New Thinking – New Action

LIFE LEADERSHIP DIGEST – Article by Steve Trivett

In the face of VUCA, we are all facing new challenges that require new ways of thinking to generate a commitment to take effective action. This means embracing VUCA and being more deliberate and proactive in learning how to relate to and make sense of what living in a VUCA World could mean for the way we live our lives, run our businesses and organise our communities to give them a more humane focus.

The challenge is to change minds, the way we think and act to serve mutual interests, not selfish interests. This may seem idealistic, but life and leadership are essentially about human creativity and growth. The Life Leadership Project is my way of contributing to this agenda, which is to think differently about leadership and life with the intention of committing to practice actions.

Thinking lies at the heart of leadership and life. The problem is that shallow thinking leads to a superficial life and poor performance at work. Thinking and conversation are the two skills you are expected to develop as an adult to help you navigate your way through life’s breakdowns and opportunities. But how do you engage yourself in deeper thinking so that it changes your way of being?

The paradox of a rapidly changing the complex world means your thinking has to be both intuitive and intentional. In the book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman observes two types of thinking that are used to process complex information and help us make difficult choices. They are:

1. Intuitive, instant, unconscious, automatic and emotional.
2. Intentional, rational, conscious, reflective and reasoned.

The problem here is knowing how and when to use both to best effect.  It is assumed that simple, recurrent, urgent problems require a quick response. Whereas complex and critical decisions need slower, more considered thinking, a fast-moving situation favours unconscious intuitive thinking. The danger here is that in a highly connected world, those quick decisions can lead to serious, unintended consequences. Yet, quick thinking in another situation can help you avoid danger.

Observing your Observer

The problem occurs when our emotions and previous experience produce a biased assessment based on your worldview and level of awareness. The answer seems to lie in your ability to observe yourself thinking and acting. Research suggests that you reason more wisely about other people’s dilemmas than your own. This suggests that to be a powerful observer you need to become more conscious of your thinking and make it more “intentional”. This way you are aware of the language you are using, the mood you are adopting and the body positions and energy level you are displaying that will serve your intentions.

Improving your sensemaking capacities will take practice to develop the habits that will improve emotional control and open the mind to insights and realisations that serve your declared intentions.

For example, you may believe that you should try to reason with someone who is being emotional, suggesting that they need to “get a grip” on reality.  This just creates disconnection. Someone who is absorbed in the flow of their emotions cannot “see”, or be convinced, that their feelings are not serving their intentions. To get unstuck, the emotions have to be validated and accepted, so that the mind can open up to consider intentions or the desired results that allow alternative ways of acting to be embraced.

The nature of thought

Thought is a process that relies on mind and consciousness to create reality. A stream of consciousness happens when your mind seeks to make sense of what is happening. It combines the threads of internal memories and external experiences to give meaning to your words and actions.

Those actions can result from intuition, in which case they are driven by an innate flow of well-practised actions and thoughts (wisdom) that have become your unconscious competence. You are in the flow of feelings and actions, not having to think consciously about what to do next.  This can be a disadvantage when emotions drive a biased, one-sided view of a problem.

With practice,​ you can identify your own biases, for example when you pause to consider the opposite of what seems to make sense to you. This brings you back into a state of “conscious competence” where you can review your intentions.  Taking a moment to step back and take time out to reconsider your options before you press on, can cause you to question your beliefs and justify your unconscious assessment.

Intuitive ways of behaving can be an advantage, particularly when you are dancing or playing a sport. But this unconscious competence can blind you to errors because you are not conscious of your bad habits until they no longer work for you. There are times when conscious thinking can be an advantage when you need to become more aware of the language you are using, the mood you are in and your posture, to give them a purpose and avoid unintended consequences. 

This website offers you new ways of thinking intuitively and intentionally about life and leadership. You will gain invaluable insights and new practices in how to adapt your thinking to see patterns of events and relationships from multiple perspectives. You will also find learning resources to help you engage in ‘deliberate practice’ that will help you get breakthrough results from your actions.

The OAR Model

This model allows you to see how the results you look for are driven by the way you observe the beliefs that shape the world you see so you can question your assumptions and resolve your concerns. This often involves you in reframing your thoughts to help you become aware of different patterns and perceive what you were previously unaware of. This can come from intuitive insights or intentional questioning.

The beliefs you hold, which in turn colour your thinking and shape the way you interpret what you observe, are reflected in your choices and the way you interpret the intentions of others.

If you are a deep thinker you are likely to be a more powerful observer, simply because you are questioning your habitual thoughts and feelings. If you were to think differently about a problem, the results you seek may be seen differently revealing new possibilities for action. These new actions could lead to results that better serve your intentions. In other words, they make more sense logically or intuitively.

Effectively, you have created a new way of being and doing. This produces results capable of delivering what really matters to you. You are focused on the things you really care about, that are important to others and good for the environment.

New actions are made possible because you are making new distinctions from your different observations.  Your decision-making becomes more conscious, with assessments being made moment-to-moment. You are pausing to consider alternative perspectives and new ways of thinking. This requires a “learner” mindset where curiosity and questioning take precedence over unconscious habits and past assumptions. New thinking leads to new action as blind spots are revealed and awareness is raised.

For example . . .

• Thinking about how an employer assesses you, you might want to clean your shoes, smile and straighten your back to change the way you are seen.
• Thinking about what you will need to be a better manager, you might want to create a workplace mood or culture of accountability, shared commitments and effective action.

Moving from now to new

Leadership and life are performance arts. You are showing others through your actions a way of knowing what an effective life and effective leadership is all about. Being an effective leader is a learning journey based on deliberate practice. This means equipping yourself to be a better learner. You have to be prepared to be self-directed and push yourself to be more open and less judgemental.

Gaining a deeper understanding of human capacities requires experience, practising how to  “know” yourself and others better as human beings. You are expanding the type of thinking that will reveal the weaknesses in “now” to see the value of moving to something “new”. This requires you to see with new eyes and be a more powerful observer. As a result, you begin to see different situations, people and ideas differently. You become more open to alternative perspectives.

This drives you to make . . .

• New distinctions
• New perceptions
• New actions

Creating a new reality or worldview requires movement. Knowing is not doing and thinking is not enough. Your choice of actions must serve a longer-term goal or intention. It’s important to start fast and build momentum. This stops you finding excuses and enables you to see more clearly what the barriers are and how best to tackle them.  You are then spending limited time tackling the most debilitating habits by going deeper to reveal your blind spots and pay attention to what you care about most.

For example, you could ask . . .

• What are you concerned about?
• How do you feel about that?
• What concerns you most about that?
• What do you want to do about it?
• How could you achieve that?
• What would you need to do differently?
• What difference would it make?
• Why is that action meaningful to you?
• What will you do next?

In essence, you are asking:

WHAT are you going to pay attention to?

SO WHAT does it mean that makes sense to you?

NOW WHAT will you do about it?

Below is a graphic you can use to help tease out what is and is not working for you, and where best to focus your attention so that the change is meaningful and actionable. See your Reality Creators.

All knowing is doing

If your thinking is simple and obvious you will only ever know something at a superficial level. Consequently, acting to get better results will be limited to taking different actions, not from deeper thinking. Shallow thinkers are resistant to facing facts or exploring possibilities. They operate in a mood of anxiety, as uncertainty can be unsettling. The brain likes to make good predictions. When it fails the mind experiences a “breakdown” in its processing.  See your Mood Managers.

Deep thinkers understand more and will consider the whole chain of effects, impacts, and outcomes. The reasons for their choices will be grounded in logic, analysis and verifiable facts. Shallow thinkers are incapable of finding the energy and commitment required to consider alternatives before making a decision.

A major blind spot is believing that you manage your time. What you actually manage are your commitments. To do this you have to negotiate priorities, build relationships, agree on standards for satisfaction and make responsible complaints. Knowing how to do these things is one thing, learning from experience is quite another.

Thinking about results can take us away from assessing the actions we are taking in the present moment. Managing your today will not fulfil someone else’s unspoken and unmet expectations and assumptions about the future. It’s our perspectives that shape the observers that we are – not the truth.

You are programmed to look for things that you like and opinions that support your own. Views and events that grate on you get a rapid, negative emotional reaction. This is why fake news is so powerful. The message fits your sense of who you are and your status within your social group. As a result, you hang on to a way of seeing things and becomes “your” truth – not “the” truth. Both can get confused but the mind defends what it believes is “you” as opposed to what it believes is “not you”. This is is the autopoietic nature of your nervous system that protects your identity from dangerous memes – as if they were infectious viruses.

After the event, you may realise that your assumptions were wrong and can’t understand how you could be so blind to an obvious fact that caused you personal embarrassment. process failures or even fatalities.  It’s shallow thinking that causes you to turn a blind eye, stay in your comfort zone or defend your ego. Being more conscious of your assumptions and questioning them by considering unintended consequences could reveal your biases and face up to the dilemmas it raises. This might mean being more aware of what is going on around you in your relationships with those in authority (top-down dynamics), your family or colleagues (bottom-up dynamics) and demands from your customers, clients or stakeholders (outside-in dynamics).  See your Energy Producers.

Thoughts precede actions, feelings and results

You have to have a mind and be conscious to produce thoughts. The mind brings together sensory data and observations from both outside and inside the body to create a virtual interpretation of the world inside your head that you then act out to engage with others.  You live your life from the inside out. What’s “out there” are just objects that you make sense of and use to produce the movie that is your life.

Your mind is capable of producing, scripting, directing and acting out what it has rehearsed will happen. Your nervous system knows what you will do seconds before you act. Most of what you think is your free will has already been chosen for you. That is until you become conscious of processes in brain and body use to interpret your experiences and intervene by making conscious choices about the distinctions you will make.  You can choose to observe your thinking and see things differently, feel them differently and act on them differently.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”– Aristotle