actions. Although the “leader as hero” may never be completely replaced, we now have other models to guide our behavior.

Taking Off the Armor

“You become what you practice most.” — Unknown

It is difficult to expect leaders who have not embraced the discipline of vulnerability throughout their careers to do so when the stakes are high. Instead, leaders must consistently cultivate this approach over the long term. Pema Chödrön writes, “When I was about 12, I read a Life magazine series, ‘Religions of the World.’ The article on Confucius said something like: ‘By the time you’re 50, if you’ve spent your life up until then taking the armor off . . . then you’ve established a pattern of mind that for the rest of your life, you won’t be able to stop. You’ll just keep taking the armor off. But if by the time you’re 50 you’ve become really good at keeping

that armor on . . . it’s going to be very hard to change.”

Regardless of our age or position in our organization, how might we start to “take off the armor”? We can begin with the principles of vulnerability outlined above: openness, transparency, “not knowingness,” trust, and compassion. For each of these guiding ideas there are numerous practices that run the gamut from audits to Zen. Below are examples of some that might support each of the principles (also see “The Principles of Vulnerability”).

Openness. A number of years ago, I attended a barbecue hosted by a local police officer, along with mutual friends. This was the first time we had met most of the people at this party. Early in the evening, our host began railing against the Puerto Ricans who had moved into his community in recent years. He described them as having caused an increase in crime, poverty, and teen pregnancy in the town. My first instinct was to react to aggressively defend the people he was maligning — but we were his guests and it did not seem appropriate. I was greatly conflicted: I felt as though his beliefs, his perspective, would seep into me and become a part of my identity if I didn’t mount a defense. But as a guest and a stranger, I did not feel it was polite to argue with him.

Instead, I tried to be open to his perspective. When I actually allowed myself to take in his point of view, I realized that police officers regularly encounter people at their worst. Given that, why would he have a different perspective about Puerto Ricans? Once I became vulnerable and considered his perspective, it changed me.

At that point, I began to pay attention to the ways in which my fear of being “colonized” by “the other” was causing me to become rigidly defensive of my own views. I started exploring various practices that enhance individual and collective openness. The Buddhist practice of tonglen, which means “exchanging oneself for the other,” is a powerful personal discipline for cultivating compassion and a sense of connection with others. Tonglen entails the deliberate “breathing in” of someone’s pain, anger, sadness, and negative energy and “breathing out” light, warmth, and positive energy directed toward that individual. I have found it to be especially helpful in countering the tendency to defend my own beliefs and reject those of other people.

There are also numerous exercises that encourage taking different perspectives, including the exercise called “Multiple Perspectives” described in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. The exercise, which is useful for teams working on a real problem, involves identifying each of the stakeholders and rotating among roles in order to see the issue from as many vantage points as possible. This exercise can benefit individual participants as well the team as a whole.

The June 2003 issue of Fast Company magazine features an organizational example of the power of taking multiple perspectives. The Dofasco Steel Company of Hamilton, Ontario, has distinguished itself because of its emphasis on the “triple bottom line” (society, the economy, and the environment) as well as its consistent profitability, in an industry where neither are typical. Former CEO John May berry says, “These things all bleed into each other. How do you get happy shareholders? Start with satisfied customers. How do you get satisfied customers? Start with happy employees. How do you please employees? Try not to wreck the community they live in.” When faced with seemingly incompatible goals, such as reducing energy consumption while still producing high-quality steel, the company creates innovative solutions by “constantly examining problems from all perspectives as we try to solve them. And often, an improvement in one area that might initially look bad for another stakeholder actually pushes you to come up with solutions that are better all around.”

Transparency.

Individuals and groups alike can practice transparency, the openness to scrutiny or critique. On an individual level, we can invite friends, family members, and colleagues to offer feedback about our behavior and its impact on them. We can also make ongoing efforts to align our purpose, values, and goals to result in more consistent actions. If others know what our values are and can observe a pattern of behavior consistent with those values, then the reasons for our actions are clearer than they might have been if we behaved in inconsistent and unaccountable ways. Any effort to bring to consciousness our own mental models and assumptions, along with the willingness to make those public, is practicing transparency.

For organizations, one powerful way of practicing transparency is by inviting scrutiny — feedback — from outside parties through external evaluations and audits. Recently, the food industry, spearheaded by the Food Marketing Institute and the National Council of Chain Restaurants, implemented an animal welfare initiative that is producing audits of eggs, milk, chicken, and pork producers and will eventually result in inspection of cattle and feed lots. In 1997, McDonald’s restaurant began a process that eventually required all of its meat producers to undergo animal welfare audits: In 2002, it conducted 50 such audits worldwide.

Other ways in which organizations can practice transparency include aligning vision, mission, values, goals, and practices and collectively uncovering assumptions and mental models. The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook and other resources describe a number of techniques for creating a shared vision and uncovering mental models. Although the techniques are well proven, they are most successful in environments in which there is already a fair amount of openness and trust.

For a variety of reasons, having the answers can be the most unhelpful thing a leader can do.

“Not Knowingness.” People in leadership roles are often expected to have all the answers. In fact, for a variety of reasons, having the answers can be the most unhelpful thing a leader can do: It allows others to avoid taking responsibility; it perpetuates the “leader-as-hero” myth; it suppresses creative thinking that can come from those on the margins; and it keeps others at a distance. “Not knowingness” requires especially rigorous practice because the pressure that leaders experience “to know” comes both from within and without.

Leaders who want to adopt this principle might find inspiration in the experiences of former Hewlett-Packard executive Greg Merton. In his article, “Leadership is Sourced by a Commitment to Personal Development” (Reflections, Fall 2002), he writes, “I am learning that a willingness to be vulnerable arises out of strength, not weakness. We protect ourselves out of fear, not confidence. And if we want those around us to learn, then we must be learning as well.”

The creation of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is an excellent example of “not knowingness.” Since the early 1980s, this bank has made a success of doing something no other bank has done: lending to the poor. In Reflections (Spring 2002), the leader of the bank, Muhammad Yunus, described its origins. Conditions in Bangladesh in the mid-1970s were horrific. As Yunus walked from his beautiful bungalow to the university where he was teaching economics, he would pass by people dying in the street. He realized that his economic theories were useless in the face of those conditions. He said, “I felt completely empty. . . . I realized I could help people as a human being, not an economist. So I decided to become a basic human being. I no longer carried any preconceived notions.”

Stimulated by this realization, he traveled into local villages to learn about poverty by listening to poor people themselves. He discovered that many of them earned a meager income by making things to sell but, in order to buy the raw materials, they had to borrow cash from a moneylender at high interest rates. Making these payments left them without enough money to live on. The people Yunus met were not victims or malingerers; they were motivated entrepreneurs who lacked resources. This learning became the foundation of the creation of Grameen Bank, which has grown to be an international model for microcredit banks, lending money to people with no collateral.

Trust. “Not knowingness” also involves a willingness to trust an unfolding process and to have a kind of faith, whether it is faith in other people, in oneself, in a deity, or merely in the integrity of the outcome. In A Path with Heart (Bantam Books, 1993), Jack Kornfield includes a wonderful story about Vinoba Bhave, who was Gandhi’s closest disciple and heir apparent. After Gandhi’s death, his followers tried to convince Vinoba to lead a nationwide convention to decide how to continue Gandhi’s work. With serious reservations, Vinoba agreed, but only on the condition that the conference be postponed for six months so he could walk there on foot, halfway across India.

In his travels, Vinoba discovered the same scenario in village after village: The people were poor and were unable to grow their own food because they owned no land. At first, he promised to talk to Prime Minister Nehru about passing a law to give land to the poor villagers. Upon reflection, he realized that such a law would be ineffective in addressing the problem because it would take years to pass and when it was finally put into place, corrupt governmental officials would siphon the land grants away before they ever reached the people. Sadly, he gathered a group of villagers together and told them his conclusion.

In response, one rich villager pledged to give some of his land to 16 families, each of whom needed five acres. This generous offer prompted others to follow suit in village after village as Vinoba traveled to the conference. During his journey, he stimulated the transfer of more than 2,200 acres of land to poor families. As a result, others joined the effort, which became known as the great Indian Land Reform Movement.

Kornfield writes, “All of this began from a spirit of listening, a caring for truth, and a compassionate beginner’s mind brought to an old and difficult situation.” I would add that it also came from a trust in an unfolding process. If Vinoba had proceeded with an agenda, clear goals, and a decisive vision of the future of the Gandhian movement, would the Indian Land Reform Movement ever have happened?

Compassion. Compassion is defined as “deep feeling for or understanding of misery and suffering and a desire to promote its alleviation.” It results from the act of “opening the door” discussed earlier in this article. The spiritual practice of tonglen is deliberately aimed at cultivating compassion.

Whether we use a spiritual or cognitive route to expand our perception of the interconnectedness of elements within systems, we cannot fail to experience a strengthened relationship with the other parts of that system: individuals, work groups, organizations, cultures, nature, and so on. Awareness of this relationship creates the groundwork for a compassionate response to the other. Peter Senge quotes Einstein on this topic:

“[The human being] experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of our 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.”

The practice of systems thinking can enable us to see the interconnection between elements that had previously been perceived as separate. Systems diagrams can be a useful tool for cultivating this type of thinking. In a leadership course I was teaching for people with mental retardation and their workers, we used a rudimentary systems diagram to describe the relationship between the behavior of staff and clients in a group home. One of the residents understood the connection immediately: “So when staff yell at me, then I feel ashamed and that makes me mad and I yell back. The staff think I’m acting out and then they restrain me.” Through the practice of systems thinking, this participant, who had previously viewed interactions entirely from her own perspective, was able to take the perspective of others. This stimulated a thoughtful discussion about the ways in which the behavior of the staff and residents influenced each other, which helped to break down barriers between people in those two roles.

Perhaps a case study will be useful at this point. What follows is a real situation.

In the mid-1990s, a small town in a rural state experienced a series of violent events that challenged the community’s capacity to act compassionately toward individuals with mental illness. The incidents also challenged the state mental health department to operate with a stance of vulnerability rather than the usual defensive posture that is so prevalent in response to scandal. First, a man with a history of mental illness attacked members of a local religious order; two of these women subsequently died. The man knew these individuals and had grown up in the community. Several months later, another murder took place in the town; the alleged perpetrator was on a waiting list for mental health services. During the same year, in a nearby town, a resident of one of the state-run psychiatric facilities was murdered by her boyfriend.

Any one of these tragic events might have provoked a serious backlash against the mental health department and the people it served. The coincidence of three violent crimes happening within a short timeframe was a recipe for disaster. It would not have been surprising to find the system’s leaders engaging in defensive practices such as scapegoating, retreating, and retaliating. Instead, leaders within the system chose to stay focused on the circumstances of the people they served and the well-being of the community at large, a focus that necessitated a different set of responses than the conventional ones.

What did the department actually do? In the instance of the nuns’ murder, the department reached out to those people who had a stake in the unfolding events. First, officials asked themselves, “Who is going to be most affected by this horrible incident and its potential implications?” They contacted the head of the local chapter of AMI, a national education and advocacy group for people with psychiatric disabilities and their families. They also got in touch with the leader of the local mental patients’ advocacy movement, the mayor of the community, the head of the agency that served the perpetrator, and the Catholic diocese. This group of people from the community got together and said, “Our community has a reputation as a caring community, and we need to let people know we are not going to scapegoat people with mental illness or let this become a witch hunt. That’s not what this community is all about.”

Although the event and its aftermath were tragic and painful, the behavior of this community group, supported by leaders within the mental health department, prevented worse consequences. In fact, a reporter who had grown up in the community returned to his hometown shortly after the attack to see what the effects had been. Fully expecting a severe backlash against people with mental illness, what he found was very different. Four days after the incident, 1,000 citizens crowded into a church just down the street from the convent for a public prayer service. The town’s mayor urged them to pray for the family of the perpetrator. The state legislature later called for improved treatment of mental patients living in local communities. The nuns continued to pray for the man who had killed two of their own.

How does this example illustrate the discipline of vulnerability? Instead of padlocking the door, turning off the phones, and hunkering down in their “room,” the department heads acknowledged that they needed to work with other key stakeholders. They recognized that they were but one element of a larger system, and possibly not even the central or most relevant one. Instead of protecting and defending itself, the department reached out to others. Its message was, “We need you; we can’t do this alone.” Given that department leaders were besieged by lawsuits and attacks in the newspaper, actions that often lead people to feel defensive, it is all the more remarkable that they chose to respond in this way.

Further, the department proceeded with a sense of not knowing, a courageous stance for an institution expected to wield power, expertise, and accountability. Leaders focused on creating an expansive, long-term agenda, rather than on merely reacting to the crisis. This approach enabled the broader group of stakeholders to establish common ground. It would have been impossible for them to do so if the emphasis had been on defending the stakeholders’ individual actions regarding the specific incident. Instead of fortifying their “room,” these courageous folks opened the door and went out into the world, vulnerable and open to influence. This is a clear example of the discipline of vulnerability at work.

A Fresh Approach

I have attempted to describe some current conditions that call for a stance of vulnerability and to describe why vulnerability is a core leadership discipline for these times. Although it may not be the most accurate term for what I have tried to describe, it does have the advantage of freshness. Using “vulnerability” as a positive term, a condition to which leaders might aspire rather than eschew, invites reflection upon our existing assumptions about leadership. Because I also wanted to include some practical elements, I have attempted to touch on some of the ways in which an individual or collective might cultivate vulnerability. Anyone interested in further pursuing these practices will find ample information else-where. My main hope in writing this article is that it might contribute to our individual and collective capacity to “open the door” and venture out into the world.

The post Embracing Vulnerability:A Core Leadership Discipline for Our Times appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

What Is Human Dynamics?

Human Dynamics is a body of work that identifies and illuminates innate distinctions in the way people function as whole systems that include mental, emotional, and physical dimensions. It is the result of an ongoing investigation launched 24 years ago that has so far involved more than 80,000 people from over 25 cultures. From this research, we discovered that three universal principles – mental, emotional, and physical – combine in people in specific patterns characterized by distinctly different ways of processing information, learning, communicating, relating to others, solving problems, undertaking tasks, and, as a result, exercising leadership and contributing to groups or teams. These different “ways of being” appear to be so foundational in the human make-up that they can be seen the world over, identified at every age level (even in infancy), and observed in males and females equally. In other words, these distinctions are more fundamental to who we are and how we function than age, race, culture, or gender.

We have identified nine of these distinct human systems, or “personality dynamics.” Of these, five appear to be by far the most prevalent. The individuals representing these groups have characteristic gifts and affinities for certain ways of functioning. They flourish and contribute best under certain conditions. Most importantly, they have their own distinctive paths of development.

Being aware of and understanding these natural, inherent differences is significant for developing successful and effective human relationships of all kinds – for leading and partnering with others in the workplace, for developing loving and supportive family relationships, and for successful teaching and learning. When we don’t recognize and take into account these differences, we fall prey to misunderstanding others and misinterpreting their behavior; poor communication; less than optimum teamwork; and, in class and training settings, teaching approaches that do not “match” students’ specific learning processes. When we do understand the differences, the way is open for us to acknowledge and appreciate diverse ways of functioning; to see and adapt to others’ needs; and to relate, manage, and teach in ways that enable each group member to perform at his or her best. We are able to consciously utilize our own and others’ distinctive processes and capacities to achieve optimal individual and group performance.

The Three Principles

Let us first briefly explain what we mean when we refer to each of the three principles – mental, emotional, and physical. The Mental Principle is related to the mind. It is expressed in thinking, seeing things from a detached perspective, formulating a purpose or vision, seeing the overview, setting structure, and establishing principles and values.

The Emotional Principle is concerned with forming relationships. It is the subjective part of us that knows and values the world of feelings in ourselves and others; that needs and offers personal communication; and that relates, organizes, and collaborates. We express the Emotional Principle when we make new connections among diverse elements and exercise our creative imagination.

The Physical Principle is that part of us that is most down-to-earth and practical. It is expressed in making, doing, actualizing, and operationalizing. The Physical Principle has to do with the realm of the senses, rather than that of the mind or the emotions. It is concerned with understanding the operation of systems, both natural and human-made, and with creating effective systems of operation.

All of these dimensions are active in all people, but to varying degrees and in various combinations (see “The Mental, Emotional, and Physical Principles”).

It is also important to note that each of these principles is of equal value. They are all needed in the functioning and development of a whole and balanced person. We could also say that all are equally needed for the functioning of a whole and balanced organization.

At this point, pause and ask yourself, “With which of these principles am I most comfortable and familiar? Which do I express most easily and naturally? Could I benefit from some development or help with one of these areas?” As we shall see, individuals are generally more comfortable and familiar with two of the principles, while the third is often less known, developed, and utilized.

Mental, Emotional, and Physical Centering

While all of us have mental, emotional, and physical dimensions, we have discovered that people seem to be “wired” in such a way that one of these three principles is central in each individual’s functioning. People are “centered” mentally (rationally), emotionally (relationally), or physically (pragmatically) (see “Centering”).

Of course, each human system comprises a continual interplay of mental, emotional, and physical life. Nevertheless, each person is characterized by a central process that is specific and consistent. The principle at our core determines how we typically take in and process information.

Mentally centered people process information in a logical and sequential way. They are also characterized characterized by an innate detachment. They experience life as if they were standing on a hilltop, so they naturally maintain a birds-eye view on events and a long-term perspective.

Emotionally centered people, on the other hand, process information in a non-linear, associative, interactive way that incorporates feelings and intuition, rather than through a strictly rational process. This relatively spontaneous way of proceeding often results in the generation of new ideas and the exploration of new avenues of thought or action that might not have emerged through a more linear process. For emotionally centered people, engaging in dialogue with others is essential as a means of clarifying thoughts, feelings, and intuitions, as well as for establishing the sense of personal connection with others that makes life meaningful for them.

Finally, physically centered people process information in a systemic way – they gather and assimilate large amounts of data, and think in terms of the interconnections that make up whole systems of functioning. Because of their affinity for the systemic, they may be fascinated by the patterns they observe in the flow of events across time, from past to present and projected into the future, or they may have a keen interest in, and sense for, how things work mechanically.

Five Predominant Personality Dynamics

We have found that there are three variations on each of these major themes. Mentally centered people may be “mental-mental,” “mental-emotional,” or “mental-physical.” Emotionally centered people may be “emotional-mental,” “emotional-emotional,” or “emotional-physical.” And physically centered people may be “physical-mental,” “physical-emotional,” or “physical-physical,” making nine personality dynamics in all. Whereas the first principle indicates how one processes information, the second indicates what one processes – the kind of material that is the natural focus of attention. (This interaction will become clearer when we outline particular personality dynamics.)

CENTERING

While all of us have mental, emotional, and physical dimensions, people seem to be “wired” in such a way that one of these three principles is central in each individual’s functioning. People are “centered” mentally (rationally), emotionally (relationally), or physically (pragmatically).

Of these nine possible systems of functioning, we have found that five are by far the most prevalent – mental-physical, emotional-mental, emotional-physical, physical-mental, and physical-emotional. Any group of people – the members of a management or project team, a department, the students in a classroom, family members seated around the dinner table, a meeting of heads of state – will include some combination of these five different ways of being “wired,” with their distinctly different natural processes of learning, communicating, problem-solving, relating, developing, and so on.

Following are brief thumbnail sketches of each of these five most commonly encountered personality dynamics. These summaries provide a basic sense of their similarities and distinctions, and also of the misinterpretations of each that commonly arise as a result of their particular ways of functioning.

Mental-Physical. As we have already indicated, the thinking process of mental-physical people is linear, logical, and sequential (mental principle), and it is focused upon operations in the external world (physical principle) – as opposed to emotional data. Because of their “hilltop” perspective, they tend to focus on the long term and to think in relation to enduring principles and values. Because of their innate detachment, their emotional life is typically extremely even. Mental-physical people offer teams emotional stability, objectivity, and their gift for selecting and articulating what is essential – key points, principles, values, goals, and information. They value clarity; for this reason, they often prefer written communication. They are usually precise and meticulous in any task that they undertake.

Mental-physical people often ask the questions “Why?” and “What do you mean by…?” But they are frequently silent in groups, either because they feel no need to speak if others are saying what needs to be said, or because they think carefully before speaking and cannot find the space to participate if a process is less than orderly. Because of their natural detachment and reticence, and because they do not readily express their feelings, others may interpret mental physical people as being aloof, disengaged, uncaring, or unwilling to be approached. None of these interpretations is necessarily true. If you want to know how a mental-physical person is really thinking or feeling, just ask. Such questions will help him or her to connect and communicate.

Emotional-Mental. Emotional mental people process in a non-linear, associative way (emotional principle) the world of ideas (mental principle). They deeply enjoy a highly interactive brainstorming kind of communication, in which one idea triggers another, leading to the generation of new ways of thinking or acting. Emotional-mental people typically love movement and change. They are often innovators, drawn to the new and untried. They intuitively sense new possibilities in people, situations, and events, and endeavor to make them happen.

In undertaking new projects, emotional-mental people can move into action with the strong sense of a general direction to be taken, but with minimal data and little or no real prior planning. This experimental movement leads to new experiences, which suggest next steps that may be entirely unanticipated at the beginning. They repeat this process until they reach a satisfactory outcome.

Because emotional-mental people concentrate on the future, they typically recollect very little about the past. They do, however, remember data required for any project that is their current focus of attention – but only until the project is completed. Emotional-mental people usually have little awareness of physical signals from their bodies. They may be able to work long hours with great concentration because they are unaware that they are hungry or tired.

Others may misunderstand emotional-mental people as being either pushy or, because they will initiate movement with little or no prior planning, irresponsible. Instead, they are following their natural instinct to move things forward and light the fires of new endeavors, often relying on others to execute the details.

Emotional-Physical. Emotional-physical people also think in a non-linear, associative way (emotional principle), preferably through dialogue with others, but their focus is on the physical world (physical principle) – especially people! They experience constantly changing emotional responses to their environment and all the objects, people, and events in it. They are sensitive to others’ feelings and often can sense those feelings in their own bodies, even when others aren’t outwardly expressing them. This ability can be a gift, providing helpful information and insights; it can also be a burden, affecting the emotional physical person’s sense of well-being in negative circumstances, or creating confusion about whether feelings experienced are his or her own or those of someone else.

Emotional-physical people value personal connection and communication with others. They bring to teams both a high degree of creative thinking and a concern for creating harmony among group members. The quality of the group’s process is as important to them as the outcomes. However, they can only offer their full capacities if they feel comfortable and “safe.” If they feel threatened or judged in any way, they may withdraw and stay silent.

Emotional-physical people can relive emotion-laden events from the past as if they were occurring again in the present. Sometimes others judge them as “too sensitive,” “using too many words,” or insufficiently logical. The truth is that their sensitivity is a gift to be valued – they use it for understanding individuals and interpersonal situations. Their sometimes extensive communication results from their need to establish personal connections and to ensure that misunderstandings don’t arise. And their non-linear thinking has an emotional logic, frequently reflecting a “knowing” that they cannot rationally explain. Their intuitive gift is often a wasted resource in organizations.

