On Living, Leading, (Re)designing, and Coaching

"A genuine dialogue is never the one we wanted to conduct"

The quote from the title is from Hans-Georg Gadamer, a philosopher who studied hermeneutics - the art of interpretation and understanding.

Gadamer's point, is seems, is that it is the nature of genuine conversation that it takes you somewhere you didn't intend to go beforehand. And once you are there, the conversation reveals a new understanding that belongs to no one (no single person). Rather, the understanding is a creation that is realized only in its sharing.

Understanding is a creation that is
realized only in its sharing.

This is a very very radical stance - that something is only real if and only if it is shared. This flips most communication strategies on their head. Most communication strategies are strategies for getting the message out. We have the understanding ... now let's drill it into the masses (e.g., our family, our friends, our employees, our clients, our customers, our audience, etc.). How different would our approach to communicating be if we took Gadamer's insight to heart?

In order to have the conversation we intended to have we must steer the conversation, dampen our sensitivity to shifts in emotions and moods, and only listen for what we want to hear. But this doesn't necessarily generate understanding. In order to generate understanding, we must have the conversation that "wants" to happen, so to speak, instead of the conversation we want to happen.

To generate understanding, our listening must be sensitive and open and this demands from us a higher level of authenticity and presence in the conversation. Leadership, coaching, and design occurs within a conversation and can only be effective when it is a genuine conversation.

Take care,

-Steve

What if uncertainty is the path to happiness?

It's been about a month or so since I last posted. I've been on sabbatical between jobs and while I hadn't intended to stop posting, as I relaxed into my sabbatical it sort of happened. So with this new year, I start my new job and with it posting to this blog.

In fact, my first day at work was supposed to be Tuesday. But, as the fates would have it, I'm sick at home and my first day has been delayed until (hopefully) tomorrow. Life is definitely not turning out as planned.

I've spent the month in a bardo of sorts - a place in between places - filled with uncertainty. And facing into the uncertainty about my new job (and new career) has generated happiness and freedom without resolving the uncertainty.

Yesterday, in my sickly stupor, I was drawn to a book I once read called Bring Me the Rhinoceros. I have learned over the years to follow these subtle feelings that I need to read something or talk to someone. This is a book about working with koans written by a Zen teacher named John Tarrant. I started to re-read the book and forgot how much I had enjoyed it the first time.

Koans offer a method of undoing us and opening us into the uncertainty that is life. They have been around in the Zen tradition going back to its roots in China more than a thousand years ago. Tarrant opens the book by pointing to seven things to notice about koans:

1. Koans show you that you can depend on creative moves.
2. Koans encourage doubt and curiosity.
3. Koans rely on uncertainty as a path to happiness.
4. Koans will undermine your reasons and your explanations.
5. Koans lead you to see life as funny rather than tragic.
6. Koans will change your idea of who you are, and this will require courage.
7. Koans uncover a hidden kindness in life.

This is a radically different kind of education than what we get exposed to in our schools. And yet, in the midst of big life transitions - as I'm going through now - what koans reveal is so much more helpful than the feeling that the uncertainty that I feel dooms me to failure.

 

What if uncertainty really is a path toward happiness? Is there something trustable about our true nature? Undying creativity? Endless kindness?

Take care,

-Steve