We begin to unravel the complexities involved when we recognize that curiosity is the natural state of a child until
some event has caused the child to be cautious in circumstances in which the child has learned there is likely to be
danger. This is a fundamental that any supervisor is wise always to keep in mind because ignorance can then
usefully be conceived as originating in temporary inabilities on the part of both supervisor and employee to
differentiate between their current experience from "echoes" of similar past experiences. Looked at in this way, what
appears as an ignorance on the part of the employee is recognized as in part a reflection of ignorance on the part of
the supervisor for which the supervisor's recovery of his or her natural curiosity can initiate discovery of a solution.
That solution will emerge from their conversation if each can bring their observations about the present situation into
a shared focus in which the vital concerns of each are revealed empathically to the other.
As children we often sensed or believed, whether correctly or only fantastically, that the adults who had charge of us
either would not appreciate our expressing some of our feelings or, alternatively, would be particularly pleased with
how we felt inclined to dramatize some of them. These beliefs, which often later become implicit ones of which we
have become quite unconscious, determine to a very large extent which aspects of learning we later come, sometimes
perversely, to ignore.
If we were often praised for being stoically brave beyond the expectations of the adults who had charge of us, we
learned to "stuff" the fears then bothering us, thus providing "emotional soil" for anti-dependent, and sooner or later
imprudent and/or inauthentic behaviour to take root. Unless later events in our lives empower us to modify these
behaviours, they will typically develop into bravado, cavalier insensitivity, and even arrogance, all of which will later
limit our capacities to enjoy and contribute to a mature inter-dependence of the kind described in Stephen Covey's
"Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". Likewise, if we were ignored as a child, we learned to discount the value of
narrating or commenting upon any event that was not downright harrowing or upright ecstatic for us. Moreover,
whether we were praised for stoicism or simply ignored, and most of us experienced both "treatments" in different
circumstances, we will be unlikely to recognize the possibility of vitality arising in a team from acknowledging
everyone's ultimately unavoidable inter-dependence -- except through personally experiencing a trauma at a time
when a much more mature social role will be expected of us. Yet specific recognition of ineluctable inter-dependencies
is becoming ever more necessary for productive harmony in the increasingly larger world that each of us must inhabit.
If, on the other hand, we found as a child that we could amuse our seniors by dramatizing our dislikes, we learned we
could get away with less than honest behaviour – from which habits of either exaggeration or false modesty would
develop. And this experience will lead to organizationally dysfunctional habits of ignoring or chronically and even
contemptuously, discounting the values of accuracy, reliability, empathy, and aptly intelligent sharing.
Thus, as children in a world we imagined our seniors “always” comprehended better than we did, many of us acquired
– perhaps initially deliberately but later increasingly automatically – the habits, as if they were wisdom, of either
hiding those ideas and thoughts we judged would be unacceptable or exaggerating those that would be fun to
display dishonestly. By these largely unconscious means, our interests in exploration, and our abilities to learn by
exploration and genuine curiosity, became, almost imperceptibly, either fragmented or constrained by childish senses
of “others' wisdoms”.
The consequences in the present of this phenomenon of "background culture" -- whether family, institutional, ethnic,
or national -- are that each of our personalities has evolved stunted to a greater or lesser extent in traits of either
stoic bravado or false modesty. Both these shortcomings of attitude or character may be conceived as attempts to
monopolize truth – the first extrovertedly and the second introvertedly. But whichever course such stuntings take,
they present leaders seeking to grow an aptly focused learning culture with obstacles and dilemmas concerning how
to address underdeveloped capacities for genuine authenticity and/or empathy and active concern.
Much has indeed "gone awry" in at least some of our childhood processes of socialization – as we all eventually come
to recognize from more adult processes of observation and self-discovery. Put another way, the social and
organizational costs of most of us being unaware of the constrictions arising in childhood of the natural blossoming of
truly rounded personalities are enormous. So what can you and I now practically do to lessen the ill effects of
characteristic habits of ignorance – temporary inabilities to learn from certain of our experiences – upon the
quality of our lives? Very broadly speaking, there are three channels in which we can focus our attention.
