Leadership Meets Life Blog

Practical Approaches for Innovation and Problem Solving

Phil C. Bergey — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 04:00:00 GMT

How do ideas get generated? And how do problems get solved?

Let's look first at idea generation.

Researcher Margaret Boden describes three types of creative idea generation processes: combinational creativity, exploratory creativity, and transformational creativity.

Innovation blogger Yorum Solomon in an inc.com post, 4 Processes That Generate Big Ideas, adds a fourth: team-based combinational creativity.

Here are Solomon's quick definitions of four types of psychological and cognitive processes involved in idea generation.

- - Combinational creativity: "the generation of new ideas through the combination of old ideas"
  - Exploratory creativity: "The premise of exploratory creativity is that the new idea is not in your head yet, but that ideas already in your head would only lead you to explore beyond them."
  - Transformational creativity: "The premise of transformational creativity is assuming (or hypothesizing) that an idea (or a few) in your head are actually wrong, and exploring the possibilities that result from accepting it."
  - Team-based combinational creativity: Solomon adds to Boden's three forms. "The 3 processes described above rely on creative ideas generated in one brain of one person. However, ideas can also be generated by a team of creative people, with the right diversity, and the right dynamics, by which the old ideas, pieces of the new idea, actually reside with multiple people, and the team dynamics, through debate and communications will generate the combination."

In reality, we use a combination of these processes when we need innovation or want to tackle problems that have us stumped.

As I highlighted in a recent podcast episode, we humans solve problems in one of two primary ways:

- - We either tend to rely on moments of insight,
  - or we approach problems analytically.

You can learn more about how insight happens and how to help it happen more often in my Leadership Meets Life podcast episode 13, Insight: A Great Speculative Leap. Check it out.

When we approach problems analytically—as opposed to using insight—we begin with defining the problem. Then we try to understand the problem through some form of analysis. Some approaches require taking things apart. However, some issues don't lend themselves to take-apart-ability.

In a previous Leadership Meets Life blog post and podcast, I explained the differences between technical problems that have known solutions and adaptive challenges that not only lack an immediate solution but also may be difficult to even frame as a question. You can check them out in the Resources section below.

So what are examples of solving problems analytically?

In the spirit of my Leadership Meets Life blog and podcast, I like to share accessible tools, resources, and approaches for you to apply to leadership and life.

There's an excellent resource called The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler.

Not only does this little book describe and demonstrate 50 models concisely, it does so in an orderly way, broken down into four sections: how to improve yourself, how to understand yourself better, how to understand others better, and how to improve others.

It's a great tool to use as an idea prompter as you're puzzling over a particular challenge.

Here are a few examples from The Decision Book that you might find helpful.

- - Drexler-Sibbet Team Performance Model describes the goals of each of the seven stages that groups go through when carrying out a project: Orientation, Trust Building, Goal Clarification, Commitment, Implementation, High Performance, and Renewal.
  - The Crossroads Model is a simple approach to help create clarity or provide discernment using questions, including What is really important to you? Which people are important to you? What are you afraid of? And others.
  - The Black Swan is a principle that explores our inability to predict the future from the past. Consider that a turkey is fed every day, so it grows fat, but it never imagines that it will face the butcher one day. The 9/11 tragedy in New York City was a black swan event.

The specific models in The Decision Book can be helpful. Still, I also find simply reviewing or perusing the book helps me consider the next steps in my thinking process to address a particular problem.

One more model you might find helpful to analyze a problem analytically is called The 5 Whys.

Sakichi Toyoda, a Japanese inventor and founder of Toyota Industries, developed the 5 Why approach in the 1930s to address the root cause of problems that were not getting resolved. Here's a great little video and how-to article from MindTools® on using the 5 Whys.

In my next Leadership Meets Life podcast episode and blog post we’ll build on the neuroscience of creativity and problem solving by looking at the phenomenon of “flow,” that magic space-time intersection when we get caught up in what we’re doing, and time seems to fly.

If you haven’t already done so, check out my Leadership Meets Life Podcast!

- - Primary Source: The Neuroscience School, led by Dr. Irena O’Brien
  - Article: Yoram Solomon, 4 Processes That Generate Big Ideas
  - Article: Margaret A. Boden, “Creativity as a Neuroscientific Mystery” (in the book Neuroscience of Creativity, MIT Press, 2013)
  - Book: Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler, The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking
  - Podcast Episode: Leadership Meets Life on technical and adaptive challenges, by Phil Bergey: Technically Speaking, It’s Adaptive - Tackling Challenges in a Changing World
  - Blog Post: Leadership Meets Life on technical problems and adaptive challenges, by Phil Bergey: Leadership Fruit Bowl: Navigating Technical & Adaptive Challenges With Your Team
  - Video: Rainn Wilson, David Eagleman & Others, Creativity: The Science Behind the Madness

Let me know how you’re connecting with the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast. I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me directly at philb@designgroupintl.com or by visiting my website.

Stay well.

On the journey with you,

Access more resources for your leadership journey:

Making Progress (Every Day) in Leadership and Life

Phil C. Bergey — Wed, 18 May 2022 04:00:00 GMT

When I began my first executive leadership role in my early thirties, I recall telling a story…

8-year-old girl: Why does daddy work so much?

Mom: He needs to work hard so he doesn't get behind at work.

8-year-old girl: Why don't they put him in a slower group?

And there you have it, from the mouth of babes, as they say. A story that said with a bit of humor what I was feeling.

I wish I had known then what I've learned over the years about the importance of deep breathing. Spending ten minutes intentionally breathing and being aware of my body breathing has been life-changing.

Even a minute is fantastic. And you know what? If all you have is time for seven, or even just three, deep breaths. Do it! Here's a short video of a simple two-minute breathing exercise.

While deep breathing helps leaders stay calmer, what about making progress?

In my previous blog post called The Neuroscience of Willpower we looked at why willpower seems so daunting sometimes. Benjamin Hardy, in his book Willpower Doesn't Work, and James Clear, in his best-selling Atomic Habits, and many others, point to the importance of structuring your environment instead of just relying on sheer willpower.

And in my podcast episode 12, Aristotle Says We Are What We Repeatedly Do, we looked at "habit stacking" and other ways to reduce the number of choices for more routine habits and make them part of the fabric of one's leadership and life in general.

Author and online educator Danny Iny defines discipline as choosing "what you want over what you feel like."

I like that definition. It highlights a values conflict and that the way forward is to choose which value we will act upon intentionally.

Structuring Your Environment for Success

Neuroscientist Irena O'Brien, the founder of The Neuroscience School, suggests several evidence-based strategies to increase our ability to make progress every day by structuring our environment. I'll list three: The Progress Principle, Just Start, and Body Budget.

The Progress Principle: Break down large goals into tasks you know you can successfully accomplish. Small tasks can feel like small wins, which help you maintain your dopamine and motivation levels. Small wins increase motivation, which leads to more progress in an upward spiral.

Dopamine is a type of chemical messenger in your body called a neurotransmitter. A key role played by dopamine is to help the body feel pleasure, which helps us strive, focus, and find things interesting in the world around us.

Just Start: Nike's famous trademark slogan (Just Do It) was brilliant marketing. Multiple neuroscience studies have shown that getting up and doing something gets us out of our default mode network and into our executive control network.

The short version is that our brain has two main networks for processing, with a third one that does the switching between the two:

→ Central Executive Network

→ Default Mode Network

→ and Salience Network

The Salience Network is constantly scanning our body and any signals it's getting from inside our body or from the environment around us. It uses that scanning to decide when something is important enough for us—that is, salient enough—to switch from the Default Mode Network into the Central Executive Network.

The Default Mode Network is simply what it says: it's the default mode when we're not engaged in a task or conscious effort of any kind.

The opposite network from the Default Mode is the Central Executive Network—that leadership center activated by the Salience Network to respond to a threat, engage in a task, or pursue an intentional process.

Practically speaking, we do our best listening, thinking, and problem-solving when we can remain focused in that Central Executive Network.

The best way to get out of our Default Mode Network and into action is to get out of your head and (literally) into the room, as neuroscientist Dr. Irena O'Brien says. That is, if you feel stuck, just begin. Simple baby steps help progress feel meaningful, and meaning leads to action.

For more on these parts of the brain, see my blog post, Emotions and Decision-Making.

So when we simply "get up and get going," we are switching from our Default Mode Network and into our Central Executive Mode Network.

Body Budget: Our body has a budget! Who knew?

In her fun-to-read book Seven and A Half Lessons About the Brain, Neuro-phycologist Lisa Feldman Barrett highlights that our brain's primary purpose is to keep our body alive. And to do this efficiently, our brain budgets how, when, and where to expend the body's limited resources.

So with that awareness, you can see how important it is to make the proper investments to get the most from our body budget. Investments include a healthy diet, enough exercise, and optimal sleep.

As O'Brien notes, "a lack of motivation may really be due to an unbalanced body budget."

Breathe! Seriously. In addition to the automatic breathing, your body does for you, learn the art and science of deep breathing. It will give you energy and help you stay calmer.
Remember to break down large projects into small tasks. The winning formula is: Small tasks = Wins -> Motivation
You don't need to remember the names of the brain processing networks. Just remember what Irena O'Brien says, get out of your head and into the world. Beginning to do something, especially something you need to do, helps you start the flywheel of motivation.
Your body has a budget, and like any budget, it needs to stay balanced for you to make your contribution to the world. Eat. Exercise. Sleep.

