Leadership Notes -- Thoughts on Leading People and Making a Difference in Organizations

Word count this issue: 633

Estimated reading time:   3.0 minutes 

During a wonderful conversation with my friend and colleague Dixie Black http://www.spiritualsobriety.com/Biography.html she was talking about how our expectations often limit what we see and experience. “If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Consider for example that if the world is a dark and dangerous place in your view, then what you see and experience will be dark and dangerous. If you see the world as a sometimes beautiful and sometimes scary place, you will find beauty sometimes and be scared others. 

Dixie’s point though was somewhat deeper. Our experiences, our learnings over the year are built by our neural pathways; we learn by identifying patterns. Our ancestors knew to be afraid of all large animals with big teeth; they didn’t have to work out the relative danger of each one. The shadow side of patterned learning is that we also then miss the elements that are not included in the pattern.

For example, the night of the last Federal Election here in Canada, just about 4 years ago, I went to bed here on the west coast assuming that the worst that would happen is that the Conservative Party would win a minority government. (For those of you outside Canada here’s what a ‘minority government’ means: http://canadaonline.about.com/od/elections/g/minority.htm ) I based this assumption on the pattern of my friends (including Facebook friends). most of whom would be voting New Democrat or Liberal. I was then gobsmacked the next morning when the Conservatives had won a majority government. How was this possible?! It was possible because I had not been looking beyond my own patterned learning. It was possible because I had not explored other possibilities, looked for instances and patterns that were different than the ones I was comfortable with.

As important as patterned learning is, we need to look beyond our own patterns. More often than not, we cannot do that alone; our own patterns, our own neural pathways have their own ‘gravitational’ pull. Here are some tips and questions to spark new neural pathways, to seek out new ways of perceiving:

1. Become friends with people with different political, moral or theological perspectives. Don’t defend your positions, and don’t judge theirs. Listen and learn with each other.
2. When planning for the future, look forward to at least two possible outcomes. For example, if you are applying for a new job always set up a positive outcome to think about alongside the positive outcome of getting the job. Maybe it is a trip, or getting something done on your bucket list.
3. Stop watching news channels, and don’t use Facebook for your news source. Both news channels and Facebook are setting the news agenda for you, albeit in different ways. For an extreme example, Fox News in the US is very clearly aligned with certain political sensibilities. That means that other news sources are moving to fill the white space in other political perspectives. Each on their own way are giving news to fit certain patterned thinking.  Facebook meanwhile is giving you the news you are interested in by employing algorithms that look at the patterns of your searches, likes and comments. The patterns in our brains are being leveraged to give us what we like. To see things outside of these patterns then are that much more difficult. In short, go outside your usual patterns for news gathering, watch or listen to different voices. 
4. Learn something new once a week. Try something new, a new taste, a new song, a new idea, anything, learn something new.

May this week be a week of creating new neural pathways for each of us.