[Neurons] 2014 "Neurons" Meta Reflections #23

Mon Jun 9 09:04:47 EDT 2014

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2014 #23

June 9, 2014

THE NEURO-SEMANTICS OF BEING

GLORIOUSLY FALLIBLE

Errs.  Mistakes.  Failing to achieve an outcome.  Faults.  Strange that
these very normal aspects of being human are somehow treated as not worthy
of being human.  Yet you were born a fallible human being and no matter how
much development you experience or how long you live, you will always be a
fallible human being.

While working on the leadership that's entailed in businesses as the senior
management level (which led to the book Executive Coaching, 2014), I have
simultaneously been working on the leadership that's required for governing
an organization or a government.  That will lead to Political Coaching which
I'm planning for 2015 as Volume XII in the Meta-Coaching series.  For three
years I've been reading in political science, I have written about Political
Coaching (to the Meta-Coaches  egroup), and I have found myself talking
about it more and more often.

That has led to many questions.   One question I am constantly asked, as an
American, is if I have or would I like to coach President Obama.  And the
answer is, Of course.  And due to all of the scandals that have been
mounting up in the Obama Whitehouse, the lowering of approval and trust in
the poles, the majority of people thinking he has lied to them, etc., he
certainly needs someone other than the political "yes" men that surround him
to coach him. [Of course, this is also equally true for most people in
power, most presidents and most CEOs of companies.]

Now if I were to coach Obama I would focus on something that has repeatedly
occurred that seems to be one of his blind spots.  Recently in the news this
has surfaced again and is one of the saddest things about him, namely his
seeming total inability to admit when he made a mistake.  Even when caught
in a contradiction or incongruency, he seems to be addicted to making
excuses and explaining (justifying) himself.  For instance, he said, "If you
like your doctor (on your health care plan), you can keep your doctor,
period."  When that turned out to not be true, he justified it in several
ways.  Then this past week, when the five terrorists were released for the
sake of a single soldier who evidence seems to indicate was a deserter, he
again justified releasing the terrorists.

This raises lots of questions:

           What is this inability to admit a mistake?

           What causes some people to seem completely unable to acknowledge
what is obvious as an err or a failure and then just apologize, make
whatever amends that can be made, and learning from it, adjust themselves to
do better next time?

           What prevents them from making course-corrections?

           How is it that they seem to not have a reverse gear in
themselves so that they cannot "back up?"

As with everything human, it involves their neuro-semantics.  The semantics
(meanings) that they give to mistakes, errs, failures, etc. and the
neurological states that they go into as a result.  So what meanings do such
persons invest in errs that creates this limitation and inability?  The
meanings that they construct about errors must make errors "bad," fatal, and
contemptful of their value as persons.  They must semantically load an error
so that it is not just an error, it is insult to their dignity, it questions
their value as a person, and it absolutely ruins their relationships and
reputation.

The solution to this?  Easy.  Simple.  It is the recognition that we all
make mistakes.  If you are engaged in doing anything that's significant and
important and/or challenging, then you will make lots of mistakes and make
them every day.  You will make mistakes of the mind, of the heart
(emotions), of speaking, and of doing.  You will mis-perceive,
misunderstand, mis-believe, make decisions that will undermine your
well-being and success, mis-feel about things, mis-speak, mis-behave, etc.
It's inevitable!  And why?  Simply because you are a fallible human being.
You are not and never will be infallible.  If that's distressing, then have
a good cry and get over it.  You are not God with infallible powers.  You
are a human being and a fallible one at that, which is great because it
means you still have new things to learn and develop.

This week here in Mexico one of the coaches-in-training to become a Licensed
Meta-Coach asked, "What if I make a mistake in coaching?  What if I blow-it?
What if I hurt someone?"  I said, "Say you're sorry."  David Murphy said,
"Recognize the mistake and correct it."  Let the person know as soon as
possible that you made a mistake and do whatever you need to in order to
correct it.  Say, "Oops!  That's not right.  Let me do that one again."
Matter-of-factly recognize and acknowledge the mistake, don't try to cover
it up, be real, be human, and do the best you can as you move on.

Doing this gives you a back-up gear so that you can put yourself in reverse.
Then like driving a car, if you go somewhere that isn't where you want to
go, put it in reverse, back up, and then let yourself start again, afresh.
In missile and rocket design, once launched there's lots of things that can
cause the missile to get off target, but no worry.  Make a course correction
midstream.  If cybernetic systems such as rockets can do it, surely human
beings can do it.

In business we call this Risk Management.  So when we design, create, and
innovate something big and wonderful, we set out contingency plans.  We
create Plan B in case things go wrong, Plan C if things go south, etc.  We
think through the risk, calculate the probabilities, and create
contingencies for worst-case scenarios.

In science this is call experimentation.  We set out to experiment on one or
more facets of a problem by altering key variables to see what happens.
When the experiment fails, we have succeeded in learning something.  The
so-called "failure" is a success because we use it for learning, for
adjusting the experiment, and for moving forward to the next experiment. 

In NLP we say, "There is no failure, there is only feedback."  And this is
the genius for recovering from an error, it is how to be gloriously fallible
as a human being, it is how to make course-corrections in mid-stream, and it
is how to not get locked into the limitations of denial of problems,
justification of errors, and refusal to admit that things don't always turn
out as we hoped.  

The neuro-semantics of being gloriously fallible is that a mistake is just
that- a mistake.  So learn from it, put things in reverse, correct it,
experiment, and course-correct.  Here's to being able to recognize the
mistakes and accelerating your learning and to being openly receptive to
mistakes and errors as just evidences of being human.  

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

                Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

                Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

                1 970-523-7877 

                Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net

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