Business lessons from the AT wrapping things up, a conversation in three parts part two

For most of the year now we’ve been talking monthly about comparing everyday life to a walk in the woods, in this case my son and I hiking the Appalachian Trail (the AT), a 2200-mile footpath along the Eastern seaboard of North America.?Last month we began wrapping up those talks into a summary conclusion of what we learned and comparisons to everyday life, this is a continuation of those talks. In order to give proper credit, it should be noted that much of the material from this series of articles is built upon the work of Dr Iain McGilchrist and his great new book The Matter with things which I highly recommend, links to some of these lectures are included here. Enjoy, and as always, your thoughts are appreciated and wanted, we learn together.

Article three

In article three we talked more about people than the trail (mostly the unique kind of people), we talked about judgement, nature and perception, fear, and bringing your “A” game to everything you do.

It’s true that our identity is defined (in part) by us, but another part is molded in what others think of us, and in turn we help to define them.?It’s a subtle yet powerful interchange, and as Greg Ellis alludes to in the opening quote above, we identify ourselves in others, it’s a mirror.?I like to say, “we belong to each other, and we belong for each other, because we belong because of each other.”?It’s true what William Shakespeare said that the world is a stage, and we are players on that stage.?So consider the roles you play for others in any given context and consider relationships important, give your best performance for their comfort, care, and betterment.?It’s so powerful in fact, this identity interchange, that if you never spent any time considering and attending to it, I would say you are probably doing yourself, and others, a disservice and are not as successful and happy as you could be in life.?This isn’t ego talking, or deception, and it’s not a narcissistic thing I’m suggesting, it’s more an awareness, empathy, and mindfulness thing, a realization of the responsibility we have to one other.?Understand and define your identity as created by you and others and then own it, and if you don’t like it or think it undeserving, change it. ?When you’re on the AT, it’s not long before you acquire a trail name and the best ones are collaborative observations of your personality or behavior given by others, they tell a story about you.?In the business world we have identities, and some of us have nicknames, call signs, or reputations for something. Are you known with distinction? Is that distinction sustainable, viable, and good?

Different people

There are a lot of people hiking the AT who you might find unusual, suspicious, or even menacing or offensive.?You learn quickly to put aside your biases, judgements, and fears however and assess these people by their actions, behavior, and deeds and nothing more.?If you didn’t, you’d probably call the first Uber within cell phone range of a forest service road and high tail it out of there.?But you will also find yourself suspending judgement in part because you are all united in the common goal of survival against mother nature, the elements, and the universe.?But in the business world its different, we don’t have to stick with people out of necessity or survival. We can shun those we find unusual or different, ones who annoy us, and ones who are “fringy” or don’t fit our mold.?We are afraid of emotion at work when in reality it signals passion, care, creativity, and motivation, we marginalize our bricoleurs (think of the 80’s television character MacGyver), our divergent thinkers, our polymaths, and courageous learners when all the while they could hold the key to a company’s creativity, innovation, and survival.?On the trail you know these outliers are worth their weight in gold, and feel a kinship toward them, in the eyes of nature everyone’s an outlier.?On the Appalachian Trail no one gets fired, promoted, or demoted, there are no evaluations, tests, or judgements, unless they’re handed down by the universe, and most hikers are too busy supporting one another in the business of mutual survival to spend time in judgement or evaluation.?What's the takeaway here regarding different people? I used to shun people who were different from myself, after hiking 250 miles of the AT with my son I now think they are some of the most genuine and insightful people I’ve met, now I seek them out.?

Perfecting us

?How can you develop your best self? One way is for all of us to think of ourselves as coaches, or at the very least be ready to put on a coaching hat when someone else needs assistance. On the trail people help each other in innumerous ways, constantly and intuitively, without thinking.?Helping, coaching, tutoring, being of service, it happens so often in fact that it’s practically ubiquitous, overlooked, and anytime groups of people meet on the trail they immediately assess one another looking for cues they are in distress or need help.?Pam McLean , author of Self as Coach, Self as Leader, says that who you are is also how you will coach and how you show up is paramount, soft skills are differentiators, she says, and you, your genuine self, are an instrument and the most important part of coaching.?Pam says coaching work is highly relational and if you turn up the awareness dial you will also learn about yourself.?Finally, Pam offers this observation, “every encounter is an intervention,” that’s powerful, and something worth thinking about.

We all bring stories into life, and you’ll hear many stories on the trail.?Often invisible, we form stories in our early years and drag them with us into adulthood and many of them can become self-limiting stories, do your stories still serve you??BL, know your stories, listen for them when you tell them and the message they convey, and listen to others, and if possible, help them understand theirs and the role they play in the present. Your presence in another’s life, you just showing up, is an intervention and is sensed and felt by others. We have a tough time putting our thoughts aside, our instinct is to turn inside and become distracted.?Can you be present for others you encounter, and can you put your agenda on the shelf in the service of others, notice how you show up. Is presence the same as mindfulness? Pam says no, presence is bigger, mindfulness is a practice which enhances presence.

Trust

How else can you be your best self? By being trustworthy. Clinical psychologist Michael Regier says we are naturally wired to form bonds with others and there are 5 pillars of trust which form the basis for this bonding: transparency, reciprocity, understanding, safety, and time (TRUST).?When those are present Michael says our relationship achieves a predictability, expectation of outcome, and fairness which is comforting, easily returned in kind, and honest.?It almost feels paradoxical to say this considering Michael’s research but, on the AT, you have the potential to, and often do, form bonds of trust very quickly, it’s a phenomenon on which other hikers would agree.?It may be because Rieger’s pillars of TRUST are met more quickly on the trail.?Let’s look deeper into a few of these pillars and why this is.?

?Reciprocity

What is the catalyst for building trust quickly? And is what you’re feeling at any given moment legitimate, is it real or fantasy? How would you definitively know and be able to make a decision unless you were able to discuss it with someone else. Without reciprocity of feelings in this case, someone you can bounce ideas and feelings off, no matter how ridiculous, without judgement, you might never know. Reciprocally sharing thoughts, feelings, perspective, and opinions help us know and also help us grow and get closer to a common truth.?It’s been said by Dr Iain McGilchrist that objectivity (truth) is really an inter-subjectivity.?Truth, reality, and objectivity is not simply what I’m feeling, or think, but instead what two or more people create through dialogue and agree upon together, with intermingling thoughts there is richer context. The truest reality is an encounter which creates a gravity, and something new beyond me and you, it creates “us” moments. ?Without fair reciprocity (back and forth) there is no feedback, no deeper understanding, no honesty, no reality, no truth, no objectivity, and no trust.?It’s a “second person” perspective which doesn’t include the ego trappings of a “first person” (what I think), or a “third person” (what I say the world thinks) perspective, both aspire to have the last word, it’s an honest, shared perspective. Do you have a person with whom you can share perspective? Can you be this person for others?

Time

Time management also holds a strong component of trust. Time is important and wasting another’s time can be interpreted as a show of great disrespect.?From Social Worker Nora Gold we learn that while punctuality (timeliness) might seem trivial it’s really of the utmost importance. Keeping someone waiting conveys a disrespect that others time is less valuable than your own (IE they’re less valuable than you).?Nora says punctuality has been called “the politeness of kings,” the way in which they show respect to others, I love that. Punctual people also show they are realistic thinkers and organized, they build in buffer time and are comfortable with downtime, using it productively and showing that they can think both tactically and strategically.?Punctual people are trustworthy, predictable, and transparent.?People who are frequently late don’t appear to possess these traits and therefore don’t suggest that they have these qualities.

Article four

In four we talked about intelligence, making sense of the world around us, and reality as explained through metaphors used by the right and left hemisphere of the brain. The takeaway here is that metaphor is the bedrock of language and a building block for stories and reality and not just a frivolous dress-up we use to garnish meaning already transmitted, understood, or executed.?The left hemisphere prefers metaphors which are mechanical and lifeless while the right prefers those associated with life, and nature, the flow of rivers, the movement of the wind in trees, and living organisms.?These metaphors paint different pictures dependent upon where they reside, and where we reside in them.?Where we live, and work, and spend our days and experiences will dictate the metaphors we dream of and dream up and so for most of us we eventually give up the nature metaphors of the right hemisphere in favor of the ones of the left, preferring and relating to mechanized, machine models to explain life and ultimately considering comparisons of nature to work irrelevant or unsuitable, but the machine model doesn’t explain everything in our world.

Remarkable people??

Bricoleurs, iconoclasts, divergent thinkers, polymaths, these are the Marvel Superheroes hidden in our organizations and we should seek them out, protect, and nurture them.?I consider myself on notice, why? for the times I thought my grandfather’s nostalgic observations were merely sweet reflections and dismissed them.?Or, when my child or the youngest, or newest person in the office said something so brilliant it could have spun everyone’s perspective and the current work paradigms 180 degrees, but it didn’t because I wouldn’t support or allow it.?Or when the artist among us compared current business to something poetic and conceptual, and I laughed or shrugged it off.?What's the takeaway here? It is that different people are also remarkable people.?

“The mind is a metaphor of the world of objects” – Pierre Bourdieu

Metaphors and the mind

Before metaphors are introduced or created, an experience is presented to us in embodied real-time context as it is happening first through the right hemisphere, the intuitive, reasoning side of the brain, this is the truest form of reality we encounter.?It then makes its way to the left hemisphere, the rational side, where it transitions from an experience to analysis, and it is “re-presented” in an abstract way.?Taken out of context, taken apart, and analyzed in a static field as data, facts, figures, numbers, it becomes a useful picture, a schematic, a map, a model, and is now a “re-presentation”, a representation of what we saw and examined out of the context of the living world, this is a second, “abstract look” after our initial experience.?In our manmade worlds we are often most comfortable with stopping at this step, and we have the luxury to stop here, making decisions from these representations of reality, our models, and executing based upon them.?But were not done with the sensemaking process and when we do this our best efforts become a kind of “ready-shoot, aim” fiasco and we’re often unaware that we could have performed better, or produced more, or created greater outcomes, where’d we go wrong??This analysis step is an intermediary phase. What we should do next is give the left’s analysis and insights back to the right hemisphere, looking at it once more in the living context of a natural world, informing intuition and linking rational analysis with intuitive reason.?

Grandfather, our children, and the artist might very well be the wisest among us when they share unfiltered and candid observations as they’re most likely reporting on encounters of raw “real” experience, fully felt in context in the brain’s right hemisphere. ?So Pierre Bourdieu’s dictum above becomes evident when we think about it, the brain is one big creative “metaphor machine,” and metaphors help join the minds intuitive experiences of life with analysis in a relatable context giving them fuller meaning, animation, and permanence, and, painting them it into stories we ultimately know as life. Neuroscientist Rudy Tanzi says the only purpose of the brain is to create.?It creates thoughts, words, facial expressions, works of art, and that which it creates ultimately comes back to monitor, regulate, and govern us, what are you creating??

Puzzles and problems

Is life complex or is it complicated? It’s an important question because there’s a significant difference in these definitions and not knowing which it is and when to apply aptly to each in any moment could cause you to make needless, even grave mistakes, the short answer is it depends.?I recently watched a well-made video compilation from a diverse group of leaders in my particular field discussing how to meet todays, and tomorrow’s challenges with fresh solutions, there must have been more than two dozen top thinkers speaking.?What was interesting was that my gut told me that a third to half of them got something important wrong, what was it??They were confusing the complicated with the complex. I ended my last article with the suggestion that life, living organisms, biology, and the natural universe were complex, while the creations of men, our tangible products, were merely complicated. What's the difference? When we step out of our boardrooms, factories, and workplaces and into a natural world like that of the Appalachian Trail we largely step out of?a complicated?world of man’s creation and into the?complex?world of nature, example??A jet engine is complicated. Made of mechanical pieces, springs, bolts, gears, tubing and wires, an engine can be disassembled, analyzed, reassembled, stopped, and started, and has definitive borders which make it what it is.?But nature’s different, nature is?complex. Weather systems are complex, rivers, streams, biology, life (human life), organisms, and the universe are all examples of complex systems not of our creation.?Complex systems, like a hurricane or tornado for example, don’t have definitive borders, they have transitions, they’re malleable, subject to change, and are unpredictable, and they cannot simply be taken apart and analyzed, reassembled, shut off and set back into motion (turned back on again).?As in the examples of living organisms, or nature, they’re also not created by us, not completely understood, and may not even, ever be completely understandable, there may be aspects about them we will never know.?The next time we are in a manmade world like work we would do well to remember that the creations of man are not complex, but instead complicated, and like every puzzle, they have a solution which an expert could solve, while man himself and the natural world are different, and may not be as readily understood.?In this world, expertise, and objectivity, will only be realized when everyone, and all associated things are considered, involved, and included in a “better” solution, its inter-subjectivity.?And when we hear others speak of manmade complications as complex, but solvable, know that these confident assurances are likely contradictions, and we’re not being completely honest with ourselves or clear.?They are solvable when they’re complicated, or, put another way, the complicated part of them may be easily figured out.?Their complex side however may only be solved in approximation, and in context of a living embodied world with others, or, perhaps not at all.??

We human beings will never be one of man’s complicated creations, though we wear the complications of humanity around us we are ultimately part of the universe’s natural complexity, one which we may not fully understand, or even, never be fully understandable, and perhaps herein lies the rub. It would be simple to say that when we’re building a boat, or plane, an automobile, or an organization with others we are dealing solely with the complicated (a puzzle), and, that when we are encountering feelings, or the weather, our thoughts, or unexplained behavior we are encountering the complex.?But these two balls are in play simultaneously, at the same time, they’re intermingled, the complicated and the complex.?And with them the rational (analysis) that is the brains left hemisphere view of the world, and the intuitive (reasoning) side that is the right hemispheres view, the two, and their perspectives, are seamless, it’s often difficult to distinguish and separate them.?The trick is to identify each as we navigate these spaces of experience and process reality, addressing each appropriately. What’s all this got to do with hiking a mountain trail and why’s it so important? ?Just this, clarity.?When were on the trail it’s easy for our mind to distinguish between the two.?How? We carry the complicated on our backs while the complex is all around us, all of life’s experience should be so easy. Get out there on the trail!?

Dr. Zabiegalski, and Anthony, are available to talk to your organization or venue about ambidexterity research or speak informatively and eloquently about organizational culture, leadership, strategy, learning, complexity, business neuroscience, creativity, mindfulness, talent management, personal success, emotional intelligence, Action Learning, and storytelling. Contact us about a talk, keynote presentation, hike, or workshop today!