Connell Fanning and Marija Laugalyte
What kind of readers are we? Would we consider ourselves to be good, intelligent readers?
Have we ever found ourselves reading a book presenting an argument for a new idea, finding its argument about the new idea persuasive, but nevertheless not taking it on board, not changing how we think, and continuing as before?
How does this happen for us?
Obstacle to new ideas
Could it be, as Keynes observed, that “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones”? What are the obstacles to us letting go of old ideas, taking on new ones, and implementing them in our living?
One difficulty that arises for us is because we feel an uncertainty about letting go of a familiar idea we are comfortable with and taking on a new idea that we do not yet know how it will ‘work for us’.
At any time, we are comfortable with a set of ideas that we are familiar with as we know from experience what they will do for us in our daily living. New ideas, however, like a new acquaintance, may be of concern to us as to whether we can trust them or not.
Just as with a new acquaintance, we relate to new ideas as whole persons, that is, with our integrated faculties of intellect, reason, emotion, and feeling, which powers we distinguish and separate out only for purposes of our understanding. They are not found in isolation in our living.
Since we don’t always allow and recognise that we react with our faculties of emotion and feeling to new ideas, we may, therefore, continue as before although our intellect and reason may suggest there is a better way of thinking available to us with the new idea.
We have to bridge the ‘Yalom Gap’ from understandings of the intellect and reason to the grasping of the emotion and feeling, thus:
“…the problem …is always how to move from an ineffectual intellectual appreciation of a truth about oneself to some emotional experience of it. It is only when a [method] enlists deep emotions that it becomes a powerful force for change.” [1]
Both are aspects of the one, whole and indivisible, person. They are as Yalom implies connected and intertwined. As Kegan and Lahey say, undertaking development in adulthood is “messy work, …it draws on head and heart, on thinking and feeling.” [2]
Operating at uncertainty
In taking on a new idea, we are confronting ourselves with the challenge of operating at an uncertainty coming from not yet having experience of working with the new idea.
The question arising in us is, will it work for me? But really, the operative question is, can I make it work for me?
Operating at uncertainty is something many of us find difficult and shy away from as much as possible. Nevertheless, to continue our development throughout adulthood we need to devise a way of overcoming such difficulties as otherwise we remain stuck as we are while the world in which we live moves on.
We can think of the challenge of taking on new ideas in the same way as Machiavelli, one of the great realists about human nature, warned of how hard it is to bring even welcome changes in the face of established interests.
The following, with appropriate substitution of new ideas for old ideas, bears contemplation for reflecting on our attitude to new ideas through our internal dialogue of me-and-myself:
“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones…It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.”
Ideas are not abstract things, they are part of us, they are living things and the new struggle with the old within us, just as Machiavelli described about the new and old social orders.
In The Leadership Mind (2022) we address the uncertainty of the world in which we live.
Uncertainty also applies to our selection and use of concepts. When the opportunity to replace a familiar concept with one that might serve us better arises, we may let the opportunity pass because to select and use new concepts is to enter into a relationship of uncertainty with it, at least until such time as we are confident through experience about what it will do for us, as Machiavelli pointed out.
Way forward
We may not always appreciate how we relate with concepts in this way as we tend to see them as abstract and detached from us when in fact, they are very much part of us. This can have us feeling compromised, if not feeling we are betraying our old ideas, when faced with taking on a new idea. We can remain loyal to our familiar concepts long after they are serving us well. These feelings can give us a sense that changing our ideas is bigger than it really is and the uncertainty greater than it will turn out to be.
The zone of transition from an old idea to a new one is a zone of uncertainty as to whether the new idea will work for us or not. Like any zone of danger, we may be reluctant to venture into it. At times, we can only screw our courage to the sticking place. We must head off to conduct experiments in an intentional and deliberate way in order to continue our development in our adulthood. We must also trust ourselves as explorers in the realm of new ideas and expect that we will solve problems in using the new ideas as they arise.
A short transformation practice
We need to think in examples.
Week one: Select an idea that enters into your life and thinking on a regular basis. For reasons that will become clear, we suggest ‘leadership’. Keep a daily diary of examples of the ideas of ‘leadership’ arising during your daily activities, either you referring to it or you hearing other people referring to it in one of its manifestations – ‘leadership’, ‘leader’, ‘leading’, ‘lead’. At the end of the week observe the use of these terms and the context in which they were used and, specifically, any meaning you can ascertain attaching to their use.
Week two: Find a clearly defined and articulated definition for the concept of ‘leadership’. Unsurprisingly, we offer the concept we have formulated in our book, The Leadership Mind (2022), as a well-argued concept with which to work.[3] Any time you find yourself reaching for or exposed to the idea of ‘leadership’ in one of its manifestations, slow your thinking and insert the new conception you are now working with. Check to see whether you feel this idea is working for you, at least as well, if not better, than previously was the case with this idea.
Week three: Observe the old way of thinking and the new way of thinking as alternates in your daily thinking and attend to your reactions as you do so in each case. At the end, with this data to hand, settle on your experience of testing the new idea and implications of doing so.
[*] Thanks to Nuno Reis for comments on an earlier version with the usual disclaimer about responsibility for the views expressed.
[1] Irving Yalom. Love’s Executioner and Other Tales in Psychotherapy. Penguin Books, London, 2013, page 35.
[2] Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock Potential in Yourself and Your Organisation. Harvard Business Press, Boston, Mass., 2009, page 54.
[3] Connell Fanning and Assumpta O’Kane. The Leadership Mind. The Keynes Centre, University College Cork, 2022.
