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 later become implicit presumptions, determine to a very large extent which aspects of learning
we later come, sometimes perversely, to shun.

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 dysfunctional behaviour to take root.  Unless later events in our
lives empower us to modify such 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 stoic behaviour 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 inter-connected world that each of us must,
whether we like it or not, live in.

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, or derivatives therefrom, would develop.   This experience will lead
to organizationally dysfunctional habits of ignoring or chronically and even contemptuously,
discounting the values of accuracy, authenticity, 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 "childish presumption" -- whether induced
by family, institutional, ethnic, or national means -- 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
aspects of character may be conceived as attempts to monopolize truth – the first extrovertedly and
the second introvertedly.  But whichever course such stuntings take, they present obstacles and
dilemmas to leaders seeking to grow an aptly focused learning culture.  Nowhere are these obstacles
higher than when a team leaders must address stunted capacities for the authenticity and/or
empathy that is needed in mutual reciprocities for the team's success.

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 to 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 more or less habitually ignoring, i.e.
unconsciously either suppressing or dramatizing.   This is not at all easy, for how does one pay
attention to “something" one has become accustomed, either heroically or self-indulgently
depending on one's experience as a child, to ignore!  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.  This is
the
stuff of politics!

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 low levels of authenticity as protesting "I am fine" when truth is more likely to be, on the one
hand, "I fume at this moment" or "I want to weep, but I just can't" or, on the other, "What did I do?" or
"Can't people take a joke?".  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 seem 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 in some barely conscious way distracting ourselves from
recognizing and paying enough attention to.

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, and also focused inquiry into a
broader range of circumstances.  We learn 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" or unnecessarily inflexible training and what turns out to be
truly enlightening
education and coaching
.  This distinction may sound a dramatization that is unfair to some in the
professions of teaching and training.  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
theories or pontifications that our teachers have tried (sometimes too hard!) to instill in us.

And third, as leaders of teams or organizations, we can emphasize the values of empathy and
scrupulous
authenticity in our relationships, and become more proficient in the discipline of, and
capacity for, both in successive phases of a relationship.  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 all do in sympathy and some do in "compassion", 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 the
evolving circumstances of others and the emotions 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 -- or, as Marshall Rosenberg puts in, "what's alive in us
now".  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.  I certainly would love your feedback!


Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 080221-091105, excerpted from "Presumption Free or Rational Presence: Your Choice with Eye-Zen
English
", to be published in 2010
Reading Material Sample
Services to Leaders
Coaching Essay: Developing Curiosity
Growing an Aptly Focused Learning Culture:
Acknowledging Ignorance to Nurture the Capacity
for Focused, Unabashed, & Empathic Inquiry

(c) 2005-2009 by
Angus Cunningham
Principal, 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 actually needs to learn, and then to relay that learning to others whom the organization
specifically needs to be informed?
Paper addressing the dilemmas of making judgments
Root page of Leadership Services section
Root page of Coaching Services section
IHXEN English for Rational Decision-Making
Our Engagement Values
Authentix Coaches Home page
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Want more on how to make aptly focused learning a vital part of your organization?  The navigation
bar below offers you some additional reading on this high-leverage issue.  Please treat what you read
that is valuable to you with proper respect for the work of its author, your fellow human being,
Angus.

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 hard
to imagine.  "Blind spot" is an alternative term sometimes used to describe
the tendency of all human beings to ignore what we lack, for whatever reason,
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, the
management solution has been to "increase the incentive".

But is that optimal?  We begin to unravel the complexities involved when we
recognize that curiosity is the natural state of a child -- until some event
causes the child to begun presuming there to be danger in similar
circumstances.  This is worth any supervisor keeping in mind because
ignorance can then usefully be conceived as originating in
temporary
inabilities on the part of
both supervisor and employee to differentiate 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 can be
conceived as in part a reflection of an ignorance on the part of the supervisor,
and the supervisor's recovery of his or her natural curiosity can then initiate
joint discovery of a solution.  It will emerge from their conversation if each
can bring their observations of the present situation into a shared focus in
which the vital needs and concerns of each are safely and empathically
revealed to the other.
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