Physical-Mental. Physical-mental people think systemically (physical principle), with a focus on ideas, purposes, and structures (mental principle). They plan consciously, strategically, and systematically. They want to know the purpose of any endeavor and then create a logical step-by-step plan for achieving that purpose. They tend to have a conscious strategy for almost everything they do.

Physical-mental people value efficiency and create systems of operation to achieve it, then refine those systems to make them even more efficient and, if possible, broadly applicable. They like to use models, diagrams, and charts to assist their thinking or communicate their ideas. Physical-mental individuals gather considerable data as a basis for their planning and put it into logical structure quite quickly. They have a capacity for seeing patterns in varied data or in the flow of events, from which they make projections into the future and devise action plans.

Physical-mental people have a detailed memory for data in areas that interest them. In communicating with others, they are always looking for the action to be taken or problem to be solved. They like communication to be factual and organized.

A common misunderstanding about physical-mental people is that they do not care about people or their feelings. This misperception can occur because they may be so focused on results that they may sometimes fail to consider human factors in their planning. Also, they usually find it difficult to express personal feelings. They typically express their caring through their actions rather than their words.

Physical-Emotional. Physical-emotional people process in a systemic way (physical principle) the connections (emotional principle) among data, events, and people in order to comprehend or create whole systems of operation. Their natural process of thinking, planning, and learning is not systematic but organic. When approaching any new endeavor, they immerse themselves in gathering and absorbing data without initially sorting or prioritizing it. (Because for them everything is connected to everything else, they do not always know initially what might be relevant). They then assimilate, sort, and link all of this information in a process that may be as much unconsciously as consciously directed. This process, like digestion, takes its own time, until suddenly everything comes together in a highly detailed, systemic understanding of a situation, plan of action, or product. Because the entire process takes place internally, others may think that “nothing is going on,” when in fact very much is “going on,” though the person may not be able to clearly articulate what it is until the process is complete.

Physical-emotional people are sometimes labeled “slow” in a negative sense. In classrooms they may be categorized as “slow learners,” with the implication that they may not be as smart as other students who respond more quickly. They are not really slow at all, but rather thorough. Their organic process takes time, but they are typically able to assimilate and synthesize more data and comprehend and handle more complex situations than people of any other personality dynamic.

Physical-emotional people typically have a prodigious capacity to remember data. They can recollect events from even the distant past in which they were fully engaged in extraordinary sensory detail. Because physical-emotional people think and experience in terms of interconnections, they appreciate communication that provides “the whole story,” and they often convey information through detailed stories.

Distribution of Personality Dynamics

The personality dynamics that we have identified are not equally prevalent or evenly distributed. Of the five dynamics that we have described, mental-physical people are encountered most rarely – they seem to constitute no more than about 3 percent of the population. The great majority of the world’s people appear to be either emotionally or physically centered.

Anyone of any personality dynamic may be more or less intelligent, more or less compassionate, more or less contributive, more or less gifted.

It has been fascinating for us to experience over the years that in the Western cultures in which we, or the facilitators we have trained, have worked extensively (such as North America, Europe, South America, and Israel), we have found a slight majority of people to be emotionally centered and the rest to be physically centered. In Eastern countries in which we have worked, such as Malaysia, China, Singapore, and Japan, we have found by far the great majority of the people to be physically centered. These findings apply even to people of Asian descent whose families have lived in the West for many generations.

We have no explanation for the fact that the two physically centered personality dynamics seem to predominate in the East and the two emotionally centered ones in the West. We simply offer our findings. However, we emphasize that no value judgments adhere to this observation. All of the personality dynamics are equal in value. It is not “better” to be one more than another. Anyone of any personality dynamic may be more or less intelligent, more or less compassionate, more or less contributive, more or less gifted. What is different is how they “are,” think, experience, and go about things. Indeed, we can say that each needs the others for results that are optimal and whole.

Nature vs. Nurture

We have often been asked if we think that this distribution of personality dynamics could be the result of cultural influence. Our experience has led us to believe otherwise, for a number of reasons:

The cultural explanation does not account for the many physically centered people in the West or the emotionally centered people in the East.

If culture created the personality dynamics, then one would expect the many people of Asian background who have been assimilated over generations into Western cultures, and who are not part of an Asian community within the larger community, to show the characteristic processes of the majority in their adoptive cultures. However, we have not observed this to be the case. Although many Asian Americans, for instance, may have adopted more characteristically Western values, their foundational processes of handling information, learning, problem-solving, and so on remain those characteristic of physical centering.

We have come up with the same findings in following infants adopted from the East into families in the West in which both of the adoptive parents were emotionally centered. As these youngsters develop, they may exhibit their parents’ influences in some aspects of their outer behavior – for example, by being somewhat more expressive of their feelings and individually oriented than is typical of their Asian-raised counterparts – but their fundamental processes remain those we have described as characteristic of physical centering.

The evidence indicates, therefore, that while there is a continual interaction between any individual’s personality dynamic and the external environment, the latter neither determines the basic natural processes nor fundamentally alters them. It may influence what one thinks or learns, but not how one naturally thinks or learns.

We are led to assume, therefore, that the distinctions we have identified are inherent and genetically determined. This conclusion is reinforced by our findings that people almost always identify at least one parent as having the same personality dynamic as themselves or, if not, a grandparent.

Implications for the Workplace

These different ways of being and functioning are represented wherever people live, learn, and work together. They are present in every work environment, among management and project teams, in boardrooms and training rooms, in meetings with staff or potential clients, in conference calls with colleagues or strangers from around the globe, and, of course, in classrooms (see “Human Dynamics in Education”). It has been said that 90 percent of the difficulties that organizations face can be attributed to dysfunctional relationships among people. When people develop awareness and understanding of the different personality dynamics, much interpersonal misunderstanding and conflict is avoided. Also a groundwork is laid for developing optimal communication, teamwork, coaching, mentoring, and training. A shared base of understanding enables colleagues to work together more effectively and to consciously leverage one another’s gifts and capacities.

Sandra Seagal and David Horne are the founders and directors of Human Dynamics International, an organization that disseminates unique training programs in the fields of organizational development, education, healthcare, and cross-cultural bridge-building. They are also the founders and directors of the Human Dynamics Institute, which is engaged in original research into the personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal functioning and development of people. Sandra and David are coauthors of Human Dynamics: A New Framework for Understanding People and Realizing the Potential in Our Organizations (Pegasus Communications, 1997) and are working on a new book directed toward parents, teachers, and all who care about children. For more information, go to www.humandynamics.com.

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Family life, like organizational life, is filled with challenges and complexity. We begin family life with great hopes of love and warmth. We dream about learning and growing as we build our lives together. Yet for numerous families, and friends living together as families, learning together seems rare. Too often, people are stymied when faced with the complexity and difficulty of actual family living.

Part of the reason for this difficulty is that couples and single parents often lack the perspective, skills, and tools for mastering the increasing rate of life changes. One essential perspective that we often miss is that our families are complex systems and, as such, are more than a group of individuals. Even divorced partners who are now co-parenting find that family dynamics persist. Any kind of shift for one member — such as a new job or a bad grade on an exam — has an impact on the family as a whole.

In the face of life’s inevitable changes and the complexity of our relationships, how can we thrive even when family dynamics become challenging? How can we pay attention to our difficulties in such a way that our relationships grow together, not fall apart? We believe that the five disciplines can help to create a learning family at home as much as they can build a learning organization at work.

Two Essential Capabilities

Family life is one setting where people can become more skillful at navigating life transitions in order to fulfill their aspirations. To do so, they need to feel a sense of safety, believe that what they want is important, and trust that the hard times, including painful feelings and difficult exchanges, can actually be sources of growth and healing. Two essential capabilities help families cultivate these experiences: 1) living in a creative orientation and 2) building a powerful context or “container” for speaking and listening deeply. Let’s take a closer look at these two capabilities.

Living in a Creative Orientation. Many families dwell in what author Robert Fritz calls a “reactive orientation.” They feel overwhelmed by forces that they believe are beyond their control, such as lack of time for family and friends, work and financial pressures, lack of support, and violence in the schools and media. These pressures tend to pull families apart even when members wish to be closer to each other. In addition, family life has its own inherent challenges such as working out differences between spouses, parenting children through different ages, and facing critical life passages such as birth and death. In a reactive mode, people start to blame themselves or others for their difficulties, or they simply feel helpless.

Fritz contrasts this with the concept of a “creative orientation.” In a creative orientation, we deepen our understanding of ourselves, we turn toward the possible, and we look for our own contribution to a current situation. In this way, we restore the sense of purpose and efficacy that we forget when we are in a reactive mode. Through our families, we also have the opportunity to deepen our understanding of others, their values, and their dreams. We learn to give what’s needed and to hold fast to each other’s aspirations, even when despair sets in. Together we learn how to stop blaming each other; clarify the values, aspirations, and talents that unite us; and affirm the kind of contribution we want to make to the outside world.

Building a Container. Building a container involves developing the capacity to listen and speak deeply together. In discussing the concept of a container, Bill Isaacs, author and organizational consultant, suggests the image of a sturdy vessel that holds its bubbling hot contents without cracking, allowing them to transform into something of profound value. Too often, our families are the last people we turn to when we want to be heard, because of the intensity of emotions involved in intimate relationships. However, we can change that through carefully creating this kind of a container. A strong container can help us bring stability and resilience to life’s difficult situations instead of rushing in to fix them prematurely or running away from them. To build a container:

• Develop ground rules for engaging in difficult conversations.
• Establish uninterrupted times and places to explore and resolve tensions.
• Meet the challenges you and others are facing with commitment, courage, and curiosity.
• Slow down and reconnect with your heart.
• Respect other family members’ feelings, and seek to understand the thinking that leads them to feel the way they do.
• Agree on how to behave with each other on a daily basis.
• Trust that difficulties, when handled well, can lead to genuine growth.

The Five Disciplines at Home

We believe that the five disciplines point to actions that families can take to build such a container and to create fulfilling and loving lives together. A virtuous cycle can unfold in which applying the five disciplines enhances our ability to live in a creative orientation and build our containers, which in turn strengthens our ability to practice the five disciplines. Personal Mastery. In the early years of Innovation Associates’ Leadership and Mastery Program, participants’ spouses were encouraged to attend the training in recognition that a leader’s professional vision can be achieved only within the context of his or her personal aspirations. As an individual in a relationship, you have a responsibility to both yourself and your family to fulfill your potential. You also have a responsibility to help your partner and children realize their potential.

We suggest four ways to explore the path of personal mastery within your family:

The five disciplines point to actions that families can take to build such a container and to create fulfilling and loving lives together.

1. Make compromises and avoid sacrifices. Psychologist Nathaniel Branden suggests that compromising means being willing to change what you do in service of another. It is an essential aspect of family life. By contrast, sacrifice means trying to change who you fundamentally are to satisfy another, which is ultimately a disservice to both parties. Learning who you are and knowing what you really care about enable you to make compromises and avoid sacrifices.

2. Appreciate others for what they contribute to you and to the world around them. A relationship counselor we know asks each clients to list 25 things in their lives for which they are grateful. Her premise is that you cannot create joyful intimacy without appreciating all the gifts you already have. Being grateful for your life and for each family member’s place in it helps you reconnect with how unique and valuable they are. For example, we find it helpful to reflect with each other at the end of every day on what has enriched us, and what we appreciate about each other, ourselves, and our relationship.

3. Adopt the perspective that family challenges can help us grow. It’s easy to get distracted by the idea that family members are being a pain in the neck and are keeping us from moving toward our vision. However, psychologist Harville Hendrix observes that we attract a mate who is different from ourselves in precisely the ways in which we need to grow, and that our children’s behavior presents an opportunity for us to parent in just those ways that we were not parented ourselves. The key is to recognize relationship challenges as stemming from our own innate desire to heal and grow, rather than from faults in other people.

4. Remember that we are all more than the sum of our successes and failures. Focusing only on successes can be difficult for everyone in the family. It can be difficult for the successful ones because they may feel that people care about them only when things are going well, and difficult for others because failures then become a source of shame. Supporting a partner or child through failures entails seeing his or her good qualities under all circumstances. A learning family can learn much from failure and can come to celebrate successes in inclusive ways.

Shared Visioning. “What are we about as a family? What do we envision for ourselves this year . . . five years from now? What do we deeply care about?” Our visions and dreams can easily get lost in the everyday pressures of errands, to-do lists, and piles of laundry. It’s hard to envision making a difference when you can’t find a pair of matching socks.

Shared visioning is a conversation that helps people open their hearts to hearing each other’s deepest wishes and loves—their hearts’ desires. As children get older, shared visioning can help a family see what they have in common and how they can inspire each other to pursue their desires and create more of what they want in life. When people open their conversation to visioning, they can recall the hopes, dreams, values, and images that brought them together. Sharing these moments is particularly powerful during difficult times because these memories restore the energy of loving connection:

“Now I remember, that is why we are together!”

In visioning together, we explore what we can do together and how we can be together. We imagine how to spend our time together, how we want to be involved in our community, where we want to live, how we want to socialize, and where we want to travel. We can share our visions yearly, monthly, or daily. For example, Mark and Ellen take a walk together each week, during which each one reflects on the lessons of the past week and identifies a vision for the coming one. They then share their visions with each other, allowing both partners to feel support in the growth and learning they are embarking on. The ritual itself becomes a strong container of trust and respect that increases their ability to create what they want in their lives individually and as a partnership.

Mental Models. The discipline of mental models helps us gain a greater understanding of how our minds work. With careful observation, we begin to see that our beliefs have an impact on our perceptions, which in turn influence our actions, and then our reality. Our mental models serve us when they enable us to focus on what we want. However, they are always simplified, and therefore incomplete, views of reality that can hurt us when we miss something important or when the conditions under which we created them change.

Family life provides a great setting to develop skill in surfacing and testing our beliefs, revising them when necessary (see “Surfacing Mental Models of Family Life”). Not only do families offer ample opportunities to explore differing perceptions, but also the love on which they are based encourages people to take risks in exploring these differences and misunderstandings. Home is a place to experience humility and to learn.

The tools of the discipline of mental models, such as the ladder of inference, balancing advocacy and inquiry, and the left-hand column, can be useful when tried out at home. For example, recognizing that there might be a difference between how you experience your partner’s or child’s behavior and what he or she intends can help you accept that certain actions are not intended to hurt you (or make you mad or jealous), no matter how hurtful they might feel. This assumption can lead you to ask several questions when you are experiencing conflict:

• What pressures is my partner or child facing?
• What might he or she be intending to accomplish?
• How might my behavior appear to him or her?
• How can we share our respective intentions and learn about the impact we have on each other?

As you consider these questions, you might find yourself growing calmer. Then you can raise your frustration in such a way that the other party is more likely to listen to you with interest and speak with compassion. For example, Brad would sometimes leave his breakfast dishes in the sink on his way out the door, assuming that he would just do them later. However, Michelle perceived the dirty dishes as a chore that she was obligated to do. When they discussed the issue, she learned that he did not intend for her to do his dishes. At the same time, he learned that, because her office was at home, the dishes were an imposition on her space. With this new understanding, both were able to change: Brad usually did not leave his dishes in the sink out of respect for Michelle’s work space, and Michelle was more willing to do his dishes occasionally, knowing that she had a choice.

Another helpful tool is to use the ladder of inference to provide feedback. This approach consists of a series of statements. The first describes observable behavior; it begins with “When you do or say [the observable data].” The statement then continues with “I feel [a particular feeling, such as angry, hurt, jealous].” The feedback continues with “I think [or the story I tell myself is],” which explains my assumption based on that observation and feeling. It concludes with “What I want is ____,” and makes a specific request of the other person. Adhering to this structure, however clumsy at first, can open a genuine dialogue.

For example, Larry and Aisha were returning from a party where Aisha had felt ignored by him. Her initial reaction was to want to tell him, “You abandoned me, just like you always do at parties, and I’m sick and tired of being ignored when we go out.” Instead she said, “When you spent an hour looking at Joe’s Australia photos and didn’t invite me to join you [data], I felt hurt and angry [feeling]. I think you were ignoring me [interpretation]. I want to figure out with you a way we can enjoy parties together [request].”

Team Learning. Meaningful conversation takes time, skill, and intention. Weeks, even months, can go by without a family’s carving out the time to sit and simply explore what is going on with its members. If there are tensions between family members, it becomes even easier to postpone “family council” time. Yet, gathering regularly to listen to each other may defuse tensions before they build to a crisis, help the family to identify issues that people are grappling with, or simply offer a time for parents and children to be together and listen to each other’s thoughts and concerns. To create a “learning conversation,” set aside time and find a private space. Then identify some guidelines and a purpose. Even for two people, some of the following guidelines may help shape a surprisingly rich and gratifying conversation:

• Be fully present.
• Be open-minded.
• Listen, listen even more deeply, and then respond.
• Acknowledge the other person’s feelings and reality as true for him or her.
• Speak from your heart instead of from your head. Try breathing slowly, and notice how you are feeling.
• , “Lean into” discomfort. Discomfort is a spark of enlivening energy that is a clue that something can be learned here. “Leaning in” suggests receiving that tension with a quality of alert inquiry.

Team learning offers a way for people to open themselves to learning together. This is a time to practice listening for insight, for something fresh, for a way to reach below our familiar everyday clamor to the surprising wisdom that we carry inside. By practicing team learning, we can listen to one another with a renewed interest and focus.

A learning conversation can be a good time to revisit our vision of family and remind each other of what our family stands for or what we are grateful for. For example, one family gathers after their Thanksgiving meal to ask the question, “What are you thankful for this year?” Each person then has 3-5 minutes of uninterrupted air time as everyone else listens quietly. Then, they reflect together on what they heard.

Bringing the five disciplines home involves identifying and changing well-entrenched patterns of behavior, which can be both rewarding and painful.

Systems Thinking. Systems thinking encourages us to see our family and our role in it in a new light. Every family is a system. When you and other family members fall into typical, ongoing struggles, consider how your behavior is likely to affect theirs and vice versa. After all, you are deeply connected, although in moments of conflict, you might want to deny that fact!

We use two simple tools to help us out of binds: interaction maps and the “Accidental Adversaries” archetype. Interaction maps were developed by Action Design to show how two parties become locked in a vicious cycle by thinking and acting in particular ways. Party A thinks something negative about Party B, which leads Party A to act in either a defensive or an aggressive manner toward Party B. As a result, Party B develops negative thoughts about A, acts out toward A, and reinforces A’s negative thinking. The result is a vicious cycle.

The parties can break this dynamic first by noticing its existence, then by testing the mental models they have of each other, and finally by developing more effective ways of behaving in support of their more complete understanding of the other person’s reality. For example, Rachel thought her partner Carol was too close to her parents and asked her to limit her weekly phone conversations with them. This led Carol to think that Rachel was jealous of her relationship with her parents, prompting her to defend them. Her impassioned defense, in turn, reinforced Rachel’s belief that Carol was too close to her folks. When Rachel and Carol recognized this dynamic, they were able to test their mental models. They discovered that Carol felt pressured by her parents’ insistence on regular weekly contact. When she understood Carol’s position, Rachel was able to relax her own concerns and actually share some of the responsibility for maintaining contact with Carol’s parents.

Many family members become “accidental adversaries”; that is, they possess an enormous potential to cooperate with and serve each other, but tend to end up in conflict because each is subconsciously trying to address a personal hurt, fear, or discomfort. For example, when Bill believes that he will not get something he wants, he becomes aggressive and insists that he has to have it. This behavior gets him what he wants in the short run. However, Joan then becomes concerned that she will not be able to achieve what is important to her. She withdraws from Bill, which makes him feel that he can’t rely on her to support him. For that reason, he finds himself being even more aggressive the next time he thinks he won’t get what he wants. To break out of this negative pattern of behavior, both Bill and Joan need to reaffirm their commitment to supporting each other in achieving their individual and shared visions. Then they can identify their individual needs and reflect together on how they can both help each other meet those needs in ways that don’t make life more difficult for the other person.

Systems thinking also enables us to appreciate some of the challenges in bringing the five disciplines home. For instance, applying the disciplines to family life often means breaking out of a powerful “Success to the Successful” archetypal structure (see “Bringing the Five Disciplines Home”).

Because many of us spend more time at work than with our families, we tend to become more successful in our professional lives than at home (R1, R2, R3). However, using some of our time at work to develop new interpersonal skills can not only lead to more success at work (R4), but can also provide us with tools to support our success at home (B5). It is helpful to realize that, until we experience more success in the family, we might be tempted to convince ourselves that we are too busy at work to apply the skills back home (R6).

First Steps

Bringing the five disciplines home involves identifying and changing well-entrenched patterns of behavior, which can be both rewarding and painful. We suggest that you start small, be patient, and let your new successes at home naturally shift your work/family balance over time. You might begin by reviewing what you are grateful for in your own life. Then continue by looking at your relationship with one family member. Consider the areas of conflict with that person as a systemic issue, rather than as a problem with him or her. Engage in a learning conversation to begin to shift the dynamic. Over time, you might work toward creating a shared vision with your family, one that combines success at work and success at home to shape a life where each domain energizes and enriches the other.

Marilyn Paul is an independent organization consultant in Lexington, MA with a PhD in organization behavior from Yale. Peter Stroh is a founding partner of Innovation Associates and a principal in its parent company, Arthur D. Little. Marilyn and Peter are a married couple interested in supporting learning families. We welcome learning more about your own experiences in applying these tools, or any others you find helpful. Please send us your stories by e-mail to mbpaul@erols.com.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Betty Byfield Paul.

For Further Reading

Branden, Nathaniel and Devers. What Love Asks of Us. Bantam Books, 1987.

Fritz, Robert. The Path of Least Resistance. Ballantine Books, 1989.

Hendrix, Harville. Getting the Love You Want. Henry Holt and Company, 1988.

Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home & Home Becomes Work. Henry Holt and Company, 1997.

The post The Learning Family: Bringing the Five Disciplines Home appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Somatics is a whole systems view that addresses the nature of how we operate and what shapes our perceptions, opinions, and actions. It deals with our innate structure, moving beyond any superficial investigation of body language or posture. The principles of Somatics recognize that the self is indistinguishable from the body, from our lived experience. Somatic practices such as deep breathing, centering, gratitude, and curiosity are effective because they retrain the nervous system by attending to the self as a whole, rather than treating it like a machine to be managed. In this way, real change can take root and become lasting experience.

In our culture, talking about the body can be tricky, because we link it to appearance, fitness, and health, relegating it to the status of an object to be managed. The body is often considered an inert mass activated by something else, the mind or the spirit. For our purposes, we hold the notion of the body very differently: We see it as an intelligent, awake, and powerful part of an organic unity. To arrive at this understanding, we must investigate and mend the mind-body schism that disconnects us from ourselves and keeps us trapped in our heads, trying to win the battle of mind over matter.

Overcoming the Mind-Body Schism

One profound cause of the schism between body and mind is that we have learned to mistrust or disregard our senses. We’ve lost touch with what poet Mary Oliver calls “the soft animal of your body.” Living as though we’re disembodied (numb or disconnected), we lose touch with our self-direction. Rather than forge ahead with a firm sense of purpose, we’re caught in the drift of whatever thought or action prevails; we go wherever we’re led.

Think about it: Can you really separate yourself from your biology, your experience, your history? We are informed by our lived experience. It influences what we perceive and how we react to everything we encounter.

I grew up as a military kid. We lived a few hundred yards from the flight line, and my days began and ended with the scream and quake of jets taking off. When our windows rattled, it was a sign to me that all was right with the world. Now as an adult, whenever the Blue Angels come to my area, I always make sure that when they fly over, I am close enough so my whole body thunders with the vibration. My system relishes the experience. Someone who has lived in a war zone would experience the sensation very differently.

If you went to a strict school where you were ridiculed for making mistakes, it’s not likely that you are the first one to offer a new idea at work. If you grew up with lots of siblings and not quite enough food, you probably eat fast. If you have traveled internationally and adapted to constant change, chances are good that you feel energized in new settings rather than frightened. We are formed or shaped by our experience. That shape, or soma, influences who we are. Along with our life story, our soma determines what is possible (and improbable) in our experience.

For a moment, slump in your chair, drop your chin to your chest, tighten your back and shoulders, make your breathing shallow, squint your eyes, and tighten your gut. Now get out there and be great! Lead that team, sell that project, host that event, attract that partner – you’re a sure bet! It’s absurd, right? We intrinsically know that this tight soma we’ve crunched ourselves into is just not consistent with effectiveness. Even so, many of us are still living in some chronic variation of this shape, and we struggle all the harder because of it.

Most of us have been practicing contraction for decades, holding a tension-filled soma that makes ease and flow feel a long way off. The good news is that when we begin to recognize how we have been shaped, we can begin to change our way of being and reshape ourselves to experience life with ease.

The Body Is Not a Taxi for the Brain

Let’s start where we all start, as babies. The work of Daniel Stern, MD, focuses on infant development. He has found that:

“All mental acts are accompanied by input from the body, including all the things the body does or must do to permit, support, and amplify the ongoing mental activity, postures formed or held, movements of the eyes, head, or body, displacements of space, and contractions and relaxations of muscular tone.”

The body and mind inform each other, and our resulting mental constructs create what Stern refers to as the embodied mind. The way we learned things in the beginning is how we continue to learn them: through the body-mind loop.

In his book Descartes’ Error, neurologist Antonio Damasio confirms the mind-body loop and describes how we can step in and make changes, how we can self-observe and self-regulate so that we don’t allow our “negative body state” to negatively affect our mental state as well (see “The Mind-Body Loop”). The process requires, first, that we be in touch with our own sensations.

Under stress, we tighten. Our bodily system contracts muscles, constricts blood vessels, alters breathing, and generally prepares for danger. It is designed to do so very efficiently for a brief period of time, and then to return to a more relaxed and fluid state. Sadly, what is meant to be a brief and intense organization of the human system has become a chronic way of being for many of us. Our muscles stay rigid and tight. We grind our teeth in our sleep. We’re squeezed in and up, losing our sense of groundedness or flexibility. We’re trapped in a conditioned reaction that perceives everything as more reason to bear down.

THE MIND-BODY LOOP

In his book Descartes’ Error, neurologist Antonio Damasio confirms the mind-body loop and describes how we can self-observe and self-regulate so that we don’t allow our “negative body state” to negatively affect our mental state as well. The process requires, first, that we be in touch with our own sensations.

Without the Body, Never Mind

I’m not a fan of suffering or struggle. In fact, my life’s work is devoted to interrupting struggle wherever I find it. As an educator and executive coach, seeing people stuck in stories or somas that strangle their aliveness launches me into action. I have witnessed myself and others valiantly trying to change our lives strictly within the mind-over-matter Cartesian model by conceptualizing, intellectualizing, rationalizing, and willing ourselves into a new reality.

This method is insufficient, however, given our human nature. We are intricate psychobiological beings, not merely minds to be programmed with new data. When I was first introduced to the discourses of Somatics about 15 years ago, I knew I had found the element that had been missing from all the well-intended work of personal and cultural transformation I had been involved with. I became an avid student. My teacher, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, has taken this important work to governments and corporations, consulting with such organizations as NATO and the Marine Corps. When I seek hope for the future, I take our cultural welcoming of Somatic principles as a very good sign. And in my own experience, I have found corporations, leaders, parents, entrepreneurs, and social leaders grateful for this powerful approach for personal and organizational change.

Strozzi-Heckler tells us: “By living in our body we can generate a presence that has the power to allow genuine contact with our most inner core, with others, and with the environment. I have come to believe that by living close to our bodily and energetic processes, we may lead lives of increasing wholeness and purpose.”

I’ve seen these changes, even in individuals and organizations for which exhaustion and defeat had gained what seemed like a permanent stronghold. By understanding our soma and learning to listen to its messages, we become equipped to create a new reality.

Thawing Out Our Life Force

Embodiment is the result of what we practice. Sadly, most of us have been practicing various forms of contraction for many years. We learned early on to squeeze down our sensations, be they excitement (“People don’t like little girls who are too loud”) or distress (“If you keep crying, I’m going to have to put you down”). How open and alive can you be if your breath is high and shallow, your shoulders are tense, and your jaw is tightly clenched?

I perfected the clenched jaw decades ago. I’ve since learned that when I hold my jaw tight, it determines how I interact with the world. Life becomes a series of hurdles to be conquered. Even if I’m not upset about anything, my tight jaw will lead me to feel I’ve got to get this done or This is hard or I have to get through this.

The good news is now I know that one place I regularly contract is my jaw. As soon as I’m clenched, my day changes from a bright package of possibility to one huge, daunting ToDo List.

By continually checking in with what’s happening in my soma, I can catch my clenched jaw early and then I can relax it. I may have to relax it a dozen times throughout the day. But every time I do, I’m interrupting an old pattern and replacing it with a new one. In the meantime, my day begins flowing much more smoothly.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. We are always practicing something, and what we practice, we become. In fact, the body is incapable of not practicing. Under stress, 99.9 percent of us will gravitate to our accustomed practices, our embodied way of being. David Morris, in his paper “Placebos, Pain and Belief,” says that our biology, like our culture, limits the world we recognize and respond to. When we release the contraction in our bodies, our world expands, too.

The Shape of Our Experience

How have you shaped or configured yourself in a way that is life-suppressing, that is not available to ease and flow, that squeezes down aliveness? Yes, I’m flagrantly assuming that you have a habit of contraction, given that you’re a member of this culture. What is your customized, highly sophisticated, well-practiced personal separation strategy? And once you’re out, where do you go? You can find your suppressing practice by watching what is habitual (embodied) in how you operate.

It’s Monday morning. Today is the day you present your team’s new project to your boss and other executives. You stayed up late last night preparing. You need to drop your kids off at daycare on the way to work. The clothes you planned to wear are still at the cleaners. How do you move with all this: are you tight or at ease, hopeful or filled with dread?

Using the list in “Open Versus Contracted,” note which traits or symptoms best describe your normal experience. Where on the continuum of Open to Contracted do you spend more time? What are the results you produce from there? What is your energy level like at the end of the day? What impact does that have on your interactions and relationships? On your self-esteem? What’s the deeply embedded story (masquerading as truth) that lives in your soma?

When we live in contraction, the tension keeps us disturbed and attending to what’s wrong. We think, “There must be a problem if I’m this tight and anxious.”

Our body informs our thinking and our mood. If we consistently hang out in our physical tensions, we can actually become addicted to struggle; in an odd way, struggle becomes our comfort zone. Many of us build our identity around making continued noble efforts in the face of almost certain defeat. We’re in a cultural harness that says the way to be attractive is to look strong and hide our vulnerability. So we squeeze down a little tighter and separate ourselves a little more. Just look at a person’s soma, or shape. (We’re talking about the shape of lived experience, not clothing size.) The shape we inhabit over time becomes our outlook on life. Our separation strategies are our stories in action.

Mick was a struggling entrepreneur who lived by the story that “Life is unsafe.” If something didn’t happen as he hoped it would, he immediately moved into resignation. It didn’t take any effort at all for him to go there – it was his default mode, and he had been practicing it for years. You can imagine what the shape of resignation looks like: rounded shoulders, flaccid belly, crumpled chest, lips pursed, and eyes dull. As Mick shifted into a new orientation of “Great things just keep happening to me,” it was amazing to see how he changed. He practiced a new shape, a new way of being, that included coming up to his full height, letting his shoulders rest back and down, breathing fully into the belly, feeling his feet solidly planted and his face relaxed and responsive.

We’re not talking about body language or posture. Such terms refer to the body as an object, a thing we configure by putting arms this way and tilting the head that way for a certain effect. Shape is our lived experience; it reveals who we are. Maybe our parents knew something when they told us to stand up straight because it produced a different mood for us to live in than being hunched down or drawn back. While shape may reflect cultural differences, travel to any country and you can see who has a sense of freedom and self-direction and who does not, just by observing how they inhabit their somas. A person raised in a position of authority is trained to take the shape of a leader or a sovereign. Such people are believable, coherent to themselves and those around them. They become the self that leads.

There’s no question that we are formed and shaped by our history, whether that means never forgetting how to ride a bicycle or flinching at the sight of the family home we lived in 30 years ago. What we experience lives in our bodies and informs our actions and reactions daily. Wilhelm Reich, the Austrian psychoanalyst of the early 1900s, was among the first to recognize muscular armoring as a reaction to stress, either current or historical. If you were yelled at frequently as a child, you might have developed protective muscular armoring in your neck and shoulders. Your eyes might be chronically squeezed. The yelling might have stopped decades ago, but if your muscles never got the message that they don’t need to contract anymore, they’re still on duty whether or not yelling is present. The armoring you took on was absolutely the right choice at the time because it helped you take care of yourself. But based on who you are and what you want today, it may be time for a different shape.

Taking Off a Tight Shoe

Once something is embodied, it becomes automatic, especially when we’re under stress. This is both the good news and the bad news. We have been conditioned a certain way. Duane Elgin, in his book Voluntary Simplicity, suggests we would do well to acknowledge how much we act in preprogrammed ways. “We live ensnared in an automated, reflexive, and dreamlike reality,” he writes, “that is a subtle and continuously changing blend of fantasy, inner dialogue, memory, planning, and so on.”

When we recognize what creates our experience, we can change it.

Don’t despair, however. We are not locked forever into the trances we have embodied. At the same time, I’m not here to blow sunshine by telling you that the whole process is a simple matter of relaxing your muscles and thinking happy thoughts. We must address things as they are, things we can count on.

One thing we can count on is that human nature is changeable.

We are living beings, not inert clumps. We are made of live, malleable substances in constant flux. Dr. Amit Goswami, who wrote the textbook on quantum mechanics, confirms that “atoms are not things, they are tendencies.”

When we recognize what creates our experience, we can change it. We can then respect, even revere, our human psychobiology, rather than ignoring it or trying to wish our way to a better life. Coming into a new relationship with embodiment, we become effective players in this game of life. Our awareness is our ace in the deck.

The person who wears a perpetual frown even when she is “relaxed” – how do you suppose that person sees the world? Or the one who inhabits a rigid back, tight arms, and hard eyes – what is she expecting life to deliver? If someone doesn’t know that it’s possible to inhabit life another way, she remains trapped. In contrast, the person who breathes deep and easy, who holds minimal tension in the shoulders, who lifts the heart and chest – she has a very different experience of life. The root of the word courage means heart. When we collapse the chest, we become easily discouraged, dis-heartened. When we fill our space and widen our chest, there is suddenly room for connection, purpose, and passion.

Our shape doesn’t impact only us, it affects those around us. The shape we take on creates our identity, and others respond to us based on the shape they see. Remember, we humans are always deciding what everything means. All I need to do is look at you, and I create an instant story about you based on what I see; it’s an automatic process. Just as an actor takes on a certain shape to get in character, we can experiment with how we inhabit ourselves until we find the soma that best supports what we care about. We can choose to inhabit the shape that encourages the unrestricted flow of life.

Saying “Yes” to the Flow

Thank goodness for great teachers! Our dog Tucker adopted us seven years ago, probably because she saw how much we needed to learn about real pleasure. The way she stalks a squirrel (which she has absolutely no intention of catching) is an exquisite act of choreography. Her muscles tremble with excitement, and she places each paw so slowly that the squirrel doesn’t even notice she’s moved closer. Her nose twitches as she draws in every scent, until her waiting explodes in a final burst of speed as she chases the squirrel up the tree, following it all the way to a second-tier branch. Then she proudly trots into the house, slurps up a loud, luscious drink of water, and paws the rug until it’s just right as she walks the secret number of circles that make her ready to throw herself down with a satisfied sigh. In minutes she drifts into a contented asleep.

Tucker gives herself completely to the moment, just as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes in his book Flow, a study in the state of high performance. In the state of flow, the moment is rewarding in and of itself. There is no split attention. This, I realized one day, is exactly the state that Tucker effortlessly inhabits. Whether she’s tracking a squirrel or drinking water or preparing for a nap, she’s completely in touch with her sensations and uses them to enhance her experience and her action. The more she feels, the more alive she is. And it gives her impeccable timing, with no action wasted.

I am fascinated by Tucker’s unabashed experience of pleasure. My default mode has always been to settle for relief instead. When I’m stressed or pushed or uncomfortable, relief sounds pretty good. At such times, I think that anywhere other than where I am would be preferable. But here’s the problem: Relief takes me in the opposite direction from pleasure. Instead of becoming more alive, I move to being more numb. I move away from myself.

Erich Fromm identified relief as the satiation of deficiency, which he calls scarcity-pleasure, distinct from the abundance-pleasure of creation and growth., “We go to glut, relaxation, loss of tension,” he said, “in contrast to the ecstasy, the serenity one experiences when functioning easily and at the peak of one’s power. Relief is less stable or enduring than the pleasure that accompanies growth which can go on forever.”

Pleasure requires a certain degree of intimacy with ourselves. To be true to myself, I must know myself: what I enjoy, what I resist, what moves me. Pleasure asks that we reacquaint ourselves with who we are. It is through feeling sensations that we come to know ourselves in new ways. Our senses give us answers to questions such as What do I feel? What calls me? How am I affected? What am I drawn toward? What do I avoid? When do I feel most alive? The more alive we feel, the more responsibility we have. This is only fitting because we have more power when we’re fully alive. Instead of being the disembodied self that drifts away from life and goes numb, our embodied self’s aliveness grants us greater discernment.

As we become more self-aware and self-directed, our life force dramatically increases. When we are fully awake, our life force is more powerful than any trance.

The more present we are, the more consciously we choose where to direct our attention and what action to take.

So pleasure is a way of waking up! Who would have guessed it? Many of us have been taught that pleasure is the first step into the quagmire of sloth. But as Kay Redfield Jamieson asserts in her thoughtful book Exuberance, play is essential for human beings. She writes, “Play encourages fearlessness – that is, the readiness to explore one’s world, test boundaries, reward flexibility and prepare one for the unpredictable.”

Time and space for play are, nevertheless, dwindling in our culture. Today’s children have 40 percent less free time to play than they had 20 years ago. Some elementary schools have eliminated recess entirely, so students have more time to study for state-required competency tests. Such short-sightedness edges the body out of the picture and stymies our natural creativity, resilience, and excellence.

But why even bother to feel more, since life is pretty challenging as it is? Well, simply put, the more sensation we can tolerate, the more present we can be. The more present we are, the more consciously we choose where to direct our attention and what action to take. The more choice, the more power. We get to own our lives, to climb out from the valley of habits we’ve been stuck in. Life can be messy, but it doesn’t have to affect us as though a two-ton truck were barreling down upon us. We may still experience that kind of thing once in awhile, but we have options.

We now know where our feet are, and we can move out of the way with purpose and grace. And in plenty of time.

Victoria Castle is the author of The Trance of Scarcity (Berrett-Koehler, 2007). She coaches Fortune 500 executives, business owners, and social entrepreneurs on how to be purposeful and effective in the midst of chaos and pressure. As a Master Somatic Coach, Victoria teaches at several post-graduate and professional programs and speaks at national conferences.

The post Embodying Change: A Whole Systems Approach appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Teams, too, face similar challenges. While team members often understand the need to gather for the purpose of creative dialogue, learning, and engagement, day-to-day demands often lead them to resort to counterproductive behaviors. For instance,

rather than getting together to expand our knowledge and understanding of an issue, we often turn meetings into a war zone, in which each participant tries to push his or her own agenda. In this context, managing knowledge within teams becomes a formidable task, indeed.

Maya provides a beautiful framework for surfacing common barriers to the effective flow of knowledge.

Nevertheless, the effective generation and flow of knowledge is so important that leaders must make a deliberate effort to understand and address the barriers that exist. One approach is based on an aspect of Vedanta philosophy. Called maya, this concept provides a beautiful framework for surfacing common barriers to the effective flow of knowledge within organizations. This article seeks to explore these hurdles, develop a shared understanding of maya, and spell out the implications of this framework for leaders. At the end of the article, a series of practices based on these concepts will contribute dramatically to leaders’ own effectiveness and that of the teams they lead.

Common Barriers in Managing Knowledge

Here’s a recurring scenario common in today’s organizations: A team meets so that members can make a critical decision. The gathering is carefully structured as a series of presentations, after which participants are given the opportunity to debate various plans of action. Others may present differing opinions and concerns, but the role of individual team members is to convince their coworkers that their approach will have the greatest impact. After all, because they are “in the trenches,” the members of this team believe they have the most important knowledge for developing solutions. Team members hope that, through such debate, the prevailing view will lead to the most successful course of action over the long run.

In the end, though, collaborative problem solving and true learning become extremely difficult. According to the current thinking in organizational development, this all-too-common norm for teams may not lead to the most desirable results, because it creates a number of barriers to organizational learning:

• The unchecked assumption that an individual’s level of understanding reflects a singular “true” reality.
• The failure to understand that individuals may interpret the same event or observation differently and that perceptions of reality are dependent on the individual making the observation (“the observer”).
• The assumption that the most accurate understanding of the realities faced by an organization can be attained through debate and “winning over” those with opposing viewpoints.
• The assumption that the individual, the advocate, the orator, and the great debater possess supreme value through their ability to convince others to abandon their perceptions of reality.
• Finally, and perhaps most tragically, the underlying assumption that the most complete understanding of the complex problems facing organizations today can be achieved through an analysis of the problems facing each of its individual parts, independent of the environment and relationships affecting those parts.

Given the prevalence of this scenario, it should come as no surprise that most organizations struggle to address complex problems that require creativity and an unrestricted flow of ideas.

Vedanta philosophy, central to Hindu thought, provides an elegant perspective for those who feel stuck in such dilemmas. An understanding of the concept of maya provides organizations with one way to grow beyond their current limitations in addressing complexity, fostering creativity, and increasing effectiveness. In the following sections, we seek to gain wisdom and insight from the idea of maya and use this understanding to enhance our effectiveness as leaders.

Vedanta Philosophy

First, some background describing the worldview inherent in the Vedanta philosophy is necessary. The core teachings of Vedanta revolve around three areas:

• The true nature of the universe
• The true nature of the individual
• The interrelationships that exist within the universe

According to this philosophy, the true nature of the universe is that all things, living and inanimate, are interconnected in some fashion. As quantum physicists have learned, each action has an effect on other aspects of the universe, and nothing is really separate from anything else. The belief that a particular event or outcome can result from the actions of one person, independent of all of the other factors in the universe, is a distinctly human flaw. Furthermore, energy is the true essence of material existence, not matter, and it is through this energy that all things are interconnected. This all-pervasive field of energy, referred to as Brahma, exists in all things.

The true nature of the individual exists as energy that is part of a greater whole and not as individual minds or bodies. In fact, the Hindu greeting “Namaste” alludes to this worldview, as its meaning can be translated to “I worship the divine within you.”

The interrelationships that exist among all individuals and among elements of the universe are integral to the true nature of the universe. According to the Vedanta worldview, no individual element can be truly understood independent from its surroundings.

A Definition of Maya

Maya is the illusion, based on our false perceptions, that the true nature of the universe is rooted in the material reality we observe through our senses rather than in energy. It refers to the misconception that events and observations are independent from one another and that the problems of the whole can be understood by analyzing the problems of the parts.

Within the world of Vedanta, maya implies that humans are vulnerable to the illusion that events and objects are not only real in a singular context but exist distinctly and independently from one another. In addition, maya leads humans to rely on ego and thus to see themselves as distinct and independent entities. As a result of this mindset, the teachings of Vedanta view human suffering and dysfunction as having their origins in maya.

How, exactly, is maya the cause of human suffering? For one thing, Hindus see it as the root of human attachment to objects and possessions that our senses perceive as real when, in fact, those objects are transitory. Second, individuals who fail to understand the interconnectedness of all end up acting in ways that promote personal gain at the expense of others and of the environment; foster competition and antagonism as opposed to collaboration and symbiotic growth; and steer others astray from a desire to seek true inquiry and dialogue. Finally, maya results in the illusion that there is, indeed, a single perspective or view that is “right.”

This mindset leads to the need to win, convince others, debate, and resort to violence.

Interestingly, a similar concept can be found in Christianity. Although most Christians may not see it in this context, Hindus interpret the story of Adam and Eve’s bite out of the apple in the Garden of Eden as a metaphor for human vulnerability and overreliance on our senses. In this metaphor, the apple represents maya and thus the origins of human suffering. Similarly, many Hindus choose to see this event as one that leads humans to consider God to be a separate being that can be perceived by the human senses rather than as an all pervasive field of energy in the universe, present in all things.

Maya and Quantum Mechanics

Beyond the spiritual and philosophical origins of maya, many Westerners find it helpful to understand more concrete examples of how the teachings of Vedanta may have validity. The fields of quantum mechanics and subatomic theory provide substantial support for the concept of maya. The following scientific principles, in particular, are helpful:

• The true nature of the universe is not matter but rather energy.
• The true nature of the subatomic world involves probabilities rather than certainties.
• Particles arise from energy.
• A particle’s formation and nature occurs when an attempt is made to observe it.
• Particles do not exist independent of other particles and especially of the observer.

This “new” physics has demonstrated clearly that there is no objective reality “out there,” independent of its relationship with and perception by observers. The field reveals that we cannot understand the whole merely by understanding its parts; we must consider the relationships and interactions between the parts, the observer, and the rest of the universe. In this world, there truly are no independent things.

The interconnectedness of the universe can also be demonstrated from experiments involving subatomic particles. As an example, consider two paired particles with opposite spins (, “spin” is one property of subatomic particles). Physicists have demonstrated that, when a pair of particles is separated by a great distance, they maintain their opposite spins. Even more compelling is the finding that when the spin of one of the separated particles is changed, the other particle somehow alters its spin so that it remains the opposite of its pair. In essence, their relationship and interconnectedness is maintained despite their physical separation.

David Bohm, the well-known physicist and philosopher, described how fragmentation — or focusing on the parts to the exclusion of the whole — results in a sort of “pathology of thought.” He understood that humans tend to divide things that, on a more fundamental level, are actually connected. This mindset has led to flawed thinking in the field of quantum physics and in our perception of the world in which we exist. By advocating for a change in how we view the world, Bohm led to breakthroughs in both physics and the field of dialogue.

Maya, too, refers to this fundamental flaw in human understanding and, as we shall see, in organizational thought. It reminds us of our fallibilities as leaders, as well as those of our organizations and communities. So how can we break free from this trap? Below, we’ll examine the power of dialogue and systems thinking for helping us see through the net of illusions cast by maya.

Perspectives from Dialogue

Leaders who want to achieve a true understanding of reality in the context of the challenges they face should turn to dialogue, not debate or discussion. Because individuals possess different interpretations of what they observe and because there is no reality independent of the observer, the ability to elicit the mental models and perceptions of others is crucial. Dialogue offers a set of tools for surfacing the multiplicity of perspectives that add to a more complete picture of reality.

In particular, four specific dialogue skills, as defined by William Isaacs, can assist those who seek to generate a shared understanding of the true essence of any given situation: listening, respecting, suspending, and voicing.

Listening is more than hearing, as it involves not only the perception of words, but also the attachment of meaning to those words.

Listening

In our over-stimulated lives, we seldom notice the ways in which we listen. Listening is more than hearing, as it involves not only the perception of words, but also the attachment of meaning to those words. The meaning that we attach is often biased by our projection of our own biases, assumptions, interpretations, inferences, and history our mental models. In fact, failing to objectively examine our own interpretations while listening can distort our perceptions of reality.

Maya, as an illusion, refers to this distortion of reality and makes true listening ever so critical to enhancing our own understanding of reality. Given this fallibility, we must understand the mental models within which we operate and learn how to circumvent the automatic projection of these models on the things we hear.

The mastery of inner silence through meditation can dramatically enhance the ability to listen. Vedanta philosophy states that the true essence of reality can only be experienced in, “the space that exists between thoughts.” It is in this space that true mental silence exists and in which mental models disappear. The same principle can be applied to the skill of listening. The greater the degree of inner silence that we are able to achieve, the more effective our listening skills become.

Respecting

When we listen with the goal of understanding others, we are able to achieve greater levels of mutual respect than when we try to push our own agendas. Such listening is made more imperative by, but also facilitated through, the understanding that we are interconnected with and do not exist separate from others. Through mutual respect and listening, we learn about the thinking of others and, more importantly, about our own thinking. In the words of William Isaacs, we can see that “I am in the world, and the world is in me.” Likewise, our ability to say “That, too, is in me” is an extremely useful tool for building respect and understanding with one another. By making efforts to control our tendency to fall for the illusions of maya and separateness, we can build a practice of respectful listening.

Suspending

Suspending involves sharing and putting aside our own mental models. In essence, by suspending, we are making visible our own perspectives of reality. In so doing, we put forth the possibility that our own perspective may be flawed, that certainty may be in question. As we both suspend and seek to understand the perspectives of others, we must inquire effectively from a place of genuine curiosity. In addition, true inquiry involves being aware that our own perspective maybe flawed. The key in the act of suspending involves both surfacing and exploring the relationship between separate interpretations of reality.

Voicing

Often, because of the “pathologies of thought” that are so prevalent in our society, we learn to fear expressing our own interpretation of reality. Taking the leap requires the courage to share a view that may differ from that of others. To combat these fears, we must cultivate the skill of self-awareness, along with that of trusting our own thinking as a valid glimpse of reality.

Understanding that every element of the universe arises from the same underlying energy and reality can help us develop trust in our own voices. By becoming aware that only different perspectives of “the truth” exist, we can muster the courage necessary to effectively voice our opinions. The concept of maya provides us with an awareness of our own vulnerability to forgetting that we are in touch with this reality.

Perspectives from Systems Thinking

Just as dialogue provides us with tools to cultivate perspectives that contribute to a more complete understanding of reality, so does systems thinking. By offering tools that lead us to examine the interrelationships and dynamics that exist among elements of our world, systems thinking creates a framework for moving beyond the limitations that maya imposes on our thinking.

Fragmentation

Our tendency to see things as separate parts whether they are processes, departments, positions, or individuals can severely limit our ability to understand the myriad of systems within which we exist and participate. Leaders in organizations that succumb to maya may ultimately find that they deal with unintended consequences, “fixes that fail,” and processes that deplete rather than renew and invigorate.

Taking time for both reflection and dialogue at meetings and in groups permits teams to explore critical questions such as, “How might this impact other departments with which we interact?” and “How will this approach help to renew the environment and the partners with which we operate?” Eliciting, through generative dialogue, the full nature of interconnectedness is a powerful experience for a team and has the potential to create new perspectives and revolutionary approaches. Such regular dialogue is essential for groups as they evolve beyond the limitations of maya and is a critical competency for leaders to develop.

Even more enlightening is dialogue that elicits connections and relationships to enhance an understanding of the whole. Effective dialogue must be based on the premise that there is not one true perspective of reality, independent of the observer, and that many voices must be engaged to expand our understanding of the whole. In the end, greater insight into the connections and relationships between processes and structures leads to a greater level of group intelligence and more effective and fulfilling work.

The symbol for Om, representing all existence

Individuals and organizations tend to view assets human, financial, or intellectual as their own. In reality, however, when we cease to exist, the things we have in our possession will “flow” elsewhere. In essence, assets flow through the universe and pass through us (or our organizations) temporarily, so that we can utilize them to enhance the greater well-being and harmony of that with which we are interconnected: our partners, our environment, our customers, and our owners.

In the context of Vedanta philosophy, the resources in our possession at any particular moment are available to us for the purpose of fulfilling our mission. But when we fall prey to maya, we fail to experience this interconnectedness as it relates to our true mission and purpose. Individuals and organizations that hoard resources in a miserly fashion are at risk for failing to accomplish their true mission and intent.

Resources for Leaders

In order to master the skills necessary to function beyond the limitations and vulnerabilities described by maya, leaders can adopt a number of practices:

1. Meditate. Time for daily reflection is essential for effective leaders to bring about a greater awareness of their own “center,” their interconnectedness with all that surrounds them, and their own limitations in seeing only a glimpse of reality. Such reflection, though humbling, also instills a sense of calm. Indeed, avoiding the illusion of maya is difficult, and daily reflection can help us to develop this practice.

To that end, devote time each day for silence. Inevitably, when beginning, you will notice thoughts entering your mind. Observe the internal dialogue, label it with what you feel, and release it to return to experience the silence. This observation will uncover aspects of your own mental models that influence thought. To overcome the illusion of maya, it is imperative to develop the ability to master silence and to realize that the essence of true reality is in the space between thoughts, not in the actual thoughts.

2. Become Aware of Ego. Ego, defined as a perception that we are solely responsible for our own success, that our perceptions of reality are indeed the most accurate representations of reality, and that our identity is based in the greatness of our own accomplishments, is a tragic human vulnerability. Leaders must become aware of this flaw in themselves and in those they lead. More importantly, they must foster the conditions that make it safe for individuals to relinquish their attachment to an identity based in ego.

3. Engage Others in Dialogue. Leaders must reflect upon and engage others in dialogue around maya and how it may exist in your own views and perceptions. Explore how opportunities may be missed and dysfunctions created through this vulnerability. In asking questions such as, “How do we create fragmentation in our organization?” leaders trigger others to reveal aspects of their mental models and create a more complete view of the situation.

4. Understand the Interconnectedness of All Things. Encourage those whom you lead to reflect each day on your interconnectedness and on, “That, too, is in me” in the context of thinking about the behaviors and perceptions of others in your organizations and communities. Understand how processes and objects do not exist independent of their surrounding, and explore the relationships that exist between processes and objects, in the context of systems thinking. Work with others to surface these unseen connections.

5. Examine the Relationship That You and Your Organization Have with the External Environment.How do your actions affect the world around you? What systems exist that you have not yet explored or surfaced? In order to be sustainable and healthy, organizations must renew and invigorate their surroundings and environment, not deplete them.

6. Realize That Assets Are Not to Be Hoarded, but Rather to Be Used to Fulfill Your Purpose in Life.Organizations and individuals must realize that assets are part of the universal flow of resources and that, when these resources flow through you or your organization, they do so for the purpose of fulfilling a mission. Hoarding such resources is based on maya, the illusion that it is truly possible to, “own” things.

By comprehending maya as a source of limitation and mastering the true nature of existence, we can begin to successfully manage knowledge in our organizations and support individuals in becoming thoughtful and fulfilled contributors. Likewise, by developing a more complete shared understanding of maya among members of their organizations, as well as within themselves, leaders will develop the skills necessary to excel in the turbulent environments that we face now and that we shall surely face in the future.

The post Becoming Unstuck: Leadership Lessons from Hindu Philosophy appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

This exchange brings into sharp contrast the two different definitions of learning that we were operating under. For Elise, learning algebra meant acquiring information in her head about how to manipulate numbers and symbols according to prescribed rules in order to give an answer that would be deemed correct by someone in authority. My definition of learning, in contrast, involved increasing the ability to achieve desired results. Learning had to be practically useful — it had to lead to outcomes in the real world. To me, what Elise was doing wasn’t learning at all: She was simply storing information that she may or may not ever retrieve again (she has no interest in pursuing a career in math or science). So if what she was doing really wasn’t learning, why did I want her to learn algebra? For a while, I really wasn’t quite sure. How was studying algebra going to help Elise achieve her desired results?

In a moment of inspired brilliance (or so I thought), I conjured up three reasons why she should learn algebra: (1) It increases brain development by making new neural connections; (2) It helps her acquire intellectual discipline; and (3) It increases her maturity. She was having a hard time relating to these noble, idealized reasons. Then as an afterthought, I added a fourth: It helps her do better on her college entrance exams. Now, I had her attention. She saw a practical use for algebra after all.

As the story above illustrates, we need a more robust perspective of learning than we’ve had in the past. In this article, I am advocating for an integrated framework that describes a new way to understand, utilize, and sustain learning—and, in turn, achieve our desired results.

Human Efficacy

The ultimate aim of humans can be boiled down into three basic categories:

• Seeking fulfillment (pursuing happiness, consciousness, meaning)
• Creating relationships (giving and receiving love, strengthening connection to other people or a higher being)
• Having a purpose (pursuing a dream, fighting for justice, improving the world)

We cannot achieve these aims or our day-to-day goals (e.g., shaving, buying groceries, getting your kids to school on time, serving people in need) without a certain level of human efficacy.

Efficacy is being able to produce a desired effect (see “Achieving Results and Human Efficacy”). Some level of effort must be expended, and therefore some effect produced, to attain our goals as humans. (This is not to say that we can achieve all our aims through individual human effort alone. We must work in cooperation with others and in alignment with our sources of influence, authority, or wisdom. However, we cannot fail to exert an effort and expect we are going to get the outcome we’re seeking.)

For example, let’s say you want to experience more love in your life. How successful would you be if, in order to accomplish this goal, you sit in a chair and wait for the love to come to you? You don’t talk to anyone, you don’t look at anyone, you don’t think about anyone — in reality, all you really do is wait. Not very. You will be unable to produce the desired effect. Another example: Will it be possible for you to be more effective in your job if you don’t initiate some sort of movement or influence — even if that movement is simply to begin to notice what others are saying or doing? All desires, lofty or modest, will only be reached through some level of human efficacy.

So then, how do you increase your efficacy? Psychologist Albert Bandura argues that there are several sources for increasing our effectiveness: “They include [1] mastery experiences, [2] seeing people similar to oneself manage task demands successfully, [3] social persuasion that one has the capabilities to succeed in given activities, and [4] inferences from somatic and emotional states indicative of personal strengths and vulnerabilities.” Bandura goes on to say that “the most effective way of creating a strong sense of efficacy is through mastery experiences” (Albert Bandura, “Self-Efficacy,” in Encyclopedia of Human Behavior). In other words, you build efficacy by repeatedly achieving your desired results.

The next question, naturally, is, “How do you get better at ‘repeatedly achieving your desired results’?” The answer is learning. Unfortunately, without understanding how learning actually works, most of us are less than intentional about how we learn. And, consequently, we take actions that are unconscious, random, or undirected, at worst, or ineffective, at best. Therefore, the next section will attempt to provide that important understanding.

How Learning Works

In the most concise, generic form I can express, learning works in the following way (see “A New View of Learning”).

First, you become aware of a discrepancy between “the way things are” and “the way things ought to be”—you realize that you are not achieving desired results.

Second, you make a choice to address the discrepancy and decide that something has to change. Your response emerges either out of a knower stance, which says someone or something else will have to change (a focus on the circumstances) or a learner stance, which says you will have to change (a focus on your ability to respond to the circumstances).

If you decide to respond out of a knower stance, you will (eventually) become ineffective. New and different challenges and circumstances confront you daily. Responding to tomorrow’s dynamic challenges with your current, static abilities will, over time, lose its effectiveness.

Third, you choose to respond out of the learner stance and decide that you will have to change. So, you will take actions to increase your ability to respond to the circumstances you are facing. If your ability to respond becomes greater than the circumstances, you will achieve positive results, but if the circumstances remain greater than your ability to respond, then you will get negative results.

STANCE DECISION TREE

Whether you adopt the knower stance or the learner stance depends on how you answer three questions.

Because learning can be difficult, we all, unfortunately, have a tendency to respond from the knower stance. Making a change requires a direct confrontation with the status quo. And in confronting the status quo, you will eventually discover that your ability to respond is less than you’d like it to be, and this discovery, in turn, may generate feelings of threat or embarrassment. So, in order to protect yourself, you take the stance that someone or something else (i.e., the circumstances) must change. Over time, you become so skilled at this way of reacting that you assimilate these thinking habits into your everyday practice, and they become your knower stance.

Fourth, you will vigilantly notice whenever you are responding out of a knower stance and choose to shift back into the learner stance. You will make this shift easier by diligently employing five learning practices: personal mastery, shared vision, mental models, systems thinking, and team learning. A disciplined application of these five learning practices will help you continually look at yourself as the necessary focus of change and increase your ability to respond appropriately and achieve your desired results.

Awareness and Choice

Many times, the choices we make are hidden from our conscious awareness. For example, when I first got married, I was in the habit of pointing out the flaws in my wife’s suggestions when she proposed an idea with which I disagreed. I figured I was just helping her to “think things through a little more clearly,” when in reality all I was doing was frustrating her to no end. It wasn’t until she pointed out that all I ever did was poke holes in her ideas, without making an alternative suggestion of my own, that I became aware of how my behavior was unfair to her. When I became consciously aware of how I was acting, I could choose to continue with it (perhaps more skillfully, so as not to get caught quite so often), or I could choose to change my behavior, so that it was more productive and caring.

We go through life, to a great extent, unaware of the choices we are making. To be more effective in the world, it is important to consciously operate from a learner stance. So we need a way to wake up our awareness about which stance we are living out of, so we can then make choices — behave in ways — that are in alignment with the learner stance rather than the knower stance. Learning cannot begin without awareness and cannot continue without the making of fundamental choices.

Knower Stance Versus Learner Stance

The terms “knower” and “learner” will be used throughout this article. In short, let’s define a knower as someone who can’t admit that they don’t know something, for fear that doing so will make them look bad. They often pretend that they know things even when they don’t, and they are not willing to be influenced. They are like those know-it-all kids we knew in grade school, except that, as adults, they are much better at hiding it when they don’t know something. Alternatively, let’s define a learner as someone who admits they could be wrong, or that they are uncertain, or that they probably have to change their usual actions in order to achieve their desired results. Learners are willing to be influenced.

Whether you adopt the knower stance or the learner stance depends on how you answer the three questions depicted in the Stance Decision Tree. If you believe you are actually “getting what you want,” you will take on a non-learner stance — there is no need for learning, things are fine, nothing needs to change. If, however, you believe you are not getting what you want, but you don’t want to do something about that discrepancy, then you will, likewise, take on the non-learner stance.

If you believe that you are not getting what you want and you decide that you will do something about it, your next choice is “What will you try to change?” If you attempt to change someone or something else (focus on the circumstances), you are living out of the knower stance, and if you attempt to change yourself (focus on improving your ability to respond), you are living out of the learner stance.

For example, let’s say you become aware that your accounting practices are peppered with errors rather than being the pristine example of proper accounting you thought they were. You are now faced with a choice. How will you address what is happening? If you focus attention on someone or something else, such as why no one ever told you this before, or how you had received poor training in accounting, or how this was fine at the place you used to work, then you are taking a knower stance. On the other hand, if you focus attention on yourself, such as feeling stuck in a rut, or not staying up-to-date on the latest techniques, or lacking passion for doing accounting in the first place, then you are choosing a learner stance. You can tell whether people have taken a learner stance or a knower stance based on where they primarily focus their attention (this is illustrated by the two vertical lines in “A New View of Learning”). If they persistently focus their attention on changing someone or something else, they are living from the knower stance; if they persistently focus on changing themselves, then they have taken a learner stance.

Results

In baseball, home plate is the most important place on the diamond. A run is scored when a player rounds the bases and touches home plate, and not before. It is the central focus of the action—the ball must always be thrown to it or hit from it.

Likewise, achievement of results is the home plate of learning. All learning must be directed to achievement of results or emerge from it. There is no learning without achieving desired results. As illustrated at the top of “A New View of Learning,” results occur through the interaction of (1) the challenge or circumstances we face and (2) our ability to successfully respond to the challenge. When our ability to respond is greater than the challenge itself, then results will be positive; and when the challenge is greater than our ability to respond, we will get negative results.

Let’s bring the baseball analogy a little further. Think of the pitcher as the circumstances or challenges you must face, and think of yourself, and your ability to respond, as the batter. The pitcher hurls challenge after challenge at you. If your ability to respond is greater than the circumstances, you will hit the ball, but if the circumstances are greater than your ability to respond, you will miss the ball or watch it fly past.

The most effective people are always increasing their ability to respond to the changes and challenges they face, and thereby keeping the ratio of “challenge” to “ability to respond” tilted in their favor. On the other hand, when faced with challenging circumstances, less effective people focus their attention on the circumstances rather than increasing their ability to respond. So they blame the circumstances, avoid the circumstances, cover up the circumstances, deny that the circumstances are as bad as they seem, or blame someone or something else for the circumstances.

As an effective baseball player, you would continually seek to increase your ability to hit the ball, no matter who the pitcher is or what type of pitch he is throwing. If you began to frequently strike out, you would focus on your inability to respond and ask, “What part of my hitting needs to improve in order to hit what is being pitched to me?” As an ineffective player, frequently striking out, you would start to question the circumstances (e.g., the umpire isn’t fair; the sun is in my eyes; at least I haven’t struck out as many times as Carlos; I’ve got the wrong bat; etc.) rather than your ability to respond (hitting ability).

You cannot achieve your desired results by focusing attention exclusively on the circumstances rather than on your ability to respond to those circumstances. It doesn’t make sense to ignore the circumstances, however, for they are part of the equation of effectiveness. In fact, you must explore and interact with them. But then you must redirect your energy toward developing the ability to respond successfully to those circumstances.

Learning begins and ends with achievement of desired results. You cannot know whether you have actually learned anything unless and until you compare the results you are getting with those that you desire to achieve.

Five Core Learning Practices

As you become more skillful at catching yourself reacting from the knower stance and, simultaneously, desiring to live more out of the learner stance, you will recognize a need to develop your learning muscles, or your capacity for learning. In order to do so, you will need to practice five fundamental learning disciplines (as Peter Senge described in The Fifth Discipline) — personal mastery, shared vision, mental models, systems thinking, and team learning. As you develop your learning muscles in each of the five disciplines, you will progress along five continuums from a “knower” to a “learner” (illustrated by horizontal arrows in “A New View of Learning”).

As you practice the disciplines, there is a developmental process — a progression away from knower behaviors toward learner behaviors. While there is some risk of labeling people by using such words as “knower” and “learner,” these terms are used in this context as convenient handles to suggest a contrast between “where we are” in our learning journey and “where we want to end up.” You might think of them like those “before” and “after” photographs often used in weight-loss advertisements. You don’t have much of an appreciation for the “after” picture unless it’s contrasted with the “before” picture. Likewise, you don’t much appreciate what it takes to become a learner unless it’s contrasted with living like a knower. This framework is meant to imply that you cannot stay the same and remain effective in your life.

There are many, many learning practices that you can use, including meditation, reading, intuition, reflection, suspending assumptions, dialogue, intention, team-building, productive conversations, and so on. The five learning disciplines that are explored here are not the exclusive practices that you need to master to get to learning “heaven.” Instead, consider them the core disciplines (along with any associated tools, techniques, or practices) that will help you develop your capacity for deeper and richer learning. Many of the learning practices would serve to enhance and build capacity for progressing along one or more of the learning discipline continuums.

Personal Mastery — If you have transitioned from knower to learner along the personal mastery continuum, you will have felt an internal shift from external pressure to internal desire. Formerly, you reacted to external pressures and expectations defined for you by someone or something else, but now you experience an intense internal desire to create the results you truly want in your life. You have developed the ability to bring something new into existence.

Shared Vision — As an advanced practitioner of shared vision, you have shifted from controlling group interactions with a goal of getting compliance from the members to facilitating mutual commitment. You have developed the ability to co-create collective aspiration.

Mental Models — As someone operating from the learner end of the mental models continuum, you have given up defending yourself during conversations using “protection mode” and now embrace self-exploration using “reflection mode.” You have a well-developed ability to distinguish between “myself” and “my view.”

Systems Thinking — An experienced practitioner of systems thinking, you have shifted your perspective from focusing exclusively on “my part” to focusing on “the whole.” You have a well-developed ability to see your role in the whole.

Team Learning — As you have moved from knower to learner along the team learning continuum, you have shifted from directing and debating during group conversations to having group conversations focused on mutual learning. You have a well-developed ability to generate collective insight.

Living As a Learner

The ultimate aim of this article is to help you live your life as a learner, both individually and collectively. Living an effective life — whether it is achieving your ultimate aim or swatting at little problems that annoy you — begins and ends with understanding how learning works. With this understanding, you are in a position to make critical choices. Do you want to take actions based on a knower stance or based on a learner stance? If you see yourself avoiding, covering up, or denying the circumstances or blaming someone or something else for the circumstances, you know you are living from the knower stance. If you see yourself taking actions designed to change someone or something else, without first focusing on changing yourself, you will, again, recognize that you are mired in the knower stance. If you see yourself creating, reflecting, building commitment, seeing your role in the whole, and engaging in mutual learning, you will be aware that you are living from the learner stance.

Becoming aware, making choices, focusing on your ability to respond, and achieving your desired results — this is living your life as a learner.

Brian Hinken is the author of the newly released book, The Learner’s Path: Practices for Recovering Knowers (Pegasus Communications, 2007), from which this article was adapted. He serves as the Organizational Development Facilitator at Gerber Memorial Health Services, a progressive rural hospital in Fremont, MI. Brian is responsible for leadership development, process facilitation, and making organizational learning practically useful for people at all levels of the organization.

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