#19—Downwind Effects

Near our campsite came the unmistakable downwind sound of someone's rant.

Minutes long. Directed at multiple persons. Shattering the idyllic peace of mountain sunrise with a first cup of coffee.

My calm instantly became irritation. My awareness of beautiful surroundings transformed into a blindness caused by high alert against physical threat.

Alert!?

Amygdala hijacking!

How hard it is to develop ourselves, others, and the cultures where we all mingle while needing safety, curiosity, creativity, even readiness to engage in healthy conflict. And how simply, instantaneously, and unthinkingly our curation unwinds.

This difficulty surrounds us with scores of toxic organizations and people who prefer a non-reflective life, so they lash out instead. It's not just the difficulty. It is the contagion—the ease by which "not worth the effort to be nice" spreads.

"That's just the way I am!"?the non-reflective person often says. Really? We are talking about self-management. Sure, emotions rise and get expressed in individual ways, but why remain stuck in unmanaged ignorance?

Society, an organization, or the family system where we are placed will facilitate or complicate our learning. None of these can assume that courtesy, respect, empathy, and self-awareness are natural endowments or talents formed elsewhere or that fellow citizens, employees, and family members bring these qualities with them. We are all charged with their constant and disciplined development.

Hearing that loud rant on an otherwise idyllic morning, I could easily imagine the downstream effects sown into the children at the campsite, their children after them, and the many neighbors and co-workers along the way whose lives will be further complicated in rage, sullenness, fearful anxiety, and gas-lighting. That makes for a lot of cleanup!

Enterprise can improve the world, not just taking goods out of it but bringing good to it. Could more businesses make this their business?

Would you like to go deeper? Here are some favorite resources:

Mygrow - daily, scalable, individual, and organizational application for EQ development

The Crucible Project - Interventionary and transformational retreats. A means to turn away from and then turn towards.

WiLD Leaders, Inc. - A series of assessments marking one's leadership development. Reflection and deliberateness built over time.

In my backpack:?Libertism, by Lene Rachel Andersen.

Lene Rachel Andersen is another person inviting us to make the world better. I'm a fan, so you won't find an objective, detached critique here. I'm a fan because I've not found another such voice capable of condensing the broad sweep of history, culture, and human development into pictures we can grasp. Not just where we have been but where we are going and our invitation to do something about it.

In her most recent work, she points to our current moment—one where we can choose our future as never before—either to direct it or to become victim to it; to control the technology we are developing, or to be controlled by it. We must bear this in mind whatever we dismantle or assemble, fund or defund.

My theological background comes to the fore here—reminding me that in creation, the created human possesses the capacity for self-awareness and self-direction. Humanity chose to leave innocence to know and participate in good and evil. Humans now act as the creators, coaxing technology toward its own level of awareness, however synthetic. Having chosen to leave our creator behind, do we want to put ourselves under the dominance of something we created?

An Executive Advisor walking alongside accomplished executives in the third turn of their careers, Mark L. Vincent , Ph.D., EPC , loves leaders who love leaders.

In his own third turn, Mark continues to grow his capacity for wise advising, artful facilitation, and public presentation.

Mark has founded?Maestro-level leaders ,?Design Group International, ?and the?Society for Process Consulting , and authored a number of books, including Listening Helping Learning . He now partners with Mygrow to build an emotionally intelligent world.