First, as individuals, we can pay closer attention to our emotions -- particularly those which, being inconvenient to
attend to, we have, if truth were told, been in more or less habitual ignorance. This is not at all easy, for how does
one pay attention to “something” of which one is scarcely aware?! Most of us will become more fully aware again of
mysterious currents sabotaging our desired focus only when they have become moods projecting statically sterile
world-views to which, to our surprise and alarm, another objects strongly.
If we are fortunate, the comments of an unusually insightful and honest person in whom we have either confidence or
on whom we must depend will awaken us to the emotional-intellectual rigidity of such inauthenticities as protesting "I
am fine" when truth is more likely to be "I fume at this moment" or "I want to weep, but I just can't" or "I feel I must
be resigned to this". If we are less fortunate, a string of “bad luck” that seems to be destroying the last vestige of a
hope – to which we have been clinging increasingly desperately – that we will some day achieve our fondest
aspirations – will bring about a comeuppance. Such unwanted experiences, arriving by what seems to be force
majeure (a power we are unable to control) are termed “wake-up” calls.
Giving attention to eruptions from such hitherto largely subconscious moods enables us to discover that we don't
actually know why we are doing what we are doing (or worse, why we did what we did). When first we become
aware of these unbidden eruptions, paying attention to them seems to be both unnatural and a “waste of time ”, and
we will not lack for advice from cronies to “move on” rather than to pay them present attention. But, when eventually
we decide to do so, we begin to become aware of the vast “internal universe” that we have come, often by small
degrees over virtually an entire lifetime, to be "shunting by" our conscious minds – the part of life we have, in effect,
been habitually ignoring -- or distracting ourselves from engaging.
As we complete stages in this initially very strange process, we start again to enjoy a zestful discovery of the intricate
“stitching” of an increasingly seamless web connecting our instincts, emotions, intuitions, and senses -- a web less
and less burdened with moods and idiosyncratically reactive behaviours. We extend our capacities to enjoy
discovering into a broader range of circumstances, learning that curiosity and minute observation, both external and
internal, are the keys to turning each scrap of our experience into a growth of our own unique store of wisdom. We
have acquired what might perhaps be the key, to what psychologist and author Daniel Goleman terms emotional and
social intelligence. In due course we may find we can do this as enjoyably, if not as effortlessly, as in the more blissful
moments of our childhoods.
Second, as inter-dependent members of the various communities in which we are learning to live as continuously
growing human beings, we can begin conversing with others, on this issue of ignorance as a mood. Whether directly
or through media, we can discuss ways that help more people make accurate distinctions between the procedures
that I might describe as “personality-stunting teaching" and what turns out to be truly enlightening education and
coaching. This distinction may sound a dramatization that is unfair to the profession of teaching. If it does to you, it
probably is. But, whatever may be your immediate reaction to this observation, many people now acknowledge that
teaching is characteristically an inefficient, hit-and-very-often-miss process -- and indeed almost every educator will
admit this after reflecting carefully upon his or her "failures". As human beings, we naturally learn more by being
encouraged to reach accurate and satisfying learnings from differentiation of our experiences than by being
compelled, or even expected, to believe what others tell us are the lessons we "should" learn. This is especially the
case when we feel obliged to pay attention to theoretical-seeming ideas that our teachers have tried (sometimes too
hard) to instill in us.
And third, as leaders of teams or organizations, we can emphasize the value of empathy in our relationships, and
become more proficient in the discipline of, and capacity for, empathizing. Many people confuse empathy with
compassion and/or sympathy. But empathy is different from either of the latter in that in empathy one does not
presume a superior status as we do in both compassion and sympathy, nor does one presume that one’s imagination
of another’s situation or thinking is accurate. Instead we give sensitive attention to small details and imaginative,
considerate curiosity to discovering another’s evolving circumstances and feelings related thereto. Most important,
unlike in extending compassion or sympathy, in extending empathy we do not create dependence or encourage the
settling in of either a victim or an entitlement mentality, but rather we encourage the reciprocal flow of goodwill and
fellow feeling. For only in a culture in which genuinely reciprocal flows are "the norm" can the curiosity essential
to learning flourish. In such a culture we all do indeed learn in good time what our organization/community
needs us to learn, and we also do pass on what we learn in good time also.
