Over the last several years I have had the opportunity to work in a couple different countries, interact with non-profits, NGO’s, churches, high tech communications companies and coaching clients with even more diversity of background. I say all that to frame what I am about to say…
...when an organization is stuck, it is usually
because the leader of the organization is stuck.
I realize, in looking back that often I was the guy that didn’t know that I didn’t know…you know what I mean?
Remember the old Arabic proverb you heard sometime in college?
He who knows not and knows not he knows not: he is a fool-shun him.
He who knows not and knows he knows not: he is simple-teach him.
He who knows and knows not he knows: he is asleep-wake him.
He who knows and knows he knows: he is wise-follow him.
This is why I have to check in with those in my life and my coach so they can help me see what I can’t see, and help me find out what I don’t know I don’t know.
As long as we constantly identify being stuck as a dynamic out there we can point at, then we will continue to chase our tail never ever getting resolution on the very things we claim we are trying to solve.
Insert the issue you are wrestling with right now. Repeated efforts to deal with that issue by continual focus on changing something out there first without acknowledging your role, how your level of consciousness impacts it, how your design/contribution to its existence sustains it, will fail. And those efforts will frustratingly fail over and over and over again. You know not that you know not that you are the system.
Changing the system comes first by changing you.
Blaming is more fun. Pointing the finger easier. Scapegoating others reflexive. But owning that I am the system and that a shift in my consciousness and awareness actually changes the system?... that is too powerful for most of us. But that is the reality of the quantum world we live in.
When our consciousness changes, a system changes and when I change I can “be” with a system in a different way and hence change it by changing me.
It applies to parenting, relationships, companies, and churches. It applies to Home Owner Associations, political parties, church boards, and city councils.
It is one of the most profound learnings I have had in the last several years and it is why personal mastery has become part of the transformational architecture I am developing for those that I coach and the systems I have been invited to help.
“Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively. It goes beyond competence and skills, although it involves them. It goes beyond spiritual opening, although it involves spiritual growth. Personal Mastery is a never-ending process. People with a high level of personal mastery live in a continual learning mode. They never ‘arrive’. Sometimes, language, such as the term ‘personal mastery’ creates a misleading sense of definiteness, of black and white. But personal mastery is not something you possess. It is a process. It is a lifelong discipline. People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas. And they are deeply self-confident. Paradoxical? Only for those who do not see the ‘journey is the reward’.” (Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer)
Those that engage in personal mastery know that they don’t know and so engage in the life long process of awareness. I want to be that person and help others into that journey because it is there you find deep reward and life long satisfaction.