Next month my Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast will focus on the neuroscience of creativity and problem-solving!

If you haven't already done so, check out my Leadership Meets Life Podcast!

Primary Source: The Neuroscience School, led by Dr. Irena O’Brien
Book: Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven and A Half Lessons About the Brain
Book: James Clear, Atomic Habits
Video: Rachel Richards, Calm Your Anxiety in Two Minutes
Video: James Clear, Atomic Habits: How to Get 1% Better Every Day

Let me know how you’re connecting with the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast. I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me directly at philb@designgroupintl.com or by visiting my website.

On the journey with you,

Access more resources for your leadership journey:

The Neuroscience of Willpower

Phil C. Bergey — Wed, 04 May 2022 04:00:00 GMT

What is Willpower?

When you think about the word willpower, dieting and exercise may come to mind. And for a good reason.

The roots of the English words will and power are worth a quick mention. The word will combines the notion of determination with one's purpose or wishes. And the word power suggests an ability to do (or not do) something.

This makes sense when you think about documents like a last will and testament or a living will that grants others power to execute our wishes when we're gone.

The fields of neuroscience are helping us understand motivation and willpower in ways that redefine how I grew up understanding whether I was good at refraining from eating another donut. Dr. Irena O'Brien of The Neuroscience School suggests that learnings in the neurosciences are challenging the notion that willpower is a muscle that gets depleted which leads to us giving in to the sugary temptation.

While this blog focuses on willpower (and by extension, motivation), you might also want to check out my Leadership Meets Life blog post Increasing Your Capacity for Mental Complexity. It highlights the work of Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey to understand better how we often live with competing commitments that undermine our aspirations.

Why Doesn't willpower Seem to Work?

Author Benjamin Hardy in his book Willpower Doesn't Work, believes the reason willpower is necessary for a situation derives from one of four fundamental sources:

You don't know what you want, and are thus internally conflicted.
Your desire (your why) for your goals isn't strong enough.
You aren't invested in yourself and your dreams.
Your environment opposes your goal.

Hardy asks: "Want to change? Then change your environment. Stop the willpower madness already."

Executive coach and Fortune 100 leadership guru Marshall Goldsmith notes: "If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us."

While literally "controlling" our environment may be a bold aspiration, the point is clear. The environment we set up around us—or agree to be part of—is a system in which we work. The environment we tolerate—or create—impacts our success.

Best-selling author James Clear of the run-away success Atomic Habits puts it this way: "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there. This year, spend less time focusing on outcomes and more time focusing on the habits that precede the results."

Clear adds, "If you genuinely care about the goal, you'll focus on the system."

See my earlier Leadership Meets Life blog post, System or Heap?, to learn more about systems.

So, Do I Still Aspire to Have Willpower?

Well, of course. I'm not suggesting willpower is a lost cause. We need willpower in the moment for many things, including managing our anger at the jerk who cut us off in traffic. But we can do many things to supplement our willpower. For example, if I run a tight schedule and am uptight while driving on the highway, I've increased the likelihood of experiencing others as "jerks." Maybe they really need to go to the potty, or someone in the car is having a baby (You get the idea.).

The point is that willpower will be most successful when we create more intentional environments and surround ourselves with systems structured to help us succeed. The truth is, I don't eat many donuts anymore. But if I kept a box of donuts in my office, I'd be creating an environment that sets me up for failure.

Our Predicting Brain

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett and author of Seven and A Half Lessons About The Brain, adds another vital dimension to this conversation on willpower.

Feldman Barrett explains that our brain plays an enormous role in a function called body budgeting. "The scientific name for body budgeting is allostasis," she notes. "It means automatically predicting and preparing to meet the body's needs before they arise."

The brain constantly calculates and predicts what our body needs to stay alive. When we go on a long hike in the heat of the day without taking water along, our body is literally predicting what parts of our body can do with less so that other parts will have what is needed. I found this out the hard way when I got heat stroke on an international trip to the Middle East.

As things were getting bad inside my body, my brain was busy predicting what to turn off for conservation. When my body stopped sweating, even in triple-digit heat, my brain conserved whatever moisture was left in my body to protect my internal organs for as long as possible.

We can help ourselves out by anticipating our needs. For example, drink water before we get thirsty. Eat something healthy before the hunger pangs have us pulling into that building with the golden arches.

Dr. Irena O'Brien notes that neuroscience is helping us understand the importance of self-compassion when it comes to willpower. Be kind to yourself. You will get hungry and probably grumpy. Be mindful of what's happening in the environment around you. Become aware of your thoughts and feelings. Be mindful of the limitations of others around you. No one is perfect.

O'Brien also notes an effective strategy for self-awareness by envisioning what our future self (like two years or five years from now) would tell our present self. She suggests you might even want to draft a letter from your future self to help you see how important it is to [fill in the blank].

A Growth Mindset

Renowned psychology professor and researcher Carol Dweck spent much of her career at Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford developing a theory that compares a fixed mindset with a growth mindset. In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck explains the vital difference.

Someone with a fixed mindset focuses on their limitations and the "cards they were dealt." They make excuses and struggle to take ownership of things they believe are beyond their ability to influence.

On the other hand, with a growth mindset, someone would instead focus on what they can do to impact a situation positively. People with a growth mindset assume they are constantly learning and can adapt to conditions as needed.

Adding the notion of willpower to mindset, it's easy to see that a fixed mindset would tend to view the environment as conspiring to keep them limited. A growth mindset would focus on how an environment could be changed to increase the likelihood of success.

Someone with a growth mindset takes ownership of their own decisions, including mistakes from which they can learn. Someone with a fixed mindset focuses on how the situation or environment keeps them from succeeding.

Blogger Jennifer Smith shares this graphic that helps differentiate the two mindsets.

What "willpower hacks" have you discovered?
What strategies have you put in place to create an environment at work or home that helps you succeed?
As a leader, what do you do to be kind to yourself?
How have you learned to pay attention to what your body is saying before you find yourself working from behind?

Next month my Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast will focus on the neuroscience of making progress in leadership and life. We'll look at what Dr. Irena O'Brien calls the progress principle and evidence-based ways to structure our environment for success.

I can't wait to hold myself accountable on this one! 😉

Primary Source: Dr. Irena O’Brien, The Neuroscience School
Book: Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain
Book: Benjamin Hardy, Willpower Doesn't Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success
Book: David Rock, Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long.
Video: James Clear, Atomic Habits: How to Get 1% Better Every Day
Video: Carol Dweck, The Power of Believing that You Can Improve

Let me know how you’re connecting with the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast. I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me directly at philb@designgroupintl.com or by visiting my website.

On the journey with you,

Access more resources for your leadership journey:

Emotions and Decision-making

Phil C. Bergey — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 04:00:00 GMT

You can focus on the big picture or zoom in to view something in detail. It's one or the other, not both at the same time. That's the way the human brain works.

If you're in a coffee shop to do some work on your laptop, you can likely tune out the drone of clanking dishes and multiple conversations to focus your attention on your work. And if someone joins you, you can focus on your conversation with them despite the cacophony of voices and noises surrounding you.

To understand a bit more about how we pay attention to one thing and not another, you can check out my 20-minute podcast Episode 10: Can You Actually Multi-Task?: The Neuroscience of Attention here.

Our brain has three distinct networks:

Central Executive Network
Default Mode Network
and Salience Network

The Default Mode Network is simply what it says: it's the default mode when we're not engaged in a task or conscious effort of any kind.

The opposite network from the Default Mode is the Central Executive Network—that leadership center activated by the Salience Network to respond to a threat, engage in a task or pursue an intentional process.

Practically speaking, we do our best listening, thinking, and problem-solving when we can remain focused in that Central Executive Network.

The other theme highlighted in the corresponding podcast episode of Leadership Meets Life is the notion of multi-tasking. However, much of what we consider multi-tasking is actually fast task-switching since for many tasks—especially those using the same channel- we can only switch between them.

The exception is when we're using different channels, like jogging while listening to this Leadership Meets Life podcast.

When we think that our multi-tasking is so impressive, we're actually not as productive or efficient as we'd like to believe since we use more resources from our body budget during fast task-switching. As a result, we tend to make more errors or produce lower-quality work.

Some ways to improve attention are:

Practicing mindfulness
Healthy eating
Exercise
Hydration
Classical music
Drinking tea, chewing gum

A related theme with multi-tasking and attention is the notion of inattention blindness and selective attention. Check out the videos in the resources section below.

Emotions = Feelings?

Feelings and emotions are often used interchangeably, yet from a neuroscience perspective, there are significant differences.

Neuroscientist and author of Your Brain Health blog, Dr. Sarah Mckay, differentiates emotions and feelings this way:

Emotions play out in the theater of the body. Feelings play out in the theater of the mind.

Emotions are sometimes described as lower-level responses in the brain that create biochemical reactions in our body that alter our physical state. Their function has been to provide quick reactions to threats or rewards. And they change our physical state, so they are literally built into our genetic make-up.

So emotions are physical and instinctual, which is why body language can be so telling, and why self-awareness—including awareness of what we are experiencing in real-time, is central to higher emotional intelligence. Our emotions precede our feelings.

Feelings, then, are essentially mental associations and reactions to our emotions. As such, our feelings are subjective and influenced by our personal experiences, memories, beliefs, and mental models.

Again the words of Dr. Sarah Mckay:

Emotions play out in the theater of the body. Feelings play out in the theater of the mind.

Widely accepted emotions are:

Happiness
Sadness
Fear
Disgust
Anger
Surprise

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio is a researcher who revived and provided scientific evidence for the work of early psychologist and educator William James that feelings and emotions play a key role in decision making. Damasio says:

"Feelings are mental experiences of body states, which arise as the brain interprets emotions, themselves physical states arising from the body's responses to external stimuli."

So the sequence is:

I am threatened (external stimulus)

experience fear (emotional response in my body)

and feel horror (the feeling I connect to the emotion)

Debbie Hampton notes in her blog The Best Brain Possible:

"Your emotions and feelings play a powerful role in how you experience and interact with the world because they are the driving force behind many behaviors, helpful and unhelpful. It's possible to react to emotions and the feelings they evoke, guided by unconscious fear-based perceptions that you may not buy into anymore. Yet, you're living your life, making decisions, and behaving according to these outdated tendencies. Living unaware like this almost always leads to problems and unhappiness in the long run."

Making Decisions with Our Whole Self

Recognizing the role that emotions play in our lives (literally in our body) and our choices to become aware of and examine our feelings in response to our emotions becomes vital for healthy living and successful leadership!

Realizing the importance of feelings in decision-making is a needed counterweight to the heavy Western emphasis on logic and reasoning—also vital—that too often are viewed as the only or best way to make decisions you can trust.

One of the assessments I use in my work as an executive and leadership coach is called the iEQ9 Integrative Enneagram. One of the measures it provides is the degree to which someone uses each of the three Centers of Expression: Action, Feeling, and Thinking.

We use all three of these centers of expression. However, we tend to favor one of the three first to do our initial processes. Ideally, we find ways to use all three of the centers of expression since learning to access our thinking, feeling, and action (gut or body awareness) leads to our best processing and, thus, the potential for decision-making.

You may be familiar with a software application called Lucidchart. I include it since it has a basic decision-making process and more complex processes shown here.

Lucidchart includes these steps in a typical decision-making process:

Identify the decision.
Gather relevant info.
Identify the alternatives.
Weigh the evidence.
Choose among the alternatives.
Take action.
Review your decision.

Based on my blog post, at what step(s) in the decision-making process above would you want to make sure you are aware of your emotional state? Your feelings?
What strategies or tips have you learned to get in touch with your emotions? With what you're feeling?
As a leader, how might you learn to read your body in real-time to scan for your body's emotions (Happiness, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, Anger, Surprise) so you can consider how a particular emotion is impacting how you're showing up, and what meaning you give to that emotion in the form of a feeling?

And remember, meditation and prayer can help us feel centered and more in touch with our bodies. Check out the Ten Percent Happier app listed in the Resources section below.

Next month my Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast will focus on the neuroscience of motivation and willpower. We'll look at what Dr. Irena O'Brien calls the progress principle, and of course, we'll dig into what's going on with procrastination, assuming I don't miss my deadlines!!

Videos: Focus and Selective Attention
Article: Selective Attention
Article: Multicosts of Multitasking
Phone App: Ten Percent Happier: Meditation and Sleep
- Apple
- Google
Application: Lucidchart
Primary Source: The Neuroscience School, led by Dr. Irena O’Brien
Book: Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain
Podcast: Leadership Meets Life
- Can You Actually Multi-Task?: The Neuroscience of Attention

Let me know how you’re connecting with the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast. I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me directly at philb@designgroupintl.com or by visiting my website.

On the journey with you,

Access more resources for your leadership journey:

Giving Up Coffee?: Neuroplasticity and Leadership

Phil C. Bergey — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 05:00:00 GMT

Giving Up Coffee

There’s a wonderful story about a wise fool named Nasrudin. A leader approached Nasrudin to receive some advice and pled with Nasrudin to help him give up drinking coffee.

Nasrudin thought about it for a while, then finally agreed to help. Nasrudin asked the leader to return in two months. The leader agreed.

When he returned, Nasrudin stared directly at the leader and said clearly:

“Stop drinking coffee. You do not need it anymore.”

The leader was stunned. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” said Nasrudin, “you will find that your craving for coffee has completely gone.”

Well, you could have said that to me when we first met, so why did I have to wait two months and come back and see you?”

With a smile, Nasrudin said, “I had to give up coffee first.”

This little story told by Peter Hawkins, a British management consultant from his book The Wise Fool’s Guide to Leadership, offers several perspectives. First, it’s an inside joke about consultants. Many leaders have a less-than-favorable opinion about consultants. I understand that, speaking as someone who needs to frequently explain how a process consultant like me is different from “those consultants” who give many of us in the trade a bad name.

To Nasrudin’s credit, the second perspective this story provides is that he wanted to make sure his advice would be helpful.

And a third reason for me to begin with this story about Nasrudin in this post about neuroplasticity and leadership is that it points to the nature of neuroplasticity that Nasrudin needed to experiment with first before he felt good about offering his advice.

Firing and Wiring

In my corresponding Leadership Meets Life podcast episode that you can find here, I provide an overview of neuroplasticity focused on the reality that neurons in our brain that “fire together, wire together.”

Neuroplasticity is defined as “the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.” Nasrudin needed to prove to himself that giving up coffee for two months helped him see he didn’t need to have coffee.

And while the story oversimplifies the act of changing a pattern or habit, during those two months, the familiar neural pathway that informed Nasrudin every morning—including the well-worn path of opening the cupboard door and getting the coffee mug, and the familiar smell of freshly-dripped roasted coffee, and that warm feeling going down his throat that correlated with waking up his brain—all this and more was wound up in a collection of millions of neurons that fired together, and therefore wired together to create a robust neural pathway in the brain that had been strengthened through years of repeating the pattern.

This is how patterns, habits, and practices from tying our shoes to shooting freethrows to playing guitar to building a complex spreadsheet go from being complicated and time-consuming at first to something we can master over time. The more we do it, the more defined and robust becomes a pathway among our billions of neurons. Neurons that fire together (regularly) wire together more (efficiently).

Our brain has the capability of rewiring itself to become more efficient at tasks. It can also rewire itself due to injury, including substituting some neurons to handle processes or activities previously managed by a damaged or missing part of the brain.

Neuropsychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett notes that “if you blindfold people with typical vision for a few days and teach them to read braille, neurons in their visual cortex become more devoted to the sense of touch.”

There’s a great (and short!) YouTube video that shows how—in the giant forest of our brain’s 100 billion neurons—our neural pathways go from crude development to becoming a path to becoming a familiar roadway.

Practice and repetition of something create these neural pathways, and the lack of practice and repetition of something begins the process of neural pathways being dismantled by the brain.

The brain is focused on being efficient for the sake of our overall body budget. Neurons no longer being used for one thing essentially become available for something else that seems more critical to the brain based on our patterns and habits. This one-minute video shows beautifully how billions of neurons communicate to help us think, feel, and remember.

Next month we’ll look at decision making and the role of focus in leadership through the lens of neuroscience. But it’s worth mentioning here in advance that the more room we create in our brain for distractions—like notifications on our phone that our favorite music performer had a bad day—the more the brain arranges itself to become efficient at processing these distractions. As you might imagine, this happens at the expense of other priorities.

Neurobunk?

Yet something as amazing and mysterious as the brain can easily become something misunderstood and misrepresented (that is, “snake-oiled”). Neuroscientist and founder of The Neuroscience School, Irena O’Brien, calls myths about the brain "neurobunk."

Brain “myths” include:

Right-brain-dominant people are intuitive and creative and are “qualitative” big picture thinkers. Left-brain-dominant people are more “quantitative” and analytical, paying attention to details, and are ruled by logic. And folks have written about why this myth may never die.

Research has identified that different areas of the brain appear responsible for different functions like planning and creativity happening in the front of the brain and visual information processing happening in the back of the brain. However, more individual personality traits like rational or intuitive processing have little to no research supporting the use of one hemisphere or the other. The reality is that in creative or logical thinking, both sides of the brain are needed.

A Harvard Health blog notes that “if you performed a CT scan, MRI scan, or even an autopsy on the brain of a mathematician and compared it to the brain of an artist, it’s unlikely you’d find much difference. And if you did the same for 1,000 mathematicians and artists, it’s unlikely that any clear pattern of difference in brain structure would emerge.”
Despite being endorsed by 93 percent of the public, 76 percent of teachers, and 78 percent of those with neuroscience education, some research suggests that instead of adapting learning to learning styles, "the most effective way for us to learn is based not on our individual preferences but on the nature of the material we’re being taught."

British cognitive neuroscientist Christian Jarrett notes that left and right brain theory makes sense because we are unique. However, Jarrett says in the link in the paragraph above, “usually the most effective way for us to learn is based not on our individual preferences but on the nature of the material we’re being taught – just try learning French grammar pictorially or learning geometry purely verbally.”

For more neurobunk, see Dr. Irena O’Brien’s list here.

Exercise for Brain Neuroplasticity

Most of us know pretty well the benefits of exercising our muscles to stay fit and healthy (whether we act consistently on what we know is another matter, isn’t it?). The benefits of exercising the brain are also important.

An article titled Effects of Second Language Learning on the Plastic Aging Brain: Functional Connectivity, Cognitive Decline, and Reorganization describes how learning a second language—even, and perhaps especially, in our older stages of life—acts on our brain’s neuroplasticity to improve connections in our brain for other things and may help slow the impact of dementia.

Similarly, learning a skill like playing the piano or learning to juggle can help our brain’s health.

Here’s a quick read showing that research indicates “that learning to juggle accelerates the growth of neural connections related to memory, focus, movement, and vision.” Rather watch a 3-minute video of a little kid juggling set to music, here it is.

Hey, maybe learning to juggle will help you also juggle your many roles and responsibilities as a leader!

Want more exercise? Here’s a wonderful short video showing how playing an instrument benefits your brain. Listening to music is great, yet learning to play an instrument is even more powerful.

And then there are the basics! Sleep, exercise, and good food habits. We’ll cover these in-depth in future blog posts and podcast episodes.

And just for fun to close out this blog post, here’s an image called a homunculus that shows primary areas of the brain that respond to parts of the body. Notice the larger proportion of the brain given to hand and tongue, which makes sense when you realize what they need to do functionally in daily life.

maxplankflorida.org

What do you find most interesting about what we’ve covered in this blog post on neuroplasticity? What implications do you connect with leadership?
Are you ready to join me in learning to juggle or learning another language, or learning to play a new musical instrument?

Next month’s podcast and blog will focus on decision-making and the role of focus in leadership and life. I hope you’ll join me!

The Neuroscience School, led by Dr. Irena O’Brien
Seven and A Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Brain Myths, compiled by Dr. Irena O’Brien
Homunculus Image via maxplankflorida.org

Let me know how you’re connecting with the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast. I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me directly at philb@designgroupintl.com or by visiting my website.

On the journey with you,

Access more resources for your leadership journey:

Intro to the Brain and Nervous System

Phil C. Bergey — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 05:00:00 GMT

In the Wizard of Oz, Scarecrow wanted so badly to have a brain instead of his head filled with stuffin’. He wanted a brain he could use for thinkin’ of stuff he never “thunk” before.

In the second half of 2020, I took a certificate program in Neuroscience from The Neuroscience School near Montreal as continuing education for my International Coaching Federation (ICF) credential I maintain as a professional certified coach (PCC).

As crazy as it sounds, I’ve decided to create a podcast episode and blog post each month this year focused on some of the learnings from that Neuroscience program. Since I’m not an expert in Neurosciences, I’ll be drawing heavily from Dr. Irena O’Brien’s excellent certificate program, as well as other resources to make connections to leadership and life. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the complementary podcast episode, you can catch it here.

The Brain

The human brain remains a type of frontier in science despite significant progress in our understanding of the body. The neurosciences have become a vast system of study that include fields like Affective Neuroscience relating largely to emotions, Clinical Neuroscience relating largely to nervous system disorders, and Social Neuroscience which is an interdisciplinary field relating largely to social processes and behavior—to name only a few of the many fields with the Neurosciences.

The Neurosciences have made enormous progress in studying autistic spectrum disorders, epilepsy, effects of stroke, ADHD, addiction, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, brain tumors, and immune system disorders.

This blog on leadership and life is not the place, nor am I the person to try to explain the human brain’s anatomy. So alongside what a layman like me might call the medical aspects of the brain, I’m interested in a few key learnings for leaders to be able to apply to life in general.

This year, future podcast episodes and blog posts in Leadership Meets Life will focus on applications like decision-making, motivation, problem-solving, flow, stress, and the gut-brain connection. For now, let’s look at the overall nervous systems that interface in and with the brain.

The image below gives one of many views of how the brain is currently understood, in this case showing the basics of human functions like vision, hearing, and the body’s sensing capability.

Blausen.com staff (2014). "Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014". WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 2002-4436.

Main Nervous Systems

Obviously, the brain doesn’t function in isolation. On the contrary, the brain relies on the spinal cord and an elaborate network of systems. The body’s nervous system has two main parts: the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. (Peripheral means the outlying parts of the body, the periphery.)

The two primary organs of the central nervous system are the brain and spinal cord, as shown below.

The other main part of the nervous system is the peripheral nervous system, comprised of nerves that branch off the spinal cord that runs down the spinal column from neck to lower back, connected along the way with nerves in the peripheral system that extends throughout the body, sending information to and from body organs based on information from the body organs and external stimuli, including sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.

Central Nervous System Image via Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed

under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Information flowing along this central and peripheral highway network travels in both directions. Ascending, or afferent, nerve swathes “carry sensory information from the body to the brain.” Descending, or efferent, nerve swathes “send information pertaining to motor function from the brain to the rest of the body” (O’Brien).

Hang on, the next part gets a little complicated, but it will help set up future Leadership Meets Life podcast and blog learnings

Sub-Systems Within the Nervous Systems

Breaking down the nervous systems even further, the peripheral nervous system (in contrast to the central nervous system—brain and spinal cord) is divided into three subsystems:

Somatic – from the Greek soma for body
Autonomic – from two Greek words meaning self-governing (think, automatic)
Enteric – from the Greek word for intestines

But wait, there’s more! You’re beginning to see why Scarecrow’s big ask of the Wizard was a tall order.

Somatic

The first subsystem (of three) of the peripheral nervous system is the somatic nervous system controls skeletal muscle and external sensory organs like the skin. The somatic system is considered voluntary because “the responses can be controlled consciously. Reflex reactions of skeletal muscle, however, are the exception. These are considered involuntary reactions to external stimuli” (O’Brien).

Autonomic

The second subsystem of the peripheral nervous system is the autonomic nervous system. This controls the body’s “automatic” functions that we aren’t consciously directing, like breathing, heartbeat, and digestive processes. The autonomic system is considered involuntary since we don’t consciously control it. This “auto” subsystem is divided even further (sorry!) into sympathetic and parasympathetic branches.

“The sympathetic nervous system is often considered the 'fight or flight' system while the parasympathetic nervous system is often considered the ‘rest and digest’ or ‘feed and breed’ system. In many cases, both … systems have ‘opposite’ actions where one system activates a physiological response and the other inhibits it” (O’Brien).

Nerves of the sympathetic division speed up heart rate, dilate pupils and relax the bladder. Whereas nerves of the parasympathetic division control functions, including reducing heart rate, constricting pupils, and contracting the bladder. The interplay of these two divisions of the autonomic nervous systems controls the stress response.

We’ll explore this in future blog posts as managing stress is a huge part of leadership and life.

When these interdependent sympathetic and parasympathetic branches are in balance, this balance is called homeostasis (literally, “standing still”). The notion of homeostasis is often used in change management or leadership when we refer to a planned or unplanned change that upsets the system’s equilibrium, taking the system out of its normal state, that is, the disruption of homeostasis.

Enteric

The third—and to me, most interesting—subsystem of the peripheral nervous system is the enteric nervous system and is embedded in the lining of the gastrointestinal system. This part of the nervous system not only governs the function of the gastrointestinal system but is referred to as separate from the autonomic nervous system because it has its independent reflex activity.

Although the enteric nervous system communicates typically with the central nervous system, it is often “described as a ‘second brain’ for several reasons…. [It] can operate autonomously…. [It] includes efferent neurons (from the brain), afferent neurons (to the brain), and interneurons, all of which make the enteric nervous system capable of carrying reflexes and acting as an integrating centre without [central nervous system] input” (O’Brien). We’ll look at the gut-brain connection in future posts and podcast episodes.

WHEW!

Ok, that’s probably more than you wanted to know about the brain and its related nervous systems. But it’s essential to have a base as we discuss the many associated themes in the months ahead, like:

why it’s necessary to get enough sleep,
why exercise plays such a huge role in brain health,
staying focused and overcoming distractions
how breathing, meditation and prayer play foundational roles in our overall wellbeing

So here’s a simple summary:

Central Nervous System

Brain
Spinal Cord

Peripheral Nervous System

Nerves, throughout the body, are further divided into three subsystems:
- Somatic – controls skeletal muscles and external sensory such as the skin
- Autonomic – bodily functions not consciously directed, like breathing
  - Sympathetic – fight/flight/freeze response
  - Parasympathetic – rest/digest; feed/breed
- Enteric – controls digestive functions; communicates with central nervous system but can also operate autonomously (second brain)

See the diagram in the Resources section below for a more detailed summary.

It’s Personal

I have three reasons for tackling this neuroscience project in my 2022 Leadership Meets Life podcasts and blog:

3. I believe there are enormous neuroscience applications to leadership that are otherwise buried in books many leaders may not have time to read.

2. Preparing my podcast episodes and writing blog posts is the best way I know to embed my initial learning phase into a more lasting integration in my own understanding.

1. By putting myself “out there” with this neuroscience series, I’m creating accountability to put into practice—in my own leadership life—the many important learnings I’ll be sharing with you.

It’s a vulnerable and scary journey for me, and I’m excited you’re traveling with me!

What’s something vulnerable and/or scary you’re tackling right now?

Next month’s podcast and blog will focus on neuroplasticity and your leadership brain. It’s a fascinating topic.

The Neuroscience School, led by Dr. Irena O’Brien
Seven and A Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
If I Only Had a Brain – Wizard of Oz Scarecrow Video Clip
Brain Image via Wikimedia Commons
Central Nervous System Image via Wikimedia Commons
Nervous System Diagram via Wikimedia Commons.

Let me know how you’re connecting with the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast. I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me directly at philb@designgroupintl.com or by visiting my website.

On the journey with you,

Access more resources for your leadership journey:

Whom Do You Trust—And Why?

Phil C. Bergey — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 05:00:00 GMT

Stephen M.R. Covey, son of Stephen R. Covey, who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything.

In The Speed of Trust, the younger Covey makes the case that nothing is as fast as the speed of trust.

Consider Covey’s economics of trust shown in the following formula:

Simply stated, less trust means slower progress at a higher cost. Conversely, higher levels of trust mean faster progress at a lower cost.

But what is trust, actually?

A dictionary definition of trust is “firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.”

Each of us has experienced trust and a lack of trust. We extend and benefit from trust every day. Even assuming that oncoming traffic will stay in its respective lane is a daily exercise in trust. There are many layers of trust in life.

Covey lays out five waves of trust, but in this blog, we will focus mainly on the second wave:

Self-Trust
Relationship Trust
Organizational Trust
Market Trust
Societal Trust

You know what builds or diminishes trust in your leadership and life from your own life. Covey is clear that trust results from both character, in the form of integrity and intent, and competence, in the form of capabilities and results.

The first wave—self-trust—establishes the personal credibility that lays the foundation of all trust.

This first wave of self-trust involves:

Integrity – Are you congruent?
Intent – What’s your agenda?
Capabilities – Are you relevant?
Results – What’s your track record?

Covey then clearly and practically explains how character and competence manifest in 13 behaviors that underlie the second wave of relationship trust.

Character is shown in the following five behaviors:

Behavior #1: Talk Straight
Be honest. Tell the truth. Let people know where you stand. Use simple language. Call things what they are. Demonstrate integrity. Don’t manipulate people or distort facts. Don’t spend the truth. Don’t leave false impressions.
Behavior #2: Demonstrate Respect
Genuinely care for others. Show you care. Respect the dignity of every person and every role. Treat everyone with respect, especially those who can’t do anything for you. Show kindness in the little things. Don’t fake caring. Don’t attempt to be ‘efficient’ with people.
Behavior #3: Create Transparency
Tell the truth in a way people can verify. Get real and genuine. Be open and authentic. Air on the side of disclosure. Operate on the premise of “What you see is what you get.” Don’t have hidden agendas. Don’t hide information.
Behavior #4: Right Wrongs
Make things right when you’re wrong. Apologize quickly. Make restitution where possible. Practice “service recoveries.” Demonstrate personal humility. Don’t cover things up. Don’t let pride get in the way of doing the right thing.
Behavior #5: Show Loyalty
Give credit freely. Acknowledge the contributions of others. Speak about people as if they were present. Represent others who aren’t there to speak for themselves. Don’t bad-mouth others behind their backs. Don’t disclose others’ private information.

Competence is shown in the following five behaviors:

Behavior #6: Deliver Results
Establish a track record of results. Get the right things done. Make things happen. Accomplish what you’re hired to do. Be on time and within budget. Don’t overpromise and underdeliver. Don’t make excuses for not delivering.
Behavior #7: Get Better
Continuously improve. Increase your capabilities. Be a constant learner. Develop feedback systems—both formal and informal. Act on the feedback you receive. Thank people for their feedback. Don’t consider yourself above feedback. Don’t assume today’s knowledge and skills will be sufficient for tomorrow’s challenges.
Behavior #8: Confront Reality
Address the tough stuff directly. Acknowledge the unsaid. Lead courageously in conversation. Remove the “sword from their hands.” Don’t skirt the real issues. Don’t bury your head in the sand.
Behavior #9: Clarify Expectations
Disclose and reveal expectations. Discuss them. Validate them. Renegotiate them if needed and possible. Don’t violate expectations. Don’t assume that expectations are clear or shared.
Behavior #10: Practice Accountability
Hold yourself accountable. Hold others accountable. Take responsibility for results. Be clear on how you communicate how you’re doing—and how others are doing. Don’t avoid or shirk responsibility. Don’t blame others or point fingers when things go wrong.

Covey believes three additional behaviors involve both character and competence:

Behavior #11: Listen First
Listen before you speak. Understand. Diagnose. Listen with your ears—and your eyes and heart. Find out what the most important behaviors are to the people you’re working with. Don’t assume you know what matters most to others. Don’t presume you have all the answers—or all the questions.
Behavior #12: Keep Commitments
Say what you’re going to do, then do what you say you’re going to do. Make commitments carefully and keep them. Make keeping commitments the symbol of your honor. Don’t break confidence. Don’t attempt to “PR” your way out of a commitment you’ve broken.
Behavior #13: Extend Trust
Demonstrate a propensity to trust. Extend trust abundantly to those who have earned your trust. Extend conditionally to those who are earning your trust. Learn how to appropriately extend trust to others based on the people’s situation, risk, and credibility (character and competence). But have a propensity to trust. Don’t withhold trust because there is risk involved.

Covey builds on the collection of the 13 behaviors above, showing how together they manifest in three additional waves of trust: organizational, market, and societal. I intend to pick these three up in a future blog post.

If you enjoyed Covey’s Speed of Trust summary, you might also enjoy Charles Feltman’s The Thin Book of Trust: An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work.

Click here to listen to my Leadership Meets Life podcast episode in which I address the topic of trust, including additional references to Feltman’s work.

Who do you really trust?
What do they model that helps you trust them?
Which of the 13 behaviors matter most to you when working with someone you need to trust?

In the first half of 2022, I’ll be exploring the impact of neuroscience on leadership and life. Stay tuned!

The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M.R. Covey
The Thin Book of Trust: An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work by Charles Feltman.

Let me know how you’re connecting with the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast. I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me directly at philb@designgroupintl.com or by visiting my website.

On the journey with you,

Access more resources for your leadership journey:

Theory U: Movement of the Mind, Heart, and Gut

Phil C. Bergey — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 04:00:00 GMT

In 1912 the Titanic, that famous ship, struck an iceberg during the night in the icy North Atlantic Ocean. During the latter part of the last two hours and forty minutes, until the ship sank, the 8-member band played music on the deck to keep passengers calm and upbeat. What the band played as it went down is disputed. But from witnesses in lifeboats, the band played on, even as they were perishing.

No doubt that story is the context for the oft-used phrase, “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” It’s a reference to well-intended but short-sighted efforts to make minor organizational changes—tweaks, actually—in the looming shadow of much greater transformation that is needed.

Theory U: The Model

This blog post builds on my 6th podcast episode, Leading from the Future.

Economist Otto Scharmer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed a fascinating approach to decision-making and discernment that can be used by one person or an organization of any size. The model is based on several key stages during a process of reflection and visioning.

At a high level, the model has three stages forming the letter U:

On the left-hand side, the downward movement of the U focuses on observing, Scharmer calls “Letting Go.”
On the right-hand side, the upward movement of the U focuses on acting, which he calls “Letting Come.”
At the bottom of the U is the area of “Presencing,” which is a space of reflection between observation and action.

Presencing

The word presencing is essentially a combination of two words: present and sensing; literally being present to all that you’re sensing. When you realize that the bottom of the U is where “Letting Go” and “Letting Come” share common space, the idea of presencing takes on more meaning.

“Letting Go” and “Letting Come”—in dynamic tension—are actually a polarity. With a polarity, both poles need to exist for the good of the whole. And as with any polarity, both poles are useful. However, either pole used to the extreme becomes unhealthy.

For more on polarities in leadership and life, see my blog post on that leadership approach.

Consider a life-long challenge that I’ve navigated.

As an Enneagram 7, I am drawn to the future (if you don’t know what “enneagram” means, reach out to me; I have a fun assessment that could change your life). What lies ahead is usually more interesting to me than what has already been. So adding new interests or hobbies—or commitments(!)—to my life creates a very full life! Life can become too interesting when a steady “Letting Come” of new things into my life gets over-used without some measure of “Letting Go.” And by too interesting, I mean it can be difficult to balance or do a decent job at any of them. There needs to be a letting go of some things in my life for new things to emerge.

A similar dynamic can play out with the other pole being overused. If I’m too attached to the familiar, to the way things have been and are currently; I am not likely to be open to what could be, to what is wanting to emerge or come into my life. This is true in both personal and organizational realities.

So Scharmer’s notion of presencing is being present simultaneously to what we sense needs “Letting Go” and what may be wanting to emerge (“Letting Come”). Reflection and Visioning. Past and Future.

However, the beauty and power of the Theory U model involve one’s ability to deepen the sense of awareness to both poles. Scharmer refers to this depth as “Source.” Scharmer has this to say about “Source”:

Metaphorically speaking, presencing is the capacity that allows us to operate from [an] extended notion of the source, to function as a watershed by sensing what wants to come forth and then allowing it to come into being. In other words, by bringing the water from the surrounding waterfalls to a single point, the pond fills and spills into the river, bringing it into being.

“Source” is that (usually) quiet and reflective space we occasionally find when we can do some deep pondering and imaging, complete with a constructive critique of what needs letting go, as well as a creative and bold imagining of what could be, of what we may need to “let come” into our life.

Three Openings

To deepen our quest for discernment and decision making, Scharmer suggests three openings needed to access Source: Mind, Heart, and Will.

The first part of the journey down the “Letting Go” portion of the U can suspend judgment to be open to possibilities. Scharmer calls this having an Open Mind. Having an open mind means seeing with fresh eyes. The friend of an open mind is curiosity.

Yes, yes, curiosity allegedly killed the cat. But curiosity is vital to exploring beyond what we currently see and understand.

The second opening is deeper—into the heart. An Open Heart is necessary to feel and care about what may need letting go and what else could be. The friend of an open heart is compassion. An open mind and an open heart combine thinking and feeling.

And the third opening is deeper still, into the very soul of our being: an Open Will. While Scharmer doesn’t necessarily make the direct comparison, I view the will in the gut. Current neuroscience studies increasingly and consistently confirm what we’ve hunched (get it?) all along. The stomach, our gut, plays a huge role in helping us make decisions.

These three openings—mind, heart, and will—help us access new space. Space allows us to see, feel, and sense what to let go of to allow the new to emerge.

Our body does this with our cells all the time. Old cells are shed, and new cells are grown. This happens until the minute we pass on from this life.

Three Voices that Limit Our Depth

Our quest to go deep toward the Source of our being, toward clarity about who we are and why we’re here, so to speak, is inhibited by three voices that limit us and our ability to become more.

The first voice is the Voice of Judgment. This voice is consistently pre-judging, acting as if our past experience is always right. And while there’s an evolutionary reason for our capacity to judge things that are dangerous for us, there’s also a danger in not having an open mind.

As you know, having an open mind doesn’t mean you accept anything and everything. It’s actually quite the opposite. An open mind allows you to look at the facts, the argument, the possibilities, and then make a judgment. But our tendency to pre-judge is what limits us from seeing anew.

It’s healthy and vital to challenge ideas and beliefs about ourselves and others that no longer serve us.

The second voice is the Voice of Cynicism. The difference between cynicism and apathy is day and night. A cynic has typically been wounded and is angry, doubting, or distrusting. Someone who is apathetic has given up. You can work with a cynic, but it takes compassion. We can work with our cynical selves if we can open our hearts enough to have compassion for ourselves.

The voice of cynicism says, “We’ve already tried that, and it didn’t work.” A heart filled with cynicism finds it difficult to try again, to let go of the hurt enough to try again (and again).

Having an open mind allows us to let go enough to experience the possibility of an open heart. Both of those openings will enable us to work toward an open will.

However, the Voice of Fear is that third voice that keeps us from acting, from being fully open to the fruit of what is wanting to come, wanting to emerge.

Even with the curiosity of an open mind and compassion of an open heart, the voice of fear can keep us from having the courage to have an open will, that necessary component to living fully into what is wanting to emerge.

The graphic below illustrates not only the three primary movements of the U—observing/letting go, reflection/presencing, and action/letting come—but it also layers on the three openings (mind, heart, and will) as well as the three voices (judgment, cynicism, and fear) that can limit being open.

In the diagram on the far right of the graphic, you'll also notice that the deeper you descend into the U—that is, with an open mind, an open heart, and an open will—the more profound can be the impact of the action. Continuing to do what is already known is called re-acting; you could also call it re-enacting, as in, re-enacting each morning how I tie my shoes. There is no reason to reinvent every morning how I tie my shoes.

As we go deeper into the U, we move from simply re-acting/re-enacting to re-structuring. We might restructure how we run our busy lives to help us feel more efficient, but if we have added new without letting go of the existing/old, we still feel overwhelmed.

Deeper still takes us into the space of re-designing, which can be markedly different than simply restructuring, but perhaps only be degree. Redesigning without fundamentally changing what we’re working with may be helpful, but like restructuring, it often doesn’t go deep enough to make a meaningful difference.

The final two “re” words, re-framing, and re-generating, are evidence of depth, of discerning and deciding from a place of true reflection.

Reframing suggests not only repositioning what already is but understanding what it means to reconsider the purpose of someone’s life or an organization’s role in the world. It requires not only rearranging things but backing up or going deep enough to understand the significance at stake.

Regenerating goes even one layer deeper, and for me, conjures the image of a tree stump regenerating the essence of what that tree has always been about, but under new conditions.

With the curiosity of an open mind, the compassion of an open heart, and the courage of an open will, we can look again at true purpose. We can assess both what to let go of and what to let come and do so from a place of depth.

Ideally, this involves time, like a day off or a leadership retreat, or a sabbatical of some kind. But with focus and intentionality, it can happen in an hour. Or in multiple hours spread over months.

Instead of recapping what I shared here, I summarize with a story.

Just before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, I began working with an organization on what was to be a 20-month project to help them redesign who they were and gain clarity on where they were heading. We launched the process in late fall of 2019, and by March and April 2020, we realized we needed to redesign the redesign process! By the summer of 2020, it was becoming clear that even a redesign wouldn’t be enough.

Spurred by a crisis, the organization’s leaders kept an open mind and an open heart for whom they were planning to serve. And by the fall of 2020, they had the courage to have an open will.

The organization’s leaders not only “restructured” how they would serve those they had previously served but went much deeper to a place of Source. Who are we? Why are we here? Whom do we serve?

From there, they regenerated why they existed in the first place and started their new, courageous—and risky—direction. They decided that Covid-19 was not only a setback but also an opportunity. And they embraced it with curiosity, compassion, and courage. With that, they faced down judgment, cynicism, and fear. They are now positioned for what is emerging.

Next month we’ll explore The Speed of Trust, an approach by Stephen M.R. Covey. The model is both practical and profound. Stay in touch!

Theory U Model
The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications (2018)
Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies: Applying Theory U to Transforming Business, Society, and Self (2013)
Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges: The Social Technology of Presencing (2nd ed., 2016)
Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (With Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, & Betty Sue Flowers; 2004)
Presencing Institute Website
Theory U - Learning from the future as it emerges video
Episode 6 of Leadership Meets Life Podcast: Leading from the Future

What aspect of your life needs an open mind, heart, and will in order for you to regenerate who you are?
What does your organization need to let go of in order for new things to emerge?

Let me know how you’re connecting with the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast. I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me directly at philb@designgroupintl.com or by visiting my website.

On the journey with you,

Access more resources for your leadership journey:

Increasing Your Capacity for Mental Complexity

Phil C. Bergey — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 04:00:00 GMT

Increasing Your Capacity for Mental Complexity

Award-winning journalist Thomas Friedman in his book Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, helped popularize the hockey stick-shaped curve that demonstrates technological growth and change made possible by the ever-expanding capacity of microchips. The simple graphic below shows how, over time, the rate of technological change accelerated to the point where it is now beyond human ability to adapt fast enough to the change. This reality creates stress due to the complexity in many facets of lifes.

Mental Complexity

Researchers and authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey have been working for decades to help people understand how to gain more perspective in life in order to make intended changes in life. My Leadership Meets Life Podcast episode earlier this month provides a quick primer on Kegan and Lahey’s work to address what they call Immunity to Change. This blog post builds on that podcast episode.

Kegan and Lahey note:

When we experience the world as “too complex” we are not just experiencing the complexity of the world. We are experiencing a mismatch between the world’s complexity and our own at this moment. There are only two logical ways to mend this mismatch—reduce the world’s complexity or increase our own [complexity].

Increasing our mental complexity is not only a cognitive exercise but one that involves both head and heart in a messy expedition that includes the interplay of both thinking and feeling. Such messy work is only possible by addressing the adaptive work that lies behind our immunity to change.

Adaptive work—in which there is no immediately-known solution for a challenge we are facing, is in contrast with technical work—in which there is a known solution that simply requires the application of the fix. Addressing an adaptive challenge, as author Ronald Heifetz and his colleagues have shown in their work on adaptive leadership, involves a sustained effort in which the goal is learning before “fixing” can happen. Applying a technical fix to an adaptive challenge that we don’t understand only tends to make it even more difficult to resolve the challenge at hand.

Kegan and Lahey note that increasing our mental complexity can be done with the help of what they call optimal conflict, defined as:

“The persistent experience of some frustration, dilemma, life puzzle, quandary, or personal problem that is...
Perfectly designed to cause us to feel the limits of our current way of knowing…
In some sphere of our living that we care about, with...
Sufficient supports so that we are neither overwhelmed by the conflict nor able to escape or defuse it.

A Three-Strand Rope

Kegan and Lahey use a three-strand rope analogy to illustrate why the immunity to change is so difficult to address. Built into our very being (and by extension, our organizations) are interacting systems that maintain stability—and thereby create an immunity to change, even intended change.

The first strand in the immunity rope is a change-prevention system (in a person or an organization) that thwarts the challenging aspirations for changes we would like to make.