And now it’s your turn: has this writing helped you recognize, in your life, the moments when you have not asked as
many tactful questions as perhaps would have been optimal for you and your family, friends, colleagues, boss, the
people you supervise, clients, customers, acquaintance, or constituency? Has it given you some ideas for encouraging
someone else to develop and articulate optimally his or her talent for organizationally useful curiosity?
If you would like, you can tell me, by email to angusc@authentixcoaches.com. I certainly would love your feedback!
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 080221-080806, excerpted from "Empathic Authenticity", to be published in 2008
some event has caused the child to be cautious in circumstances in which the child has learned there is likely to be
danger. This is a fundamental that any supervisor is wise always to keep in mind because ignorance can then
usefully be conceived as originating in temporary inabilities on the part of both supervisor and employee to
differentiate between their current experience from "echoes" of similar past experiences. Looked at in this way, what
appears as an ignorance on the part of the employee is recognized as in part a reflection of ignorance on the part of
the supervisor for which the supervisor's recovery of his or her natural curiosity can initiate discovery of a solution.
That solution will emerge from their conversation if each can bring their observations about the present situation into
a shared focus in which the vital concerns of each are revealed empathically to the other.
As children we often sensed or believed, whether correctly or only fantastically, that the adults who had charge of us
either would not appreciate our expressing some of our feelings or, alternatively, would be particularly pleased with
how we felt inclined to dramatize some of them. These beliefs, which often later become implicit ones of which we
have become quite unconscious, determine to a very large extent which aspects of learning we later come, sometimes
perversely, to ignore.
If we were often praised for being stoically brave beyond the expectations of the adults who had charge of us, we
learned to "stuff" the fears then bothering us, thus providing "emotional soil" for anti-dependent, and sooner or later
imprudent and/or inauthentic behaviour to take root. Unless later events in our lives empower us to modify these
behaviours, they will typically develop into bravado, cavalier insensitivity, and even arrogance, all of which will later
limit our capacities to enjoy and contribute to a mature inter-dependence of the kind described in Stephen Covey's
"Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". Likewise, if we were ignored as a child, we learned to discount the value of
narrating or commenting upon any event that was not downright harrowing or upright ecstatic for us. Moreover,
whether we were praised for stoicism or simply ignored, and most of us experienced both "treatments" in different
circumstances, we will be unlikely to recognize the possibility of vitality arising in a team from acknowledging
everyone's ultimately unavoidable inter-dependence -- except through personally experiencing a trauma at a time
when a much more mature social role will be expected of us. Yet specific recognition of ineluctable inter-dependencies
is becoming ever more necessary for productive harmony in the increasingly larger world that each of us must inhabit.
If, on the other hand, we found as a child that we could amuse our seniors by dramatizing our dislikes, we learned we
could get away with less than honest behaviour – from which habits of either exaggeration or false modesty would
develop. And this experience will lead to organizationally dysfunctional habits of ignoring or chronically and even
contemptuously, discounting the values of accuracy, reliability, empathy, and aptly intelligent sharing.
Thus, as children in a world we imagined our seniors “always” comprehended better than we did, many of us acquired
– perhaps initially deliberately but later increasingly automatically – the habits, as if they were wisdom, of either
hiding those ideas and thoughts we judged would be unacceptable or exaggerating those that would be fun to
display dishonestly. By these largely unconscious means, our interests in exploration, and our abilities to learn by
exploration and genuine curiosity, became, almost imperceptibly, either fragmented or constrained by childish senses
of “others' wisdoms”.
The consequences in the present of this phenomenon of "background culture" -- whether family, institutional, ethnic,
or national -- are that each of our personalities has evolved stunted to a greater or lesser extent in traits of either
stoic bravado or false modesty. Both these shortcomings of attitude or character may be conceived as attempts to
monopolize truth – the first extrovertedly and the second introvertedly. But whichever course such stuntings take,
they present leaders seeking to grow an aptly focused learning culture with obstacles and dilemmas concerning how
to address underdeveloped capacities for genuine authenticity and/or empathy and active concern.
Much has indeed "gone awry" in at least some of our childhood processes of socialization – as we all eventually come
to recognize from more adult processes of observation and self-discovery. Put another way, the social and
organizational costs of most of us being unaware of the constrictions arising in childhood of the natural blossoming of
truly rounded personalities are enormous. So what can you and I now practically do to lessen the ill effects of
characteristic habits of ignorance – temporary inabilities to learn from certain of our experiences – upon the
quality of our lives? Very broadly speaking, there are three channels in which we can focus our attention.
First, as individuals, we can pay closer attention to our emotions -- particularly those which, being inconvenient to
attend to, we have, if truth were told, been in more or less habitual ignorance. This is not at all easy, for how does
one pay attention to “something” of which one is scarcely aware?! Most of us will become more fully aware again of
mysterious currents sabotaging our desired focus only when they have become moods projecting statically sterile
world-views to which, to our surprise and alarm, another objects strongly.
If we are fortunate, the comments of an unusually insightful and honest person in whom we have either confidence or
on whom we must depend will awaken us to the emotional-intellectual rigidity of such inauthenticities as protesting "I
am fine" when truth is more likely to be "I fume at this moment" or "I want to weep, but I just can't" or "I feel I must
be resigned to this". If we are less fortunate, a string of “bad luck” that seems to be destroying the last vestige of a
hope – to which we have been clinging increasingly desperately – that we will some day achieve our fondest
aspirations – will bring about a comeuppance. Such unwanted experiences, arriving by what seems to be force
majeure (a power we are unable to control) are termed “wake-up” calls.
Giving attention to eruptions from such hitherto largely subconscious moods enables us to discover that we don't
actually know why we are doing what we are doing (or worse, why we did what we did). When first we become
aware of these unbidden eruptions, paying attention to them seems to be both unnatural and a “waste of time ”, and
we will not lack for advice from cronies to “move on” rather than to pay them present attention. But, when eventually
we decide to do so, we begin to become aware of the vast “internal universe” that we have come, often by small
degrees over virtually an entire lifetime, to be "shunting by" our conscious minds – the part of life we have, in effect,
been habitually ignoring -- or distracting ourselves from engaging.
As we complete stages in this initially very strange process, we start again to enjoy a zestful discovery of the intricate
“stitching” of an increasingly seamless web connecting our instincts, emotions, intuitions, and senses -- a web less
and less burdened with moods and idiosyncratically reactive behaviours. We extend our capacities to enjoy
discovering into a broader range of circumstances, learning that curiosity and minute observation, both external and
internal, are the keys to turning each scrap of our experience into a growth of our own unique store of wisdom. We
have acquired what might perhaps be the key, to what psychologist and author Daniel Goleman terms emotional and
social intelligence. In due course we may find we can do this as enjoyably, if not as effortlessly, as in the more blissful
moments of our childhoods.
Second, as inter-dependent members of the various communities in which we are learning to live as continuously
growing human beings, we can begin conversing with others, on this issue of ignorance as a mood. Whether directly
or through media, we can discuss ways that help more people make accurate distinctions between the procedures
that I might describe as “personality-stunting teaching" and what turns out to be truly enlightening education and
coaching. This distinction may sound a dramatization that is unfair to the profession of teaching. If it does to you, it
probably is. But, whatever may be your immediate reaction to this observation, many people now acknowledge that
teaching is characteristically an inefficient, hit-and-very-often-miss process -- and indeed almost every educator will
admit this after reflecting carefully upon his or her "failures". As human beings, we naturally learn more by being
encouraged to reach accurate and satisfying learnings from differentiation of our experiences than by being
compelled, or even expected, to believe what others tell us are the lessons we "should" learn. This is especially the
case when we feel obliged to pay attention to theoretical-seeming ideas that our teachers have tried (sometimes too
hard) to instill in us.
