Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
The new year began with clear signs from coast to coast that we were entering an age of disorder. A critical (and sometimes unpleasant) transitional state between order and reorder, disorder arises when life experiences contradict previously held expectations. We see the dismantling (sometimes by force of nature, sometimes intentional) of systems and institutions. The wildfires in California are just one example. Disorder eventually makes way for reorder—a more compassionate and wiser worldview on the way.
Times like these bring predictable fear and unrest. And while most of us can recognize what it’s like to feel afraid (I stop breathing, for example), we have few tools for becoming aware of our fear before being seized by it. If we can recognize when we’ve slipped into fear, we reclaim the power to shift toward conscious, productive behaviors at work and at home.
So, let’s talk about tools for regaining consciousness.
The first step sounds simple: parsing out facts versus stories. A fact is objectively true. When the facts of our lives start stacking, we interpret them to make meaning of the world through story.
As Yuval Noah Harari wrote in “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” our stories are our species’ superpowers. (Says Harari: Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can order its society around things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money and human rights.)
When our partner asks about our big meeting, we don’t delineate between the facts and the stories we share. On average, we tend to share few facts (one or two that we call “content”) alongside an abundance of story (the vast majority of the information, which we call “context”). This context has the power to color our entire worldview.
We can accomplish so much through story, because stories have helped us cooperate and unify through millennia. Family is a story. America is a story. Money is a story. And so on.
So, it’s no wonder that most relationship dysfunction comes from conflicting stories. Our stories tell us who we are, and challenging them calls our very identity into question.
Our tendency to rapidly manufacture meaning in our stories will never go away, so the question for leaders becomes this: How can we build the capacity to recognize when we’re in a story and thereby neutralize the situation?
A conscious leader might sound like this: “I noticed you were quiet in the meeting this morning. The story I’m making up about that is, you’re upset about the direction we’re going. Any truth to that?” That middle part is the superpower move.
This creates what’s called an “inarguable truth.” Stories can be argued with, but the fact that it’s someone’s story is true. This is so much different from, “I noticed you were upset after this morning’s meeting,” which presents the story as fact and puts people on their heels.
A shorthand way of talking about our context is “above and below the line.” When we’re above the line, we’re conscious—open to creativity, connection and growth. When we’re below the line, we’re unconscious—fearful we’re powerless and at the mercy of circumstances.
Evolutionarily, it’s normal for us to spend most of our time below the line. Fear is designed to be physically overwhelming. When described as a feeling, fear is a contraction. A contraction of muscles (see above: my lungs), our hearts or, perhaps most dangerously, a contraction of the mind.
To visualize some of the recurring ways you orient from a place of fear, draw a horizontal line. Below it, draw an inverted triangle. This is the drama triangle, a model of human interaction developed by Stephen Karpman in the 1960s. Label the three points with these roles:
◗ Victim: The person who feels powerless, blames others and avoids responsibility. This is not the victim of an actual tragedy, but rather a person who believes they are a victim.
◗ Villain: An angry, judging, blaming person who identifies the source of a problem and becomes attached to it—criticizing, controlling and oppressing others.
◗ Hero/rescuer: The person who steps in to try to save the day. Heroes bring temporary relief but don’t change anything structurally. “Saving” the victim often enables dysfunction.
Now stand on the triangle and consider something that has recently sent you below the line. It’s likely that connection or learning (things our wiser selves are trying to optimize for) became second-order functions. Perhaps you even ping-pong among the three roles. I sure do.
We avoid the drama triangle by shifting these roles. Draw a right-side-up triangle above your line and relabel it.
◗ Instead of identifying as a victim, conscious leaders adopt a creator mindset, taking ownership of challenges.
◗ Rather than being a villain, they practice challenging with compassion, offering constructive feedback in real time.
◗ Instead of acting as a hero/rescuer, they become a coach, guiding others to find their own solutions.
When we can get above the line, we start to see that, while real events present real challenges, none of us is powerless and at the mercy of the world psychologically.
Stories can hold us in their maws, or we can hold them. Fear can hold us, or we can hold it. Harnessing the wherewithal to take hold of our evolutionary advantage, we recall that not all fire comes to disrupt your life; some comes to clear your path.•
__________
Haskett is a leadership consultant at Advisa, a Carmel-based leadership consultancy.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.