The authors point to a study of heart patients in which only one in seven people with severe heart disease was able to make the necessary changes to their lifestyle despite all participants in the study saying they wanted to make the changes.

Hidden competing commitments, suggest Kegan and Lahey, keep people from honoring their stated aspirations.

This internal change-prevention system exists alongside a second strand in the immunity to change rope, called a feeling system. The function of this feeling system is to help manage anxiety one feels about their insecurity that lies behind hidden assumptions, or as Kegan and Lahey call it, one’s own “brand of terror.”

The third strand in the immunity to change rope is called the knowing system; or if you prefer the $1000 term, one’s personal epistemology, which is how one keeps organizing their reality to maintain stability. This stability plays directly into one’s difficulty in making a particular change in life.

These three interwoven strands (systems) in the immunity to change rope—change-prevention, feeling, and knowing—serve to provide stability to function in life. However, this same stability that helps someone make sense of, and keep in check, their sense of being in the world, is directly related to one’s difficulty—that is, immunity—to making changes they say they want to make.

The table below shows Kegan and Lahey’s four-column tool they call an immunity x-ray that helps someone view their own immunity to change.

In brief, the immunity x-ray works like this:

In Column 1: write one or more commitments you hold—improvement goals—for a change you want to see
In Column 2: list things you are doing or not doing instead of the stated commitment or goal; that is, list behaviors that work against the stated goals
In Column 3: name the likely hidden, competing commitments that keep you from accomplishing the commitments/goals you named in column 1
In Column 4: list the Big Assumptions that hold you, that is, assumptions that you make that subtly and quietly undermine your progress by having you behave in the unhelpful ways you listed in Column 2

At the end of this blog post, you’ll find a blank template of the Kegan and Lahey model for you to take your own immunity x-ray.

It will take time, courage, vulnerability, and candor to honestly list the content for the four columns. You may want to enlist a thought partner who knows you well.

The immunity x-ray works for organizations too. Filling out the x-ray for your organization with key leaders could be an eye-opening and life-changing exercise.

From Subject to Object

At the root of the Kegan and Lahey immunity to change model is proper perspective. All of us—individual leaders and organizations—function in life by using mental models and assumptions. Life would be unmanageable without doing this.

James Clear defines a mental model simply as: "an explanation of how something works…[and] an overarching term for any sort of concept, framework, or worldview that you carry around in your mind.”

Supply and demand is a mental model that helps us understand an economic theory. You have a mental model of critters included in the notion of “dog,” and sometimes that model gets tested or expanded when you see a coyote or wolf.

But while assumptions we make, and mental models we hold, are efficient ways of making sense in the world, they are imperfect and often flawed. When we are challenged in life, it’s often a mental model that is being tested. And that’s exactly the point of the immunity x-ray: to challenge big assumptions, mental models we hold about ourselves or our organization, that often function in the background and may go years—or a lifetime—without being tested.

The challenge is being open enough and courageous enough in life to allow our mental models and assumptions to be tested. Our hidden assumptions, that is, mental models operating in the background of our mind, are assumed to be true. They may or may not actually be true, but when untested or operating blindly, they provide a reference point for us in making decisions all day long.

An invisible assumption about myself that I’m not aware of, is an assumption that has hold of me. It is the subject and I’m the object. However, if I’m open to critique by someone or if in using the immunity x-ray I’m willing to test an assumption about myself that I hunch is holding me back or creating an immunity to change, I can assess whether the mental model remains helpful or whether I wish to adjust it.

Think of times in your life when a mental model was tested. Perhaps you met someone of a particular socio-economic or racial-ethnic group who didn’t fit your assumptions or stereotypes. It began to allow you to realize first, that you held that assumption; and second, that your assumption no longer fits everyone you had in that neat model.

As you opened to further testing of the model, you realized that others don’t fit the model either. Ideally, this led you to adjust your model as the assumptions you were making no longer seemed “true.”

As long as the mental model was operating without scrutiny, it had a hold on you. However, when you changed the perspective and looked at it more critically, the model went from being a subject to an object. It no longer held you, but rather you held it.

The same is true of any idea or thought behind our eyeballs. When we can articulate something enough to assess it, as if we’re holding it in our hands, we can consciously and intentionally choose what we want the model to be. In that way, we now hold the very thing that held us. We have choices…more than we realize.

Mental Development

For decades Robert Kegan has been developing an adult development theory. Some of you may find it interesting in detail, but without boring those who just want the shorter version, the theory can be summarized like this:

A human body reaches a physical peak relatively early in its life. However, mental development, especially mental complexity, can keep growing. This explains in part why whether you view a group of people in their thirties or a group in their sixties, you will find a range of capacity for mental complexity that Kegan views as stages or plateaus.

We don’t advance automatically but rather we advance by opening ourselves to learning and growth. Permitting ourselves times of optimal conflict mentioned earlier allows for a lifetime of growth and development.

Kegan’s theory, and then in his collaboration with colleague Lisa Lahey, suggests three such complexity stages or levels:

Socialized mind, characterized as those of us who are shaped by definitions of our personal environment and by our relationships and “schools of thought” to which we subscribe
Self-authoring mind, characterized by those of us who can step back enough from our social environment to generate what Kegan and Lahey call “an internal ‘seat of judgment’” to evaluate and make choices about external/others’ expectations.
Self-transforming mind, characterized by those of us who can step back from and reflect on the limits of our own ideology, can see how any system of thought is in some way incomplete, and who tend to be more comfortable with contradiction and opposites.

Kegan and Lahey’s stage theory makes sense to me in my own development. However, not everyone agrees with the concept of stage theories. Perhaps the reality is that at different times of the day or times of our lives we may move among the stages depending on circumstances, or the environment we’re in, or the particular people around us at the time. I’ve included the Kegan and Lahey complexity development concept as food for thought.

We live in an increasingly complex world, and we are living in times of significant complexity. Your relationships, your leadership, and the overall quality of your life depend on your capacity to evaluate fairly and be open to testing and adjusting your assumptions and mental models. Ultimately, assumptions that “hold us” limit our effectiveness, health, and wellbeing.

Consider using the Kegan and Lahey immunity x-ray (below) to explore things you want to change that seems stuck. Consider how a few key invisible (or unexamined) competing commitments are keeping you immune from making intended changes. And then move beyond the personal to your organization or areas you lead. The x-ray can be helpful in any setting in which people are willing to be open, vulnerable, and courageous.

Immunity to Change Model Sample (Figure 2-8, from Kegan and Lahey, Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock Potential in Yourself and Your Organization)

Try it yourself with a blank Immunity to Change Model Sample.

Books by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey:

Videos by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey:

An Evening with Robert Kegan and Immunity to Change, Robert Kegan [VIDEO]
Seeing & Overcoming the Immunity to Change, Lisa Laskow Lahey [VIDEO]

This blog post builds on my recent Leadership Meets Life Podcast Episode 05: Immunity to Change - Dealing with Assumptions . Take a listen to dig deeper!

As a leader, how open are you to critique?
How willing are you to test your assumptions about people, about leadership, about how best to organize?

Next month we’ll explore a tool by economist Otto Scharmer called Theory U to apply presencing as a way to lead from the future as it emerges. You won’t want to miss it! If you haven’t yet signed up for the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast click here for more information and to sign up!

Let me know how you’re connecting with the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast. I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me directly at philb@designgroupintl.com or by visiting my website.

On the journey with you,

Access more resources for your leadership journey:

Change Happens, But Transition Is the Work

Phil C. Bergey — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 04:00:00 GMT

Beginning At the End

“Considering that we have to deal with endings all our lives, most of us handle them very badly.” These words by William Bridges in an early work of his on differentiating change and transition are as true today as when he wrote them over 40 years ago (Transitions: Making sense of life’s changes: Strategies for coping with the difficult, painful, and confusing times in your life, 1980).

We tend to see endings, as Bridges says, “as something without sequel, forgetting that in fact they are the first phase of the transition process and a pre-condition of self-renewal.”

This blog post featuring the work of William Bridges builds on my Leadership Meets Life podcast episode released July 13, 2021. You can listen to it here, where I highlight the role of loss and letting go in order to deal successfully with the many transitions in life.

An overview of the Bridges approach to change goes something like this:

There are two key terms: change and transition. “Change is the external event or situation that takes place,” says Bridges. This change could be anything in your life, like a birth or death of a loved one, being let go (aka, fired) at work, or getting a big promotion, just to name a few examples. A global pandemic is also an example of a change!

In contrast to change, notes Bridges, transition “is the inner psychological process that people go through as they internalize and come to terms with the new situation that the change brings about…. The starting point for dealing with transition is not the outcome but the endings that people have in leaving the old situation behind.”

Think of that for a second. Consider an African elephant. The gestation period for a baby elephant is 22 months of life in utero. The end of that time inside Momma elephant gives way to the birth—and beginning—of that baby elephant’s life outside. The beginning of that elephant walking and spraying water with its trunk started with an ending.

Similarly, graduation from high school or college, or these days—from preschool, like a few of my grandchildren have already experienced, signals a commencement. To commence is to begin or start. Yet, it would have no meaning apart from the arduous work that has just ended.