And third, as leaders of teams or organizations, we can emphasize the value of empathy in our relationships, and
become more proficient in the discipline of, and capacity for, empathizing. Many people confuse empathy with
compassion and/or sympathy. But empathy is different from either of the latter in that in empathy one does not
presume a superior status as we do in both compassion and sympathy, nor does one presume that one’s imagination
of another’s situation or thinking is accurate. Instead we give sensitive attention to small details and imaginative,
considerate curiosity to discovering another’s evolving circumstances and feelings related thereto. Most important,
unlike in extending compassion or sympathy, in extending empathy we do not create dependence or encourage the
settling in of either a victim or an entitlement mentality, but rather we encourage the reciprocal flow of goodwill and
fellow feeling. For only in a culture in which genuinely reciprocal flows are "the norm" can the curiosity essential
to learning flourish. In such a culture we all do indeed learn in good time what our organization/community
needs us to learn, and we also do pass on what we learn in good time also.
And now it’s your turn: has this writing helped you recognize, in your life, the moments when you have not asked as
many tactful questions as perhaps would have been optimal for you and your family, friends, colleagues, boss, the
people you supervise, clients, customers, acquaintance, or constituency? Has it given you some ideas for encouraging
someone else to develop and articulate optimally his or her talent for organizationally useful curiosity?
If you would like, you can tell me, by email to angusc@authentixcoaches.com. I certainly would love your feedback!
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 080221-080806, excerpted from "Empathic Authenticity", to be published in 2008
Reading Material Sample
Services to Leaders
Coaching Essay: Developing Curiosity
Coaching Essay: Developing Curiosity
| Growing an Aptly Focused Learning Culture: Acknowledging Ignorance to Nurture the Capacity for Curiosity (c) 2005-2008 by Angus Cunningham President, Authentix Coaches angusc@authentixcoaches.com |
Growing a culture of aptly focused learning is becoming recognized as the key leadership
objective of our time. As events continue to bring, at a seemingly ever faster pace, novel
situations to which organizations must research, decide, and execute responses, interest in
learning what is useful and timely for one's organization becomes more and more the factor
that most clearly differentiates organizations that are growing stronger from ones falling
behind. How then does a leader nurture the interest of the people he or she leads to learn in
real time from unfolding events what the organization needs to learn and to relay that
learning to others whom the organization specifically needs to be informed?
This question is complicated by the reality that each of us experiences different reactions, and
also more slowly developing responses, when the word "ignorance" is used or inferred as
having been implied. Yet a discussion of the means to grow an aptly focused learning culture
in which the word "ignorance" is neither used in nor inferred from the context is scarcely
imaginable. "Blind spot" is an alternative term sometimes used to describe the tendency of all
human beings to ignore what we lack interest in learning. But whatever term we use, the
question remains: how can we help a person through a lack of interest in learning?
Traditionally, leadership help has been to "increase the incentive". But is that optimal?
objective of our time. As events continue to bring, at a seemingly ever faster pace, novel
situations to which organizations must research, decide, and execute responses, interest in
learning what is useful and timely for one's organization becomes more and more the factor
that most clearly differentiates organizations that are growing stronger from ones falling
behind. How then does a leader nurture the interest of the people he or she leads to learn in
real time from unfolding events what the organization needs to learn and to relay that
learning to others whom the organization specifically needs to be informed?
This question is complicated by the reality that each of us experiences different reactions, and
also more slowly developing responses, when the word "ignorance" is used or inferred as
having been implied. Yet a discussion of the means to grow an aptly focused learning culture
in which the word "ignorance" is neither used in nor inferred from the context is scarcely
imaginable. "Blind spot" is an alternative term sometimes used to describe the tendency of all
human beings to ignore what we lack interest in learning. But whatever term we use, the
question remains: how can we help a person through a lack of interest in learning?
Traditionally, leadership help has been to "increase the incentive". But is that optimal?
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Want more on how to make focused learning a vital part of your organization? The navigation bar below
offers you some additional reading on this high-leverage issue:
offers you some additional reading on this high-leverage issue: