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 or advantageous to pretend. 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 hold a monopoly of veracity – 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 greater than when a team leader must address such stunted capacities. But somehow the leader must find a way to evoke the authenticity and empathy that are needed in mutual reciprocity for his or her team to succeed. 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. sub-consciously 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'm 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 sub-conscious 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 giving 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 both discovering and 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, researcher, 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. Yet, 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 most of us 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 and enjoy the reciprocal flow of goodwill and fellow feeling -- or, as author Marshall Rosenberg puts in, "what's alive in us now". 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 2011 |
| 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? |
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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. One way to do so is to acknowledge the work of this essay and its copyright. |
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 begin 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 sub-conscious or preconscious "echoes" of similar past experiences. Looked at in this way, what appears as an ignorance on the part of an employee can be conceived as in part a reflection of a non-deliberate 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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