I'm learning that living life well is so much about expectations; and expectations are shaped by how you view life. Your mental picture about what life is and is supposed to be really determines your life experience. If you have a faulty view, you end up with a faulty life. Your experience matches your picture.
Research on Effective Leadership Styles Important research these days is revealing some significant trends in how people are thinking about leadership, the style they want to see in their leaders, and what style is proving to be the most effective in solving today's complex global problems.
Gone are the days where the macho approach is looked up to as the savior of our problems. That current track record speaks for itself.
Qualities to Move Away From. "Everywhere, people are frustrated by a world long dominated by codes of male thinking and behavior: Codes of control, aggression and black- and-white thinking that have contributed to many of the problems we face today, from wars and income inequality to reckless risk-taking and scandal."*
Qualities to Embody More of. Instead, says a growing body of academic and industry research, "senior executives around the world and across industries put qualities such as collaboration, creativity, flexibility, empathy, patience, humility and balance right at the top of the list of crucial leadership characteristics for the future."**
Soft Vs. Hard. There are those in our culture who still choose to see these qualities as "soft" versus "hard" - they can't embrace them as truly significant to the bottom line of productivity and financial sustainability and growth - they see these qualities as luxuries at best, and perhaps curriculum to be relegated to Human Resources department if at all.
This leads to a tragic sidelining of what is increasingly showing to be more effective in the long run in addressing the fundamental needs of our organizations and markets with their complex, global, and interconnected challenges. This short-sighted and biased view continues to do damage on multiple layers of our human systems and organizations. Productivity and engagement are at all-time lows in our country.
In contrast, natural biologists are providing us with powerful examples of how the more relational and collaborative qualities are in fact hard-wired in the natural world to powerful effect. My last blog post described birch trees and rhododendrons in a symbiotic relationship.
Here's another: take the barheaded geese, for example.
Learning From Barheaded Geese
It’s estimated that at least 50,000 of them winter in India. And when summer nears, they undertake the two month 5000 mile migration back to their home in Central Asia. What makes this trip remarkable is that the route they choose to take every year is the world’s steepest migratory flight—they fly over the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest in the Himalayas.
Amazingly, this route is where the air is thinnest and oxygen level lowest. What’s more, the thinner air means that less lift is generated when the birds flap their wings, thereby increasing the energy costs of flying by around 30 per cent. And yet they still fly the same route over the highest place on earth. Imagine it!
Scientists now find that these geese do not make use of tailwinds or updrafts that could give them a boost up the mountain. One of the remarkable resources they choose instead to rely upon is teamwork---collaboration.
Drafting. Geese are famous for utilizing in flight the V-formation which helps reduce individual energy consumption by up to 30%. Professional cyclists use the same principle that empowers them to sustain high energy and power for endurance races like the Tour de France (over 2000 miles in 21 days). Drafting.
The whole flock of geese gets over 70% better mileage than if each bird flew solo. When the lead bird gets weary, it drops back and a new one takes the lead. As the birds vigorously flap their wings, it creates lift for the bird behind. These geese actually choose to fly over Mt. Everest at one time rather than breaking up the trip, typically a grueling eight hour marathon.
And in addition, if one of the geese gets too tired or gets injured or sick, two of the other geese shepherd the weaker one back down to the ground and stay with it until it either gets stronger or dies. Then they rejoin the group or find another group to fly with to complete their migration.
Clearly, there is no physical way these birds could soar over Mt. Everest without this kind of drafting, teamwork, and collaboration. Forget it!
And yet so many of us individuals, including many organizations that insist on a few at the top within hierarchical structures possessing all the power, continue to assault our Everests ineffectively.
The Qualities That Make A Difference
What social science and organizational effectiveness research is telling us these days is that similarly there is no way we can scale the Mt. Everest-sized global challenges we face without prioritizing and valuing these same qualities: teamwork, collaboration, empathy, nurturing, loyalty.
The days of the solo leader (or small group of men who conduct the business war games and deals in the backroom), projecting an omnicompetent ability, standing at the top of the hierarchy of power, position, and status, omniscient in wisdom, who has only to speak and command the vision, strategy, and way forward, are gone (or should be gone).
"In the new economy ‘winning’ is becoming a group construct: Masculine traits like aggression and independent trail the feminine values of collaboration and sharing credit. And being loyal (which is feminine) is more valued than being proud (which is masculine), which points to being devoted to the cause rather than one’s self. And that we want our leaders to be more intuitive—(also feminine)—speaks to the lack of many leaders to have the capacity to relate to ordinary people and their points of view."*
We have to intentionalize systems and structures that help us rely on each other, where everyone is empowered to contribute their best strengths, where organizational and team health is seen to be as important as ROI and the financial bottomline, where we mentor others and stand beside them to support their growing development, where we manifest patience and empathy instead of "get it or leave here" attitude, where we employ technicolor instead of black-or-white thinking to our problems.
If we want to soar over our Mt. Everests, we will choose to be more like the barheaded geese.
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* The Athena Doctrine: How Women (and the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future, Michael D'Antonio & John Gerzema.
** Gayle Peterson, associate fellow of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and co-director of its Women Transforming Leadership program, "We Don't Need A Hero, We Just Need More Women At the Top" (The Guardian, Nov. 13, 2013)
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If you or someone you know in your organization is looking for keynote speakers or workshop teachers for events in your company, congregation, or association gatherings, I would be happy to come speak on this theme or others like it. Feel free to email me at greg@gregorypnelson.com.
46th Session This week I had the 46th session with a coaching client. We started our journey together a year ago. This is the longest I've coached a client - 46 sessions! What has impressed me with this client's experience has been that it's only been in the last month that more visible break-throughs have been taking place. I have seen profound transformation in his way of thinking about himself and life and how he's showing up in the world. He has much more clarity as well as fulfillment these days.
My typical coaching approach has involved working with clients sometimes for a month, most often for 3 months, sometimes for 6 months (all involving weekly sessions). I've helped people through life transitions, establishing personal dreams, developing strategic plans for business or personal issues, helping them achieve clarity about their strengths and life purpose, defining a new personal faith. All very helpful journeys, according to their personal testimonies.
But in this case, we've continued for 46 sessions - mostly at his request - and certainly I've agreed with the value. But significant change has happened lately that has caused me to realize some very significant realities about life growth as it relates to this lengthier journey. Thought I'd share three of them with you in this week's blog post.
One, personal growth takes time. 
Regardless of your view of God and how God operates in the messy human process of growth, God rarely seems to simply "snap his finger" to transform people. Pray as hard as you might, growth isn't based upon a magical formula that occurs in the "twinkling of an eye." Genuine change takes time - it doesn't matter what the personal or relational issue, meaningful transformation simply takes time.
There's a reason why so many spiritual wisdom traditions call spirituality a "journey." Personal growth is a process, a path. Even Jesus called himself "the way." Notice he didn't say "the point" or "the moment." He's the way. He's describing the process of spiritual growth - becoming a follower on a path which involves a journey that takes place over time, in fact over one's entire lifetime. It's as though he's saying, "Follow me. Watch me. Consider me, what I do and how I do it. Walk with me and observe, reflect upon, question, weigh, and wrestle with it all. Practice what you observe with me. Learn how to lean into it. Be a follower on the journey." Those kinds of experiences don't happen over night. There's no simple formula. Personal growth takes time.
Two, personal growth involves developing new ways of thinking.
No wonder it takes time. Our thoughts create our realities. In fact, some experts say there is no difference between cause and effect - our thoughts produce our experiences (and vice versa) simultaneously. What we think, is. So if we want to change our experiences, we have to change our thoughts. Our thoughts are the fabric of all the stories we tell ourselves and others about ourselves, about others, about all of life, even about God. Our stories (what we think and say about all of this) are the sum total of the thoughts we string together to describe what we think we're seeing and observing. Our thoughts create the lens through which we see life. So if something isn't working well or serving us well in our lives, we have to evaluate carefully and honestly our lens (what thoughts we're stringing together to describe what we think is reality).
And if that lens is hazy or dirty or smudged or cracked, that impacts what we see. This is why spiritual traditions describe the journey of spirituality as the process of cleaning the lens or even changing the lens through which we look.
St. Paul described this process: "11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely." (1 Corinthians 13)
He likens seeing through a cloudy lens as being a child. When we're kids, our ability to see and understand the realities of life are limited. Kids have nightmares or bad dreams about things that aren't real. And many of us adults still have that limitation. :)
I remember having nightmares as a kid about gorillas. I would wake up scared to death that the gorilla was in my room ready to eat me up. My mom says she would often awaken in the middle of the night feeling this "presence" beside the bed and when she opened her eyes she would see me standing there (still asleep) but white as a ghost. Rather unnerving for a parent (not to mention this little child). A child's ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy is not well developed. Kids are seeing imperfectly through "a cloudy mirror," as St. Paul put it.
As I've grown up, I don't have nightmares about gorillas anymore (thank goodness!). But I do have more sophisticated fears that can equally incapacitate me at times and which sometimes prove to be equally fantastical (not based on reality, not true). My gorillas have turned into fears about my worthiness, my ability to succeed, whether people will accept me or admire me, etc., etc. I've at times gone into situations with other people completely sure that they would judge me or criticize me because of my past, only to end up experiencing just the opposite from them. I almost allowed my "seeing through the cloudy mirror" to keep me from showing up in that group which would have caused me to miss out on a wonderful experience.
Kids don't understand the nuances in human relationships - life tends to be more black and white. Maturation, human development and growth, is about learning the process of seeing more clearly, and sometimes of even having to change the lens because the lens is simply not true.
Notice that St. Paul describes his current knowing as "impartial and incomplete." But he looks to that time when he will know everything "completely" (fully, accurately, wisely, without limitations that are self-imposed or otherwise), which he describes as the way God sees us. The point he's making is that that path between those two times (from unknowing to knowing) isn't bridged instantaneously. Personal growth takes time because it involves learning how to think more maturely and wisely, more divinely. We have to grow up, to develop. "By beholding, we become changed." Are we beholding truth and reality or old "truth" and unreality? Change the lens to behold clearly.
Three, personal growth necessitates personal patience and profound acceptance. I'm getting better at giving myself some slack for the lack of perfection in my life. That doesn't mean I'm choosing not to take self responsibility. In fact, I'm taking more ownership for my life with all its foibles and dirty lens and my determined responsibility to make necessary changes then ever before. But I'm learning to give myself more patience and self-acceptance along the way.
One author I was reading this week said that the most important gift we can give ourselves and others is acceptance. It's a counter-intuitive choice. Contrary to popular opinion, accepting doesn't prohibit or stifle growth, it actually fosters it. "Accepting people as they are has the miraculous affect of helping them improve" (Marianne Williamson, Return To Love, p. 162). In fact, this kind of acceptance is the most divine act we can engage in. That's what Paul was saying earlier - God knows us completely - and as the next verse says, God loves us just as completely. "13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13)
The power of divine grace is that God considers us perfectly acceptable every step along the way of our journey into greater wholeness and maturity and development (take a look at one of my favorite bible texts, Hebrews 10:14): Perfectly acceptable to God while we're in the process of becoming more and more whole.
That attitude of profound acceptance toward us is what empowers us with the courage to continue the journey of growth, to keep learning and struggling and becoming, to changing the lens so that we see ourselves-others-and God more clearly and perfectly, to being courageous enough to let go of the old stories we almost immediately tell ourselves when something negative happens to us, to changing our "childish" thoughts into more mature and loving ones. We end up showing up with way more love in all our relationships and life experiences.
Personal growth necessitates personal patience and profound acceptance.
My forty-six client sessions have been such an amazing learning experience for me. My client is not at the same place where he was a year ago. His old paralyzing stories - his cloudy mirror - are changing and being replaced with the truth about himself and the promise of his profound potential. There is tremendous value in allowing someone else into your life for such a long, specifically directed period of time. That's the power of having a coach or other trusted person to help guide the journey.
And the journey has helped to change me, too. Forty-six sessions!
I live in San Francisco which is a city primarily accessible from the north and east by bridges (the Golden Gate and the Bay Bridge). You can reach the City from the south by land. Only boats reach us from the west emerging from the Pacific Ocean into our Bay.
Bridges are quite fascinating spiritual metaphors. Take our Golden Gate bridge, for instance. It's the ninth longest suspension span in the world (1.7 miles). And believe me, my 
body has felt the pain of every inch of that span, having run in the SF marathon which crosses the bridge and back along the total route (about 8-9 miles in), with the bridge curving uphill from both ends to the center of the span! It was brutal, especially with heavy fog and light mist in our typical July weather!
The bridge clearance is 220 feet from the high water. It weighs 887,000 tons total. And the two cables that span the bridge's suspension are each composed of 27,572 strands of wire. There are 80,000 miles (129,000 km) of wire in the two main cables, and it took over six months to spin them.
Construction on the bridge began on January 5, 1933, and the first cars drove across on May 28, 1937. The toll was 50 cents one way, $1 round trip and 5 cents surcharge if there were more than 3 passengers. Those were definitely the good 'ole days because the toll now is $6 per vehicle (charged only for southbound traffic). Gotta love inflation! The bridge traffic now averages about 41 million vehicles a year.
One of the most interesting Golden Gate Bridge facts is that only eleven workers died during construction, a new safety record for the time. In the 1930s, bridge builders expected 1 fatality per $1 million in construction costs, and builders expected 35 people to die while building the Golden Gate Bridge. One of the bridge's safety innovations was a net suspended under the floor. This net saved the lives of 19 men during construction, and they are often called the members of the "Half Way to Hell Club."
So why go to all the expensive, difficult, dangerous work to build this bridge? Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County to the north was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay. Ferry service began as early as 1820, with regularly scheduled service beginning in the 1840s for purposes of transporting water to San Francisco. San Francisco was the largest American city still served primarily by ferry boats. Because it didn't have a permanent link with communities around the bay, the city's growth rate was below the national average.
But in spite of the need, the obstacles from opposition were strong. Many experts said that a bridge couldn’t be built across the 6,700 ft (2,042 m) strait. It had strong, swirling tides and currents, with water 500 ft (150 m) in depth at the center of the channel, and frequent strong winds. Experts said that ferocious winds and blinding fogs would prevent construction and operation. It was too costly on every level!
The Department of War was concerned that the bridge would interfere with ship traffic; the navy feared that a ship collision or sabotage to the bridge could block the entrance to one of its main harbors. Unions demanded guarantees that local workers would be favored for construction jobs. Southern Pacific Railroad, one of the most powerful business interests in California, opposed the bridge as competition to its ferry fleet and filed a lawsuit against the project, leading to a mass boycott of the ferry service.
But thankfully, strong vision, lots of courage, and collaboration between many dedicated experts, along with the investment of massive human and financial resources, produced a bridge that today is unarguably one of the most iconic structures in the world.
So what are some of the spiritual applications to this particular bridge metaphor? Notice several. First, the Golden Gate bridge looks like it's simply straight across and level from one side to the other - until you get on it and start traveling across, especially on foot at which time you realize it's actually uphill both directions. A lot like the spiritual journey. There's no such thing as a straight, flat distance. Spirituality is about life and life has ups and downs even though you can't see them at first. So don't get discouraged. Keep running or walking, keep moving forward - you'll eventually get to the downhill side. To get where you want to go, you need to cross the bridge.
Second, to build a strong bridge like the Golden Gate, every task is done with great care and persistence. Look at the two main cables - 80,000 miles of wire, taking over six months to spin. Imagine that - 6 months to do one spinning-the-wires task. But without that attention to that specific project, the finished bridge wouldn't be still standing strong today.
Spirituality involves engaging in sometimes menial tasks - routine - repetitive - over and over and over again. It's easy to take short cuts for the sake of brevity or expediting the process. But healthy and deep spirituality is like a good wine - it takes time, careful and loving attention. And some times you simply have to "sit with" it - let is simmer, percolate, age. Spirituality takes patience and persistence. Spinning the wires again and again. Sometimes it doesn't feel very productive. Our hearts aren't in it. But we still do it. It's a sacred routine that ultimately builds a strong spirituality - a holy bridge from here to there.
That's why the enduring religious traditions of the world have developed what they call spiritual practices - behaviors, activities, that you engage in over and over again - like spinning those wire cables around and around and around, each spin producing a stronger wire. We pray, we meditate, we read, we serve others, we attend services, we practice healthy behaviors, we work on healthy thought patterns - over and over and over again - with each new practice, we're building a stronger, deeper receptivity to the Spirit, and transformation increases.
Look at how long it took to build the Golden Gate bridge - January 1933 to May 1937 - four years. But because the builders took this strategic time and attention to the process 73 years ago, over 40 million vehicles today make it to their destinations safely every year.
Stay tuned to my next post - we'll look at two more ways I see the Golden Gate Bridge as a spiritual metaphor. I'm reminded of these every time I walk or drive where I can see the bridge. It truly is inspiring to me from every angle.
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