Archetypes

I was on a group mentoring call talking about archetypes as a way of thinking about an issue. The archetypes in this case were: Warrior; Sovereign; Shaman; Lover. I thought this was an interesting tool to use.

 

I started out thinking about how these archetypes functioned in my life in the realm of exercise. The Warrior part of me wants to exercise to be strong; the Sovereign wants me to be healthy; the Shaman enjoys my walks because I can commune with nature, watch the sun rise, listen to the birds, talk to trees, and feed my spiritual aspect; the Lover enjoys the feeling of being healthy and the joy of movement. When I only worked out of the first two, I didn’t exercise much, since it felt like punishment. ‘I must exercise to be healthy but it doesn’t feel good so I want to avoid it.’ It was only when I found the ways that it felt good that I started doing it every day.

My husband is an artist. He needs to draw and paint to feel joy and contentment. So when he spends all his time in his office using Photoshop, he doesn’t feel like he’s working super hard and struggling, he’s doing what he loves. I have looked at him on the computer for hours during the day, and then going back after dinner, and felt entirely inadequate. I can’t focus on my computer that long! But for me, computer time is much more on the side of doing what I should, not what I love. I find joy elsewhere. So it’s not a fair comparison.

I think it’s interesting to apply these archetypes to work, too. Is there a place in your work where you feel joy, or pleasure? Is there a time when you feel connection to something larger? Or is it all about getting ahead and working harder? I think there is a place for a strong warrior and sovereign, so that the right things get worked on, and the work is focused and intent. But if there is no lightness, no connection with something larger, then it feels more like punishment than a cause to work for.

This may explain part of the Gallup numbers saying that only 33% of American workers are fully engaged at work. If work is punishment, I’d want to leave early too! When I have to spend hours working on things I don’t enjoy, I’m not working at my greatest potential, I’m less likely to have the energy to help others, and I want to stop as soon as possible.

So here is the million dollar question – how can you help your employees find pleasure, connection, meaning, and joy from their work?

I’m reading a book about finding your strengths, so I may have more to say in next week’s blog. However, for today, I need to say – it depends. It depends on the things that light up your employees. It depends on what they enjoy, and where they look for meaning. But I can give you a few generalities:

1. Explain the Why. When you tell someone to make 100 phone calls a day, they might rebel. But if you talk about the goals of the organization, and how this effort can help reach the goals, they may be more inclined to put in extra effort and time. Knowing how each person’s part plays into the bigger picture can help people feel like they are creating something bigger than themselves, which can be inspiring.

2. Listen to the People on the Front Lines. Just as they say no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, the people who are implementing your plan are the first ones to see how and where it doesn’t work. You need to know this! Also, they need to be heard. So pay attention! People won’t keep speaking up if you don’t listen the first time.

3. Build Up Your Team. Make sure people know each other, and feel comfortable around each other. Make sure your team knows how to support each other, how to help each other, and that everyone has everyone’s back. Make sure people feel comfortable showing up as their full selves. If someone doesn’t feel welcomed, they won’t put out any extra effort for the group.

In other words, find ways to engage all the archetypes. Help people feel connected, feel wanted, feel part of something they can be proud of. Otherwise, all you get is minimal effort from one part of your workers.

Advertisement

What the Business World can Learn from the Black Panther

So many super hero movies make the bad guy very evil, and the good guy very good, so there’s no question of who you should root for. I thought the movie Black Panther (yes, there will be spoilers, so if you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to wait to read this) did a great job of making the bad guy very understandable.

I’m going to digress for a moment so no spoilers will show up in the beginning of this article. I was reading some Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends & Influence People, originally published in 1936) the other day, and his very first chapter is about how people we consider the bad guys consider themselves good guys. Apparently a then-famous bad guy called “Two Gun” Crowley shot a police officer for asking for his drivers license, but Crowley wrote in a letter “Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one – one that would do nobody any harm.” Carnegie’s point is that no one blames themselves, no one sees themselves as the bad guy. Crowley thought he was defending himself, even though to the rest of the world his actions looked reprehensible.

Likewise, Erik Killmonger in Black Panther believed he was doing the right thing. There is no question that there are Black people across the world being treated poorly. He believed that having better weapons would allow these oppressed people to rise up and destroy their oppressors, allowing them to be fully free. In fact, everyone loves a story of how the oppressed win freedom from the mean bullies in power – look at Star Wars. Everyone believes they are Luke Skywalker, no one thinks they are Darth Vader.

The thing is, how you do a thing matters. Giving people freedom is an important goal. Doing it in a way that kills people is not ideal. Killmonger wants to fight partly because his father was killed when he was a child – but now he’s lost his humanity. He is fighting because his heart was broken, but he’s willing to kill his girlfriend, his allies, his cousin, anyone standing in the way of his goal. In fact, it looks like he would end up as a dictator, rather than providing people more freedom.

The thing is, Killmonger wasn’t entirely wrong. He was right that there are people who need help, that he could help. He was right that Wakanda was standing by and doing nothing, even though they had resources available to help.

What would have happened if T’Challa dug in his heels and said it’s my way or no way? There could have been a victory, but it would have been hollow. It would have been two strong forces fighting to see who was mightier, with many more dead, and with no heart, no humanity left. But that’s not how the story ended. Instead, the king realized there was validity to his opponent’s views, and there was a way to incorporate Killmonger’s desire to help his people with T’Challa’s desire to protect his people. This was a much more satisfactory ending, because the promise was that many more people would be helped without killing others, and in the end heart and humanity matter as ways to be in the world.

That brings me to business. You knew I was going to get here eventually, right? I see many people in business trying to defend their ideas, unwilling to admit that their opponents might have some good ideas too. What happens? People nurse grudges, like Erik Killmonger, until they are strong enough to fight back. Or, people work against the goals of their organizations, like Okoye was helping the women escape from their captors in the beginning of the movie. (According to Gallup, 17% of American workers are working against their employers’ interests.) And instead of coming up with the best ideas, people fight for their way until there’s no one left to fight.

T’Challa had to change what his father had done, and his father before him, for generations – he had to open Wakanda to the rest of the world. This was not a popular choice. But it allowed him to accommodate the desires of Okoye, and Killmonger, and others who felt Wakanda wasn’t doing enough to help other Black people around the world. He had to be willing to stand for his belief that leading with heart was as important as protecting the country his ancestors had founded and kept safe from the world – and he did it because he knew they were strong enough to protect themselves should anyone want to take over. It wasn’t only heart, and it wasn’t only muscle, it was a combination using the best of both.

Do you as a leader listen to your people? Do you listen to your heart? Do you always do what has always been done, or are you willing to hear new ways? Can you be flexible and humble enough to incorporate new ideas into your own? I see T’Challa as a hero, not for being able to fight and survive, but for being able to find a path that can give everyone what they really want – a way to help the people who need help while staying whole themselves.

I haven’t given myself a plug lately – if you need help listening to your people, please contact me. I can help you be a hero too, without bloodshed and without revolution. I don’t have a heart shaped herb, but I do have tools that can incorporate all of your peoples’ good ideas, which leads to happier, more productive people, and better ideas to bring into the world.

Expectations

Expectations mess me up over and over again. Expectations based on insecurity (I won’t have any fun at that party, no one will talk to me) and on confidence (Of course they’ll hire me, I have everything they’re looking for and more). Then – surprise, surprise! – I have fun talking to people at the party, and don’t get the job.

Some expectations are pretty valid, and don’t get challenged often – things like the ground under my feet is solid. Here in California we occasionally get an earthquake to remind us this isn’t always so, but generally it’s true.

Other expectations are wildly arbitrary. I don’t feel like I’m my age, ever. But what is 15, 21, or 40 supposed to feel like? It’s entirely subjective and/or based on cultural ideas that don’t really consider the individual.

Expectations between people are responsible for untold amounts of trouble. I expect you to be prompt, and assume you’re lazy or irresponsible if you’re late. You expect me to be thorough, and assume I’m incompetent if I just scan the surface. So many of these expectations are unspoken, and often unconscious, assumptions of how things are or should be, and when things aren’t that way, we get in trouble.

(Today is Valentine’s Day, and boy is it loaded with expectations! Not even going there. But wow, is it hard to live up to the perfect holiday.)

I’d love to be able to say I totally take things as they are, but I don’t. I try to. I try to recognize when something is my expectation, or the culture’s expectation, and then focus on what is really in front of me. But the truth is, I want things to be a certain way, and I get huffy when they don’t go that way. Eventually I can accept that I didn’t get the job, or that traffic is just bad today and that’s why you’re late, but it takes a while of raging against how the world is.

I guess that makes me human. I’d like to be better than that. Sometimes I am. And sometimes I get tripped up on something I just didn’t see coming, and it pisses me off.

What expectations have you had recently, that didn’t come true? How did you handle it? And what do you expect your partner to do on Valentine’s Day?

How We Drive

I was in slow and go traffic today, thinking about how to drive. I like to go slowly enough to keep a steady pace for as long as I can before having to slow or stop. The person behind me looked like he might have been from the go-as-fast-as-you-can school, which involves a lot of stopping and starting. He seemed frustrated with my slow and steady approach, and I felt stressed out by his tailgating.

Both approaches have validity. People who tailgate might arrive a bit ahead. It might feel like they’re doing more to get where they want to go. They are using every bit of speed available to them. But that approach is also sort of jolting. There’s a lot of sudden stops, desperate acceleration, then dramatic braking. People who go slow and steady miss a lot of the jerkiness. There’s a feeling of spaciousness and ease, even in difficult traffic. But there has to be trust as well that the space in front will stay open, that opportunists won’t leap in front and make you slam on the brakes anyway, only now you’re several car lengths back.

There are things in my life I do in the jerky start and stop way. I pick up new craft projects, rush forward, spend money, get supplies, and then stop. Everything takes up space and gathers dust as my enthusiasm ebbs and dies. Sometimes I pick it up again, sometimes I don’t.

I don’t like the physical feeling of sudden starts and stops. I like the smoother approach to driving because it feels better. But it’s not good for the competitive part of me. I sometimes measure my progress compared to that person with the new license plate in that lane, or the person in the blue car in the other lane. I don’t want to let them in because I want to get there first. But when I can relax and see that it’s actually to everyone’s advantage to allow people to change lanes with enough room, so no one has to slam on brakes and risk hitting anyone, and we can all feel like we are on the road together so let’s make it as easy as possible, then I slow down and allow space.

I can’t help but think that other things are like that in life. That competition gives us a narrow and jerky view of the world. That making space for everyone makes everything feel more spacious. I like to think that I’m helping to calm traffic, so there’s fewer jams, when I’m taking up a lot of space between cars. But even if that’s not true, it’s an approach that just feels right to me.

I’d be interested to hear from the go fast people – what feels right to you about that? I’m sure there’s benefits I’m not thinking of since it’s not my natural style. There should be room enough for all of us on the roads, and all driving styles.

Insight

Johan Roos, one of the creators of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, summed up it’s essence as:

“Seeing the same in a different way and
creating entirely new insights,
in enjoyable ways”

A lot of people are trying desperately to find ways to see the old in a new way. How are we going to come up with the Next Big Thing? We need to find a way to get new ideas that can make us successful.

But think about this – how fun are your meetings? Do you even get insights from them? How rewarding are brainstorming sessions? Are they something everyone dreads?

I believe that being too serious, too afraid, or too disengaged can make any meeting tank. New ideas flourish in a more lighthearted environment. Anything we can do to help our meetings be important but not dry is invaluable. The more serious we get, the more heavy lifting each idea needs to do, and the more likely we are to reject it. With levity, we can let ideas float around for a while to see what about them is valuable, and let multiple ideas bubble around until some of them coalesce into a plan.

This is one reason why bringing in something like LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® can be beneficial – it involves play, which makes it more fun and lighthearted than more serious approaches, but it still gets serious work done. At the end of a workshop, you may understand more than you did before, have ideas of what to do next, compassion for where others are, and a group pride in the work done, without having to slog through some terrible situation to gain group cohesion.

It only takes one person being disengaged to make others stop paying attention; it only takes one person being afraid to keep others from speaking up too; it only takes one person being too serious to keep the atmosphere heavy and uninviting. I’ve seen one person stop brainstorming in its tracks more than once. It takes everyone to make a meeting work.

What are you doing to make your meetings work? How do you keep the atmosphere light, inviting, open, and full of possibility? How do you keep people from shutting everyone else down? And how do you find new insight?