[Neurons] 2009 Meta Reflections #14

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2009 Meta Reflections #14

March 30, 2009

 

 

SELF-ACTUALIZING LEADERS

MORE RADICAL THAN EVEN I ANTICIPATED!

 

 

 

In the past week I have an the privilege of presenting the idea of
Self-Actualizing Leaders and Companies in several different contexts, TV and
newspaper interviews, a business luncheon, a presentation to lecturers and
professors at an University, and of course at the Unleashing Leadership-
Coaching Self-Actualizing Leadership workshop here in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia.  I have had these opportunities thanks to a visionary Meta-Coach,
Tessie Lim and her business, "World Center of Personal Excellence."

 

Now having presented these ideas numerous places, to a great many people for
the past two years, and in many articles, in two published books and the one
that will be published this year (Unleashing Leadership: Self-Actualizing
Leaders and Companies) I think I had become too used to Self-Actualization
Psychology.  I think I had gotten so familiar with it and around so many
people who share a vision of living life at the highest level-the
self-actualizing life, that I had forgotten how radical these ideas are,
especially to most people on this planet.

 

Several events during the past week have awakened this realization in me.
They have stabbed me awake.  They have sounded all of the alarm bells and
sent the inner lights flashing on and off signaling me to just how radical
is self-actualization as a vision, an idea, and a way of living.  They have
sounded the trumpets to the paradigm shift that this makes in companies and
business.

 

In the past week I have had several wonderful debates and arguments about
whether self-actualization in leaders, organizations, managers, and
employees is even possible.  One top executive challenged me as directly as
anyone.

"That's all nice and good, but let's use some common sense now.  There are
people who won't do what they are told and you just have to dictate to them!
That's just common sense."

 

Of course, the nice thing about being a neuro-linguist and even more a
neuro-semanticist is that I can hear frames in the very language that people
use.  And that really gives an NLP and Neuro-Semantic person a tremendous
advantage, even an unfair advantage on the battlefield of ideas. 

"'Common sense,' you say?  Common to who?  Sense-what sense?  What 'sense'
are you talking about-what pictures, words, sounds, sensations, smells,
tastes?  If you have a 'sense' about people, human nature, people taking on
work, people working with passion, and so on, what is the basis of the way
you are now 'making sense' of the idea that human beings want to learn,
grow, develop, be engaged in their work, achieve, have fun, and all of the
self-actualizing components?  Isn't that just, as you say, 'common sense'?"

 

It's interesting the way a new radical, paradigm-shifting idea can upset the
status quo, challenge the way people have done business, treated other
people, and the semantics meanings that they develop about such concepts as
power, control, authority, hierarchy, bureaucracy, rules, and so on.  I also
find it fascinating how we as human beings can try to defend our minds
against entertaining ideas that take us out of the box of our conventional
thinking.  Later I said,

"The words 'just' and 'only' are edge-of-a-person's-mental-maps words.  They
indicate the place where meaning ends.  'It is just this and it means
nothing more.'  So the phrase, 'It is just common sense' powerfully sets a
frame-by-implication.  It essentially says, 'All of your fancy and
complicated talk about levels of human drives, needs, and impulses is find
and good, but irrelevant in real life; what is actually real and relevant is
how I am used to doing business, that's 'common sense.'  So let's drop ideas
about human psychology and just deal with people as they are.'"

 

Of course, making the covert frames explicit robs them of their power.  So
once you are able to hear frames and to detect frames-everything changes.
Detecting frames opens the unseen, invisible structures of the mental and
emotional boxes that we live our lives in.  Recognizing the
frames-by-implication (the FBI frames) above and beyond the content of a
person's words enables us to see behind the curtain and the Wizard there
pulling the levers and making the presentation of "the great and wonderful
Oz" at the content level.  Now you are able to get to the heart of things
and facilitate transformative change-sometimes in moments.  I love it.

"So you'd rather remain ignorant of know how human nature works, of the
mechanisms that drive yourself and others, of the highest possibilities of
human nature?  You would rather keep doing what you've always done which you
already know doesn't work in the long run?"

 

I asked that of one gentleman who took me on privately.  He said, "Well, no,
not when you put it that way."

"Okay, then what shall we do?  Shall we get beyond the shallow and
superficial excuse about 'the way we've always done it,' the 'common sense'
psychology of our primitive great, great grandfathers, and use the most
transformative understanding of the bright side of human nature?"

 

Yes, he was willing to do that.  Later he came back to say, "I have so many
other old beliefs, old ideas, old experiences that keeps getting in my way.
What do I do about that?"  

"That's great?  You're now fully ready for the next section on 'suspending
meanings."  And if you like, you could use the Crucible pattern to unlearn
as you take those old formulations of meaning and let them melt down and
transform them into more dynamic and empowering beliefs."

 

With the entire group at the training, the old ideas were so much in the way
for many that I provided a challenge.

"Right now these ideas are getting in your way so you can't even cleanly
hear what I'm saying.  Is that right?  Yes?  Okay, so let me ask you to put
all of this on the side for a moment (gesturing to their past) and at the
end of this training during the last hour, let's return to this subject and
see where you are then.  In this way you will be fully informed and able to
make a comparison between your current thoughts on command-and-control
leadership and self-actualizing leadership."

 

Everybody agreed.  And on the last day, at the last hour, I invited a return
to that question.  But no one wanted it then.  They had been experiencing
the processes of actualizing their best leadership style, leadership level,
in their kind of leadership and so the old debate had become irrelevant, had
become redundant.

 

In a country where there is still a strong tradition of old
command-and-control leaders and organizations, in a country where equality
of people is not yet the foundational assumption, where there is not a
belief in the deep democracy of all people, of equal rights, of freedom of
speech, or the right to criticize the government -here self-actualizing
leaders and companies are really a radical paradigm shift.  Revolutionary.

 

And considering all of that, I say, let the revolution begin!   Let there be
a new and true discovery that there's one race on this planet, the human
race; and that the human species have a higher nature and that the design of
Neuro-Semantic NLP is to push for the highest values and vision in human
beings so that you and I can experience and deliver our best performances
and ways of relating.  That's my vision.  If you share it, come join the
self-actualization revolution!

 

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

International Society of Neuro-Semantics

Meta-Coach Training System

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA

1 970-523-7877

1 970-523-5790 fax

      <http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com 

       <http://www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com/>
www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com  --- Check out Trainer's Training for 2009

       <http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

       <http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org  --- see where
and when the 6 Meta-Coach Coaching Bootcamps are schedule in 2009

       <http://www.ns-video.com/> www.ns-video.com 

 

To sign up for a free subscription to the egroup of Neuro-Semantics
(Neurons) go to  <http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com ---
you can  subscribe and unsubscribe there.   Meta Reflection articles by Dr.
Hall are sent out every Monday and meta-Coach Reflections sent out every
Wednesdday to the Meta-Coaches egroup.

 

 

 

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