This analysis raises interesting questions about the best training for today’s business leaders. As former New York Times science writer Daniel Goleman suggests in his book, Primal Leadership (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), the latest scientific findings indicate that brainy but dogmatic bosses rarely rise to be stars in an age when organizational speed and flexibility are the key to survival.

Likewise, in a cover story several years ago, Time magazine sifted through the current thinking and reported, “New brain research suggests that emotions, not IQ, may be the true measure of human intelligence.” The bottom-line significance of what Time called “EQ” was suggested by management expert Karen Boylston: “Customers are telling businesses, ‘I don’t care if every member of your staff graduated with honors from Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton. I will take my business and go where I am understood and treated with respect.’”

If the evolutionary pressures of the marketplace make EQ, not IQ, the hot ticket for business success, it seems likely that both individual executives and boards of directors need to know how to cultivate it. I have a modest proposal: embrace a highly personal practice aimed at improving these four adaptive skills:

1. Practice Self-Awareness. Psychologists call this discipline “metacognition”; Buddhist monks know it as “mindfulness”; Socrates referred to it as the “examined life.” I think of it as thinking differently on purpose and noticing what you’re feeling and thinking. Whatever you call it, practicing this skill is a way of escaping the conditioned confines of your past. Raise your consciousness by catching yourself in the act of thinking as often as possible; routinely notice your emotions and ask if you’re facing facts or indulging biases.

2. Use Imagery. This is what you see Olympic ski racers doing before they enter the starting gate. With closed eyes and swaying bodies, they run the course in their minds, which ultimately improves their performance. You can do a similar thing by setting aside time each day to dream with gusto about what you want to achieve.

3. Frame and Reframe Events. When the Greek Stoic Epictetus said 2,000 years ago that it isn’t events that matter but our opinion of them, this is what he was talking about. Every time something important happens, assign as many interpretations to it as possible, even zany ones. Then go with the interpretation most supportive of your dreams.

4. Integrate the Perspectives of Others. Brain research shows that our view of the world is physiologically limited by our genes and the experiences we’ve had. Learning to incorporate the useful perspectives of others is nothing less than a form of amplifying your senses. The next time someone interprets something differently than you do, pause to consider that a gift of perception is being offered, if you’ll only accept it.

Mastering the emotional components of these four practices often proves to be the most difficult for senior executives, but as Goleman has emphasized, doing so can yield “Resonant Leadership”—emotionally intelligent leaders. By practicing self-awareness, leaders notice their moods and emotions and how these are influencing their behaviors. By using imagery, they can go beyond the intellectual data to make smart choices that look to others like “leaps of faith.” By framing and reframing events and integrating the perspectives of others, leaders can manage their own reactions, thereby improving their emotional state and that of their organizations.

Although the recommendations suggested above may appear simplistic, they are based on what we know about the mechanisms of the mind. The bad news: it’s hard to change power of habits—the electromagnetism of established neural pathways will literally pull you away from changing your practices. This may be why history repeats itself. The good news is that not only is it possible to change our behaviors, it’s actually easier than overcoming a chemical dependency such as alcoholism. But you must have a discipline for doing it. Hence, the method recommended here.

No, it’s not a curriculum in the sense that an MBA is. But what the latest research seems to imply is that without the software of emotional maturity and self-knowledge, the hardware of academic training alone is worth less and less.

Michael O’Brien, Ed. D., is president and founder of O’Brien Group. The firm specializes in executive coaching and executive team development and can be reached at 513-821-9580 or www.obriengroup.us.

The post A New Executive Curriculum appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Well, I wish that were true, anyway…. Like many others, I can no longer plead ignorance or pretend surprise when the trash I throw over my fence (figuratively, of course) lands in my neighbor’s backyard and poisons their dog, or worse. Even my best intentions can have disastrous unintended consequences far removed from where I stand. Am I still responsible, even if I can’t immediately see over the horizon?

I think the only honest answer is “yes.” It is my responsibility to continually seek to extend my vision, to see further. Doing so requires a sort of personal moral discipline, i.e., an intention to keep awake that sense of responsibility for knowing, as best I can, and caring about the effects of my choices on others. Once I know, then I can act, not hysterically, wildly, or compulsively, but with concern, forethought, and a willingness to make adjustments according to the results I get.

Needless to say, I discover many “horizons” right under my nose; sometimes we’re most ignorant about the things that are closest to us. At work, my blind spots often are related to use of resources—cash, people, and ideas— and affect the success of our efforts and the well-being of the people involved. Some examples include launching into a new project without enough preparation; causing an almost completed one to founder; not coordinating the availability of talent with when that talent will be needed; letting functional silos develop and persist; focusing too much on short-term firefighting and not enough on long-range direction and vision; and working harder and longer, but not smarter. Many such problems arise from not fully recognizing the interdependencies inherent in the system.

On a broader scale, we are letting powerful social forces drag us away from each other, even though we know that this isolation ultimately can’t be in anyone’s best interests. Being rich is profoundly isolating, as is being poor. Forsaking tolerance and believing you are right about everything is equally alienating. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my neighbors to starve while I get rich or to live in fear because they hold as sacred something I don’t understand. My gut tells me I’d rather see what I can do to help and drop my righteous judgments in favor of plain and simple kindness.

How can we start to “think further” and extend our horizons to include all of our neighbors? Here are a few ideas:

1. Isolation Is a Fiction. Toss out any notion that you are separate from others, both in the workplace and in the larger world. Look for important connections that may not be obvious.
2. Know Your Story. Develop a storyline about what is happening in the systems you are a part of. Get people who represent different parts of the organization together. Capture their mental models of what is happening and come up with a narrative that describes some of the interdependencies.
3. Put on Your Systems Thinking Cap. Try to diagram the interactions of different elements of the system. If they are complex, use causal loop diagrams or stocks and flows—whatever tools you are comfortable with—to shed light on key interdependencies.
4. Be Open to Emerging Information. Always look for information from new sources. You’ll never be able to see the entire picture, but you will grasp more of it if you keep your antennae up.
5. Remember Your Intention. You are responsible for knowing the results of your actions, so don’t grow complacent. Remembering your intention keeps your curiosity alive and gives you focus.
6. Do the Right Thing. Consider the ethical basis of your actions in light of their effects. Don’t neglect honest inquiry because you can’t face up to the difficult questions.
7. Proclaim Your Vision by Living It. Persuasion has its place, but nothing influences others more than your own example.

Being isolated from each other doesn’t make us any less interdependent. When we hold on to this illusory perception of separation, it just means that it’s harder to work together to make things better and that our lives will probably get a lot worse before they start to improve. We have two choices. We can recognize now what interdependence means and plan a livable future together. Alternatively, we can start building fortresses and postpone that recognition until another dark age passes. In either case, we will eventually realize that we need to include everyone in order to create a neighborhood where we all can live together well.

Rod Williams, Ph. D., is media development director at Pegasus Communications.

The post I Am Your New Neighbor appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

• We are wise when we extend our vision to perceive the largest possible perspective of a situation. This expansion of perspective takes us closer to encountering the “whole” of life. Even though we can never experience that whole in its full scope and detail, there is much wisdom in any motion toward it.
• We are wise when we extend our vision into the future to the consequences of our present actions—and learn from reflecting on those consequences, especially before we act. There is much wisdom, then, in applying this expanded perspective to help us meet our needs in ways that don’t undermine the ability of our children’s children to meet theirs. Some call this “sustainability.”
• We are wise when we extend our vision beyond the clamor of this moment’s shallow desires and immediate demands and opportunities to understand and care for our deeper, longer-term needs. While our desires and appetites may feel vividly personal, private, and unique, our deepest needs are universal. We can find great peace in satisfying them in harmony with others and in co-creating the common good. There is much wisdom in pursuing our own best interests through the pursuit of a world that works for all.
• We are wise when we extend our vision beyond current events—both personal and collective—back into the history behind those events and forward into possible futures. In that history and those futures lie causes and stories and motivations that we can work with to call forth new options and energies. There is much wisdom in bringing the power of such understandings into the present unfolding of life.
• We are wise when we extend our vision beyond our personal view—and beyond the dominant view of our group or culture—to hear and understand the views of others. Every view has blind spots, and all knowing rests on unexamined assumptions. As these are revealed through encounters with other views and ways of knowing, we can deepen our understanding. And so we are wise to value diversity, dissonance, and dissent and to learn how to use their potent gifts well. There is much wisdom accessible through the use of dialogue to help us tap that latent power together on behalf of our whole community.
• We are wise when we extend our vision beyond convenient labels and judgments to view things more as they are. Doing so entails becoming familiar with the ways our thoughts and feelings—and, collectively, our culture and media—trick us into narrowing our view. Good and bad, order and chaos, individual and collective, you and me, simplicity and complexity—these tantalizingly useful distinctions hide the fact that reality, in all its dynamic wholeness, embraces both sides of every dichotomy. There are ways in which apparent opposites not only define and depend on each other, but live within each other and dance together. There is much wisdom in becoming aware of this bigger, truer picture of life.
• We are wise when we extend our vision beyond isolated facts and linear logic into the whole fabric of life, using all the forms of knowing that are given to us. These include intuition, spiritual experience, and the sciences that attempt to appreciate the whole and our relationship to it, such as ecology, complexity and chaos theories, and the consciousness sciences. With each way of knowing, we access new dimensions of reality. There is much wisdom in weaving them together, using each tool in our cognitive toolbox according its best purpose, along with all the others, and letting none colonize our awareness to the exclusion of the rest.
• We are wise when we extend our vision beyond certainty to the underlying, allencompassing, ever-unfolding mystery of life. Once we see through the illusion of certainty, humility and humor become natural, and paradox, ambiguity, and change become friends and teachers on our journey though life. In the midst of wonder, we encounter each situation with the curiosity and sense of adventure befitting wise and joyful spirits. There is much wisdom to be gleaned as we marvel at the nuance and vastness we encounter at each bend in the road.
• We are wise when we extend our vision beyond our personal world to the world of our fellow humans and all other life. This reaching into the world of other lives is the wisdom of compassion and the realization that our destiny is bound up with the destiny of all others. There is much wisdom in recognizing our vast and vivid interdependence. This wisdom can lead to many soulfully effective solutions to the diverse sufferings of our world and its people. We need our wisest eyes to find them.

These wise eyes are ours, if we choose to see through them together.

Tom Atlee is president of the Co-Intelligence Institute and author of The Tao Of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All (www.taoofdemocracy.com). He is currently researching process designs that can evoke the latent wisdom of whole communities and countries through informed, high-quality dialogue and deliberation among ordinary citizens. A longer version of this article appears at www.co-intelligence.org/WisdomWays.html.

The post Some Ways We Can Be Wise appeared first on The Systems Thinker.