Month: July 2022

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Human-sized challenges I (talking about possibilities)

It’s incredibly hard to choose a just right challenge. Have you noticed this? Even if you manage to come up with something that is exactly in the sweet spot between too easy and terrifying, as soon as you begin, something is sure to screw up. This will either make your chosen adventure suddenly way more adventurous, or else kinda moot.

Rating the size of the challenge in advance is also full of unplanned surprises. We can research, but we rarely have access to enough information to know for sure. Ever taken a new job? How often do your preconceptions truly match what you find is the day to day reality, six weeks in? We have to make our best guess. There is a fair amount of what comes perilously close to outright gambling in many of our most mundane choices.

The world is literally full of challenges, too. Just waiting to be conquered. Or avoided, depending on your particular temperament. There is no shortage of frontiers to explore, even if you are following millions or billions of other humans in that exploration. It’s new to you. It’s a short lifespan we have to work with, and an awful lot of possibilities to thread through.

This means that many of us spend our days doing lots and lots of stuff that is too easy, or too hard, or completely uninteresting to us. We have to do some of it. Some of it we do because, let’s face it, everyone else is doing it (it’s hard to resist peer pressure, even as cool, independent-thinking adults). Lots of what we do falls into the category of “what was I thinking?” Then there are the challenges we take on because we know we should stretch ourselves, move out of that darn comfort zone, expand our horizons. These are either intoxicatingly exciting, or downright traumatic. Either way, they take some energy.

My point is, figuring out a ballpark scale of challenge does require some trial and error, some humility when we get it wrong, and some celebration when we accidentally get it right. It’s not automatic that our lives match our resources, mentally, physically, financially, emotionally. It takes a lot of calibration, and puzzling out what’s gone wrong, and effort to figure out what could be changed to make the match more “right.” For us. In this moment.

In this very human endeavour, looking around at others in order to see what challenges they are attempting, surmounting, or failing at, is tempting. It is natural to want to follow a pattern set by someone else, rather than to start from scratch and, well, write our own book. The problem is that our defaults are so often set to “negative” in this sort of comparison. We either use this comparative exercise to put ourselves down, or to pull ourselves up, but at the expense of the other. It’s zero sum thinking when we have no shortages (of possible challenges) to worry about! In other words, what someone else finds interesting or achievable is almost completely irrelevant to my own life. If you think about it, why would their choices have anything to do with the scope of what I am looking at for available next hard things?

Unfortunately, most of us are still working off of the mindset that a classroom group of same-aged, same neighbourhood children is somehow supposed to be a group with sameness. That is patently untrue, and the diversity in today’s classrooms supports the range of human possibility and experience rather than the alikeness of any particular demographic. Furthermore, we still talk as if the diversity itself is the problem. As if it is unexpected that a group of 30+ children would have more than three or four learning rates or styles, and that the achievements of such a group would be all over the map. Looking at the adult experience, it seems there are almost limitless ways to find meaning in occupation (my particular area of professional interest), or to express one’s thoughts or feelings, or to create a joyful, welcoming home. Why would children be a homogenous group when adults are so much more unlike than like?

The size of the challenge is infinitely variable, crossed as it is with what field of inquiry, exploration, skill-development, or mental or physical frontier one is working within. The level of detail one chooses as interesting – mapping the human genome, mapping the solar system, mapping a house’s electrical wiring – this is also infinitely complex. And then there is the intensity of the pursuit – is it a single-minded obsession, or part of a suite of interests? Is it a life long dream, or a four year political cycle we’re talking about?

I guess my point is that there is almost no conceivable limit to a human-sized challenge, except for the limits of each individual. What is interesting, to me? What is already achievable and easy, to me? What is the thing I want most to master next, myself? Understanding where I am situated, what is around me, what draws my attention, and what I value most, next, and least; these are the important questions to answer. Not what my friend/neighbour/colleague/sibling is doing. Not what I see a celebrity I admire accomplishing. Certainly not what others tell me I should be able to do. Or not do.

The size of the challenge, as it relates to me, is a very good calibration exercise to fine tune. I can look at the various projects I am doing, or have done, and it would be far more useful for me to rate my own subjective experience of their interest and ease than to ask others how I did. I can, for example, think about the fear factor. Was it scary? Is it less scary now that I’m in it, or have completed it? Or is it an activity that is ramping my fear up each time I “go back in” because I’m only doing this really to try to prove to others that I’m not scared, when I really am? Other factors could be: energy expenditure (very individual, and very temperamentally based), balance with other aspects of my life, interest overall, agreement with my particular values hierarchy…and so on. This obviously takes some thinking, and I believe that time thinking is well spent, if it helps with the ability to gradually get better at finding just right challenges, for me.

Being human is great. It is enough that we are human together, and can’t seem to stop challenging ourselves. That’s the great unifying characteristic, I think. We resist gravity. We express our thoughts. We imagine, and create, and innovate. More specific definers than that as to how to be human, and it gets tricky to care for ourselves and still show up in the world.

Let’s enjoy our uniqueness in what inspires, excites, comforts, contents, or plain gladdens us. Let’s not do so much judging of our own or others’ chosen level of “challenge.” Let’s invite and offer, but not expect and compare. Some days, a just right challenge is just getting up and stretching. Other days, we actually fly.

The challenge is human-sized if a human is choosing it. That’s it.

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Ideas are not People. People are People.

There is a lot of power in one person’s intention. That is for darn sure. Aim plus movement plus communication of vision…that is inspiring stuff. People like to follow people with vision and aim and some forward momentum. People like people with ideas. However, it is my sad observation that a powerful agenda is just…not enough to take it to the finish line. There are a lot of mundane steps involved that have to be either done or delegated. That involves a level of inspiration that gets down to doing dishes, cleaning bathrooms, and keeping the cupboards stocked. In other words, vision requires a certain amount of physical work, done in the all too real world. Ideas are not people, and it takes people to make ideas worth anything at all.

Enter a great team. A great team does not consist of a lot of the same sort of people, but rather, all the diversity. Someone to notice that we’re out of toilet paper. Someone who makes callbacks on time. Someone who thinks about the timeline and pushes people. Someone to remember both why there are regulations and what they are! Someone who pushes against the regulations, but for a good cause. Someone who makes everyone laugh when things get tense. Someone who brings cookies. Someone who takes notes. Someone who doesn’t lose the notes. Someone who thinks of super creative solutions to problems, but someone else who can actually turn those solutions into a plan with a timeline and a budget. A team really benefits from its differences.

Inclusion is such a funny concept. In order to properly inhabit it, one has to include all the people and concepts and problems that make it so frustrating and impossible to visualize. You can’t do it neatly and precisely because that is one sort of process represented well in some people’s ways of doing things, but not everyone’s. And everyone is who inclusion is for! So you have to have space for messy and non-linear thinkers as well as the neat and finicky ones. For abstract idealists, and concrete engineers. For the artists and the scientists and the farmers and the explorers. For mud on the floor and laser focused intensity. For midday snacks and all night debates.

I read a great book a few years back. Messy: the Power of Disorder to Transform our Lives, by Tim Harford (Riverhead Books, 2016), has kept me thinking on some level about the conflict inherent in teamwork and how it can be a really good thing. We don’t all see things the same way. We don’t all agree on the what, the how, the when, and frequently the why! We get riled up, and we have to put our thoughts in order so we can tell everyone why we’re right and maybe just a little more right than them. This forces us to examine what we truly believe, and in a safe team, to express it. That’s a good thing.

I’m smiling now because I just had a very dear teacher friend give me a plaque saying exactly that: This is a Good Thing. Apparently that is how she remembers me. I didn’t realize that I say that all the time, but others agreed with her! So. I guess I do like to reframe to the positive. That’s my superpower. I have to say it is a superpower with a dark side (I frequently use it to evade my own more “negative” emotions, to some detriment to my mental health), however it was a nice compliment. But back to my point, which was that it is a good thing when teams have some conflict within their ranks. At the very least, it means people are engaged in the overall goal to the extent that they are willing to put some skin in the game!

But there are limits to conflict and how much an agenda can be pulled apart by a “team” before it becomes unrecognizable – it being the team’s agenda, or maybe even the team. At a certain point, it is maybe helpful to separate the agenda from the team, and to figure out if there are potentially some sub-teams that would be better off working together on a sub-agenda, rather than constantly fighting for control of the overall one. This is tricky stuff and is why all teams need good administrative minds. When is the conflict healthy and productive, and when is it becoming nihilistic? That’s a tough call, and one often made most correctly in hindsight, unfortunately.

In my podcast, one of the complexities I try to untangle from a few different directions is the concept of separating the person from the person’s ideas or even values. This is an incredibly important step in useful dialogue or any process involving more than one mind. In child development, we speak of joint attention. This is that magical cognitive and perceptual skill where a child (or anyone, actually) and another person are both attending not only to each other, but also to a third item (or task or object of interest). The reason it can be called joint attention is that the child in question is looking both at the object, and also at the other person. There is an alternating of visual regard that shows the child is keeping track of both what they are doing together and also how the other person feels or thinks about it (as communicated through facial cues). Joint attention is what allows for shared enjoyment, teaching and learning, and social emotional growth. Joint attention is the set of blocks on the table between me and a child, and it is neither of us, but participated in by both of us.

Sometimes, in a team, it might be helpful to designate certain ideas as blocks on the table. Separate from any one person in the group, but of interest to everyone. No one is in danger of being personally attacked if we can make sure that the blocks are seen as separate and objectively discoverable things. These are thoughts, for sure, and therefore often somewhat abstract. But once expressed, they can be placed in relation to a person, rather than seen as part of a person. This is safer for everyone because then criticism or even rough handling of the ideas is not going to result in the same level of hurt and confusion as if the ideas stayed connected to their originator.

I realize this is difficult in a culture where we value individualism and so tend to identify (often fiercely) with how we (each, individually) see the world. As in, our individual thoughts are who we are. But they’re not! We are not our thoughts. We have to be deeper/more than that, because otherwise our thoughts changing could rock our identity, and that is a pretty scary thought! Come to think of it, that could be the problem fueling some of the polarization in our political landscape.

We are each of us already full human beings with validity and worth before we have ideas. We know this because we value infants, and let me tell you, infants’ ideas are somewhat simple and straightforward. One could call infants the ultimate conformists. They want to be comfortable. Period. They are not choosy about how – but they will be quite vocal about how not to achieve this egocentric and highly practical goal. Infants are the most tyrannical of all despots, and we love them dearly. They come to have ideas that start to differentiate them from each other as, and as well as, they are cared for, securely loved, and waited on hand and foot. Their developing personalities do not procure the care they need. The personalities come after the care is given. Always. Try withholding basic needs from anyone at any age, and they will eventually descend back to that infant place of tyranny and single-mindedness and un-originality. At the root of our humanity is our worth because we are human, not because of what we do with our humanness.

So fast forward back to your average adult-inhabited team, and we can see that making sure everyone knows their value, before they have to add value, will go a long way in helping to de-escalate conflict as regards agendas. Ideas, and the plans we make to push them forward, are all so many blocks on the table. People matter. Agendas are objects of interest to people. But the people are more important than the objects, or agendas, or ideas.

Sometimes, concrete thinkers benefit from visuals or even tactile symbols to help with the relational terms we use (under, over, because of, before, after, not so much as, and more than). When we want to help our literal thinkers learn about the process of organizing time and activities, we use a visual schedule. This makes what we do in planning the day observable, and separate from an invisible and person-centred process. It makes it an object both a child and a caregiver can look at, and manipulate, together. A visual schedule is often magical in defusing daily conflict. The same principle could work in teams where agendas are getting confused with proponents of those agendas. Maybe placing some coloured blocks on a table and labeling them with the ideas would help! Ownership or authorship could be ascribed, but that is not as confusing as when the ideas are seen as the person. Figuring out relationships of one person’s ideas to other people’s ideas could be more playful, and less fraught.

Teams are great, and the more people with the more ideas in them, the greater the potential for creativity, innovation, acquisition of many types of wealth, and flourishing – both of the team and of everyone around them. Inclusive teams need to have space for a lot of rough edges, sharp disagreements, non-overlapping perspectives, and completely new paradigms. That’s what fuels growth and prevents stagnation. Yes, it’s dangerous, as the power of the emotional fuel that drives passion can also blow things up. But that power is so worth it.

Value the people. All of them. In your team, everyone is amazing, before they even show up. After they are safe, and welcomed, and sure of their worth, you will see ideas surface which will be fantastic, but also unexpected, and maybe even scary, sometimes. That’s okay. Put them on the table, and let everyone just consider their characteristics and possibilities without needing to smash them down or keep them under someone else’s ideas or hidden from sight. The ideas aren’t people, and so can be safely treated as objects.

But the people are people. And people will always do better when treated as human.