As noted with the William Bridges quote above, Endings are difficult, and most of us struggle to do them well. There are many stories and studies about the challenges of ending active work life and beginning some version of retirement. Endings mean dealing with loss, especially if the ending was forced or externally driven or resulted from something beyond our control. Some endings may feel as if they have their own stages, including what we can deal with at the moment and perhaps needing to revisit an ending later in a deeper way when we have more capacity.

Listen to my podcast episode on this topic to hear more about dealing with loss and letting go as it relates to change and transition wherever leadership meets life.

The Messy Middle

The second stage in the Bridges model is The Neutral Zone. It’s also the transition zone where necessary work takes place that can lead to transformation.

As a leader, you are well aware that your organization goes through changes. It must change to stay alive, to remain relevant, to grow, and thrive. But this phase brings out the best—and worst—in leaders and those we lead.

Bridges uses an organizational life cycle model as one way of better understanding how this second, middle, messy, vital, Neutral Zone stage relates to the whole change and transition journey. He credits the work of business consultant Ichak Adizes who popularized a life cycle or life stage approach that views organizational life similarly to a human life cycle. To be fair to Bridges, he too spent much of his life developing a life cycle approach to organizational growth and death.

Drawing on Shakespeare’s seven ages of man from his work As You Like It, Bridges posits seven comparable stages of organizational life. There has been plenty of critique about the validity of organizational life cycle models. Yet, I appreciate the angle Bridges takes by admitting the number of stages could be fewer or greater than his seven. He humbly offers: “You could come up with a list of six or twelve stages and give them very different names, and you might have just as useful a map…Try it out in your own work, and see if it doesn’t clarify things.”

“Transitions,” states Bridges, “are the dynamic interludes between one of the seven stages of organizational life and the next. Their function is to close out one phase, reorient and renew people in that time we are calling the Neutral Zone, and carry people into the new way of doing and being that is the beginning of the next stage.”

The New Beginning

Having ended well and learned much on a transformation journey through a Neutral Zone, we are ready to embrace a New Beginning. British novelist D.H. Lawrence once said:

The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences…The world doesn’t fear a new idea. It can pigeonhole any idea. But it can’t pigeonhole a real new experience.

We both anticipate and fear New Beginnings. After long journeys through the wilderness and unknow of the Neutral Zone, it’s a relief for most of us to begin again. Some are energized and eager to learn, while others are ambivalent or apprehensive, but most of us are ready to move on from the unknown.

A global pandemic that never seems to end is exhausting! We know when the ending happened, but when do we get to a new normal? Is there a new normal? Am I still in the wilderness, or has a New Beginning begun?

Bridges notes that it helps whenever entering a New Beginning to have a Purpose, a Picture, a Plan, and a Part. Be clear about the why: The Purpose. Paint the outcome of what it will look and feel like: A Picture. Develop steps or phases of how we move forward: A Plan. Help people understand their role in the New Beginning: The Part they will play.

Laws of Organizational Development

Bridges posits what he calls “laws of organizational development” to complement and further develop his version of an organizational life cycle. Personally, I would have chosen the term principles over laws, but you may see that as semantics. At any rate, here are his five laws of organizational development:

Those who were most at home with the necessary activities and arrangements of one phase are the ones who are the most likely to experience the subsequent phase as a severe personal setback.
The successful outcome of any phase of organizational development triggers its demise by creating challenges that it is not equipped to handle.
In any significant transition, the thing that the organization needs to let go of is the very thing that got it this far.
Whenever there is a painful, troubled time in the organization, a developmental transition is probably going on.
During the first half of the lifecycle—through the Making-It stage—not to make a transition when the time is right for one to occur will cause a developmental [delay] in the organization.

Each of the above “laws” would merit unpacking, which I won’t take the time to do here, but if you find this intriguing, grab a copy of the book Managing Transitions (see resources section below) and dig in.

The Bridges model can be applied to personal as well as organizational development. Try it. Re-read the above five laws and see how they fit with a transition you recently went through or are in the middle of right now.

Our Relationship With Change

As leaders, we all experience life differently. And the same is true of those we lead and serve. Because we experience life differently, we experience change differently.

Some of us are wired such that we tend to enjoy change and are often energized by it. The anticipation, the unknown, the thrill, the figuring it out. It’s engaging and stimulating.

Others of us feel threatened or anxious by changes of nearly any size and resist change wherever we can. Our relationship with change is one we know is unavoidable, but we need to be dragged through it, reluctantly, painfully, anxiously.

Because we differ in our relationship with change, leaders need to be discerning, proactive, and empathetic as we lead through times of change and transition. Some of those we serve will experience the uncertainty of Endings with excitement and anticipation, ready to help bring closure so we can move on. Others will be in denial, perhaps filled with confusion, reservation, or frustration; they remain unconvinced that anything good can come from leaving what has worked in the past.

The same dynamic plays out during the Neutral Zone, that middle transition space where the makings of transformation begin. Some folks will experience this as a challenge to be embraced, as a time for creativity and experimentation, and innovation. They are ready and eager to see how these new machines or this new software will make their and the organization’s life better and more efficient.

Other folks remain skeptical and experience the Neutral Zone as a time of suffering, anxiety, confusion. Many of these folks find it challenging to be motivated about the changes impacting them from this new technology or different entry or longer (or shorter) processes. Energy that could be spent on learning gets channeled into resistance and complaints. These folks need to feel heard, valued, and understood even though the transition is moving forward.

The Neutral Zone, that middle stage that finds our people all over an experiential map, ends earlier for some than others. Those who tend to embrace change or don’t love change but have learned not to keep fighting it can move into the third stage in the Bridges model: New Beginning.

Others, however, may be scattered along an experiential timeline, inching or lunging forward, dragging themselves or nursing themselves toward a New Beginning. A leader needs to find ways to motivate, inspire and care for this spectrum of humanity and their varying relationships with change. And as you likely know, that in itself is an enormous leadership challenge. By and large, in my experience, leaders that tend toward change, often open to it even if it presents challenges.

Another factor impacts how organizations handle change and transition. Those of us in leadership have a longer view of the future. We thus have begun dealing with our own concerns about pending change well in advance of others who will eventually find out about and be impacted by the change that’s coming. In some ways, this is inevitable since much of leadership is about anticipating and exploring but not always acting on all the possibilities. But some of the organizational angst is avoidable through proactive, constructive, and transparent communication and giving those we serve enough time to deal with their own feelings, fears, and hopes about how changes may impact them.

Here are some resources you might find helpful as you explore this topic:

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
Managing Transitions, 25th-anniversary edition: Making the Most of Change by William Bridges, Susan Bridges
The Way of Transition: Embracing Life's Most Difficult Moments by William Bridges
The Story of Transitions [Video] - specifically refer to 0:24 for another example of William Bridges' 3 Phases of Transition

This blog post builds on my recent Leadership Meets Life Podcast Episode 04: It’s the Transitions that Get You . Take a listen to dig deeper!

William Bridges developed a powerful three-stage model that differentiates change from transition. Change is external and happens to us. Transition is our experiential journey dealing with the change regardless of whether we chose the change or it was imposed on us.

The first phase is the Ending. The Ending is about loss and letting go that is necessary in light of the change. A child old enough to head off to camp or college is an Ending. It’s a change, and how we prepare for and respond to that change matters. Moving from paper entry to fully digital record-keeping is an Ending. Coming to terms with what I liked about paper entry and embracing new technology matters.

The second phase is the Neutral Zone. This messy middle is the time and space when someone is coming to terms with what has ended, and yet the New Beginning hasn’t yet fully come into view or isn’t yet fully being realized. This could be the neutral space between jobs or significant relationships, or it could be the journey required to learn a new language or technology. Some of us embrace change, and others of us resist it. Leaders must understand the differences in how those we lead and serve deal with change so we can provide the necessary training, structure, and empathy to address the spectrum of responses to change in our organization.

The third phase is the New Beginning. This is an opportunity to live into a transformed future. It’s also a time to be alert for past patterns that may want to be re-inserted back into organizational life. Bridges proposes four Ps: Purpose, Picture, Plan, and Part. Purpose can guide a New Beginning. A Picture of what this New Beginning can help inspire and motivate, although it cannot carry all the freight alone. A Plan can help flesh out the Picture, especially when everyone in the organization understands what Part they play.

As always, future blogs and podcasts in the Leadership Meets Life series will continue to build on today’s blog. Reach out to me with ideas, questions, and solutions you have encountered in dealing with change and transition. I’d love to hear from you!

What transition(s) are you in that resulted from a change?
Which of the three stages are you in—Ending, Neutral Zone, New Beginning?
What’s one thing you will do this week to move yourself forward?

Next month we’ll look at another helpful leadership approach to add to your learning toolbox. It will feature the work of Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey and their approach to dealing with what they call Immunity to Change. It deals with competing commitments within organizations or within individuals that hold us back from making the changes we say we want to make.

Don’t miss it! If you haven’t yet signed up for the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast click here for more information and to sign up!

Let me know how you’re connecting with the Leadership Meets Life Blog and Podcast. I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me directly at philb@designgroupintl.com or by visiting my website.

On the journey with you,

Access more resources for your leadership journey: