'Teaching an Anthill to Fetch: Developing Collaborative Intelligence @ Work'

“Steve walks beside us telling us stories, drawing images, crack-
ing jokes and pointing out the evidence that human intelligence can
deliver so much more than we allow it … a welcome guide to the
learning journey.”
Marilyn Hamilton, Ph.D., C.G.A., Founder of Integral City

“Weaving Collaborative Intelligence (CQ) into organizations is an
idea for it’s time. Instilling CQ in the learning and actions of all
employees of an organization is a vital resource to engage everyone
in the real work. Joyce’s book is a must read.”
Dr. Stephen Hobbs, author Help Them to Help YOU Lead

“Stephen delights in bringing us to a richer realization, and more
complete picture of our collaborative intelligence. A practical book
that points out the skills that enable us to master our own collabo-
rative capacity.”
J. Brian Woodward, Ph.D. Senior Faculty,
Leadership Development & Leadership Learning Lab,
The Banff Centre, Canada

“Get out of autopilot and read this book. Full of wisdom and insight,
you may not think about work and the difference you can make, in
quite the same way ever again…”
Paul Belcher, Trainer, Consultant and Coach, ABL World

“Stephen has the uncanny ability to make the complex understood.
Teaching an Anthill to Fetch is about liberating human potential.
Insightful as it is practical, the author puts forward a simple set of
higher order rules that organizations can use to succeed, regardless
of what the future might bring. …rediscover the unbounded resilience
that lies at our fingertips when we come together and collaborate
effectively.”
Clifford Wessel, Performance Consultant & Coach

“Immediately useful…. Teaching an Anthill to Fetch is a contempla-
tive practice for building a better life.”
Don Hill, Media Thought Leader

“Anyone who enjoys a good story will certainly relish the Irish lilt
of Joyce’s voice which comes through on each and every page.”
Michael K. Mauws, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Business
Policy & Strategy, Athabasca University

“Teaching an Anthill to Fetch provides a valuable path to strengthen
the emergent survival skill — collaboration. With novel features
like “Go Deeper” and practical “Tools”, this is a new road map to
make Collaborative Intelligence really work @ Work!”
Roger Gullickson, President/CEO, MVP Collaborative

“Teaching an Anthill to Fetch is a must-read. This book provides
valuable insights that will benefit any organization undertaking change
and wanting to get the most out of its most important asset — its
human resources.”
Rick Thrale, Community Futures, Alberta

“[Teaching an Anthill to Fetch is] … a practical handbook with sug-
gestions and exercises to help us to improve our team’s “Collaborative
Intelligence”. A great addition to the canon of leadership literature.”
Peter McNab, author of Towards An Integral Vision

“This book will help managers and team leaders see the learning
terrain more clearly … an appreciation of the awesome power of
collaborative intelligence.”
Will Black, executive coach, SourceS of Executive Action

Teaching
an Anthill
to Fetch
Developing Collaborative
Intelligence @ Work

STEPHEN JAMES JOYCE

Stephen James Joyce, 2007

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ISBN-10: 0-9780312-0-2
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Printed and bound in Canada
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Joyce, Stephen James, 1959-
Teaching an anthill to fetch : developing collaborative intelligence @ work /
Stephen James Joyce.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-9780312-0-6
1. Teams in the workplace. 2. Cooperativeness. 3. Group decision making.
4. Group problem solving. I. Title.
HD31.J69 2007 658.4'022 C2007-901053-9

Editor: Catherine Leek of Green Onion Pubishing
Interior Design and Electronic Page Composition: Kim Monteforte of
WeMakeBooks.ca
Cover Design: Dianna Little
Cover Image: © Ron Elmy/Firstlight

Dedicated to Sandy, Zoey and Leland,
the most wonderful people in my life.
For all the love and joy you have given me.

'Teaching an Anthill to Fetch: Developing Collaborative Intelligence @ Work'

2

Acknowledgments

A number of people gave me specific input that strengthened this
work and I would like to thank them — Judy Kidd, Brian Woodward,
Ken Lowe, Keith Webb, Don Hill, Gary McPherson, and Dan Dybl.
This book has taken form because of the excellent skill and
guidance of a number of other people: my editor, Catherine Leek of
Green Onion Publishing, who acted as mentor and editor and guided
me through the process so gracefully; Kim Monteforte for her won-
derful help with production and lay-out; Dianna Little for her patience
and dedication and for creating a super cover design; and Jane
Atkinson, my coach, for helping me to stay focused and “find my
lane”. Thanks guys it has been an enriching and joyful journey.
Finally to the most important person in the entire project —
Sandy my highly talented and supportive partner. Without her this
book would never have seen the light of day.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Word or Two About this Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
An Introduction of Sorts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1: ASSUMPTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
CQ TOOL 1: Checking Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Chapter 2: PERCEPTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
CQ TOOL 2: Developing Perceptual
Flexibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Chapter 3: SELF-MASTERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
CQ TOOL 3: Self-Mastery and Eliciting a
Well Formed Outcome . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Chapter 4: COMMUNICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
CQ TOOL 4: Exploring the Conversation Café . . . 117

Chapter 5: CONNECTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
CQ TOOL 5: Building Connection
Through Appreciation . . . . . . . . . . . 146

Chapter 6: CREATIVITY & FLEXIBILITY . . . . . . . . . . . 149
CQ TOOL 6: Developing Creative Capacity . . . . . 166

Chapter 7: MEANINGFUL PARTICIPATION . . . . . . . . 171
CQ TOOL 7: Exploring Values to
Discover Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

viii TEACHING AN ANTHILL TO FETCH

Chapter 8: BUILDING HIGH CQ TEAMS . . . . . . . . . . 193
CQ TOOL 8: The LEADing Change System . . . . . 200

So Where Are We Going . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Go Deeper Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Speaking and Consulting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Take the CQ Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

2

A Word or Two
About this Book

Teaching an Anthill to Fetch: Developing Collaborative Intelligence
@ Work has been designed to be a practical tool for developing CQ
in the workplace. Toward that end, we have provided a number of
navigational tools.

There are a number of places throughout the book
where we provide a “Go Deeper” feature. These are
opportunities to explore the ideas covered in more
depth through the Web site www.anthillsite.com.
Here you will find web links connected to various
topics.

CQ Tool Exercises, called “CQ Tools”, are placed at the end
of each chapter. These are designed to develop
deeper collaborative intelligence and will challenge
and motivate you and your team.

2

An Introduction
of Sorts

Ants, and all other insects that live in colonies, appear to be hard-
wired to serve. By doing so, they ensure their survival. An anthill
can survive and feed itself in some of the most hostile environ-
ments. No single ant knows how it all works — nor does it need to.
Individually, ants are not that smart, but together they are very
intelligent. The ant serves the anthill, which in turn serves the ant.
The community the ants create and work to support is well equipped
to cope with the challenge of change. In other words, the ant and
the colony it belongs to is a good example of high level collaborative
intelligence (CQ).

Collaborative Intelligence (CQ) is defined as the
capacity to harness the intelligence in networks
of relationships.

Jim Donehey was the CEO of Capital One, the credit card com-
pany, when he coined the phrase, “You can’t teach an anthill to fetch.”
He was referring to the task of helping his organization of 1800 peo-
ple adapt and respond to a very competitive and rapidly changing
marketplace. The challenge facing Doheney was how to focus the
attention of the entire organization around vital business objectives.

2 TEACHING AN ANTHILL TO FETCH

Whether we are working inside a small team in a non-profit
organization or in a large, multinational conglomerate, dealing with
change is the ongoing challenge. Change forces us to adapt. Our
adaptability defines how successful we are in dealing with change
and how resilient we are.
Resilience is our ability to bounce back and recover from adverse
conditions. It is the innate ability to respond resourcefully to
challenges in our environment. Ray Kurzweil, author of The Age
of Spiritual Machines, has calculated that the next century will be
accompanied by 20,000 years of technological progress compared to
today’s rate of change. Therefore, our ability to adapt and respond
to change is going to play a crucial role in the success of our species.
As the pressure to deal with change increases upon individuals,
teams, and organizations, resilience will become more central to
business. Tapping into individuals’ and teams’ natural resilience will
become an essential element of business survival and success. As
teams become increasingly virtual, productivity increases will be
required; leadership skills will be demanded from more and more
of the team’s membership. Our capacity for resilience will be tested
on a daily basis. However, when groups of people adapt and respond
collectively incredible things happen. This is where collaborative
intelligence becomes vital.
Nature is a vigorously adaptive system. The evolution of life
is the history of adaptation. Ants have adapted to the challenge of
building supportive colonies by applying some very simple rules.
The argument of this book is that, for humans there are some
simple “rules” that can enable us to work much more effectively
together. These rules are much more like skills that we already have
onboard and that we simply need to further enhance. Given the
right circumstances, people and teams can embrace and develop
these skills. By doing so, they are expanding their collaborative
intelligence (CQ).

AN INTRODUCTION OF SORTS 3

So What If You Could Teach an Anthill to Fetch?

This book takes a skill-building approach to the development of the
CQ of teams. Each chapter ends with a skill-building exercise (CQ
Tools ). The elements making up the development of CQ are:

1. Assumptions
2. Perception
3. Self-Mastery
4. Communication
5. Connection
6. Creativity/Flexibility
7. Meaningful Participation
8. “High CQ” Teams

We must begin within ourselves and so we begin in chapter 1
by checking assumptions. Choosing those ideas that will serve us
and our team has a fundamental impact on the success of all other
activities. Those assumptions will determine what sort of percep-
tions we have. Our perception of situations and other people affects
how we respond to what happens to us. To adjust assumptions and
manage our perceptions requires self-mastery. Self-mastery enables
us to make the most of our personal resources. However, with all
the self-mastery in the world, if we are unable to communicate effec-
tively with others, we will be unable to affect the world around us.
Now we can move beyond ourselves to the bigger world and
others. With great communication skills, we are able to build deep
connection with others. Through connection, we create personal
and team alignment, focusing our individual and group energies
more effectively. This action raises productivity and helps create a
stable team with higher levels of CQ. A team with deep and effective
connection will be able to tap into greater levels of creativity and


flexibility. These can be further enhanced through skill-building
exercises. Creative and flexible teams are able to adapt and respond
to a rapidly changing environment.
When the going gets tough, people (and teams) need to know
there is purpose to what they are trying to achieve. Meaningful
participation provides a sense of purpose and direction.
The Chinese have a proverb, “May you live in interesting times.”
There is no debate that this has become true for us. How to deal
with these interesting times is a lively and important debate. One
thing is true, only when we can bring more of our CQ into play, will
we be able to manage the levels of change occurring within business
and society today. By increasing our collaborative intelligence, we
truly are “teaching an anthill to fetch”.

1

Assumptions

To a worm in horseradish,
the whole world is horseradish.

YIDDISH PROVERB

The sea squirt provides us a cautionary tale. When it is born, it floats
through the open oceans seeking a place to make its home. Once the
sea squirt finds a solid piece of ocean floor on which to attach itself,
it does a peculiar thing. The sea squirt eats its brain. Having achieved
its objective, a firm anchor within the ocean, it no longer needs its
brain. You may know people like the sea squirt. They have a firm
anchor in life or at work and, apparently, have long since consumed
their brains. Zoologists say that the sea squirt shares 80% of our DNA.
Some people probably share more than that. The sea squirt assumes
that nothing is going to change in its environment and that it will no
longer need to make significant adjustments. This may work for the
sea squirt, but human beings can’t afford to follow suit.


The Collective IQ Paradigm

Our society is changing rapidly. Intellectual intelligence (IQ) and
emotional intelligence (EQ) are necessary but not sufficient in order
to thrive in this world. Increasingly, we are expected to be able to
harness the power of the group or network to achieve objectives.
Collaborative intelligence, or CQ, has become increasingly important.
The term “collaborative intelligence” was coined by William Isaacs
in his book, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together. He defines
CQ as the ability to build, contribute to and manage the power found
in networks of people.
The development of our collaborative intelligence requires us
to embrace a new paradigm. This new paradigm involves viewing
all living things as deeply connected — an idea called “entangle-
ment” in quantum mechanics. It follows then that there exists a
collective intelligence to which we all contribute and to which,
potentially, we all have access. Here is an example of what I mean.
A room with 30 people in it, whose average age is 35, represents
over 1000 years of life experience. Imagine the level of this team’s
CQ when processes that are designed to tap into the vast amount
of collective life experience of this group are put into place.
Recently I worked with a group of mid-wives who had been
experiencing some team challenges. In the past they had been a
very resilient team, overcoming many significant challenges. More
recently the team members had found themselves at odds with
each other. Furthermore they had decided that a single individual
was the source of all their problems. Rather than try to replace this
person, the director decided to work with the team and attempt to
resolve the issue. After the team had taken part in a facilitated dia-
logue around some of the pressing issues, they began to realize that
they had all played a part in the circumstances leading up to the
problems. Once this fact surfaced, they were able to explore exercises

ASSUMPTIONS 7

that enabled them to reconnect as a team. During a follow up ses-
sion, it was reported that they had begun to function as a resilient
team once more. We cannot begin to embrace a new paradigm unless
we are willing to loosen our grip on the old one.

Acts of individual leadership are ineffective for
changing a paradigm. It is a community-building
process that must challenge and transform a
collective worldview.
GOZDZ

Strengthening our CQ is more than simply learning to get along
with each other. It requires that we begin to look at ourselves in a
new way. It demands that we see ourselves as deeply interconnected
with all of life and especially with all of humanity. Embracing this
way of thinking will have noticeable effects on how management
and teams operate. The significant challenges facing our societies
can be overcome if we embrace our deep connection and then
act accordingly.
The pressing issue is how do we tap into the CQ we all need as
individuals and teams to meet the challenges of the future? At the
most fundamental level, natural systems, of which we are a part, are
cooperative rather than competitive. Competition takes place within
the larger context of a highly cooperative system. In this way CQ is
already a part of nature. As human beings, we express our collabo-
rative intelligence in certain places, especially when we are placed
in extremely challenging situations. Fire fighters, police officers, and
emergency response teams, for example, report high levels of closely
cooperative synchronized team behavior when things get tough.
These are examples of CQ coming to the surface and enabling teams
to behave resiliently. Throughout this book we will discover that
CQ is a central tenet of all resilient systems, teams, and individuals.


Assumptions and Behaviors

If you try to change your behavior without first
changing the underlying structure causing that
behavior, you will not succeed. This is because
structure determines behavior, not the other
way around.
ROBERT FRITZ

One of the most persistent assumptions about business is that
we can only prosper with a strong sense of competitiveness. Other
companies in the same industry are viewed as the enemy to be
beaten, out-maneuvered or destroyed. When we look closely at
natural systems, however, we find a different story.
Fritjof Capra put it like this in The Web of Life, “Detailed study of
ecosystems over the past decades has shown quite clearly that most
relationships between living organisms are essentially cooperative
ones, (my emphasis) characterized by coexistence and interdepend-
ence, and symbiotic in various degrees. Although there is competition,
it usually takes place within a wider context of cooperation, so that
the larger system is kept in balance.” If natural systems hold the
key to developing our own resilience, then we have to take a new
look at the role competition and cooperation play in human systems
(politics, business, etc.).

GO DEEPER
Natural Systems: www.anthillsite.com

ASSUMPTIONS 9

Water — What Water?

Within the Zen tradition there is a story about two fish. One fish
tells the other of a strange experience it had.
“I was swimming along and noticed a tasty morsel. I grabbed it,
but a sharp, shiny, hard thing got stuck in my mouth. Suddenly, I
was pulled from the water and the next thing I knew I was in a whole
new world. A great big thing grabbed me and pulled the sharp, shiny,
hard thing from my mouth and threw me back into the water.”
The other fish looks shocked and asks, “Water? What water?”
The last animal to discover water would be a fish, just as we are
the last ones to discover our assumptions about reality because we
are so immersed in them.

ANY assumption can be made, but not all
assumptions are created equal, and from their
deductions you will know them.
JOHN EIDSER, GLOBAL BRAIN

Assumption — Checking as a Skill

The first of the seven skills that develop CQ and build resilient teams
is checking and adjusting individual and team assumptions.
Assumptions play such a central role in day-to-day life that, for the
vast majority of time, we never notice them. One of the most impor-
tant things assumptions do, however, is act as building blocks for
our beliefs. There are a number of ways to change beliefs. One of
the most effective ways is check and adjust the assumptions that
support the belief.
It would be impossible to make it through the day without rely-
ing on some assumptions. Without them, life becomes much too


complex. Doing the simplest things would become a series of com-
plex decisions of nightmare proportions. Therefore, we have to make
assumptions in order to get through each day.

How Did I Get Here?

We have all experienced the phenomenon of driving to work and won-
dering “How did I get here?” It is almost as if we were in a trance as
we drove the well-known route. We were running on auto-pilot. Auto-
pilot offers advantages and disadvantages. This highly-automated
piece of our behavior may bring us predictable results, and some of
those results may be highly desirable. Other results may be unwanted
and problematic. For example, the auto-pilot you use to drive to
your office enables you to plan the day ahead as you navigate the
traffic. The downside is that when adjustments to the route are
required — such as picking up a colleague on the way to work, it
may not get done. Your auto-pilot wins over and your colleague loses
out. Other times, you are the one who loses out. How many times
have you found yourself driving to work when you had intended to
make a trip to the store?
Individuals are not the only ones who can run on auto-pilot;
teams can do it too. Supported by assumptions that go unchecked
and unchallenged, teams can continue to run the same old routines
for a long time before anyone notices what’s happening. If the same
old routine is getting you and your team the results you need, then
that’s a good thing. If not, then maybe it is time to lift the hood and
have a peek into what’s driving the team’s behavior.
We all have experienced times when seemingly endless rounds of
meetings produce no noticeable results. We find ourselves thinking that
we’ve wandered into “Dilbert-land”. The definition of insanity is doing
the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Many
times the problem lies with unstated and unchallenged assumptions.

ASSUMPTIONS 11

Good Servants But Bad Masters

Everyone I meet professionally for the first time receives a piece of
string (it’s threaded through my business card). The piece of string
acts as a reminder for the story I share when they ask me what the
piece of string represents.
I grew up on a 22-acre farm in the County of Down, Northern
Ireland. When I was ten, my Dad sent me down to one of the pastures
with a portable electric fence. He told me to fence the cows into a
corner of the field. A few days later he came back and told me to go
and take the fence down. “Use it to section off the bulls in the lower
pasture,” he said. “But Dad,” I said, “what about the cows?” He said,
“Oh just put a piece of string around them.” I said, “A little piece
of string isn’t going to hold in a whole herd of cows.” “Just do as
you’re told,” was his reply.
So — liking life — I did as
I was told and replaced the What shocks me is that as
electric fence with a piece intelligent human beings we
of string. often allow ourselves to be
A few days later I went fenced in by a piece of string.
to check on the cows. They
were standing in an area of
scruffy, beaten down grass — hardly anything worth eating. All
around them grew lush, green grass, and the only thing separat-
ing them from it was that flimsy piece of string and their belief that
that piece of string would “shock” them.
What shocks me is that as intelligent human beings we often
behave exactly like those cows. We allow ourselves to be fenced in
by a piece of string — our beliefs. Rather than enabling us to live
our lives fully, our beliefs often dictate what we can and cannot do.
This is why I say that beliefs make good servants but bad masters.
One of the most common mistakes we make is holding our beliefs


to be true while refusing to accept all evidence to the contrary. This
is the very definition of dogma.

Software of the Brain

Running in the background, beliefs (and the assumptions that help
create them) act like the software of the brain. We don’t notice them
most of the time and usually only become aware of them when they
begin to cause trouble, for example, when they prevent us from
achieving things we really want. In presentations, I ask people to
put their hands up if they like to be wrong. Understandably, there
isn’t much response to that request. The truth is, we all like to be
right, and this is just as true when it comes to our beliefs. Like some-
thing to which we have habituated, we no longer notice them (water?
What water?). We begin to treat those beliefs as if they were essen-
tial truths that really exist, rather than relative points of view that
we adopted at some point in the past.
When your computer begins to cause trouble, once hardware
issues have been ruled out, you then check the software running on
the computer. So it is with our beliefs and assumptions. Just as there
are typical things that cause software to malfunction, so there are
certain types of beliefs that typically cause trouble.

Limitations of Our Beliefs

As remarkable as it is, even the human brain has its limitations. When
we examine the types of beliefs that typically cause us trouble, we
find they fall into three categories. We will briefly explore each of
these now.

ASSUMPTIONS 13

Hopelessness

In this case, the desired change is not possible, there is no hope.
Take, for example, a physically handicapped man, who wishes to
climb Mount Everest. Each time he thinks about the task, he also
thinks no one who has his physical challenge has ever done it,
so it’s probably not possible — a wonderful dream, but hopeless.
Another way of thinking about this type of belief is that the desired
change is not possible for anyone; there is literally no hope.

Helplessness

In this instance, the desired change is possible for other people, just
not for you. Our physically handicapped man may hear about some-
one else with a similar physical challenge who has climbed Everest.
In this case, however, he might choose to believe that it was possible
because someone else has achieved it, but he would not be capable.
In other words, it’s possible, but he feels personally helpless.

Worthlessness

Finally, in this situation the desired change is possible and you are
capable of achieving it, but you are not worth it; you do not deserve
the change. This is possibly the most tragic of the three types of
limiting beliefs. In the case of the physically challenged person con-
templating the ascent of Everest, he may have evidence that it is
possible and that he does, indeed, have a chance at success. However,
he doesn’t think he is worthy or deserves to achieve it and so doesn’t
try (or try as hard as he should).
If you listen to people talk about their shattered hopes and
unfulfilled desires, you will notice that most of the limiting beliefs
in operation fall into one of these three categories. The point in


categorizing the beliefs is that if you can spot the type of limiting
belief in operation, you can make the appropriate adjustments to
overcome it.

Challenging These Limitations

A simple way to dislodge a hopelessness belief is to “act as if” it
were possible. Roger Bannister acted as if it were possible to break
the four-minute mile barrier. He also trained accordingly, rather than
sitting around waiting to see what would happen. In this case actions
really can change beliefs.
In the case of a limiting belief related to helplessness, one of the
best ways to address it is by searching out a counter example. That is,
look for those who have already achieved the thing — after all, they
are living proof that the objective is attainable. Looking to our heroes
(sporting or otherwise) can be useful for finding appropriate models.
Beliefs related to worthlessness require that we check the deeper
reasons we feel unworthy of the desired goal and address that issue.
Self-esteem is often underestimated in relation to the powerful effect
it can have on our performance. Negative messages received when
we were children often determine what we think we deserve and,
until they have been checked and adjusted, will continue to do so.

The Santa Clause

If you grew up in North America, you probably believed in Santa
Claus when you were a child. This is “beliefs stage one” where you
believe everything that you are told. As you grew older you discov-
ered, usually from older kids, that Santa Claus didn’t exist. This is
“beliefs stage two” where you realize that some things you are told
are true and some are not, and it is your task to decide which is

ASSUMPTIONS 15

which. As you got older and had children of your own, you probably
told them about Santa Claus and helped them create that fantasy.
This is “beliefs stage three” — you have now become Santa Claus
(which is why I call it the Santa “Clause”). You realize at this point
that some beliefs can be useful, even if they
are created. At another level, you may even
realize that all beliefs are created. Creating All beliefs are
the belief in Santa Claus was a beneficial created and,
thing. The belief enables children and parents therefore, can
to take part in a centuries-old tradition involv- be changed.
ing ritual, mystery, and fantasy. However,
holding onto the original kind of belief about
Santa Claus (that he is a real person with a very unusual sleigh and
so forth) into adulthood would not be very useful.

Reality Is What We Notice

What we assume about life has a fundamental effect on the way we
interact with it. Everyone knows at least one person who has a very
negative view of life. Such people expect the worst and often they
are not disappointed. Their success in predicting the worst is based
in part on the connection between intention and attention. That is,
our attention is directed by our intention. There is a portion of our
nervous system that plays a role in connecting intention and attention.
It is called the ascending reticular activating system (aRAS) and it is
located in the brainstem. The aRAS acts as a pattern recognition sys-
tem and strongly affects the brain’s arousal. The way this part of the
brain works helps to explain how our thoughts manifest into reality.
Best-selling author Gary Zukav explains the process succinctly, as
follows: “Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true
is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions.


What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look
for depends upon what we think. What we think depends upon what
we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we
believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true
is our reality.”
In other words, the assumptions we make about reality play a
large part in creating that reality. We make so many assumptions that
we cease to be aware of them. Becoming aware of the basic assump-
tions we use can be a tricky process. Seeing through our assumptions
about reality is an important part of becoming enlightened in many
of the great spiritual traditions such as Sufi and Zen. There, stories
and puzzles (known as koans in Zen) are used to enable students to
break out of limiting assumptions about reality. The story line of the
movie The Matrix (based on the very same ideas and the principles
themselves) dates back thousands of years.

GO DEEPER
Assumptions about Reality: www.antihillsite.com

What Do Assumptions Have to Do with CQ?

What we assume about ourselves, life, and other people has a tremen-
dous impact on how we operate as human beings. Consider the
central assumption about resilience — that we are all inherently
resilient. This assumes everyone has resilience as an onboard capac-
ity. Making this assumption affects the attitude we take toward
ourselves and the way we treat others. In turn this affects the level
of CQ we can tap into.
Many organizations already operate on this assumption of
resilience with regard to employee development. An example is

ASSUMPTIONS 17

Appreciative Inquiry (AI). AI is an organizational development
approach that assumes it is more effective to concentrate on what
is working within an individual, team, and company, rather than on
what is not working. A core principle within the Appreciative Inquiry
model is questioning assumptions. Practitioners of AI report that
once the questioning process has begun, people become inspired to
question other previously unquestioned assumptions. Such question-
ing is a crucial first step to any real change within organizations.
The shared assumptions of a group or team have a very strong effect.
Helping a team become aware of its shared assumptions can be the
single most important source of positive change. Some organiza-
tional development programs bring in their own processes and
assumptions. Rather than layering on another set, it makes more
sense to discover what assumptions (useful or not-so-useful) have
created the system that is in operation now.

Self-Fulfilling Prophets and Losses

Assumptions easily become self-fulfilling prophesies (or profits and
losses when they operate within a business). They act as filters on
our perceptions, and we literally see what we have programmed our-
selves to look for. In turn, our perceptions of events will determine
our own responses. Our responses have specific effects and usually
provide further evidence to support the original assumption.
For example, suppose you suspected someone (made an assump-
tion about them) of being dishonest. This assumption would cause
you to filter all your observations of that person for dishonest
behaviors. This affects the other person, who may wish to reassure
you that he is honest. The more the person tries to convince you of
his trustworthiness, the more you become convinced that he has
something to hide. The original assumption about his dishonesty


enabled you to redefine the meaning of his behavior. Voilá — the
power of self-fulfilling prophesies!

Figure 1.1
The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy Cycle

Assumptions Perceptions

Self-fulfilling
Prophesy
Evidence Events

Assumptions

What Do You Believe about the Problem?

It is very tempting, when faced with a problem, to stop and ask
“What do I or we need to do to solve this problem?” This question
addresses the challenge at the level of behavior and, although there
is no harm in this question, it does not get at the deeper issues. A
more fundamental and useful question to ask is, “What do I need to
believe in order to solve this problem?” Maybe we are having diffi-
culty with someone who reports to us or with someone to whom we
report. It is useful to ask, “What assumptions am I making about

ASSUMPTIONS 19

this situation/person?” Often, we discover that something we are
assuming is helping to create the problem in the first place.
It’s easy for us to develop assumptions that limit our resilience.
For example: “this team won’t support me” (so you never ask for it);
“that person hates me” (so we look for evidence to support that);
“I can’t achieve this objective” (which affects how much effort we
put in). I am sure you can think of many more you use with yourself
and others.

Gary McPherson — A Testament
to the Power of Assumptions

Gary McPherson’s life is a testament to the power of assumptions.
Gary was a fun-loving, athletic nine-year-old boy when, in 1955, he
was struck down with Polio.
For the next 34 years of his life, Gary would live in hospital and
would require the use of a ventilator that would allow him to breath.
In the early days of his illness, many of the medical staff around him
continued to believe that Gary would not survive. Yet over the years,
Gary continued to defy the odds, even as he lost many of his friends
from the ward in which he lived. He discovered that some people
with his condition had learned to “frog breath”, a method of draw-
ing air into the lungs without using the diaphragm. Gary identifies
this as the single most important thing he did that enabled him to
regain a certain amount of his independence. No longer dependent
on a ventilator to breathe for 24 hours at a time, Gary had managed
to wrestle more freedom for himself and he left the hospital at age
43 while continuing to use a wheelchair for mobility.
Gary explains that in the early stages of his hospitalization,
he heard that life expectancy for someone with his condition was
five years. He recalls living his life in five-year increments and


being surprised when he reached his fourteenth and nineteenth
birthdays. By this time, he explains, he felt pretty good and began
to think, “well I’m still alive, maybe I should think about doing
some things”.
When talking to Gary, you quickly get a sense of someone who
is focused on what he can do, as opposed to what he can’t. The
assumptions Gary uses are based around possibility and persist-
ence. He confesses that he negotiates with himself around what he
can shoot for and then decides upon the increments for which he
will aim.
Gary didn’t set out as a 19-year old, almost totally paralyzed by
Polio, to become the Executive Director of the Canadian Centre
for Social Entrepreneurship. Nor did he envision himself playing a
key role in shaping services for people with disabilities in Alberta.
Serving eight years as the President of the Canadian Wheelchair
Sports Association (CWSA) was not on his mind either. In the early
years of his illness, Gary probably never imagined he would become
an adjunct professor or guest lecturer with an Honorary Doctor
of Law degree. However, his assumptions about his situation
and the options open to him supported each small step toward an
amazing career.
Gary is now married with two teenage children and talks about
entering politics. He says that because his kids are older, he has
more time on his hands. It is a truly humbling experience to sit and
chat with Gary as he talks about plans for the future. Most of them
are centered upon what he can help others achieve.
In conversation, Gary is quick to mention the powerful effect
assumptions have had in his life. The assumption that by serving
others we heal ourselves has helped Gary to make significant contri-
butions to society. Along with that is the assumption that you can find
humor in everything. It is difficult to sit very long with Gary with-
out being drawn into his expansive sense of humor. His philosophy of

ASSUMPTIONS 21

life has a central assumption that has become a mantra for Gary —
“You see what you look for — so choose carefully what you look for.”
Amid all the committees and commitments Gary undertook he
still found time to write the story about his battle and eventual vic-
tory against tremendous odds. With Every Breath I Take sheds light
on the heart and spirit of a remarkable man.

GO DEEPER
Gary McPherson: www.anthillsite.com

A great deal of anecdotal evidence demonstrates that people are
able to sustain themselves in challenging conditions and situations.
There are definable traits that can be identified, and we all have
them. This book explores a specific set of skill-building exercises
that make it possible for us to develop these traits further. In the
process we expand our CQ.

Assumptions About Resilience

Since this chapter is devoted to an exploration of assumptions, it
makes sense to state clearly some of the assumptions that underpin
the approach taken in this book.

• Change is a constant process.
• Our ability to adapt to change is the central role of resiliency.
• Resiliency is the ability to adapt, bounce back, and recover in
harsh or challenging conditions.
• Resiliency is an innate capacity that we all have.
• Certain definable traits make up our capacity for resilience.


• Traits of resilience have been identified and we are able to
strengthen them further with specific exercises.
• Resilient teams are built from resilient individuals.
• None of us are as smart as all of us — a resilient team further
strengthens its individual members.
• Everyone wants to make a difference with their lives. Work is
a great place for that to happen.

Exercises that challenge you to re-assess what you assume about
certain things will enable you and your team to become aware of
the dangers of auto-pilot thinking.
Just as limiting assumptions can cause all sorts of problems to
the individual and team, a well thought-out and consciously chosen
assumption can be equally liberating and empowering. Prior to
May 6, 1954, it was assumed that the four-minute mile was impos-
sible. Roger Banister forced everyone to revise that assumption. The
revised assumption generated a new belief.

[Red Queen] “Let’s consider your age to begin
with — how old are you?”
“I’m seven and a half, exactly.”
“You needn’t say ‘exactly’,” the Queen remarked.
“I can believe it without that. Now I’ll give you
something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one,
five months and a day.”
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try
again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said,
“one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the
Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for

ASSUMPTIONS 23

half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as
many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
LEWIS CARROLL, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Joseph Campbell, authority on world mythology, once stated
that many people reach the top of the ladder only to find it leaning
against the wrong wall. I would like to add that there are two other
types of ladders: the ladder that was chosen too short for the desired
effect (right wall, ladder not long enough) and the ladder lying on
the ground (uncommitted to anything, it serves no one, and may
actually trip someone.) Consciously choosing beliefs and assump-
tions that will serve you in your
life is like choosing a ladder. It is
important to lean it against the You need to ask yourself,
right wall and aim it in the right “Is your ladder leaning
direction for you. against the right wall
Once positioned, ask your- and is it long enough?”
self if the ladder is long enough.
Is your belief strong enough to
enable you to achieve your goal? Have you committed yourself to
achieving the goal? Have you actually leaned your ladder against the
wall? In other words, have you committed to do something about
the belief you have chosen?

Good Questions Rather than Easy Answers

Asking questions is something few of us developed as a skill as
we grew up. For most of us, our educational experience consisted
of being told to remember the right answer. The focus was clearly
on the production of answers to a relatively fixed set of questions
(tests and exams). There was little attention given to the creation of


good questions. Yet, throughout history, practically all of the major
scientific breakthroughs came from people who were fascinated with
a particular question and all the possible answers, rather than a
search for one right answer. Einstein asking himself what it would
be like to ride a beam of light brought him to one of the greatest
discoveries of the 20th century — the theory of relativity.
Using the right set of assumptions has a huge impact on our
level of resilience. Asking good questions is an important step toward
checking our assumptions about our own resilience. Testing what
assumptions are presently running means asking the right questions.
Questions direct our curiosity and our energy.
Best-selling author Peter Block claims that “we define…our
future through the questions we choose to address.” In chapter 4 we
will look at the topic of questions in much greater detail and more
specifically how they can enrich our communication (and, therefore,
connection) with our team.

Hitting a “Whole” in One

Increasingly, people are seeking fulfillment in the non-material, psy-
chological, and spiritual aspects of life. This movement up Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs applies to life in general, but also to work.
More and more employees and team members wish to “transform
themselves” personally as well as professionally.
There is an outstanding opportunity for companies who are
willing to offer their employees training and development opportu-
nities that help grow the whole person. It could also be viewed as
a chance for the company to evolve their people from the inside out.
Many companies have already seized the opportunity to grow
their people in this way. In Nancy and Kevin Freiburg’s book, Guts,
John Mackey, CEO of the Whole Foods Company, is quoted as say-
ing, “I don’t see any conflict between wearing our hearts on our

ASSUMPTIONS 25

sleeves and running a company that is serious about profits. In fact
we feel there is a profound synergy between the two. Both are about
responsibility.” By walking its talk, Whole Foods has gained a place
on Fortune’s list of the 100 best companies to work for in the U.S.
six years running.

WHERE WE’VE BEEN
• The assumptions we make deeply affect our personal and
professional lives.
• Our beliefs are created from our assumptions.
• Group assumptions are at play within teams at all times.
• To create sustainable, lasting change, we must identify the
assumptions behind our behaviors.
• All beliefs are created, therefore all beliefs can be
changed.
• Good questions are a great way to challenge and change
limiting beliefs.
• Successful business operations and teams are based on
useful assumptions/beliefs.

WHERE WE’RE GOING
The assumptions we make and the beliefs that radiate out
from them have a profound effect on the way we see the
world. Our perceptions are colored by what we think. The
next chapter will show how perception plays a central role
in the unconscious processes of resilient individuals. We will
also look at how important perception is in building resilient
teams and how developing CQ relies on how we see just as
much as what we see.


Questions to consider are:

• What assumptions could you make that would transform your
own resilience and that of your team?
• What shared assumptions would enable your team/place of
work to become an adaptive, vibrant center for human and
business growth?

The following exercises will enable you and your team to explore
important questions such as these.

ASSUMPTIONS 27

CQ Tool 1

Checking Assumptions

Checking assumptions can be a very important first step
before a team launches into a project together. In many cases
it negates the need to stop later and discover that members’
assumptions are working at odds with each other.
The following exercise enables team members to explore
the assumptions that may be in operation as the team gathers
(metaphorically speaking) around a task or project.

Note: for purposes of this exercise a context has been chosen.
You may wish to use this as a “practice session” and move onto
a more pertinent issue once you and your team feel they have
mastered the stages and process.

STAGE ONE: The team is divided into groups of four to eight.
Each group places a piece of flip chart paper upon the wall in
landscape format. Divide the page into three equal columns. The
heading “Assumptions” is written at the top of the middle column.

STAGE TWO: Give the project team the task of brainstorm-
ing a list of assumptions for planning a team retreat (e.g., that
it must be out of town, it must be held during weekdays, etc.).
A specific and short time period (five to ten minutes) is allowed
for this stage.


STAGE THREE: The team is asked to choose between three
and five of the most interesting or controversial assumptions
and circle them (one minute for this task).

STAGE FOUR: Write the word “Valid” into the header of the
right-hand column. They are now asked to use the chosen
assumptions to explore whether the implications/consequences
of these assumptions are valid. In short, answer the question
“What if they were valid?” (five to seven minutes for this task).

STAGE FIVE: The group is asked to place the word “Invalid”
as the heading for the final (left-hand) column. Exploring the
same chosen assumptions, this time answering the question
“What are the implications/consequences if these assumptions
were invalid?” (five to seven minutes for this step).

STAGE SIX: The group is asked to reflect upon the exercise
and comment upon what they noticed. Some questions the
facilitator can use at this point are:

• What did you notice about your own assumptions?
• Were you surprised by some of the assumptions other
people had?
• If you had the opportunity to explore the invalid options
of assumptions you agreed with what effect did that have?
• How could this process help teams form strategies
around a project?

2

Perception

It’s never enough just to tell people about
some new insight… Instead of pouring
knowledge into people’s heads; you need to
help them grind a new set of eyeglasses
so they can see the world in a new way.

JOHN SEELY BROWN

In chapter 1, we explored how assumptions affect the adaptability
and resilience of you and your team. We also considered how relative
perception really is. Our reality is based upon what we notice, which
in turn is heavily based upon our assumptions. Our assumptions pro-
vide stability to the reality that we create on a moment-by-moment
basis. The process is largely unconscious. However, even when we
do change our assumptions about things, we retain our old ways of
looking at things. We continue to wear our old prescription as it were.
This chapter is about how we look at things, about how
our perception affects our resilience. We will also explore how our


perception and awareness affect our ability to collaborate with
others. In other words, how we perceive others will determine
whether we choose to collaborate or not. To this extent our percep-
tions determine our collaborative intelligence.
In this chapter we will examine five important elements of
perception.

1. Attention can be harnessed and focused — our attention
affects our experience of our life.
2. Perception as an active process — what we see depends on
where we look.
3. Filters can be changed — they select the information that
reaches the conscious mind.
4. Perspectives change our awareness — the perspective we
take determines what we see.
5. Frames can help us become more flexible — how we frame
our perceptions affects the meaning we form.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labour does
the body.
SENECA

Changing perceptions has had a huge impact on my own life. In
1995, while living in Northern Ireland, I was involved in a road accident
that almost cost me my life. I was standing beside my car on a narrow
country road, when a speeding car skidded on black ice and rammed
into my parked car. The force of the crash pushed my car over top
of me. Miraculously I slid under my car as it glided over the road —
I “came to” lying underneath it. It was still on its wheels and I had
somehow slipped through the space between the car and the ground.
Months later the full impact of the accident was discovered. A
disc in my back had been torn apart by the injury and a consultant

PERCEPTION 31

was explaining to me that I had degenerative disc disease. I was
told that the condition “will only get worse”. (Now, there is a nice
belief system.) He offered to speed up the process for me to receive
a handicapped sticker!
Maybe you can imagine what I felt like as I walked (painfully)
out of his office. What the consultant had said was slowly sinking
in. He had inadvertently helped me form a perception of myself as
a “cripple”. I mentally formed a long list of things I could no longer
do because of my injury. A number of years passed as I lived my life
surrounded by things I couldn’t do because of my back.
I was living a “half life”, both personally and professionally. What
I didn’t realize was that the assumptions I had created as a result of
my conversations with medical staff had left me with very strong
(and limiting) filters through which I perceived my life. There was
no particular moment of “enlightenment”. Instead, an evolution of
frustration brought me to a point where I realized I had to change.
I decided I needed to do something to prove to myself that I was
capable of moving beyond my injury. If I threw my heart over the
fence, I thought, the rest of me might well follow.
Then one day I heard of a group of people planning a hike in the
Andes in Chile, South America. This had been a life-long ambition
of mine. Images of the glaciers and watching condors sail over head
occupied my mind.
The next day I went to see a personal trainer in the local gym.
I asked him if he knew anyone with my sort of injury that still
worked out. He said he had quite a few clients. I signed up and
started with small exercises. At that time I could not stand up for
longer than ten minutes without my right leg going numb and intense
pain in my lower back. With great professional advice from Paul, my
trainer, and lots of physical training on my behalf I was able to make
the trip to Chile. The transition from “cripple to climber” was brought
about by a change in how I perceived myself. Sounds simple!


However I had to do a number of things to help the change take
place in my self-perception. I realized that wishing alone would not
change anything.

1. Attention

Three pounds of tofu hidden inside a bone box; you could eat it with
a spoon and it’s the most important thing in your life. It’s your brain
of course and its only connection with
the outside world is a set of senses that
Q: Three pounds of feed it information. The human nerv-
tofu in a bone box? ous system is amazing. Through our
A: Your brain. five senses we process approximately
11 million pieces of information every
second. Our eyes send 10 million sig-
nals to the brain each second and together have more computing
power than six Cray computers connected together.
So of what is our brain capable? Researchers in this field have
attempted to calculate how much information we can process
consciously, but by all estimates it is not much. The most opti-
mistic figure is 40 pieces out of the 11 million pieces per second (Tor
Norretranders, The User Illusion).

Up Periscope

One way of thinking about how this vast amount of information
gets filtered to a small fraction is to think about our conscious mind
as a periscope. Our lives are effectively made up of those 40 pieces
multiplied by the number of seconds we live. Where we point the
periscope determines our awareness. The auto-pilots mentioned in
chapter 1 come into play here. They determine, to a large degree,

PERCEPTION 33

where we habitually direct our attention. In order to tap into greater
depths of our own resilience, we will have to revisit these old pat-
terns of perceiving; check the settings on the auto-pilots. Are they
optimal for where we want to end up?
All great athletes know that their performance is highly depend-
ent on where they place their attention. A good sports coach spends
a lot of time working in this area, helping the athlete to harness his
or her attention. The old eastern expression “energy flows where
attention goes”, implies that our energy follows our attention. What
we attend to grows and proliferates. Often we believe that it is the
things we are not attending to that cause us trouble. Frequently it
is the other way around. So when you or your team is faced with a
particular challenge it may be useful to stop and ask, “What are we
attending to that has helped us create this problem?”
“Rubber–necking” is a great example of this phenomenon. It is
defined as the tendency to look at accidents to the extent that you
become one. According to the American Automobile Association,
between 25 and 55% of all road accidents are caused by distracted
drivers. We have all seen other people do it and, in all probability,
we have been guilty of doing it many times ourselves. We give our
attention to an accident we are
passing and don’t attend properly
to the road ahead. With only so “What are we attending
much attention at our disposal, to that has helped us
splitting our attention means we create this problem?”
have less available to devote to
driving our own car. This princi-
ple is also important when we are dealing with challenges either
individually or in teams. Directing our attention is vital when we
need to have our energy flow in a certain direction.
Questions are a great way to focus your attention. You can help
your team members direct their attention by asking the right


questions. One of the differences between a good team leader
and a great one is that a good team leader asks some good ques-
tions (rather than providing easy answers) and a great team leader
asks great questions (and supports the team in forming their
own answers).
Although there is a large unconscious component in how we
organize our attention, we can, with conscious control, move our
attention. Meditative practices are really attention-training systems.
This is one of the reasons meditation can be so helpful in building
emotional balance. You are effectively training yourself to control
your own attention. Our society has become a noisy place to live
in — with many distractions and advertisers clamoring to catch and
hold our attention for as long as possible. Our attention is a pre-
cious resource that we must look after carefully otherwise it can be
hijacked or dissipated by external forces.

Unless a person knows how to give order to his or
her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever
is most problematic at the moment: it will focus
on some real or imaginary pain, on recent grudges
or long-term frustrations. Entropy is the normal
state of consciousness — a condition that is neither
useful nor enjoyable.
MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, FLOW

The quote from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi conveys the need to
use our attention as a form of energy. By channeling attention toward
something useful, we are doing two things: 1) Not allowing any of our
valuable energy to be wasted on harmful or wasteful activities; and
2) we are bringing it all to bear upon the important task of creating
what we do want to happen.

PERCEPTION 35

GO DEEPER
Attention: www.anthillsite.com

Team mission statements can serve the same function. They help
the team members harness the collective attention around specific
objectives, drawing people around a common purpose.
Many businesses go to a great deal of trouble to create visions
for their company. One of the benefits of a business vision is that
it focuses attention on what is important to the company. Ideally
the business vision orchestrates the attention (and energy) of the
whole organization.
Our resilience is dependent, in part, upon how we use our energy.
Therefore how we organize attention will have a large impact on our
resilience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his book Flow: The Psychology
of Optimal Experience, goes so far to say that “attention is our most
important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.”
When I think of directing attention what comes to my mind are
images of cairns (piles of stones) that people build to show the path
up a mountain. In a similar way the Inuit people have used special
rock formations called “Inukshuk” for centuries as a way of pointing
the traveler’s attention along a safe route.


This chapter is about building cairns to harness our own atten-
tion with the purpose of establishing a more optimal experience. By
marshaling our attention we will be more resilient. Exploring this
process as a team will enable your team to harness its collective
attention. The result will be a more resilient team.

2. Perception Is Projection

How we see things has a great deal to do with how we feel about
things. When we have strong emotions about something we often
project these outward onto events that are occurring around us.
For example, if I become angry about something in the morning,
I may notice many other things during my day that also make me
angry. Emotions have powerful affects on what we notice. It is
a common misconception that perception is a passive process
carried out by our senses. The scientific evidence points to per-
ception being an active process closely tied to the flow of our
emotions. Choosing how to view an event is one of the secrets
of emotional mastery. (We will visit this topic in greater detail in
chapter 3.)

Enlightenment is waking up to the illusions
contained in the belief we have been fed since birth:
the belief that whether or not we are at peace
depends upon what we have or do in the material
world. It is discovering for oneself, as a personal
experience of life, that whether or not we are at
peace depends on our perception and interpretation
of events.
PETER RUSSELL

PERCEPTION 37

When Captain Cook first arrived on the shores of what is now
North America, the Arawak Indians were reported to be unable to
see his ships. What they saw we will never know, however, the prin-
ciple has modern examples much closer to home. A young woman
who moved from the Philippines to North America did not recog-
nize that some of the people she was meeting had red hair (she had
never met someone with that color of hair in her home country). It
was such an uncommon sight in her native land that she was liter-
ally unable to “see it”. Months later she began to notice that some
people had a hair color that was new to her. She then began to notice
that even people she was very close to in her new country had red
hair. The distinction for red hair had not been important where she
had grown up and it took some time for her perceptual system to
rewire for its existence.
These are rather dramatic examples of a process that is going
on inside each of us all the time. We see things when we are ready
to see them. This has an impact on how resilient we are. For exam-
ple, what might you not be seeing that is going on within your team
or life, for that matter? Are some limiting assumptions “invisible”
because we have not looked for them? Shifts in what we can see
come with shifts in our awareness. The exercises at the end of this
chapter are designed to cause shifts in your awareness. In doing so
they will enable you to see things differently.
But what has the story of the invisible ships got to do with our
resilience? Maturana and Varela are well-known researchers in the
field of physiological psychology. They have demonstrated that our
perceptions are heavily biased toward the use of already-on-board
information. In other words our perceptions at any particular moment
in time are based on 20% new information — fresh from the envi-
ronment, so to speak — and a whooping 80% of onboard information.
The 80% represents information our nervous system has stored
about the environment. Our nervous system patches together the


20% new and 80% old to create an experience of reality. Such a recipe
of sources leaves us very prone to errors.
Optical illusions are great examples of how easily our nervous
system is fooled. Look at the illustration in Figure 2.1 and notice
how easy it is to see a white triangle that is not there?

Figure 2.1
Can You See a White Triangle?

The white triangle in Figure 2.1 is caused by a combination of
the 80% of onboard information and the 20% new information. Our
brain is attempting to make sense of the image and completes it
for us. This particular illusion also can be used to explain how our
assumptions help build our reality.
Now in Figure 2.2, each of the little pies represents an assump-
tion/belief that we have onboard. Our brains complete the picture for
us and assure us that the space in the middle is reality. Within every
team there is a “reality” being created by the shared assumptions of
all its members. These in turn shape our perceptions that we then take
to be our “reality”. If a team wishes to change its reality, then the
assumptions and perceptions need to be examined first.

PERCEPTION 39

Figure 2.2
Is the White Triangle Clearer?

Assumption 1

‘Reality’

Assumption 3 Assumption 2

What You See Is What You Choose to See

Being able to shift our attention from one perception to another
is known as “perceptual flexibility”. Perceptual flexibility can be
demonstrated using the necker tube experiment.

Figure 2.3
Necker Tube Experiment


Look at Figure 2.3 and notice which plane seems to be the one
closest to you. Now bring the other plane up into the foreground and
allow the first plane you chose to fall into the background. Some of
you may be struggling; others will find it a very simple task. With a
little effort you will be able to switch the tube between the two per-
spectives. Typically once someone has done this they will be able
to choose the kind of tube they see. This is an example of how we
express our perceptual flexibility.
So far we’ve discovered that our reality is a construct. Physicists
assure us that the concept of a solid physical world “out there” is,
at best, a nice idea not supported by research. Philosopher and
physicist David Bohm often said, “Thought creates the world and
then says, ‘I didn’t do it.’”
This can be unnerving and reassuring depending upon how you
look at it (there’s that perspective thing again). The world we live
in was created and is continually being created, to a large extent, by
what goes on in our own nervous system. This further emphasizes
the ancient wisdom that if we wish to change the world we must first
change ourselves.
And yet it is so tempting to point outward to all those things
(including people) that are the cause of the problem. It’s even more
attractive when it is a team of people that is not performing well or
an organization that is functioning poorly. The implications for any-
one in a position of leadership are pretty obvious so I won’t labor
this point.

GO DEEPER
Perceptions: www.anthillsite.com

PERCEPTION 41

3. Filtered or Instant?

With the massive amount of information arriving at our nervous
system from the outside, it’s not surprising that our brain has to fil-
ter it. Effectively our nervous system is tuned to notice some things
and ignore a lot of others. The software running this process is
informed by filters for dangerous things. Once our basic needs —
things we can eat, drink or mate with — have been satisfied, or dan-
gers safely avoided, a different set of filters become active. These
are designed to search for ways that higher needs can be satisfied,
for example those related to social belonging and self-esteem.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs shows one possible set of filters that
our nervous system can sort with.

GO DEEPER
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: www.anthillsite.com

We could view filters as one of the reasons goal-setting is such
a successful process. By setting goals we are setting intention. Setting
intention is like programming our nervous system to filter for things
that are important to our goals in the environment.
Perceptual filters are just as active in the workplace as they are
outside it. They determine, to a great extent, how we perceive others.
There are a wide range of personality profiling systems that provide
insight into how people behave. When someone is profiled as an
“INFJ” or a “strong blue”, that label is used to explain why they are the
way they are. With this set of filters personality is very often conceived
as a static thing that changes little. The concept of character and
building character is often not factored into how companies manage
their human resources. In real life we know people do change, either


through self-directed re-invention or as a result of events occurring
in their lives (for example becoming a father or mother). Profiling
systems, like all filters, can have liberating and restricting effects.

GO DEEPER
Building Character: www.anthillsite.com

For a long time psychologists have known about the Fundamen-
tal Attribution Error (FAE). When interpreting other people’s behavior
FAE causes us to over-estimate the importance of basic personality
traits and under-estimate the significance of situation and context.
In this case the filter for personality traits is stronger than those for
situation or context. Simply put, FAE causes us to form stereotypes
and can lead to various forms of bias. Sexism, racism, and ageism
are examples of biased perceptions. We tend to see what we want
to see. Optical illusions are a great example of how unreliable our
perceptions can be (see Figures 2.1 to 2.2).

We do not see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
MARCUS AURELIUS

If we wish to change the world (or another person or a team)
we must first ask, “what changes do we need to make within our-
selves?” Choosing to look at a person or situation from a more
productive perspective will automatically enhance our CQ. By look-
ing for places where collaboration is possible we will find more.
Being able to restructure our perceptions of reality is a fun-
damental aspect of our own innate resilience. Social psychologists
Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson suggest that we have our own
“psychological immune system” that acts to protect us from threats
to our (psychological) well-being. “When it comes to maintaining a

PERCEPTION 43

sense of well-being,” they say, “each of us is the ultimate spin doc-
tor.” The ability to put a spin on our perceptions can just as easily
hold us stuck as liberate us. This is where assumptions (especially
about ourselves) have such an impact on perception.

4. Perspective — What We Find
Depends on Where We Look

Within the Sufi tradition there are many stories about a mystic joker
called Mulla Nasrudin. One such story relates how a good friend
finds the Mulla on a dark night on his hands and knees underneath
a street lamp crying. His friend enquires why he is crying. The Mulla
explains he has just lost his gold coins; his life savings are gone.
The friend immediately feels sorry for the Mulla and gets down on
the ground to help look for the coins. After a period of fruitless
searching the friend gets up and asks, “Mulla can you remember
where you were standing when you dropped your coins?” “Oh yes,”
replies the Mulla. “I was down there in that dark alleyway.” “Why
in heavens name are you looking under the street lamp then?” his
exasperated friend asks. “Because there is more light here,” the
Mulla replies.
I find this story funny and tragic
at the same time. The Mulla is doing Optimal perception is
exactly what we do so often. He is as much about where
looking for the answer where there you look as it is
is the most light rather than where he about how you look.
really knows the answer lies. More
specifically I have often attempted
to find the cause of some problem in the environment — out there —
rather than looking where I knew the problem to lie — inside myself.
The knack to optimal perception is not only how we look but
also where.


It Looked Bigger in the Store

Colin Turnbull, in his book The Forrest People, relates a story about
a Pygmy he had befriended while traveling through the African con-
tinent. This Pygmy had lived his entire life in the thick jungles of
East Africa. Turnbull took the Pygmy to the Serengeti, the great
open plains that border the jungle and showed him the wild life
of the plains. The life-long forest dweller asked, “what insects are
those?” referring to the water buffalo that were a long distance
away. When he was informed that the “insects” were water buffalo
he laughed out loud and called Turnbull a liar. The Pygmy’s per-
ceptual world was biased so heavily toward the short distances of
tropical jungle life that he could not conceive that these buffalo
were real.
The environment in which we live and work undoubtedly affects
our capacity to see. We become accustomed to the perspectives
available and don’t even realize that we have been conditioned.
Therefore anything that enables us to change our perspectives will
inevitably change what we are able to see.

An Elephant by Any Other Name

This is not the only way that our perceptions can be restricted. I am
sure you are familiar with the story of the six blind men around the
elephant. This story originated in the eastern philosophical tradition
and is a metaphor about reality and our own incomplete grasp of it.
Each of the six blind men touch a different part of the elephant and
the zoo keeper asks them what they think an elephant is. The blind
man holding onto the trunk says that an elephant is a snake-like
thing; the one holding onto the ear, a fan-like thing; and so it goes
on, each of the blind men defining the elephant by the part of its
anatomy with which they are familiar.

PERCEPTION 45

From a psychological perspective we have at least three per-
spectives we can use to view our own reality. The first position is the
perspective of us standing in our own physical space, looking out
through our own eyes. This perspective is also associated with using
words like “I”, “me”, and “myself” when referring to our feelings.
When we describe an experience from the first position we tend to
re-experience the feelings of the event as if we were in our own body.
Typically when we think of the event we do not see ourselves in
images of the experience.
The second position is being able to assume someone else’s
perspective in an experience. We take on the other’s perspective
seeing and hearing what they see and hear. When we explore this
perspective deeply we will also be able to imagine what they feel
like. This perspective is the basis of empathy and can be a power-
ful tool in discovering what it is like to be another person. One of the
greatest benefits of this perspective is that it enables us to under-
stand the other person’s world better and to communicate more
effectively with them. The experience is often described as “walking
a mile in their shoes”.
The third position is characterized by the fact that we are not
associating with anyone in the situation. We are not assuming the
perspective of being inside our own body, nor are we imagining being
in the body of anyone else. The perspective is that of “a fly on the
wall” floating free from feelings and able to observe events and
the behaviors of ourselves and others in a totally detached way. This
is a very effective perspective to take when we wish to separate
ourselves from our own individual feelings and the feelings of others.
None of the perspectives is any better than the other. They all
serve a useful function. People who explore all three perspectives
of an event are better informed than someone who explores only
one (typically first position). Exploring all the perspectives is also
described as using perceptual flexibility.


Once again the three perceptual positions are:

1. First Position — looking through our own eyes;
2. Second Position — stepping into someone else’s shoes and
looking through their eyes; and
3. Third Position — viewing the situation as if we were a
disembodied eye witness or “fly on the wall”.

Most of us have a preferred perceptual position. For exam-
ple first position is, understandably, the most common position.
The perspectives involved with each of these positions are sim-
ply perceiving habits. With them come habits of thought. The
great news is that they can be changed and expanded with skill-
building exercises.
The difference in the quality of the three perspectives is signif-
icant. First position obviously contains more information about the
feelings we have associated with the event. You will have access to
information about physical sensations, feelings, and even smells and
tastes. If the event was positive, then first position enables us to
access the positive feelings related to it. However if the event was
negative, maybe first position is not the best place from which to
process it. After all who wants to make themselves feel bad?

Choosing How to See

I ran a stress management clinic for almost ten years in Northern
Ireland. Many clients would explain that events in their past were
making them feel depressed, scared, or sick. When I asked them a
few questions about how they thought about those events, I discov-
ered that most of the time the client was re-living the events and
running them in their mind from first position. It was not surprising
that they had to seek professional help. When I taught them the

PERCEPTION 47

perceptual positions exercise, they discovered they had options in
terms of from where they processed a memory (first, second or
third position).
Asking our brain to change how it operates is a little like trying
to write with our non-dominant hand. For most of us the process
is messy at the start, but with
practice it becomes easier. The
pay-off for developing the ability Asking our brain to
to take different perspectives is change how it operates
an increased ability to understand is like writing with our
a situation, to be able to look at non-dominant hand.
it from two or three perspectives
instead of just the same old one.
The exercise at the end of this chapter will help you learn how to
use the three basic perspectives more systematically.
My mother used to tell me that an ounce of skill is better than
a pound of knowledge. And knowing about the perspectives and
not using them is a lot like knowing CPR but being unwilling to
administer it — tragic.
When exploring the three perspectives, we begin to realize there
are three truths.

1. We have a choice about which perspective we use to process
a thought from the past, present or future.
2. Each perspective provides advantages and disadvantages.
3. Exploring all the perspectives better informs us about the event.

Leonardo de Vinci considered the first way he looked at a prob-
lem to be too biased towards his usual perspective. To overcome
this bias he would look at the problem from one perspective, then
another, and then another. With each change, he said, his under-
standing would grow. A closer examination of de Vinci’s anatomical


diagrams provides ample evidence that he never drew something
from just one perspective. The effect of adding understanding by
systematically using different perspectives may be why the different
perspectives have been called “the three keys to wisdom”. Even a
blind man having taken the time to explore an elephant from many
perspectives is much closer to wisdom than someone vigorously
clutching just one part.

5. Frames — We’ve All Been Framed

Frames refer to the set of interpretations we choose to surround a
particular event. If someone were to offer me a mint I could frame
this gesture as an act of genuine friendliness and generosity. I could
also frame it as a subtle way to suggest that I had bad breath. In
most circumstances social etiquette prevents us from asking what
the offer of the mint implied. We are left to perceive the event in
a way that fits with our overall understanding of the situation. Our
perceptions will determine how we operate in the situation as well.
We could ask ourselves a useful question: “In what way can I choose
to perceive this situation that will further enhance collaboration?”
By answering this question we are developing our CQ.
Everyone has experienced interpreting someone’s behavior in
one way, only to find out later that their perception had been flawed.
If reality is such an undependable construct, should we not just
choose the frame that best allows us to be the most resilient? In
other words, if we assume (use a frame) that a statement someone
makes to us is well-intended, the frame has a particular effect. By
framing their statement in a positive way we are indirectly creating
a situation that is cooperative and friendly.
If, on the other hand, we frame someone’s remarks as ill-intended,
we will convey this in our tone of voice and body language. That may

PERCEPTION 49

set the scene for a situation that is defensive and non-friendly. The
actual intention of the other person is almost immaterial.
We cannot control other people, as much as we would like to
think we can. The bottom line is that we can only be responsible for
how we feel. So frames can be exceptionally useful when we wish
to change the way we feel about something such as a memory or
another person’s behavior. Changing the frame we use is called
“reframing” and, along with perceptual positions, is another one of
the tools that enables us to be more resilient. The secret is to choose
a frame that enables us to respond most resourcefully. The end
result is that we are able to take control of a situation rather than
allow it to control us.
Let’s look at an example. Greg has discovered his boss, Jeff, has
plans to ask him to work the weekend. He presupposes that this is
because, of all the people that work in his department, Jeff likes
Greg the least. This assumption leaves Greg feeling resentful toward
Jeff and anxious about how he will be able to say “no” to the request.
An alternative perspective Greg could take is that Jeff has chosen
to delegate the work to him because he is the most skilled and reli-
able person. This set of assumptions (making up a frame) leaves
Greg feeling valued and honored to be asked. Whether he really
wants to work the weekend is immaterial at present. What is most
affected will be the interaction between himself and his boss. Whether
Greg says yes or no does not really matter. The overall outcome was
reframed by Greg. He could have displayed feelings of resentment
and put Jeff on the defensive. Either way Jeff will either feel more
comfortable with his refusal, or will have begun to appreciate Greg
more for saying yes. By reframing the situation Greg did not have
to lie to himself or pretend things that were untrue. What he did
was change the frame he used long enough to see how the situation
played out. In this situation the CQ of both parties probably rose
simply from choosing a different frame.


Any event or situation can be a good thing or a bad thing
depending on how it is perceived. Highly resilient people have per-
ceptual flexibility, enabling them to choose how they view a set of
circumstances.
Often they will reframe a situation several times to enable
them to maintain a sense of autonomy or control. This is called
multiple reframing. A great example of this process is found in the
Zen tradition.

THE FARMER AND HIS STALLION
There is an old Zen story about a farmer who
bought a fine stallion one Monday at market for a
good price. His neighbors came to admire it and
all said “How fortunate you are!” To which the
farmer replied
“Maybe…”

On the Tuesday the stallion escaped through a gap
in the fence and ran away to the hills. Now all the
neighbors said “How awful — what a catastrophe.”
To which the farmer replied
“Maybe…”

Then on Wednesday the stallion returned to the farm
with a small herd of wild mares behind him. This
time the neighbors were ecstatic — crying, “What
luck! How marvelous.”
“Maybe…”

On the Thursday the farmer’s only son was breaking
in the wild mares when one of them threw him and

PERCEPTION 51

he broke his leg. In the evening the neighbors talked
of “the tragedy and misfortune.”
“Maybe…”

On Friday the Emperor’s army came looking for able
bodied recruits to fight and almost certainly die in a
War in the North…the villagers said to the farmer —
“how fortunate for your son”, the farmer replied…

The principle behind this story is that perception is a highly rel-
ative process. Maturana, the Chilean biologist, suggests that when
we forget our relative view of reality, we lose our capacity to live
together. He goes on to state that when one person or group insists
that only they see “what is really going on”, they are actually making
a “demand for obedience”. There are many examples of this process
going on in the world today. Indeed most, if not all, international
conflicts are caused by groups of people being certain about their
own version of reality.
The demand for obedience worked successfully throughout the
industrial era with organizations built upon power hierarchies. Now
that we are entering the era of collective intelligence, where coop-
eration and CQ are premium skills, such demands are less effective
and often very harmful to a team’s overall resilience.

Emotional Perceptions

We’re not passive observers of an external world;
rather, we know our world through interacting
with it, and our emotions can limit or enrich that
interaction.
HUMBERTO R. MATURANA


Maturana’s observation leads us to the following question: “How
are we choosing to interact with the world?” By looking for the bad
or negative influences, we discover a limited and one-dimensional
world. This emphasizes the power of perspective in building the
CQ of groups and teams to which we belong.

Neuroscientists have discovered strong evidence
that human intelligence, human memory, and human
decisions are never completely rational but are always
colored by emotions, as we all know from experience.
CAPRA, THE WEB OF LIFE

One factor that cannot be ignored is the part our emotions play
in our perceptions. In fact research in this area demonstrates a
connection between our success and general sense of happiness.

After interviewing 100 of the most successful and
happy people they could find… The research found
that each and every one of the 100 people had a
special capability — to look for and find what is
good in him- or herself, in others, and in all
situations of life.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POSITIVE QUESTIONS

Emotions also play an important role in our level of self-mastery.
The wisdom of this chapter can be encapsulated by the “Four Noble
Truths” found in Buddhist philosophy.

• We all experience suffering in one way or another — mental,
physical, emotional, spiritual.
• We create our own suffering. It is a consequence of our desiring
things to be other than what they are.

PERCEPTION 53

• It need not be this way. We have a choice as to how we
perceive the world and live our lives.
• There are systematic ways to go about changing how we think
and perceive.

There are many ways to change how we think and perceive. The
methods offered at the end of this chapter have been very success-
ful with tens of thousands of people. Of course, nothing will change
unless you are willing to try them.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

How we perceive ourselves determines how we operate in this world.
Our self-perception is part of our relationship with ourselves. The
relationship we have with ourselves is the
most fundamental and abiding relationship
we will ever have. If we are highly judgmen- Change starts
tal with ourselves it will almost certainly be with the self.
translated into a habit of being judgmental
with others. The place where change starts is
the self and nowhere is it more true than our perception of ourselves.

When I view myself as a time-sensitive product,
valued for what I produce, then I have made
depth, extended thought, and the inward journey
marginal indulgences. Instead of doing what matters,
I spend my life doing what works. It increases
my market value and postpones the question of my
human value.
BLOCK, THE ANSWER TO HOW IS YES


The quote from Peter Block’s book, The Answer To How Is Yes,
defines the challenge we all face in a rapidly changing society. What
is our human value? Does my personal journey have any impact
upon my professional development? Without developing ourself as
a human being (rather than a human “doing”) we will fail to grow
professionally in a sustainable fashion. Along with this is the task of
developing our CQ, our capacity to tap into the energy of groups and
networks, supporting others as they strive to achieve their outcomes
and achieving our own, in the process.

WHERE WE’VE BEEN
So we’ve explored the topic of perception in connection with
resilience and the development of CQ. From this chapter
we learned that:

• Perceptions are relative and become habits of seeing;
• Our attention is an important asset and used carefully can
strengthen resilience and raise CQ;
• We use filters to select what we attend to and what
we ignore;
• We can change the way we operate with others by changing
our filters;
• Perspectives are ways of looking at things and we need
to practice using different perspectives to increase our
perceptual flexibility; and
• Frames are ways we interpret perceptions and reframing
can help us respond more resourcefully to challenges.

PERCEPTION 55

WHERE WE’RE GOING
Biographies and autobiographies of great people point
clearly to a distinct connection between how they saw the
world and how they behaved in it. In this chapter we
explored one half of the equation. In the next, we explore
the other half — self-mastery. We will also examine ways to
expand our own self-mastery and the part that can play in
developing resilience and raising CQ.


CQ Tool 2

Developing Perceptual Flexibility

This exercise achieves a number of things. It enables partici-
pants to discover for themselves specific processing capacities
of the mind. The realization that participants have a choice over
which processing capacity they use to review past events and
plan future ones.

STEP ONE: Close your eyes and think of a pleasant holiday
you have experienced. Notice the pictures/images as you recall
this event.

Note: There are two different perspectives from which you
can run your memories. One is where you are watching your-
self in the memory (fly on the wall). This is called the Director’s
Perspective. The other is when you are actually in the pic-
ture seeing things with your own eyes. This is the Actor’s
Perspective.

Director’s Perspective: When you are running a memory
from the director’s perspective, you are taking a dissociated
position. You are seeing and hearing things from a position
removed from the scene. Typically, when you run memories
from this position, your feelings about this memory tend to
be diminished or absent altogether.

PERCEPTION 57

Actor’s Perspective: When you are running a memory from
the actor’s perspective, the memory is running as if you
were re-living the event within your own body. You do not
see yourself in the pictures. Typically, you will have a height-
ened awareness of the feelings associated with that memory.

STEP TWO A: Notice the image you created. Are you in direc-
tor’s perspective where you see yourself in the picture? (If you
cannot, then go to Step 2B.) In this case, to explore the actor’s
perspective, imagine stepping into your body in the event.
Notice what it is like to be inside your own body. To help, you
may like to imagine things like warmth or coolness or feelings
of relaxation, etc.

STEP TWO B: Notice the image you created. Can you see
things and hear things as if you were there? If so, you are run-
ning the memory from actor’s perspective. In this case, imagine
stepping out of your body and notice what it is like to be watch-
ing yourself in the event. You may notice the lessening of the
feelings associated with this memory.

Note: Now you have had an opportunity to switch perspectives
from where you normally run that memory. The advantage of
being able to switch perspectives is that you can choose to have
more or less feelings associated with the event.

STEP THREE: Practice switching from one perspective to the
other. Doing this expands your perceptual flexibility. Try the
exercise with other events. Notice by switching to the director’s
perspective, challenging or upsetting events become much more


comfortable. They lack most (if not all) of the negative feelings
that accompanied them originally. Likewise, if you had been
running pleasant memories from the director’s perspective, you
will discover the memory has many more pleasant feelings to
be enjoyed by switching to the actor’s perspective.

3

Self-Mastery

Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly
free individual is free only to the extent of his
own self-mastery. While those who will not
govern themselves are condemned to find
masters govern over them.

STEVEN PRESSFIELD, THE WAR OF ART

In chapter 2, we explored the part perception plays in our resilience
and in building resilient teams. Perception also plays a central role
in our ability to develop self-mastery. In this chapter, we will explore
how to develop greater self-mastery and how developing it will affect
the creation of resilient teams. We will also examine the connection
between self-mastery and further enhancing our CQ.


The First Furrow

When I was ten years old my mom sent me with tea and biscuits
down to the fields where my father was plowing. When I got there, he
had just started a new field and was half-way down the first furrow.
I decided to wait until he came back up the field. He took ages —
every now and again getting off the tractor to tap something, or adjust
part of the plow. By the time he returned to my end of the field I had
begun to wonder just how long it was going to take him to plow the
whole field. “Dad,” I said, “I have watched you plowing the first
furrow and if it takes you as long to plough every furrow, it’s going
to take you all day to plough this little field.”
“Well son that was the first furrow of the field — it’s the most
important, because it sets the pattern for the rest of the field.” He went
on to tell me that when it came time for me to plow a field and if I
found I didn’t like the pattern when I had finished, I should check the
first furrow and I would usually find that the problem started there.

In reading the lives of great men, I found that
the first victory they won was over themselves…
self-discipline with all of them came first.
HARRY S. TRUMAN

On reflection, I realize my dad was sharing a valuable insight. So
often we become aware of patterns in our lives that we don’t like.
Sometimes we even try to fix the pattern — the one that’s “out there”
somewhere — when really the first furrow is where the pattern is
set, within ourselves. In human relations (and communication) the
human heart is where the first furrow is cut. How we relate to our-
selves sets the tone and the shape of the cut line for the ones to
follow. It is easier to look outside ourselves than look inside. Often
an ounce of change made within easily outweighs a pound of change
made without.

SELF-MASTERY 61

The first furrow connects personal
development (the responsibility to develop An ounce of
ourselves) to professional development. change made
To pretend that they do not affect each within easily
other is naive. A company may wish to outweighs a
hire the person’s skills, but inevitably pound of change
they end up with the person’s attitudes in made without.
the bargain.

Sustained great results depend upon building a
culture full of self disciplined people who take
disciplined action, fanatically.
A culture of discipline is not just about
action. It is about getting disciplined people who
engage in disciplined thought and who then take
disciplined action.
COLLINS, GOOD TO GREAT

The metaphor of the first furrow emphasizes the responsibility
we each have for our own behavior and how much this behavior
depends upon the relationship we have with ourselves. Building
greater trust with others is one thing, building greater trust in our-
selves is another. Close examination of resilient teams uncovers
that they are made up of individuals with great levels of self-mas-
tery. Not only does this ensure that everyone pulls their weight, it
also means that each member is a good role model for the rest of
the team. High levels of self-mastery are also associated with peo-
ple who have high CQs, in that they actively pursue collaboration
with others.
The most obvious question is, “How do we develop greater self-
mastery?” First let us look at what are the most important skills
that make up self-mastery.


1. Perceptual Flexibility
2. Making Meaning
3. Emotional Management
4. Mental Models
5. Leadership and Followship
6. Intention
7. Persistence
8. Alignment
9. Self-Expression

In the following pages we will discover how each plays their part
in building self-mastery and how to strengthen our own sense of
it. The truth is we already have a great deal of self-mastery at work
in our lives. It is made up of a composite of the nine elements men-
tioned above. Consciously making improvements — even small
ones — in these nine areas will enable us to deepen our self-mastery.

1. Perceptual Flexibility

In chapter 2 we explored how we can use multiple perspectives to
enable us to choose how we looked at things. Choosing how to see
something is exercising perceptual flexibility. Individuals with
high levels of self-mastery choose how they look at things in order
to deal with them more effectively.

No occurrences are so unfortunate that the
shrewd cannot turn them to some advantage, nor
so fortunate that the imprudent cannot turn them
to their own disadvantage.
DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Perceptual strategies are evident in the way people approach
life. Highly resilient people display strong optimistic strategies.

SELF-MASTERY 63

This may not be exhibited as the classic “rose-tinted glasses”, rather
it is demonstrated as a deliberately chosen, useful perspective.
Within resilient people this manifests as the ability to turn practically
everything that happens to some advantage.
Here are some of the features that distinguish optimistic strate-
gies from pessimistic ones.
When something pleasant happens to someone using a pessimistic
perspective, they:

• credit luck;
• predict it can’t last; or
• localize the effect.

When something challenging happens, they:

• blame themselves;
• generalize to other areas of life; or
• predict the future based on their present conditions.

We have all used these strategies from time to time in our lives.
However, it is obvious that if we were to apply them to everything,
the consequences would be pretty tragic.
On the other hand when something pleasant happens to some-
one taking an optimistic perspective, they:

• take some credit for the effect;
• look for a positive trend; or
• generalize the effect.

When something challenging happens, they:

• remember that there is no failure, only feedback;
• take it as an exception to the rule; or
• consider it as an isolated incident.


The same incident, challenging or pleasant, is treated quite dif-
ferently by the two types of strategies. The next time something
happens to you that could be considered unpleasant or pleasant,
stop and consider what strategies you are applying. Strategies are
like habits of thought and, as such, old ways of dealing with things
will be the first to impose their will. We only have to stop and ask
the question “How else could I approach this?” to begin the process
of breaking free of our old habits.

Foul Ball or Strike?

People with high levels of self-mastery have the ability to create use-
ful meanings for events in their lives. The story of the three umpires
illustrates this point.
Three umpires are discussing how they approach umpiring. The
youngest among them explains that he “calls them as they are”.
The next umpire states that he “calls them as he sees them”. The
oldest and craftiest of them says that “they are as I call them”. The old
umpire realized that he was able to define the game by choosing how
to see the play. In effect he is choosing the meaning of what he sees
and he knows it.
Scientific evidence suggests that the strategy of perceptual
flexibility provides benefits that go beyond the psychological. In
a study authored by Christopher Peterson of the University of
Michigan (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1989,
p. 55), it was shown that there appears to be a direct link between
illness and pessimism. The study examined how subjects viewed
events in their lives. Following the test group over a 35-year period,
the study showed that subjects with negative interpretations were
consistently sicker than their more optimistic peers. These kinds
of findings have been replicated many times since. It is not sur-
prising to find that psychonueroimmunology (the study of how the

SELF-MASTERY 65

mind affects the body) is one of the fastest growing areas of research
in medicine.
Because resilience not only relates to our minds but also to
our bodies, one strongly impacts the other. I know several people
who do all the right things for their body — vitamins, good nutri-
tion and regular exercise — but unfortunately they harbor negative
emotions and beliefs about their health. Their thought patterns may
be negating much of the positive physical care by suppressing their
immune system. If we can make ourselves sick or well with our
thoughts, we can certainly make ourselves less or more resilient
with them.

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2. Making Meaning

A Native American elder once described
his own inner struggles in this manner:
Inside of me there are two dogs.
One of the dogs is mean and evil.
The other dog is good.
The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.
When asked which dog wins,
he reflected for a moment and replied,
The one I feed the most.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and The Unheard Cry
For Meaning were written as testaments to this deceivingly simple


idea — we are the meaning makers. During the Second World War
he was held in several different concentration camps. His experience
there brought him to the realization that all his “freedoms” had been
taken from him, except the freedom to choose what the experience
meant. This insight probably saved Frankl’s life and those people
who embraced his approach. In Frankl’s own words, “the sort of
person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision”
and that decision centered on creating a meaning for himself. By
changing the meaning he could change the way he responded to the
horrible conditions in which he found himself. This led his captors
to change the way they treated him and the other prisoners who
participated in this strategy. The result was that Frankl was able to
wrench something of great value from very dire circumstances. Upon
his release at the end of the war, this series of insights led him to
develop a new psychotherapy, called Logotherapy, which has had
a significant impact on clinical
practice. The central tenet to this
Choose a meaning that form of therapy is that no matter
makes you feel more what happens to you, you always
resourceful and resilient. have the freedom to choose what
it means to you.

To an ordinary man everything is either a curse or
a blessing, but to a Man of Knowledge everything
is a challenge and an opportunity.
TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN

Just as you can choose from what perspective to look at some-
thing, you can also choose a meaning that makes you feel more
resourceful and resilient.

SELF-MASTERY 67

GO DEEPER
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3. Emotional Self-Management

Most of the time we manage our emotions quite unconsciously. The
importance of emotional self-mastery has been firmly established
through the work of Daniel Goleman and his concept of Emotional
Intelligence (EQ). When faced with challenging situations and chal-
lenging people, expressing EQ obviously becomes more valuable.
However, emotional self-mastery is just as important during times
of high performance.

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Emotional Intelligence: www.anthillsite.com

You don’t drown by falling in the water;
you drown by staying there.
EDWIN LOUIS COLE

Mastery over emotions is a central element of highly resilient
people. Our emotions provide us with the power to act and are an
important source of self-nurturance. Fear is the most common prob-
lematic emotion. Many successful athletes report how they managed
to turn their fear into a source of energy enabling them to achieve
great accomplishments. (The exercise at the end of chapter 2 (Per-
ception) can also be used to harness your emotions.) Our emotional
response to a situation is directly related to how we perceive it.
The feeling of excitement when taking a seat in a roller coaster is


biochemically identical to the feeling we have before we sit down
in the dentist’s chair. What differs is how we perceive the two events
and consequently how we interpret the feelings. In other words if
we wish to change the way we are responding to a situation, we can
change the way we look at it.
Emotional self-management is also closely related to self-esteem.
Nathaniel Branden has described self-esteem as “the reputation we
have acquired with ourselves”. He goes on to say that “There is no
value-judgment more important to man — no factor more decisive
in his psychological development and motivation — than the estimate
he passes on himself.”

GO DEEPER
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4. Mental Models

The fourth aspect of self-mastery is mental models. These are deeply
rooted assumptions and ways of thinking that guide the way we think
about the world. They are described as mental because they exist in
our minds and models because they are constructs created as a result
of our own experience of life. They are often used as maps to navigate
our future experiences. Everyone has them and, like the Zen fish, in
chapter 1, we don’t notice them most of the time. One thing is cer-
tain — they are ours and they affect the way we respond to our world.
In the practice of systems thinking, changing mental models is
considered to be the only way to eliminate a problem, rather than
just solve it. When we solve a problem it may reappear again. When
we eliminate it, that particular problem will never reappear (don’t
worry there are plenty others) because we have changed our mental

SELF-MASTERY 69

models with respect to the issue. Mental models are created out of
beliefs and based on our assumptions (chapter 1).
The reason we explore this topic here rather than under assump-
tions (chapter 1) is that mental models are more than just beliefs and
they have such a profound impact. The secret to improving self-
mastery through mental models is to develop systematic ones. Delib-
erately chosen mental models will help achieve the objectives we set.
In their book The Art of Systems Thinking, Joseph O’Connor
and Ian McDermott suggest following simple rules to enable you to
have more systemic mental models.

• Admit your mental models are your best guess at the moment
and be on the lookout for better ones.
• Have wide interests
• Be comfortable with ambiguity.
• Be curious about, and pay particular attention to, experiences
that seem to contradict your mental models.
• Have a wide time horizon to look for feedback.
• When confronted with a problem, look at the assumptions you
are making about the situation as well as the situation itself.
• Look for relationships, how events fit together.
• Look for loops and circles of cause and effect, the effect of
one cause being the cause of another effect.

Choosing our mental models is the mark of highly resilient and
successful professionals. The concept of CQ is a mental model. As
a result of adopting it we begin to look for ways to increase collab-
oration and actively seek ways of building stronger relationships.
The “assumption-busting” strategy explored in chapter 1 is particu-
larly good at altering mental models. Too often we wander around
the world without checking the filters we use to process events and
relationships in our lives.


5. Leadership and Followship

Leading and following are two behaviors that have created the
greatest number of theories and books in relation to business. For
a group of individuals to function together some leading has to be
going on and some following. That’s the simple part over. Traditional
models of command and control involve a distinct hierarchy of
command. Orders are issued from the top and fed down through the
hierarchy to the lowest levels. Since the dawn of the industrial rev-
olution this system has been considered to be the only way people
could be organized around work.
The mechanistic view inherited from Newton’s model of the
universe probably encouraged this view of how people work. The
mechanistic view also implied that the lowest levels of the organi-
zation had the least knowledge and was in the worst position from
which to make decisions. Managers at the top were considered to
be in a better position because they had the “big picture”, enabling
them to make executive decisions that became a set of directions
to the lower ranks. In such a system, the personal initiative required
from people at the front line was generally very low. We are still
occasionally told “I’ll have to ask the manager”, indicating the person
has not been granted the decision-making power necessary.
The command and control method of management and busi-
ness innovation is proving too cumbersome for forward-thinking
companies. Many are discovering the advantages of using “bottom–
up” intelligence. This perspective takes the view that people at
the front line are in a better position to make decisions because
they are closest to the changing environment. More enlightened
companies are realizing that to survive they are going to have to
become much more adaptive to the changes occurring in the mar-
ket. The bottom-up model (which we explore in greater detail in
chapter 5) also requires team members to have adequate levels

SELF-MASTERY 71

of self-mastery. Without it they will not be able to exercise their
initiative when required.
Bottom-up processing makes it possible for companies to
increase speed and effectiveness of service by enabling the front-
line staff to deal with practically anything they encounter. More and
more companies are realizing the advantages of allowing front-line
staff to have the power to make more decisions. It enables the com-
pany to flatten their own structure, making do with less middle
management. Another outcome of bottom-up processing is that
high levels of self-reliance are required of everyone in the company.
This in turn places more emphasis on all the team members’ levels
of self-mastery.

Yin and Yang In a truly self-organizing
system, the part of the
The concept of followship has team that is in the best
been with us for a few years. It position to act and has
is defined here as the ability to the greatest amount of
follow and support the efforts of knowledge will lead.
a self-organizing team. In a truly
self-organizing system, the part
of the team that is in the best position to act and has the greatest
amount of knowledge will lead. This means that within a resilient
team leadership frequently flows through the membership depending
on where they are in the process. As conditions change leadership
may shift many times. During these transitions each individual needs
to be able to shift from followship to leadership and back to follow-
ship as the situation demands. The skills involved in good followship
are as outlined below.

• The ability to see what needs to be done and do it when it
needs to be done.


• Flexibility in behaviors to support fellow team members as
they shift from follower to leader.
• An awareness of the team as a functioning whole where each
individual is willing to lead and to follow as circumstances
dictate.
• A capacity to build collaborative relationships that support
the team and the individuals that make it up.

These skills could also be considered as core in the development
of our CQ and the CQ of any team to which we belong.

6. Intention

Intention is one of our most valuable assets. It has a huge impact in
the area of setting outcomes. In other words, how our intention has
been set has a significant effect on how likely it is that we will achieve
our outcomes. For example, setting the intention to build collabora-
tive relationships will automatically make it much more likely that
such relationships will be created.
Properly formed intention enables the creation of a well formed
outcome. Resilient individuals with high levels of self-mastery fre-
quently achieve their outcomes. Laurence Boldt said, “You wouldn’t
think of building a new home without a blueprint. Yet many of us try
to live our lives without a clear sense of the results we are after.”
There are probably many people reading this book right now who
have extensive plans and objectives for their next vacation, but have
given no such attention to what they wish to achieve with their team.
The benefits of a well formed outcome are the following:

• We notice what is useful for our objective.
• We remember what is useful to our objective.

SELF-MASTERY 73

• Our objective determines our selection of perceptions.
• Our objective affects our thought patterns.
• Our thoughts and perceptions can help us reach our
objectives.

Of course the more clearly defined our outcomes/objectives are,
the more likely it will be that the benefits will materialize.
There are two types of objectives — away-from and towards. An
away-from, sometimes known as the problem-focused objective,
motivates us to solve the problem or achieve the objective by getting
away from something or reducing something.
A department trying to reduce absenteeism is a good example
of an activity which is away-from. Certain strategies and policies
are implemented to get away from high levels of employee absences.
The other side of the coin is how the department could be run to move
towards high levels of employee engagement. Strategies designed
to create a workplace that people love to come to will also have the
effect of lowering absenteeism. In this example the objective was
basically the same but the intention formed was quite different. The
question has changed from “what do we want less of” to “what do
we want more of”. In that switch, what has changed is the perspec-
tive taken and the strategy adopted. Towards strategies are also
known as solution-focused.
Robert Fritz, in his book The Path of Least Resistance, explains
that away-from outcomes are poorly designed because they do not
take into account how human beings are motivated. In the case of
away-from outcomes, as he sees it, each time a portion of the objec-
tive is achieved, the less motivation there is to continue, like a moth
flying away from the light because of the heat. At some point the heat
diminishes and causes the moth’s attraction for the light to once
again override. Thus the moth is caught in limbo until it collapses
of exhaustion.


Many organizational challenges exist only because they have
been phrased and approached in an away-from manner. In other
words they were not designed for success; they were designed to
avoid failure. For example a company focused on getting out of debt
may end up using different strategies to achieve that objective, than
a company that plans to maximize revenue. Reducing debt is, after
all, only half the story. The pressure to reduce debt will ease as the
debt falls, therefore progress slows and it takes longer to achieve
the outcome. All companies want to make a profit and a towards
objective (such as maximizing profits) creates more of the desired
result as it gains its objectives.
A salesperson with the target of selling 50 cars each month is
motivated by the number sold that increases as the month passes.
Notice that they are not motivated by the number they still have to
sell, although some people choose to motivate themselves that way.
Neither of these approaches is good or bad.
Fritz’s comprehensive research in this area clearly shows
that most successful people are motivated by things they were
building rather than things they were tearing down (except dem-
olition experts of course). Fritz uses the term “creative tension”
to describe the process of connecting a desired goal to the pres-
ent reality. Imagine an
elastic band stretched
Successful people are motivated between two points. The
by things they were building very act of connecting
rather than things they were them with an elastic
tearing down. band will make it more
likely that the two will
be drawn together. Also
being drawn towards something (e.g., profit) is much more moti-
vating for most of us than being pushed away from something (e.g.,
debt). This is one of the main reasons why the concept of creative

SELF-MASTERY 75

tension and well formed outcomes are more successful than away-
from strategies.

Addressing the South African people, Nelson Mandela spoke
much more about creating a rainbow nation than he did about tak-
ing down the apartheid system. Intuitively he knew that if they had
focused on taking it down, at the end of the process all they would
have left was a large and dangerous political hole. So instead he
focused their energy on the creative tension existing between where
they were as a fledgling nation and where they wished to end up. The
result was the rainbow coalition that amazed the world by creating
a largely peaceful transition.
All well and good, but we live in a complex world where objec-
tives and outcomes are not always of our making. Many times they
are handed to us or to our team. The argument here is that no
matter in what form they are presented, we can choose to apply a
towards or away-from strategy to them. (For a method of creating
well formed outcomes, see the exercise at the end of this chapter.)
The solution-focused approach, builds beautifully into the strength-
based/appreciative approach as both emphasize that we “find what
we look for”.
Using intention is also called “beginning with the end in mind”.
It can be explained best with the story of the young soldier. A young
soldier is found in the barracks by his captain. He is pulling all the
bunks apart, emptying all the cupboards, pulling up the rugs and
making a horrible mess. The Captain says, “Son, what are you doing?”
The young soldier says, “I’m looking for a piece of paper.” He says,


“Well, you’re making a mess and you better stop it or I’ll put you on
a charge.” The soldier totally ignores him and continues tearing the
barracks apart. Eventually the Captain says, “Look, son, that’s the
last time I’m going to warn you.” But still it goes on. So he calls
the military police and they whip him down to the brig to let him
cool off for a while.
He’s only in the cell for a few moments when the jailor hears a
commotion in the cell. There is the soldier moving anything that isn’t
bolted down. The jailor shouts in through the door, “What are you
doing, Private?” The soldier says, “I’m looking for a piece of paper.”
The jailor says, “Well there’s no piece of paper in there, buddy. You
just stop making such a fuss.” The young soldier ignores him and
continues to ransack the cell.
The jailor decides to call up the army psychiatrist. “We’ve got a
real cookie down here Doc, you gotta see this guy. He’s something
else.” The psychiatrist says, “Well, send him up.” The MPs bring him
up to the psychiatrist’s office. The young solider is only in the office
a few seconds when he starts pulling everything apart. The psy-
chiatrist asks him what he is doing. The soldier says, “Looking
for a piece of paper.” A few sessions later, the same scene play-
ing out each time, the psychiatrist becomes exasperated and says,
“Look Private, I have decided after much reflection that you are
not cut out for the army, and the army is not cut out for you. I am
signing your dismissal.” He hands the young soldier the dismissal
form and the young man says, “There’s the piece of paper I was
looking for.”
Reflect on this for a moment. What if the captain asked the
soldier, “What are you doing?” and this young soldier said, “I’m try-
ing to get out of the army.” Do you think he would have been
discharged? I don’t think so either. In this story the intention the
young soldier had set enabled him to navigate the Captain, the jailor
and the army psychiatrist. He remained focused on what he wanted

SELF-MASTERY 77

(the piece of paper) rather than what he did not want (to be in the
army any longer).

Using Our Signal Lights

One final thought around the topic of intention is the need for us to
broadcast our intention. Once you have developed a well formed
outcome, you must find ways to broadcast it and then be sensitive
to your environment as it responds to that announcement. On the
highway, for instance, we switch on our signal lights to let other
drivers know we wish to change lanes. So it is with life: if we wish
to change lanes we should allow others to know of our intention.
Think of the number of times when you set an intention and suddenly
resources became available to you that you didn’t know existed. This
had more to do with you broadcasting your intention than it had to
do with miracles.
Designing outcomes and setting our attention implies we are
willing to take personal responsibility for ourselves and our behaviors.
This is another important element of the self-mastery underlying
the resilient individual. Setting positive intention is also about a
central part of further enhancing our collaborative intelligence. By
actively seeking positive outcomes with others, we are raising our
CQ at the same time.
Viktor Frankl once said that the United States should have built
a statue of responsibility on the west coast to balance the Statue of
Liberty on the east coast. What he was getting at was that we all
wish to have more liberty or freedom and not necessarily any of the
responsibility that comes with that freedom. For instance the freedom
to drive on the public highways is matched by the responsibility to
drive in a safe and courteous manner.


7. Persistence

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.

Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men
with talent.

Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not;
the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

There are two sides to every story. Persistence can be associated
with stubbornness. Winston Churchill’s call to “never give in” can be
used by the frog as an excuse to stay in the pan while it simply boils
to death. Therefore I think an important element of persistence is
the use of judgment in choos-
ing what to hold onto and what
A great deal of success in to let go off. Another story may
life is based upon knowing help to clarify.
what to hold onto and Two monks are walking
what to let go off. along a path. They come to a
river and meet a pretty young
girl, just standing there won-
dering how she is going to get across. One of the monks offers to
carry the girl over the river. After they had all crossed and the monks
had been walking for some time along the path on their own once
again, the monk who had watched his companion help the girl said,
“Brother I have been thinking for some time about this and we both

SELF-MASTERY 79

know that our order forbids us to have contact with the opposite
sex. Are you not concerned for your soul?” The other monk said,
“Are you still carrying her? I set her down two miles ago.”
One of the monks in this story knew just how long he needed to
hold onto the young girl, the other didn’t. The country and western
singer Kenny Rogers would have described it as “knowing when to
hold em and when to fold em”. In other words there is a fine line
between persistence and stubborn stupidity.
Sometimes hindsight is the only thing that will tell us the differ-
ence. And sometimes if we hold on for long enough fate steps in.
When I was a young child living on an isolated farm, the summers
were often long and lonely. I lived a considerable distance from my
nearest friend. After working in the fields with my father all day I
often amused myself by exploring a set of old buildings belonging
to a neighbor. One evening I discovered a small hole in a stone wall
supporting an old cowshed. Lying near it on the ground was a metal
stake, the type they used to fasten the roof. I began to chisel a stone
out of the wall with the spike. This became a favorite pastime of
mine during the summer. I would make my way over to the shed in
the evening and knock out another stone.
Weeks later, toward the end of summer, there had been a storm
with strong winds. My older brother, Pierce, came into the house at
supper time and said, “You’ve knocked Billy Greer’s cowshed down.”
No one at the kitchen table knew what he was talking about —
except me of course. I didn’t know what to say, and eventually got
into a great deal of trouble with my parents over the incident. The
hole I had created, one small stone at a time, had so weakened the
building that a gust of wind came along and finished the job. The
lesson I took from this experience was that you don’t always have
to finish the job yourself — beginning it and working steadily will
allow other factors to play a part — sometimes with spectacular
results. In this case my persistence generated a good thrashing from


my father, but on the other hand persistence can generate good
things too.
Dr. Robert Ornstein has conducted a great deal of research in
the area of how people use their brains. His research shows that
when we use both sides of our brains (there is a natural tendency
for people to use one side predominately), we greatly increase our
functional capacity. Some subjects increased their performance by
a factor of ten (X10) when they used both sides of their brain. Brain
Gym™, stemming from the intensive research of Dr. Paul and Gail E.
Dennison, provides a series of simple exercises designed to balance
the use of the two sides of the brain.

GO DEEPER
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Persistence is difficult to maintain if we do not manage our
energy properly. We have a finite amount to expend and how we
focus it depends entirely on how we align ourselves.

8. Alignment

Self-mastery relies on our ability to focus and, in turn, upon our
ability to create alignment. Alignment enables us to have the great-
est impact in our lives. Robert Dilts created a model that describes
our lives as consisting of a series of levels. He called these the
“logical level” and they are:

• environment,
• behaviors,
• capabilities,

SELF-MASTERY 81

• beliefs,
• values,
• identity and
• spirit.

Arranged as a series of concentric circles (see Figure 3.1), the
levels represent different aspects of our lives.

Figure 3.1
Dilts’ Logical Levels

Environment
Behavior
Capability
Belief
Values
nt
Ide ity

Spiritual

• Environment. At the outer level, we have our physical
environment: material possessions, our homes, and the people
in our lives. This is the part of our life that is most visible to
ourselves and to others. The environment also contains all
our relationships. We have accumulated all these things (good
or bad) from the new level — our behaviors.


• Behaviors. This level includes everything we do in our personal
and professional lives. Our behaviors, to a large extent, have
created our environment. If we wish to change our environment
we must change our behaviors. Our behaviors are largely
dependent upon our capabilities.
• Capabilities. This refers to all the things of which we are
capable. Not all capabilities become expressed as behaviors.
For example I might be capable of driving my car at 150 MPH.
I don’t allow that to become a behavior because I do not like
the anticipated consequences for myself or other drivers.
Capabilities are potential behaviors, some become actualized
and others don’t. The difference between those that turn into
behaviors and those that don’t is whether there is support at
the belief level.
• Beliefs. These store all the things we assume about ourselves,
others, and the world in which we live. Beliefs are about
permission. They give it or take it away, depending on how
they are structured. Often enough we wish to be capable of
something and when we think about it carefully we find we
do not have sufficient belief in ourselves. We have not given
ourselves permission. The beliefs we form rely heavily upon
the things we value.
• Values. What we value will affect our relationship to the world.
We focus our energy around those things that have the greatest
value to us. We form strong assumptions and opinions around
our values and, as such, they become the birthplace of most
of our beliefs. In their own right they are the source of our
motivation and therefore become very important when we are
trying to achieve something. If we do not have a belief about
something, it is unlikely that we will generate any capabilities
or behaviors related to it. As you can see, each level depends
on the content of the one below.

SELF-MASTERY 83

• Identity. Who are we? This can include our ethnic and cultural
heritage (even if we don’t associate ourselves with it any
longer). Roles such as father, teacher, and artist often have a
significant affect at this level. How we perceive ourselves (our
identity) determines what we value.
• Spirit. The core of the model represents our spirit. Spirit need
not be interpreted in any religious fashion. I think of spirit as
the deepest level of us that knows it is alive in an alive universe.
At this level it is common for people to be aware of how deeply
connected they are to everyone and everything. The condition
of our spirit determines, to a great degree, our identity (and
so on up the through the layers).
When people refer to the “spirit of the team” this is the
level that is expressing itself and probably the level at which
the team has connected. Everyone has had an experience
where they have felt this level of connection with other people.
This is one of the reasons why people who have had spiritual
experiences sometimes undergo dramatic changes in their:
beliefs and values; identities; capabilities, and behaviors.

Alignment is the process of bringing the different levels into
line with each other. This can be achieved individually and also
between individuals in a group, say within a team. Typically changes
made at any of the deeper levels will reverberate, like ripples over
the surface of a pond, out to the environment level. In my expe-
rience using this model with individuals and teams, huge changes
can occur at the surface (environment/behaviors) with just small
adjustments at deeper levels.
Aligning our own logical levels is not as complex as you might
imagine. One of the most common discoveries people make when
they perform an alignment process is that even very negative and
self-limiting behaviors are attempts to honor a positive value situated


at a deeper level. For example, someone that is overly strict and
dictatorial with a colleague who reports to him may find through
alignment questions that this behavior is based on the value of
helping the person get the best out of himself. This alignment process
is featured in the companion workbook.
Team alignment can be used to help individuals align the
logical levels together. Of course, good personal alignment is a nec-
essary first step to good team alignment. Try making a neat bundle
out of a set of very crooked twigs and you’ll know what I mean.
There are significant benefits of bringing about this degree of align-
ment. Many teams are designed more around compliance than
commitment. We should remember that commitment is a much
more powerful motivator. The real reason commitment is not more
common within the corporate world is that most managers and team
leaders do not have a systematic way to generate it within their
teams. The logical levels alignment process can be invaluable in
these circumstances.
Team alignment also requires us to be actively developing
our CQ. High performing teams are aligned and exercise all their
collaborative intelligence around their shared objectives.

9. Self-Expression

At the very beginning of this chapter I shared the story of the first
furrow and it’s relevance to how we operate in the world, partic-
ularly with others. The kind of relationship we have with ourselves
affects the way we use self-expression. The kinds of things we say
about ourselves lets others know what sort of opinion we have of our-
selves. Even things we say about others reveal a great deal of
information, indirectly stated, about how we think of ourselves.
Being highly judgmental toward another team member probably
indicates we are very judgmental with ourselves.

SELF-MASTERY 85

Negative messages we received during our childhood are often
absorbed and replayed whenever we experience an event that chal-
lenges our self-esteem. What we say about ourselves affects how
other people perceive us. Conversely positive messages we received
during our childhood are absorbed and act as a supportive reference
when we encounter challenges to our self-esteem.
The things we say are based upon how we feel about ourselves.
If we discover that our references to ourselves are less than flattering,
then maybe it is time to reassess on what our self-esteem is based.
When someone is being highly judgmental of us we can, at the
least, try to avoid them. When we are doing the judging, getting out
of the way is not really an option. Self-expression is important in
another way. How we express ourselves affects how other people
relate to us — as implied earlier in this chapter. If we have a critical
and negative relationship with ourselves this stands a very good
chance of being translated into critical, negative relationships with
our colleagues. Such relationships cannot build resilient teams.
Communicating our positive regard and respect for the people
on our team will help build a team with strong resilient relationships
and further strengthen our own CQ and that of the team. The next
chapter explores the skill of communication. We will also address a
number of questions. How does our communication affect our CQ
and that of the team in which we operate? How can we build strong
teams that weather change and pull together no matter what?

WHERE WE’VE BEEN
This chapter has been about self-mastery and the role it plays
in developing resilience and raising CQ. The main points of
this chapter are:

• Self-mastery begins with taking personal responsibility for
where we are.


• Developing our perceptual flexibility expands our
self-mastery.
• We are the meaning makers and we define our own
reality by interpreting it.
• Emotional self-management is a central element of
self-mastery.
• Mental models are useful ways to manage our beliefs and
assumptions about life.
• Leadership and followship are two sides of the same coin
and both are becoming increasingly important in the
highly dynamic society in which we live.
• Intention is a potent force for developing self-mastery and
in reaching our life objectives.
• Persistence can compensate for shortcomings in other
areas and is an important aspect of self-mastery.
• Alignment of energy (e.g., beliefs, behaviors and values)
serves to strengthen self-mastery and develop CQ
within teams.

WHERE WE’RE GOING
Self-mastery is primarily important to the individual.
However very few people work in total isolation. The further
development of self-mastery requires that we know how to
positively influence others. To do this we must know how
to communicate effectively. The next chapter explores the
topic of using communication to strengthen resilience and
build CQ within teams.

SELF-MASTERY 87

CQ Tool 3

Self-Mastery and Eliciting a Well Formed Outcome

In this chapter we have explored one of the distinguishing
features of someone with strong self-mastery, namely their
ability to create well formed outcomes. The following is a series
of questions which can be used to elicit a well formed outcome.

For this exercise think of something you would like to achieve.
It is important that you choose something that you really want
and that would make a difference to your life — that will ensure
you engage meaningfully with the exercise and be motivated to
follow through. Also as far as chunk size is concerned, world
peace may be a little large (considering this may be the first time
you have ever completed this exercise) and a new haircut may
not have enough going for it to fully engage you. Somewhere in
between will probably work best. Take your time to fully explore
all the possible answers to the questions — the more specific
you are, the more likely the process will work for you.

1. What do you want? (E.g., is anyone already doing what
you want to do?)
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________


2. What’s stopping you?
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

3. Where, When, with Whom?
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

4. What resources can you use? People, personal things, and
things you don’t already have?
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

5. Time, Money, Effort needed?
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

SELF-MASTERY 89

6. What are the present benefits of the present situation?
(What is the secondary gain?)
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

Note: In relation to question 6 — present benefits — it is com-
mon for people to have the reaction, “But surely there are no
benefits to the present situation.” This is a natural response;
however psychologists call these benefits secondary gains. Like
the small child that continues to misbehave, knowing that he is
likely to receive another slap from his parent, the secondary
gain is the attention he receives and the form in which he
receives it is less important. In other words the secondary gain
will continue to reinforce the behavior until the child discovers
another way to ensure he can get attention from the parent.
Likewise with things in our lives that we may wish to change —
even with things that on the surface provide no perceivable
reward — there may well be a secondary gain. For example if
someone were frequently avoiding promotion at work, the sec-
ondary gain may be that they will not have to make adjustments
to the relationships they have established with their co-workers.
Surfacing the secondary gain can be a powerful catalyst in
moving forward with a desired outcome.


7. How will others be affected? (Explore second and third
positions.)
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

8. What are the consequences? What else might happen if
you got this outcome?
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

9. What actions will you take? Are others involved? If so
how can you build in value for them?
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

SELF-MASTERY 91

10. Ecology: does the outcome feel right? Is there anything
missing? Place yourself into the future having achieved
this thing and then answer this question again. Is there a
difference in your answers?
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

11. What larger outcomes are supported?
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

4

Communication

Communication is the essential medium of a
creative culture: the communal sea in which we
all swim. A company that can’t communicate
is like a jazz band without instruments:
Music just isn’t going to happen.

JOHN KAO

This chapter brings us to the topic of communication and connects
the previous themes of assumption-building, perception-making
and self-mastery. After all, great self-mastery can only achieve so
much if we are working within a team that does not communicate
effectively.
More specifically, we will look at the role dialogue plays and
examine how questions can serve a vital function in professional
and team settings.


Top Down — Bottoms Up

The word “communication” can have many meanings. In a business
setting it can refer to persuasion, collaboration, issues manage-
ment, public relations, or employee communication. Sadly, most
business training programs do not cover these topics deeply enough.
These skills are increasingly required to enable flattened organizations
to operate.
We are now discovering that the top down, command and control
management philosophy is giving way to the horizontally structured
(flattened) company. In this environment good communication skills
are essential to provide continuity and interaction across teams
and departments. Communication is the single most important human
skill and, like anything that is always there, it can easily become
invisible. Yet communication is one of the central skills to building
stronger CQ within teams and organizations.
William Isaacs, president of Dialogos, explains that, “The prob-
lems that even the most practical organizations have — in improving
their performance and obtaining the results they desire — can be
traced directly to their ability to think and talk together, particularly
at critical times.” Often treated as a soft skill, communication is the
backbone of every organization and affects everything and everybody
involved in that organization.
All personal and professional relationships are built on rapport.
Rapport is defined as a relationship of mutual understanding or trust
and agreement between people. It is also described as the process
of getting “into sync” with another person. Effective communication
cannot occur without it.
To expand and develop our communication skills we must first
become aware of how we are exercising the skills we have right
now. In this chapter we will explore skills that expand our ability to
communicate effectively both one-to-one and in groups.

COMMUNICATION 95

Manipulation or Influence?

Often when people think about learning how to influence others
with their communication, they ask, “isn’t that manipulation?” This
is an important question. All communication is influence, everyone is
influencing everyone else whether they mean to or not. The more
relevant question is, “how do I wish to influence this person?” not
“will I?” Most influence is directionless and without purpose. The
moment we add direction and purpose it runs the risk of being labeled
as manipulation.
Communication skills are a tool, like a scalpel, for example.
A scalpel can be taken to a hospital and used to save someone’s
life. The same implement could be used to hold up a convenience
store. The sharper the scalpel the more capable it is for either pur-
pose. The most significant factor is the intent of the person holding
the tool. Responsibility rests with the person using the skill, not
with the skill itself. This is where the rubber hits the road — are we
taking advantage of the other person? Or are we seeking to discover
a win-win situation, where the other person gains from the situation
more or less equally?
In chapter 1, we explored how the assumptions we hold about
life are fundamental to how we operate in the world. In this chapter
I am making a specific set of assumptions about communication. I
am going to ask you to take on these assumptions and use them as
you explore this book. When you have finished the book, only adopt
those that work for you.

• Rapport is meeting individuals in their map of the world.
Rapport is defined here as a relationship of mutual trust and
respect. Rapport is established through matching the other per-
son’s body language and language patterns and by being willing
to enter their world rather than inviting them to visit ours.


• Communication is both verbal and non-verbal, both
conscious and unconscious. Research in communication
shows clearly that a large component of rapport is established
non-verbally. To communicate more effectively we must be
able to address the non-verbal element first. Not all of our
communication lies within conscious awareness and the same
is true for the person with whom we are communicating.
Communicating respect and positive regard toward the other
person non-verbally is therefore an important element to
establishing good rapport.
• The meaning of the communication is the response that
you get. This principle is about responsibility in the commu-
nication dance. We are assuming that if we do not receive the
response we desire or expect, it is up to us to change our
communication. Common sense tells us that it is easier to
change our own behavior, than change that of others (tempting
as it may be).
• There is no failure only feedback. The average person
receives strong messages from very early around the concept
of right and wrong — it is bad to be wrong and it is good to
be right. This mind-set creates distinct limitations to our ability
to communicate and learn. In one sense immediate success is
much more limiting than failure because exploration ends
with the success. Failure forces us to continue exploring the
area for more information.

In response to a question about becoming discouraged after
700 failed attempts to create the light bulb, Thomas Edison replied,
“I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700
ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not
work, I will find the way that will work.”

COMMUNICATION 97

• Behavior is the highest quality information. Every moment
of every day people are giving you huge amounts of infor-
mation about their response to your communication. Most
of this process goes on unconsciously. It is tempting to
focus only on making sense of their words. The words
comprise only a small portion of the total message; body
language and voice tone make up a surprisingly large portion
of the complete message.
• If what you are doing isn’t working, do something different.
This is directly linked to the assumption about failure and
feedback and the meaning of your communication. If you are
not getting your point across, it is time to change what you
are doing so that you can get a different result. More of the
same (repeating or speaking louder) very rarely achieves
the desired result.

Instead of assuming the other person “just doesn’t get it” — take
a different approach.
These assumptions can have a real effect on how we communi-
cate. For a start, if we do not get the result we want, we are more
capable of taking a different approach; instead of assuming the other
person “just doesn’t get it”. This brings us back to our own flexibility
(which we explore in chapter 7). In other words, assuming that
there is something we can do about the way we are communicating
is much more useful than trying to get the other person to change
their way of understanding.

Teeter-Totter Topic

All communication is a balance between relationship and infor-
mation. In business, as in any other area, effectively communicating


with another person requires there to be enough relationship to
balance the importance of the information. Professional speakers
have an old saying that goes “no one cares how much you know,
until they know how much you care”. This principle is equally valid
for general professional conversations. If there is insufficient
relationship, the other person(s) will not care enough about the
information you are trying to convey. On the other hand if there
is only relationship and no information, no real progress can be
expected from the conversation. Everyone has experienced meetings
where the relationships were great and yet very little was achieved.
All of the energy went into building and enjoying the relationship;
little or nothing into the information aspect.

Generally the more important the information, the more imper-
ative it is that the relationship aspect is cared for. When we are
under pressure we frequently forget or accidentally drop the rela-
tionship piece. Our own emotional state is important; managing
it when the stakes are high can help direct the conversation in a
resourceful direction. When we are anxious about how a message
will be received, we can tip over into information-only mode. If we
are in a nervous and agitated state, we will communicate this to the
other person non-verbally. Indeed, they may be so impacted by that
non-verbal message that they don’t notice the verbal message. So
we must remember that non-verbals become strong messages in
their own right.

COMMUNICATION 99

When we take ownership of the teeter-totter and ensure we hold
the balance between information and relationship, we rapidly become
a more effective communicator. Look closely at very effective com-
municators and notice how they manage this balance carefully.

Connecting in a Different Way

The balance between information and relationship becomes even
more important when the information has the potential for damaging
the relationship between the people communicating. A study was
conducted with senior executives as they prepared to retire from
their positions. One of the questions the study asked them was to
identify the most stressful part of their jobs. One might expect the
executives to talk about big deals or crucial mergers. This was not
the case. Invariably, the group surveyed talked about the stress of
having to let people go, and of delivering bad news. I think what
this says about communication in business life is that it is not always
true when people say, “it’s nothing personal it’s just business” (true
Godfather-style). It is a natural human tendency to not wish to
disappoint others. The question is what can we do when we have
disappointed others?
Flemons, in his book Completing Distinctions, talks about how
couples deal with an affair that occurs during their relationship. He
states that, “an affair cannot be forcefully forgotten, cannot be ban-
ished from the history of a relationship, but it can be connected to in
a different way.” In other words, they have discovered another way
to communicate with it, which in turn enables them to communicate
differently with each other.
Similarly, people within organizations cannot change how they
are relating to each other if they are unwilling to connect to others
in a different way. Holding grudges is often a psychological strategy


people use to defend themselves from future hurt. However the
strategy can backfire. A story from southeast Asia relates how the
jungle dwellers used to catch monkeys.
The story goes that they would put a fig into a narrow-necked
earthen jar and leave it at the base of a tree the monkeys frequented.
The curious monkey would put its hand into the jar and grab the
fig. As long as it held onto the fig, it couldn’t get its hand out of
the heavy jar. The monkey’s ability to escape was hampered by the
thing it was holding onto and easily caught by the jungle people.
The moral of the story is that it’s unwillingness to let go cost the
monkey its freedom. We need to ask ourselves what are we holding
onto that is preventing us from moving on. Holding on can happen
in teams when members are unable to let go of things that have
happened in the team’s history. As a result they are hampered by
their history.

Is Orion Always There?

When I think of changing interpretations of an event, constellations
come to my mind. Consider the constellation of Orion in the north-
ern hemisphere — the magnificent hunter of the winter night sky.
The configuration of the stars
has represented Orion the
We are pattern recognition Hunter for thousands of years.
systems — we impose Yet if we traveled a few light
patterns and, by doing so, years toward it we would
we also impose meaning. find that the hunter has dis-
appeared. The stars have not
moved — we have and every-
thing is different. Before we made the journey those eight stars
depicted Orion and yet further out in space they mean something

COMMUNICATION 101

different. We are walking pattern recognition systems — we impose
patterns and, by doing so, we also impose meaning. We are the
meaning makers and how we make those meanings, shapes the way
we communicate.
A more useful question to consider about an event or expe-
rience could be “How can I relate to this in the most resourceful
and useful way?” or “What is the most useful meaning I can choose
from what they said?” This implies there are a number of ways the
event can be interpreted and that we have choice, rather than “what
does that mean?” which implies there is one meaning that we have
to discover.

Types of Communication

All communication can be effectively divided in to two types:

• Intrapersonal — the way we communicate with ourselves and
• Interpersonal — the way we communicate with others.

Without adequate awareness and skill at the intrapersonal level,
it is impossible for someone to be effective at the interpersonal
level. A house without a foundation may appear sturdy, however,
when storms rage, it becomes a liability and dangerous to everyone
inside it.

Intrapersonal Communication

According to the National Science Foundation the average person
generates approximately 12,000 thoughts per day. It is reasonable
to assume that most of us “talk” to ourselves at least as much as we
talk to anyone else; this emphasizes the importance of the quality


of our intrapersonal communication (self talk). Unfortunately, the
majority of self talk is unconscious and is therefore operating below
the radar.

GO DEEPER
Self Talk: www.anthillsite.com

High levels of motivation and clarity rely heavily on the kind
of message being communicated internally. Negative messages or
jumbled contradictory self talk lead to demotivation and lack of affir-
mative action. Becoming aware of the nature of self talk is the first
step to changing it.
The simplest awareness device on the market is an elastic band.
Placed on the wrist, it reminds us that thoughts matter. Twanging
it when negative thoughts surface helps to begin the process of
rewriting the scripts we run in our minds.
Our personal resilience is a reflection of the thoughts we have
about ourselves and the world in which we live. If we wish to
strengthen our own internal resilience, we must first check what
thoughts we are running. Of the 12,000-odd thoughts we have each
day, very few are critically examined. Most go unchecked or explored
for relevance. We know in our heart of hearts that change is a constant
and that the world in which we live today is not the world we lived in
last year. Yet so many of the assumptions formed a year ago are still
running our thoughts. They are fundamental to the quality of our lives.

Interpersonal Communication

As we work on further improving the quality of our internal com-
munication, we can also work on the nature of our interpersonal

COMMUNICATION 103

communication (communicating with others). One of the most
important areas where we can improve our capacity to successfully
communicate with others is with our voice tone. Voice tone plays a
significant part in expressing meaning. Remember when you were
young — the tone of voice your mother or father used could have a
devastating effect. Unconsciously we use voice tone as an important
part of the context of verbal information.
A great deal of our communication today is conducted over a
phone and body language has little impact on how our messages are
interpreted. On the phone the tone of our voice becomes the most
important source of extra information (meta messages) about what
is being said. Our voice tone is affected by our emotional state and
this explains why emotional self-mastery (chapter 3) is so important.
We may think we can mask or hide strong emotions such as anger
or excitement from the other person, but the truth is we are com-
municating our emotions unconsciously all the time. Assuming this
to be true, it becomes important to decide what emotional state we
want to be in when communicating with a particular person or in a
specific situation. The skills explored in chapter 3 will enable you
to achieve greater emotional self-mastery. The saying that “to mas-
ter others first master yourself” could be altered slightly to say “to
master your communication, first master yourself”.

Communication at the Speed of Light

Light travels very fast — 186 thousand miles per second, to be pre-
cise. Sound travels at a fraction of this speed — 750 miles per hour.
We have all witnessed thunderstorms and know that we see light-
ning long before the sound of thunder reaches us. So when you say
something, information about what you look like as you say it arrives
much sooner than the actual words.


When “light and sound” messages match in content we call this
congruence. Congruent messages are much more effective than
messages that don’t match or that are at odds with each other. It is
important for us to be congruent in our communication by ensur-
ing our non-verbal messages match our verbal ones. Saying we are
pleased to see someone when we have a doubtful look on our face
is an example of incongruence. Highly influential communicators
also ensure their voice tone closely matches the verbal message they
are sharing.
When someone responds poorly to something we said, we
frequently think it was the words we used. Rarely do we think that
it had anything to do with the other messages added to the words —
the way we look or the tone of our voice.
The expression “you cannot not communicate” represents
an interesting assumption in relation to emotions and voice tone.
When we are annoyed with someone and we allow that annoyance
to affect our emotional state, in turn affecting our voice tone, the
other person inevitably picks up on this information. This may then
change the direction of the conversation when the person responds
to the non-verbal messages (voice tone, body language), rather than
the words themselves.
Good self-mastery enables us to control our emotions so that we
are not adding unwanted emotional content to our communication.
Tone of voice does not go entirely unnoticed at the conscious level —
people will say, for example, “please don’t use that tone of voice with
me”. At times like these it is important to separate what the other
person said, from how they said it. One way to separate the two
messages — the verbal and non-verbal — is to say, “The tone of
voice you used makes me feel ‘X’. Is that what you intended?” Often
the other person is unaware that two messages were delivered. The
question enables them to clarify what they meant. The process of
building and maintaining rapport can now continue.

COMMUNICATION 105

A great deal of communication challenges could be avoided if
we practice checking or testing the meaning of the other person’s
message. One of the most powerful skills is backtracking, where
we repeat back to the person what they said to check our under-
standing.

Does it Matter Who Is Responsible?

It is a natural human tendency to hold other people responsible for
misinterpreting our communication. This can set off a chain of events
(invisible at first) that could blow up into a misunderstanding, argu-
ment or worse. Some people find the assumption that “the meaning
of your communication is the response that you get” very challeng-
ing. They may respond by saying, “that is so ridiculous. How can
I be held responsible for how someone interprets what I say?”
Actually the point of the assumption is not where the responsibil-
ity lies, but where the opportunity for adjustment lies. We cannot
really do anything about someone’s ability to comprehend what we
are saying. What we can do, is adjust how we are saying it. Highly
effective communicators take responsibility for the effect their com-
munications have and adjust how they say things when they find
themselves misunderstood.
Team rapport is achieved when everyone is playing the same
tune. Achieving and maintaining group rapport can be a challenge
as rapport tends to ebb and flow. The secret is being able to main-
tain enough rapport for the team to function fully, at all times. Team
rapport should not be mistaken for some kind of “group think”.
Rather it is based upon a willingness to embrace diversity of thought
and a healthy amount of disagreement. General Patton is famous
for the expression, “If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn’t
thinking.” Differences are valuable; it is how they are assimilated


by the team that is important. Diversity brings with it multiple ways
of responding and strong problem solving capabilities which is the
main facet of all resilient systems.
A team in rapport is much more resilient and productive than
one that is not. Team-building exercises are a great way to build team
rapport. However, after the train-
ing session or team retreat is over,
Differences are valuable; resilience is maintained day-to-
it is how they are day through good communication
assimilated by the team skills. All human behavior can be
that is important. modeled. In other words if you
can, I can and if I can, you can.
This applies to communication
skills. They can be developed further with specific skill-building
exercises included at the end of this chapter.
Most of the time rapport is established unconsciously. We can
also do certain things to accelerate the process or deepen its effect.
Typically rapport is achieved by the exchange of a number of non-
verbal messages. The exchange occurs within the first few seconds
of meeting. The initial impression that is formed by people is based
almost completely upon these messages. Some people are very
effective at creating great first impressions. This is not an acci-
dent, although they may have no idea how they do it. On close
examination, they send a specific set of non-verbal messages (a
smile or a specific tone of voice for example) that helps establish
rapport quickly.

People Like Us

The first step in building rapport is matching the other person. People
like people like themselves and the more you make yourself like

COMMUNICATION 107

the other person (though tattoos last a long time) the easier it is for
them to like you. With that attraction comes some very valuable
attention that will ensure they listen to what you are saying. Body
language is the most visible way you can match another person.
Body posture, movements, and rhythm all fit in here. You don’t have
to be Robin Williams to match another person with your body. You
do have to get over the idea of it — and using the words “mimic” or
“imitate” does not help you here at all. The whole purpose of match-
ing the other person is to honor or to meet them where they are and
only to a level that you can feel comfortable also.
When you watch people closely in public places, such as malls
and cafés, you begin to recognize the dance of rapport. Another way
of thinking about this is that there is a natural tendency toward
entrainment between people. Given the chance we automatically get
into “synch” with each other. It happens unconsciously and most
frequently between people who like each other already.
The matching I refer to here also applies to voice speed, tone
and volume. Of these, speed is probably the easiest to match.
People generally talk at the speed at which they think. So what
does this suggest? If we wish to help the other person comprehend
what we are saying, it makes sense to listen carefully to the speed
they talk and match that speed. Too fast and they will not pick every-
thing up, too slow and their mind will wander which can be just
as harmful.

I See You

The South African greeting “Sowabona” means “I see you”. When
someone says “Sowabona” to you the customary reply is “Ngikona”
or “I am”. Because you see me, really see me, I am. In other words
you are saying “you exist”, “you have value”. Sometimes we have


been so long in a system (e.g., a family, church, or school) that it is
almost as if we have become invisible. The system has habituated
to our presence. At such times it is tempting to treat those around
us as if they too were invisible. Few things could be so detrimental
to our ability to effect change and live a productive personal or pro-
fessional life. Matching another’s body language is a strong subliminal
message to the other person that you “see them”.

Attention-Getting Behaviors

After establishing rapport, the next task is to gain and hold the other
person’s attention. You don’t have to be talking all the time to hold
their attention. Listening carefully enough so that you hear what
they are saying is a great way to guarantee their attention. Good
listening is about making your own mind quiet while they talk. If
you have not tried this before, give it a go. Make your mind quiet
(harder than it sounds — and practice pays off) while the other
person speaks. The first thing that tends to happen is that we
panic that we will not have anything intelligent to say when it
is our turn. There is a natural tendency to want to impress the
other person with what we have
to say. Personal experience has
The wisest person in the taught me that one of the most
room is the one who reliable ways to impress the other
knows when to listen person is to really hear what they
and how to listen. say. You may be the first person
who has really listened to them
for a long time.
Really listening to another person in a group setting can be
a challenge. There is so much going on and we may have our own
agenda we wish to have addressed. However in such situations

COMMUNICATION 109

thoughtful listening is just as important as thoughtful talking. The
wisest person in the room is the one who knows when to listen and
how to listen.

The Benefit of Great Listening

A client once complained about having to take people from their
work to have them trained in running effective meetings. What he
did not dispute was that their meetings had been quite ineffective
in dealing with ongoing departmental challenges. We did a rough
estimate of how much money was being “invested” in their ongoing
meetings. Calculating the total of the hourly rates of the 11 people
attending the meeting (and without factoring in lost productivity
because people were not at their desks) came to $4,500 per two-
hour meeting. Held twice a month, this amounted to over $90,000
as an annual investment. At this point in the calculations we both
realized that making their meetings more effective would be a very
good investment.
We explored the dialogue process with this client. Before long
everyone in the team began to talk about things that really mattered
to them. They were also doing this in a way that was respectful of
other people’s opinions. This process has been championed by William
Isaacs in his book Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together. He
and his partner, Juanita Brown, have also used dialogue (and permu-
tations of the method) extensively with their corporate clients for all
sorts of purposes. Their model of dialogue consists of four elements.

1. Listening
2. Respecting
3. Suspending
4. Voicing


1. Listening

This is a simple process that we all think we are so good at. Yet as
we listen to another person it is so easy to add inferences to the
things people say. When we do this, we also move into a judging
mode that may affect what we hear and what we don’t. In this way
judgments can act as filters. When we allow this to happen we are
not hearing the other person, we are only hearing our inferences
about what they said.

2. Respecting

Respecting people’s right to voice their opinion is easier in principle
than in real practice. The more significant the disagreement between
people (international disagreements, for example), the more impor-
tant it is that the parties involved can respect each other’s opinions.
Isaacs describes the process of respecting as “making room for all
the perspectives and voices without trying to get rid of any of it”. If
you practiced the perceptual positions exercise in chapter 2 you
will have realized that perspective can have a tremendous effect on
how people relate to their world.

3. Suspending

Suspending is the process of allowing a topic or theme to be sus-
pended like a pendulum in the middle of the conversation. Suspending
allows doubt to exist around the topic. It also prevents participants
from falling into certainty and to access their ignorance more effec-
tively. Exploring what we don’t know is not always comfortable,
according to Isaacs. Dialogue will be difficult for people “who know
what they think and why they think it”. Suspending also helps par-
ticipants to broaden their attention to other aspects of the issue being

COMMUNICATION 111

discussed. In other words, we are expanding our awareness of other
people and how they relate to the important issues.

4. Voicing

The fourth and final element of dialogue can be the most challenging.
It requires us to speak our truth irrespective of who else is listening.
Voicing also involves finding our own voice. It is so easy for us to
speak from memory, saying the same old things we have said maybe
a thousand times. To speak about something in the moment without
knowing exactly what is going to come out, can be a challenge. Doing
so can also provide a liberating model for others present. Finding our
voice can also enable us to say something that is deeper and truer
for everyone present. At this point we are tapping into the collective
intelligence in the room, the things that the group wants to speak.

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Commitment Versus Compliance

Leaders often refer to the challenge of achieving buy-in from their
teams. Often this has been caused by the fact that people felt they
had insufficient input. Within a top-down organization this can be
a major challenge. A manager receives a mandate from above to
achieve something. No one had played a part in forming this strat-
egy and, therefore, had no sense of ownership as a result. Now the
manager has the challenge of selling this idea to the people he leads.
It is understandable that some managers apply the same strategy
with those who report to them — drop the project on their lap.


An organization operating like this will have problems engaging its
people in projects and initiatives. All is not lost, however. We can
choose to engage our people through dialogue and through the
engagement that comes from dialogue. Conversely, if they have had
no opportunity to play a part in the creation, they are naturally going
to be left wondering why they should support it.

People support what they create.
— MEG WHEATLEY

In the book Presence, Peter Senge states that “engineers know
that the best technical solutions often fail to be implemented, or are
not successful when they are, because of low trust and failed com-
munication.” So improved team communication goes beyond warm
fuzzy feelings about team members. There are concrete business
reasons why it pays to have people deeply involved in creating solu-
tions to team challenges. According to Isaacs, dialogue achieves high
levels of collaboration (collaborative intelligence) “by deepening the
glue that links people together. This ‘glue’ is the genuine shared
meaning and common understanding already present in a group of
people. From shared meaning, shared action arises.” This is effective
communication in action. At the end of the chapter you will find an
outline of the dialogue process that can be used to great effect in a
multitude of business environments.
In an amazingly compact book, The Thin Book of Naming
Elephants, Sue Annis Hammond and Andrea B. Mayfield claim that
within a team setting there are three things that are required for team
communication to be effective. They are (p. 92):

“1. being curious about how every other person sees the world;
2. respecting each person’s perspective of the world as unique
and essential to the group’s success; and

COMMUNICATION 113

3. making sure every person has a chance to speak and be heard.”

These factors rely on each other. Some teams practice some of
them and expect great cooperation from everyone. Unfortunately
without all three only partial communication (and consequently
cooperation) is possible.

Teams that “Speak Their Truth”

I used the dialogue process with a team of managers within a
Canadian health care system recently. One person said, “I love this —
I feel I have the chance to say things I have never felt permission to
say before.” After that expression, others in the group took the per-
mission and said what they also felt. The end result of the session
was a group that reached a place they had not been before in terms
of closeness and commitment. They had taken the opportunity to
share their assumptions and feelings about the team and about the
problems they faced. Sharing assumptions is something we have
already visited in chapter 1, but doing so within the team setting can
improve communication considerably.
Meg Wheatley, in A Simpler Way, refers to a group of managers
who shifted their definition of “information as power” to “informa-
tion as nourishment”. This helped to remind them that information
is essential to everyone, and that those who have more of it will be
more intelligent workers than those who are starving. The process
of dialogue helps that nourishment to reach everyone.
David Isaacs and his partner Juanita Brown also evolved the
“conversation café” from the dialogue process. Conversation cafés
are used to explore topics in a public setting. In their book The World
Café — Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Mat-
ter, Brown and Isaacs share a simple version of the collaborative


dialogue process. This can be used in any situation where a group
of people wish to address challenging issues.

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That’s a Good Question

One of the central themes of all these approaches to enhancing
communication effectiveness is the quality of the questions gener-
ated. A good coach asks good questions and a great coach asks
great questions. Peter Block has written a splendid book on asking
good questions. In The Answer to How is Yes, Block contests “We
define our dialogue and, in a sense, our future through the questions
we choose to address. Asking the wrong question puts us in the
philosopher’s dilemma: We become the blind man looking in a dark
room for a black cat that is not there.”
On the other hand asking the right question can have a miracu-
lous effect whether we are trying to help a friend or facilitating a
team meeting. A sign that you have asked a good question is the
other person saying, “That’s a good question”. They are usually silent
for awhile after that because your question has caused them to think
new things. Good questions focus our attention and at the same time
invite a deeper exploration of the issue. The structure of the ques-
tion determines the direction our attention goes. Because of this,
it is important that the question is a positive one. Problem-focused
questions will help us spend more time with the problem, but not
necessarily bring us closer to a solution.

COMMUNICATION 115

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In the Encyclopedia of Positive Questions, the authors (Diana
Whitney, David Cooperrider, Amanda Trosten-Bloom and Brian S.
Kaplin) have provided an entire book devoted to positive questions
that can be used in a variety of situations. To help people appreciate
the benefits of positive questions they suggest asking the following
question (abbreviated version) at the beginning of a team meeting:
“Reflecting back on your entire career think about the most mem-
orable team experience you have ever had…Tell me…about the time
when you were part of a really great team? What made the team
a success?”
After people have had the opportunity to discuss this ques-
tion for ten minutes in pairs, they are asked to report back about
the experience. One thing that commonly happens is the energy
in the room rises noticeably. When asked to report back about the
effect the question had, participants typically report how inspired
and deeply connected they felt. The authors of the Encyclopedia use
these kind of questions as one of the major interventions in their
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach to organizational change.

WHERE WE’VE BEEN
In this chapter we have explored how relatively simple and
easy adjustments to our communication style can help us to
be more effective in influencing others. The main points of
this chapter are:

• Influence and manipulation are two sides of the same coin;
the only difference is the intent of the communicator and
that is our responsibility.


• What we assume about communication and other people
has a tremendous effect on how successful (or otherwise)
our communication can be.
• All communication contains the dynamic of information-
and-relationship; managing this dynamic is the secret to
creating productive and positive results.
• There is often a huge difference between what people say
and what they mean; getting below the surface is vital to
successful communication.
• Some information travels at the speed of light, others at
the speed of sound; the right non-verbal cues can enhance
our communication effectiveness.
• Listening is an attention-getting behavior; great listeners
are great communicators.
• Dialogue is a powerful communication process.
• Questions are the most powerful way to connect with
others and build rapport; they are also our most potent
ally in influencing others.

WHERE WE’RE GOING
With great communication comes the opportunity to develop
great connections with other people, teams, and departments.
Connection is the theme of the next chapter. Some of the
questions we address in chapter 5 are: How important is
connection? How can we achieve deep connection within
a team? What part does collaborative intelligence play in
flattened organizations?

COMMUNICATION 117

CQ Tool 4

Exploring the Conversation Café*

One of the ways highly effective communication can be
achieved in a team is through deep dialogue. It is common
for organizations and teams to discover that although they
thought themselves to be good at communication, they were,
in fact, only utilizing a small portion of their potential in
this area. Conversation Cafés adapt two ancient traditions:
the talking-stick circle and deep dialogue. The talking stick
ensures that only one person talks at a time and deep dia-
logue provides the opportunity for participants to speak to
their own truth in meaningful ways. Dialogue also creates
an environment that enables those involved to think together
about a topic.

Prior to running the conversation café process, it is important
to have an orienting question that people speak to as a catalyst
for the conversation. An example for a team involved in pro-
viding customer service might be “What would it take for us to
be able to surprise and delight our customers?”

* Special thanks to those at conversation café for their kind per-
mission to use this guideline for the conversation café process
<www.conversationcafe.org>.


Note: At least 50 minutes should be allowed for the process.
It helps to have someone to volunteer as facilitator to keep a
gentle eye on the process. Also it is useful to have someone
acting as a recorder for the conversation, keeping track of the
themes that emerge. Both of these roles should not prevent
the volunteers from participating fully in the conversation.

STEP 1: The facilitator begins the session by reading out the
six Agreements — six principles common to most dialogue and
conversation cafés.

• Suspend judgment as best you can.
• Respect one another.
• Seek to understand rather than persuade.
• Invite and honor diversity of opinion.
• Speak what has personal heart and meaning.
• Go for honesty and depth without going on and on.

STEP 2: A simple process: A “talking stick” (any object that
has been designated for the task) is passed around the group
in a clockwise or counter-clockwise fashion. Only the person
holding the talking stick may talk. Once they have finished they
hand it to the person next to them. Two rounds of speaking with-
out interruption introduce a quality of listening and reflecting
that opens people to themselves and one another. People can
pass if they like. They can be silent as their way of speaking.
Then a lively conversation happens, keeping in mind the agree-
ments to inquire rather than assert and debate. At the end, a
final “talking stick” round anchors for each participant the gems
they are taking away.

COMMUNICATION 119

STEP 3: At the end of the session participants are asked to
reflect on the process they have just experienced and share
their thoughts. They are also asked to comment upon anything
that emerged in the conversation which surprised them.

5

Connection

Relationships are the essence
of the living world.

GREGORY BATESON

Whether it is two cells sharing information or two nations negotiating
international trade, connection is an essential factor in how things
play out. Communication is impossible without connection and in
many respects it is the core issue of this book. Connection makes
communication possible; communication makes collaboration pos-
sible which further enhances the state of connection. Connection is
a fundamental principle of all living systems and this includes all
those that make up human society (teams, organizations, etc.).
In this chapter we explore how important connection is in
building resilient teams and at the same time further enhancing our
own Collaborative Intelligence (CQ). We will also look at the part
CQ will play in the increasingly flattened structures of modern


companies and the resilient teams that are required to make the
whole thing work.
Daniel Goleman’s work around the concept of Emotional Intel-
ligence (EQ) was a major step forward in the thinking of how we
operate as human beings. EQ is especially important because of the
extent to which it was accepted by the business community. The
concept of EQ has already made its way through early-adopters
and into the mainstream. It is time for another set of skills to be
introduced — based upon the ability to collaborate.

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Celebrating Interdependence Day

Our universe is built on relationships. Relationships outnumber
people and create the matrix (social, physical, and psychological)
in which we live. Quantum mechanics shows us quite clearly that
everything is connected to everything else. Physicists assure us
that at the quantum level everything is energy and relationships.
Connection is an important aspect of our world. Connections between
nations, organizations, groups, team members, individuals, parts of
individuals, even the chemicals that make up the human body are
arranged in complex systems of interdependent relationships. The
level of interdependence is deep and pervasive, yet people, teams, and
organizations so often believe they can act with total independence.
Biologist Lynn Margulis comments that, “independence is a polit-
ical concept, not a biological concept. Everywhere life displays
itself as complex, tangled, messy webs of relationships.” In natural
systems disconnection and isolation usually represent dysfunction.
The simplest definition of cancer is abnormal or uncontrolled cell

CONNECTION 123

division where some part of the body ignores the shared interests
of the rest of the body. The isolation has become a manifestation
and the cause of dysfunction.
Maybe some day we will evolve to the extent that there will be
a holiday to celebrate interdependence rather than independence.
The holiday could be a public acknowledgment (and celebration)
of how interdependent we really are.

Life did not take over the globe by combat,
but by networking.
FRITJOF CAPRA

We live in a world that is not only changing but the rate of change
is accelerating. A tsunami of change is creating a world that places
tremendous pressure on our individual ability to adapt. Resilience
was earlier defined as the ability to bounce back and recover in
harsh or challenging conditions. Certainly, we are all going to have
to become more resilient to handle what is ahead of us. A healthy
level of connection is an important factor in developing resilience.
This is just as true for teams as it is for the organizations they serve.
This makes CQ a vital area of concern for individuals and teams that
wish to develop deeper, more reliable levels of connection within
their organizations.

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CQ, Community and Organizations

We cannot talk about developing CQ within teams and organizations
and ignore the importance of building community. Building a sense


of community automatically expands the CQ of a group or team.
Developing meaningful participation develops community. Chapter 7
will explore the theme of meaningful participation in greater detail.
With the development of community within teams and organizations
the CQ grows proportionally.
There are important lessons we need to learn about the devel-
opment of community at all levels of society. At the micro level one of
the issues that has become apparent and pressing is the shortage
of skilled people and the challenge of retaining staff. An increasing
number of business leaders are recognizing that one of the most cost
effective ways of addressing these challenges is through the devel-
opment of community within the workplace. No matter what the
motivation, this is still a reassuring trend. From a business manage-
ment perspective, people are less inclined to leave a community than
they are an organization. A community is also a healthier place to
work — the sense of support is beneficial to everyone’s mental health
especially when things get challenging.
A healthy corporate community is much more resilient than one
that lacks the community factor. So far, this could be viewed as a
cynical use of community — to simply address a business challenge.
However, once community
does begin to develop within
The more connected we businesses and teams it
become, the more we realize tends to transform the way in
we are all part of a system which business is conducted.
that supports us. The more connected people
become, the more they real-
ize the degree to which we
are all part of systems that support each other. The skills explored
in chapters 1 through 4 enable the further development of CQ
and this, in turn, increases the community building capacity of
each individual.

CONNECTION 125

Kazimierz Gozdz, in his book Community Building, explores
the connection between the creation of learning organizations and
community building. According to Gozdz we can use a series of
questions to ascertain the level of community active within an
organization. Here are some he uses.

• Is the organization moving toward greater inclusivity of
information, people, and ideas?
• Is the organization sharing power effectively, becoming more
consensual and democratic?
• At the organizational level, is the community becoming more
capable of contemplative learning?
• Is the organization a safe place, a practice field, for exploring
each person’s full potential?
• Can the group fight gracefully?
• Is the group moving toward or away from becoming a group
of all leaders?
• Is there a spirit of interconnectedness present?

What would the answers be to these questions for your team,
department, and organization? Assuming that not all of your answers
are what you would like them to be, how can we change this?
Technology provides some of the answers.
George Por, Founder and Chairman, CommunityIntelligence Ltd.,
states that technology can and should support the four functions
that our biological systems provide. These are the following:

• communication;
• coordination;
• memory/knowledge management; and
• learning.


By helping us to develop these functions beyond our own bio-
logical capacities, technology is helping us to develop the CQ of
organizations. This will enable us to manage the social and knowl-
edge capital more effectively — assets so rarely considered in the
business world. In other words, technology will play an important
part in developing the CQ of groups and organizations.
In relation to the connection between technology, community, and
resilience, Por states, “Resilience after all is determined by the ability
of the group to sense what is going on in the environment (business
and otherwise) and to be able to share ideas with itself about how
best to respond to the information that is coming in.” Collaboration
software must service the four enabling functions in order that com-
plex business groups can further develop and support “community”.
Literally thousands of highly effective virtual communities exist on
the Internet already — a quick visit to Google will attest to that.

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Collaborating and Resiling

Al Siebert in The Resilience Advantage makes a wonderful obser-
vation about resilience. He says that rather than thinking of resilience
as something someone has (like a smile or a cough), we should
think of it as something someone does. For this he coined the term
“resile” — a verb to describe when a person, or any system for that
matter, expresses its ability to respond in a resilient fashion. Resiling
is a verb or a “doing” word while resilience indicates something we
have — a characteristic or quality. So it is with CQ, a group or team
actively collaborates.

CONNECTION 127

Watching CQ in Action

Think of a flock of starlings. In your mind’s eye watch them swirl in
the sky, thousands of individual birds creating an aerial dance that
demands the coordination of millions of wing beats. On the surface
their synchronization appears to be created by each bird’s ability to
respond to the movements of its neighbors. However, high speed
film demonstrates a fascinating fact. These birds do not actually
have the ability to physically respond to the flock. Their nervous sys-
tems are physically unable to respond in the timeframes that make
the dance of the flock possible. This phenomenon is observed in a
wide range of groups, schools of fish, swarms of insects, and even
large herds of animals.
At a distance watching this group behavior, it would appear that
there is some sort of mass mind in effect. In fact this is actually
what some research scientists contend is at work. Biologist Rupert
Sheldrake has put forward the theory of morphogenic fields to explain
the mass mind or swarm intelligence that the creatures appear to be
accessing. Sheldrake goes on to claim that by tapping into the mor-
phogenic field the birds know which way the flock is going to turn.
Morphogenic fields are created, according to Sheldrake, as a field
of collective intelligence surrounding groups of living creatures.
Sheldrake is not alone in his search to make sense of this field
effect. Other field theorists include Ervin Laszlo who puts forward
the concept of an “Akashic Field”. This is a much more compre-
hensive theory, attempting to explain the basic structure of the
universe. The fundamental idea is roughly the same, however — a
field of information into which all living creatures can tap, given the
correct circumstances.
A slightly different example, and no less amazing, is the way cer-
tain insects build their homes. The termite, for example, builds the
largest structures on earth (compared to the size of the builders).


They create intricate architectural wonders (complete with built-in
air conditioning) as a group and yet there are no “termite architects”
nor “termite engineers”. The knowledge of how to construct these
intricate structures resides within the entire population. Only as a
group do they have this capability; it does not exist in the individ-
uals. This is an example of emergence — the appearance of group
behaviors that were not evident within the individuals making up
that group.
Ants are another great example of individual creatures that man-
age to build and maintain complex colonies without the aid of any
specialists or even formal leaders. In most species of ant, when there
is something that needs to be done to serve the anthill, available
ants switch tasks and simply get on with it. The abilities they have
together do not exist in individual ants, another example of emergent
properties. It could also be perceived as evidence that the group is
forming some sort of morphogenic field into which each individual
can then tap for guidance in relation to building the nest.
Remarkable examples of this kind of behavior are cited in A
Simpler Way (Margaret J Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers) and
in Emergence (Steven Johnson). These books also represent fasci-
nating explorations of how the group behaviors of insects provide
useful insights and implications for human group behavior.

CQ and Fields

The reason we have ventured into field theories is that CQ could be
considered to be a field of information that exists within groups.
Developing CQ could be an important step forward for human beings
and have significant implications for how we operate in groups,
teams, and organizations. Individually ants are pretty stupid crea-
tures, but collectively they are very smart. Human beings on the other
hand are individually very smart and collectively, well? The question

CONNECTION 129

running through this entire book is, “What will life be like when we
are able to emulate the ant by tapping into the fields of intelligence
that already surrounds us?” As CQ rises so
does our ability to access collective intel-
ligence or tap into the fields Sheldrake and Developing CQ
Laszlo are talking about. is an important
When we are able to tap deeply into step forward for
our CQ, the question will no longer be, human beings.
“What can we do?” when faced with global
and personal challenges. Instead the ques-
tion will be, “What can’t we do?” Developing our ability to merge
our intelligences and then tap into that massive resource for the
benefit of the group as a whole could literally transform how we live
our lives and operate within teams and organizations.

Systemically Speaking

The systems approach is one of the five disciplines that Peter Senge
champions for sustainable organizational change. “Systems think-
ing”, as he puts it in his book, had been around for some time before
Senge so aptly identified it as a way for business and society to
create and respond to change. Based upon systems philosophy it
promotes an understanding of the whole by examining the link and
interactions between the elements that comprise the whole system.
Systems thinking has given us a way of looking at how relationships
are the building blocks of everything, including any group of people,
whether it is a family or a multinational corporation. This approach
enables us to predict more reliably the possible implications of
making changes to parts of the system.
More specifically systems thinking permits us to better under-
stand emergent properties. For example think of your car. All the
thousands of pieces have their own properties and capabilities. None


of them on their own are able take you down the highway. Yet when
they are assembled together the emergent property is the ability to
take you where you want to go. Another example is a whirlpool.
It would be impossible to predict the emergence of this formation
from the chemical or physical properties of water. The emergent
property of a whirlpool comes into evidence when a very large num-
ber of water molecules come together in a specific arrangement. But
what does an emergent property look like within human systems?
When a group of people are brought together to work as a team
emergent properties appear. Individually the members have certain
capabilities and characteristics. However, as every team leader
knows, once you have several people working upon a single task a
number of things happen. One of the most noticeable phenomenon
is how important group dynamics become. How all these people
relate to each other effects how productive they are. As far as emer-
gent properties are concerned the team working together is able to
solve problems that none of the individual members could.
Closer to home, and to the theme of this book, emergent prop-
erties become important when we consider developing CQ within
teams and organizations. High performance can be considered an
emergent property of a group of people working together in a cer-
tain way. For most organizations the $64,000 question is, “What are
the conditions in which a team becomes high-performing?” One of the
secret ingredients is to enable the individuals making up the team
to tap into the field that is created by the team. As they do this the CQ
of the group automatically increases. A refinement of the question
could then be, “What can we do to enable teams to more effectively
trigger the CQ of which they are capable?”

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CONNECTION 131

The Power of the Collective Relationship

The process of tapping into the collective mind has already been
approached by a number of writers and researchers. In his book
Presence, Otto Scharmer refers to a new type of collective relation-
ship — one in which the individual is further enhanced rather than
diminished. In Scharmer’s words, the individual actually “connects
…to one’s highest future potential.” A concern of many people when
they first encounter ideas about collective intelligence or the collec-
tive mind is that they have to sacrifice their individuality and freedom
of choice. Scharmer and the colleagues with whom he wrote Presence
have tested this concept with a wide variety of groups and organi-
zations. Their evidence points to the emergence of a collective mind
(Sharmer’s term for CQ) in which individuality is strengthened and
enhanced rather than suppressed.
The synchronicity of firefighting, police, and emergency response
teams cited earlier are good examples. Individual members of such
teams refer to how they felt part of a single mind focused upon a
single objective; invariably the experience is remembered as an
extremely self-enriching and positive one.

Village Idiot and Collective Genius

Howard Bloom gives us a wonderful example of the power of CQ
among our closest relatives in nature. In his book, Global Brain,
Bloom compares the behaviors of chimpanzees and baboons. Chim-
panzees are more intelligent than baboons; they even make their
own tools. This latter fact further highlights the development of
their individual intelligence. Comparatively the baboon is the village
idiot when left to operate in isolation from the pack.
On the other hand, collectively baboons have achieved status
as “the most widely distributed non-human primate” in Africa. In fact


they have been described as the “rats of Africa”, flourishing in an
environment where their smarter chimp-cousins are rapidly disap-
pearing. So what are the factors contributing to the baboon’s success?
One of the most striking differences between chimps and baboons
is that although the chimps have more advanced brain capacity,
baboons have much better developed social networks. While chimps
live in groups of approximately 40, baboons congregate in troops of
three to six times that size. One of the additional advantages of larger
groups is that the pack provides greater protection from attack to
individual members. In larger groups there is also a much more
expansive social database of knowledge and, I would suggest, greater
CQ at work. Collaboratively baboons are geniuses when compared
to the individually smarter chimp. Because of their larger network
they can gather greater quantities
of information about their envi-
Collaboratively baboons ronment and adapt to changes
are geniuses when com- more rapidly. Their capacity to
pared to the individually summon the CQ within their
smarter chimp. troop has then very distinct (and
life saving) advantages.
What baboons are achieving
shouldn’t really be a surprise. Our own ancestors discovered the
strength-in-numbers principle very early. Picture the moment in time
when our cave-dwelling ancestors figured out that taking down a
hairy mammoth was going to require a large group of fairly well
coordinated individuals. Even the African expression “it takes a

CONNECTION 133

whole village to raise a child” reminds us that people have relied
upon networks to care for the precious things in life. In our modern
society the importance of connection is being forgotten or lost in
many places. When that occurs there is a disconnection from the
collaborative intelligence that has served us so well throughout
the evolution of our species.
In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam catalogs a steep drop in the
levels of participation with others, as displayed by Americans. The
examples of civic disengagement are disturbing — neglected chil-
dren, faltering education, spreading mistrust, ill health, income and
wealth inequality, religious insularity, and disrespect for the law.
This change also displays a shift in our collective values. A shift that
may actually be the source of a great many of our social problems.
With disconnection comes dysfunction it seems. This is just as true
of organizations and the teams within them.
On the bright side, more and more organizations are recog-
nizing the advantages of developing community. Whether it is within
municipalities and cities, or corporate endeavors, there is a grow-
ing awareness that if we are to solve problems collectively created,
the solutions will be created collectively too. Additionally, the
severe challenges our species face right now, are forcing people
to think about systemic solutions rather than resorting to silver
bullet responses.

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Top Down — Bottoms Up

Top-down hierarchical corporate structures are proving to be inad-
equate in the rapidly shifting business and world conditions. And the


challenge of change is only increasing. Looking back, that highly
effective troop of baboons could be considered as a single, adaptive
learning system. Our definition of “adaptive learning system” is any
entity that learns from its environment and adapts appropriately to
the challenges presented. Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis, in It’s
Alive, have made an extensive study of the adaptive learning process
and isolated the important elements. Applying these to the business
world, they claim organizations must develop the following six
basic features.

1. Self-Organize. Rather than top-down management, bottom-
up processing should be allowed to govern how the business
responds to its environment. This means that general principles
should be allowed to affect how individuals solve problems
instead of mandating specific responses.
2. Recombine. This refers to the cross-fertilization of ideas and
solutions. The team should take full advantage of the diversity
within the organization and recombine ideas and responses
from throughout the entire system.
3. Sense and Respond. Enable the system to recognize significant
changes and respond appropriately without having to refer to
many layers of higher authority. According to this principle all
parts of the organization act as a sense organ for change and
responses do not have to be centrally coordinated.
4. Learn and Adapt. Continually learning from the environment
and amassing a social database of successful adaptations
will enhance the team. Adaptation is considered to be a
continual process.
5. Seed, Select, and Amplify. Many options are tested and winning
responses and adaptations are reinforced and amplified.
6. Destabilize. Elements of the random must be continually
introduced to enable the system to be sustained in an alive and

CONNECTION 135

adaptive state. Within this principle challenge is considered a
welcome opportunity for re-invention.

Bottom-Up Businesses

An important distinction we must become aware of here is the dif-
ference between top-down and bottom-up processing. Top-down
processing represents hierarchy and command and controls the infor-
mation flow. Bottom-up processing, on the other hand, represents
information flowing up from the grass roots of an organization. All
of these features can be detected in a typical ant colony. This may
explain why anthills are some of the most resilient communities
within the natural world. Entomologists describe ant colonies as a
system that lacks visible hierarchies of command, in other words
they function in a bottom-up fashion. (See Figure 5.1 for a geometric
explanation of the two processes.)

Figure 5.1
Bottom Up/Top Down

Center of
gravity

The question that should be asked is how can we use bottom-up
processing more effectively within human organizations? There are
lots of examples of the systematic use of this type of processing, such


as the rating system used by Ebay. In the Ebay system members con-
tribute to each others’ reputation by rating the kind of interaction
they had while conducting trade. The telephone/text message voting
system established for television shows such as American Idol is
another, granted less sophisticated, example of bottom-up processing.
The point is that as the speed of change continues to accelerate, we
must be able to learn and adapt more quickly. Bottom-up processing
is one of the most prevalent ways natural systems respond to the
challenge of change. The result of increasing the level of bottom-up
processing will enable companies to achieve their business objec-
tives with fewer levels of authority. Each individual is guided by a
few basic principles that enable them to serve the greater good, in
the best way possible at that particular point in time.
Meyer and Davis, in their book It’s Alive, referred to leadership
models used by Marines. In the book, they quote Colonel Van Riper,
“We are very good at instilling certain behaviors in our Marines,”
Van Riper states. “They understand our intent, and intent is like an
algorithm in a computer or DNA in a biological system…Now we
must instill more tactical principles, so that instead of detailed
prescriptive orders, everyone on the battlefield would inherently
understand what to do. Building from the bottom up, we could have
a much more powerful organization.” Here is a great example of
bottom-up processing within a human organization. Van Riper goes
on to describe his leadership style as one that is “in command and
out of control”. This highly respected commander was essentially
achieving his objectives by using the bottom-up intelligence of his
troops. For most organizations a combination of top-down (via guid-
ing principles) and bottom-up processes, enhanced by CQ, will be
the best compromise (see Figure 5.1). The balance will depend on
the organization and the circumstances. The two forces can be
adjusted to provide the optimal mixture of direction or guidance and
the ability to respond to environmental changes.

CONNECTION 137

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Wise Teams

So what are the signs we could indentify that would tell us there was
sufficient CQ within our team? In their book, The Wisdom of Teams,
Katzenbach and Smith analyzed the reasons behind troubled teams
and found they had certain common features. I have included some
of my own conclusions after each point.

• A weak sense of direction: a sign that the top-down/
bottom-up dynamic was not very well balanced.
• Insufficient or unequal commitment to team performance:
evidence that the CQ of the team was not high enough to
create effective collaboration.
• Critical skill gaps: this probably boils down to insufficient or
ineffective training.
• External confusion, hostility, or indifference: potentially a
symptom of insufficient CQ within the organization. It could
also be caused by poorly formulated or communicated (or
both) team/organizational objectives.

There appears to be a trend pointing toward a lack of CQ. On
the flip side of the coin, within high performing teams, Katzenbach
and Smith discovered an emphasis on shared leadership roles. In
contrast to clearly focused leadership roles, individual and mutual
accountability was observed as much more important. This is a
clear indication that CQ is an increasingly important factor in team
performance.


If we raised our expectations then it wouldn’t
take a crisis for us to experience the satisfaction
of working together.
MEG WHEATLEY

We Don’t Need Another Hero

More and more organizations are realizing that what is not required is
more heroes to save the day as far as their business performance
is concerned. A hero concentrates the capacity for action around
themselves and also tends to disempower everyone else (after all
why would they have to do anything if someone was going to
save them).
The DNA that Van Riper referred to negates the need for indi-
vidual heroes. Rather everyone inherently knows what to do and
that it is up to everyone to save the day. In Guts, the Freiburgs refer
to a similar kind of guiding principle as the “heroic cause”. They pro-
vide examples of heroic causes that have acted as the DNA, guiding
the overall direction of employees’ attention. Here are some from
their book (p. 211).

• Southwest Airlines: We are in the business of freedom.
• Apple Computer: We want to educate the world.
• Fannie Mae: We help people achieve the American dream.
• Medtronic: We relieve pain, restore health, and give people
longer lives.
• Schwab: We are the guardians of our customers’ financial
dreams.

Of course these statements are similar to vision statements but
I’m sure you would agree that heroic cause has a much sexier ring
to it. These grand callings elevate the significance of what people
are achieving who work within the organization. We will visit this

CONNECTION 139

approach again in chapter 7 as a part of the exploration of meaning-
ful participation — one of the most important emergent properties
of teams with high CQ.

CoCreation Versus CoReaction

The choice of a heroic cause helps teams and organizations to
co-create their reality by deciding what they want to have. The oppo-
site of this is co-reacting, which is uncoordinated and ineffective
group reaction to unfavorable or unwelcome elements of the envi-
ronment. In true adaptive learn-
ing systems fashion, unexpected
challenges should be opportunities In true adaptive
for teams to discover more about learning systems
themselves and the wide range unexpected challenges
of possible responses they have are opportunities for
open to them. Teams with low CQ teams to discover more
tend to see these as instances of about themselves.
inflexible and predictable pat-
terns of problem solving behavior.
Remember if we always do what we have always done, we will always
get what we have always got, and that might not be what we want.
The process of co-creation says that one of the best ways a
group (especially business teams) can design their response to
rapidly changing environments can be achieved by enhancing the
quality of conversations. (This topic has been explored in chapter
4 — communication).

All change, even very large and powerful change,
begins when a few people start talking with one
another about something they care about.
MEG WHEATLY


Raising Arizona and Our CQ

Obliviously CQ is something we should be developing proactively
in our places of work, rather than searching for when things have
gotten out of hand. We have talked a lot about the importance of it in
this book, and the question emerges again; “How do we raise the CQ
of teams?” There are a number of approaches that can raise the CQ of
teams. Three of the most robust approaches are the following:

1. Appreciative Inquiry;
2. Strength-Based Approach; and
3. Solution-Focused Thinking.

Looking at all three models we can see common threads in the
principles behind each of them. They all take a positive approach
toward people. They also all focus on creating something rather than
getting rid of something. Let us look at each individually.

1. Appreciative Inquiry

As we’ve touched on before, AI was originated by David Cooperrider
of Case Western Reserve University. It is rapidly becoming one of
the most widely accepted models for evaluating and planning orga-
nizational change.
Appreciative Inquiry utilizes a four-stage process focusing on the
points below:

1. Discover: The identification of organizational processes that
work well;
2. Dream: The envisioning of processes that would work well in
the future;
3. Design: Planning and prioritizing processes that would work
well; and

CONNECTION 141

4. Deliver (or Create): The implementation (execution) of the
proposed design.

The simple act of looking for things to appreciate within systems
is one of the key elements of this model. The appreciative filter is
applied to all levels of the organization, right down to the indi-
viduals that make it up. Rather than being told there is something
wrong with you or your team, the approach seeks out what you and
your team are good at and focuses on building upon that. The AI
approach relies heavily on the generation of questions that are
designed to enable people to find things they are proud of and feel
good about.

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2. Strength Upon Strengths

The second of the approaches we are going to examine is the
strength-based approach. This has much in common with Appre-
ciative Inquiry. As early as the 1950s the social work profession
recognized the importance of identifying strengths in people. Building
on people’s strengths rather than focusing on their weaknesses
achieves essentially the same thing as AI. The strength-based
approach has been more recently championed by Marcus Bucking-
ham in his book Now Discover Your Strengths. Buckingham’s work
in this area has been informed by the 17 years he spent with the
Gallop Research Organization. According to Buckingham we achieve
several things simultaneously when we build on people’s strengths.
We help the person build upon something they already have com-
petence in, where their confidence is greatest. By focusing on these


areas we are also building positive relationships within the organi-
zation which builds healthy levels of CQ.

3. Focusing on Solutions

The third approach is the solution-focused approach. This approach
is about deciding what we want to have, rather than using our (finite)
resources to try to get rid of what we do not want. The concept of
creative tension that was referred to in chapter 3 is a central tenet
of this approach. The first step in this process is deciding what we
do want (rather than what we don’t want) and focusing our energy
upon that. According to Robert Fritz what we do want is the goal.
This must be then compared with the present set of circumstances,
referred to as the current reality. Some people mistake this approach
for some sort of rose-tinted perspective toward problem solving.
On the contrary if we do not acknowledge the brutal facts of the
situation, we cannot establish creative tension. Without creative
tension there will be no movement from what is to what is desired.
As you can see there are strong similarities between all three
approaches. The application of any or all of these will go a long way
in raising the CQ within organizations and teams.

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Technology, Connection and CQ

Developments in technology have extended our ability to connect
systems and create networks. The impact of the invention of the
Internet has been comparable to that of the Gutenberg printing
press. Both enabled a large number of people to affordably access

CONNECTION 143

vast amounts of information. What the Internet also provided was
the ability to connect people with people rather than just people with
information. The immense amount of fiber optic cable installed was
a side-effect of the dot.com bubble and is one of the technological
developments that have had significant social impacts. As a result
of the physical networks set down, a huge matrix of virtual human
networks have emerged. The bubble did indeed burst, however, and
in its wake it left a huge physical network that has transformed the
way we connect with each other and how we do business.
It seems increasingly obvious that technology, like IQ and EQ,
is necessary but not sufficient for any organization to be able to
adapt to the changes occurring in the business world. In the past
many experts have claimed technology as a panacea for all our
problems. This is not always the case. In conjunction with collabora-
tive software, technology can help us further develop our CQ. Think
about a spider’s web for a few moments — a matrix of finely woven
threads that are collectively (or collaboratively if you wish to view
a spider’s web as a metaphor) able to withstand tremendous pres-
sures. Building teams that emulate this type of strength is what this
book is about and technology has its part to play.
One of the most important ways humans express their CQ is
through conversation — this has been true for literally thousands of
years and has not changed substantially. With the Internet at their
disposal millions of people are connecting (via chat rooms, forums
or messenger services) with other people they have never physically
met. With a population of one billion, the Internet has, in just ten
years, become the “eighth continent”. It represents the most pervasive
form of technology in our society and is transforming the way we live
our lives and how business is conducted. There should be no surprise
then that it is considered to be a fundamental tool for developing the
CQ of planet earth (as well as the businesses and teams that live here).
George Por in his article entitled “Quest” states that, “Organi-
zations that will succeed in these times of accelerating changes will


be social organisms with a collective intelligence to guide them
through turbulence and transformations.” CQ and technology will
enable groups to tap into their Collective Intelligence more effec-
tively. Por goes on to claim that in
respect to social capital, “Maximiz-
With a population of ing the organization’s human and
over one billion, the intellectual capital is the key to
Internet has, in just success in the new, knowledge-
ten years, become the based economy.” In other words,
“eighth continent”. the organization (or team) that can
communicate and collaborate most
effectively with itself and its envi-
ronment will be the one that will thrive in these times of rapid
change. In society and business “adapt and respond” will be the
mantra for years to come. The impact that technology is having on
CQ can be glimpsed by simply googling “collaboration + software” —
over 100 million results appear. In the last few years there has been
an explosion in the applications of technology in this area.

WHERE WE’VE BEEN
In this chapter we have explored the very heart of CQ —
connection. The main points of this chapter are:

• Interdependence is a much more potent force than
independence.
• CQ could be considered to be an emergent property of
groups of people.
• Field theories may hold the clue to why none of us is as
smart as all of us.
• Isolation tends to be dysfunctional while connection
promotes healthy systems.

CONNECTION 145

• Top-down and bottom-up processing are important
forces and finding the optimal balance promotes high
levels of CQ.
• There are positive alternatives to the old hierarchical
methods for managing organizations.
• Technology is a strong ally in developing networks of
connection and strengthening CQ.

WHERE WE’RE GOING
Building connection within teams, virtual and otherwise,
may require assistance from technology; however everyone
knows that it is only part of the story. Building connection
through relationships is fundamentally about people discov-
ering values that they share and the desire to do something
to support those values. In the complex societies in which
we operate, finding ways to honor our values and those of
others often requires creativity. Finding ways to establish and
develop collaboration also demands that we practice high
levels of flexibility. Creativity and flexibility are the themes
of chapter 6.


CQ Tool 5

Building Connection Through Appreciation

Appreciation is a powerful force within interpersonal rela-
tionships, teams and organizations. Any exercise that makes
people more aware of its significance will have a positive
effect. For example, when providing feedback to either an
individual or a team that you are supervising, building appre-
ciation into the feedback can achieve two specific things. First,
it gives you an opportunity to attract attention to things that
you appreciate about their performance. Second, you can con-
nect this appreciation with a call for making specific changes
to the performance.
One of the best ways to achieve this is by using the “feed-
back sandwich”. The feedback sandwich places an appreciative
statement about performance before and after a question related
to improving or changing performance. Here is an example:
“John I really appreciated the way in which the summary
of the report you submitted captured the spirit of our program.
And I wonder what you could do next time to ensure the report
is submitted on time? And also I noticed that you put a lot of
care into the physical presentation of the report.”
Notice in the statement that two appreciative statements
sandwich a question focused on improvement. They are joined
by the word “and” rather than “but”. “But” tends to have a neg-
ative effect upon the listener as it distracts them from the

CONNECTION 147

element of appreciation and causes them to anticipate a neg-
ative or critical comment. The question in the middle clearly
indicates that an answer is required, and that responsibility
for action lies with the person receiving the feedback. By
answering the question they are more likely to take responsi-
bility for making the changes necessary.

STEP 1: In groups of three participants, take turns being
the person providing the feedback (A), the person receiving the
feedback (B) and the person observing the process (C).

STEP 2: The person providing some feedback, A, chooses a
context (e.g., someone is consistently late for work) and pro-
vides some feedback to that effect (e.g., “John you are always
late for work”). B notes what effect this has.

STEP 3: A now creates a sandwich of a question directed at
creating a change in their behavior, sandwiched by two appre-
ciative statements, connected by the word “and”. B notes the
effect this form of feedback has and compares the two. C ensures
A used the correct structure of the sandwich in the second
example and coaches A if adjustments are required.

STEP 4: The group rotates through the three roles until each
person has experienced each role.

STEP 5: As a group spend 5 to 10 minutes discussing the
advantages of the sandwich structure and places where it would
be particularly useful.

6

Creativity & Flexibility

Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are
stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and
pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus
whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of
death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple
of life. The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.

LAO-TZU

Although on the surface our everyday world appears reasonably
stable, extensive scientific research has uncovered a physical uni-
verse that is in continual flux, requiring constant adaptation. To have
successfully emerged in such a universe, life has to be adaptive. The
process of adapting and responding to change requires a genera-
tion of new creative solutions and this demands creativity. In this
particular game, the price of failure is extinction.


Of the many myths that exist around creativity, one of the most
prevalent must be that some people are creative and some are not.
Truth be told, the very fact that we are living systems, ensures we
are creative. The story of bacteria demonstrates clearly that cre-
ativity is a principle of nature rather than a recent discovery of Homo
sapiens. Biologist Lynn Margulis describes changes that occurred
on our planet approximately two billion years ago (Capra, The Web
of Life, p. 241):
“In one of the greatest coups of all time, the (blue-green) bac-
teria invented a metabolic system that required the very substance
that had been a deadly poison…The breathing of oxygen is an
ingeniously efficient way of channeling and exploiting the reactivity
of oxygen. It is essentially controlled combustion that breaks down
organic molecules and yields carbon dioxide, water, and a great deal
of energy in the bargain…The microcosm did more than adapt: it
evolved an oxygen-using dynamo that changed life and its terrestrial
dwelling place forever.”
By being creative, life transformed a poison into an important
ingredient for its own success. This highlights one of the most amaz-
ing facets of true creativity — the ability to turn a liability into
an asset. This is also a wonderful example of collaborative intelli-
gence — solving a problem by tapping into the combined processing
capacity of the whole colony.
Turning liabilities into assets is a useful skill when it comes to
dealing with human systems. An example of this could be a team
handling large amounts of diversity (cultural, ethnic, etc.). In this
instance the diversity could be considered a liability that must be
overcome (e.g., developing a management style that works for every-
one). When the diversity that exists within the team is turned into
the capacity for the cross-fertilization of ideas, the problem-solving
capacity of the team is expanded considerably. Diversity has been
transformed from a liability to an asset.

CREATIVITY & FLEXIBILITY 151

CQ plays an integral part in this process of transforming lia-
bilities into assets. If the members of that team were unable to
collaborate deeply then possibly the liability would have remained.

Intelligent Bacteria

Eshel Ben-Jacob and James Shapiro, world-reknown scientists in
the study of bacteria, have demonstrated that E. coli can learn how
to switch from its preferred food source (lactose) to aspirin. This is
a feat similar in kind that would be required for us to switch to the
digestion of tinfoil. What enables this organism to display such
amazing adaptability? Each of the trillions of E. coli in the colony are
acting as individual problem solvers, with one very specific con-
dition: they are all communicating intensely with each other. With
trillions of separate information processors working (in parallel
fashion) on the problem and immediately communicating the results
they are getting, they collaboratively pull off the seemingly impos-
sible. Although the IQ and EQ of an individual E. coli cell may be
extremely low, the CQ of the colony enables it to do things that we
humans would find very difficult, if not impossible.

CQ & Learning

I am curious what will be possible when humans have developed
the CQ of our colony to the extent achieved by simple bacterium.
Our level of creativity will have sky rocketed, as Ken Blanchard has
pointed out, “None of us is as smart as all of us”. How smart all of
us can be is determined by our ability to collaborate at deeper levels
than most of us do right now.
Peter Senge’s concept of “learning organizations” touches upon
this idea of collaborative intelligence although he does not use this


term. Senge defines a learning organization as, “An organization that
is continually expanding its capacity to create its future”. Notice
that survival is not mentioned. Learning (and the creativity that comes
with it) is considered to be something that should be proactive
and generative rather than
reactive, based solely upon
Learning is not about having hindsight, or focused on
access to information. surviving. There is also an
Learning is about what we obvious link between learn-
do with the information. ing and creativity. Learning
is not about having access
to information. Learning is
about what we do with the information. The scene has been set for
the transition from the information age to the age of creativity.

The Age of Creativity

John Kao, author of Jamming, states that we are already in the age
of creativity because we are in the age of knowledge and creativity
brings value to knowledge. According to Kao we are also in the age
of creativity because the speed of change demands that we are able
to reinvent ourselves (this is just as true for teams and organiza-
tions) and that requires creativity. Kao goes on to point out that the
new role of management is that of emancipator of creativity, rather
than controlling it.
Many companies have already recognized the tremendous value
in creativity. This can be seen every time a large multinational buys
up one of its smaller but more creative competitors. In this case the
larger company is not so interested in the physical equity but rather
the creative equity. It would make more business sense, in most
cases, for organizations to encourage and nurture creativity within
themselves, than buying it from outside.


Teams that exercise high levels of creativity are more resilient
and learn faster and more effectively. So developing creative capacity
within teams achieves many things at once.

No Two Alike

The natural world is so creative and so committed to the creative
process that it doesn’t like creating two of anything that are identi-
cal. Out of the six billion people living today, apart from identical
twins, no two have the same DNA. So life loves to invent and rein-
vent. We are most in alignment with our own true nature when we
are inventing and reinventing, particularly ourselves. Unless we are
able to question some of the assumptions we make about ourselves,
as we explored in chapter 1, we are unlikely to be able to do that. For
instance, our assumptions also play a central role in how effectively
we express our creativity. The assumption that you are not creative
prevents you from accessing your creative self. This becomes a
self-fulfilling prophesy with very significant implications. The same
is true when we make positive assumptions about creativity. The
creator of the Stanford Business School course on creativity, Michael
Ray, shares three assumptions about creativity with every student.

1. Creativity “is essential for health, happiness, and success in
all areas of life, including business.”
2. “Creativity is within everyone.”
3. Although it is in everyone “it is covered over by the voice
of judgment.”

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of
being wrong.
JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE


Learning to be Uncreative

What we attend to expands and grows, so it is with creativity. Some
of the limiting ideas that surround our creativity were formed dur-
ing our formal education. I can’t speak for each of you, but creative
expression was not considered an important activity at the schools
I attended. If we couldn’t draw we were encouraged to focus our
energy on other activities. The implicit message was “if you are not
very good at something, don’t do it”. It did not occur to many peo-
ple within the education system that a child might enjoy drawing
whether they were very good at it or not. Doing something for its
own sake wasn’t considered to be time well spent. Simply put, for
many people, if they were not naturally artistic, their creativity was
not encouraged and they were pointed toward the sciences where
rationality held office.
Individual creativity is important. Just as you cannot build a
resilient team out of non-resilient individuals, you cannot make
a creative team out of non-creative individuals. By more fully
expressing their adaptability and flexibility — two of the most impor-
tant aspects of creativity — team members are able to operate more
creatively together.

The illiterate of the future are not those
that cannot read or write. They are those that
cannot learn, unlearn, relearn.
ALVIN TOFFLER

Creativity Versus Innovation

We should stop for a moment and make the distinction between
creativity and innovation. Creativity is defined as the ability to create


new ideas and things. Innovation is the application of creativity to
practical problems. Another way to look at the difference is Michael
Gerber’s (The E-Myth Revisited) definition: “Creativity thinks up
new things, innovation does new
things.” Business is obviously more
interested in doing new things. The The speed that change
speed that change is occurring is occurring in society
in society and business means the and business means
mantra for most industries is “inno- the mantra for most
vate or evaporate”. This probably industries is “innovate
explains why creativity is rapidly or evaporate”.
becoming a key factor in business
success.

Creativity and Flexibility

Creativity and flexibility are not only important elements of busi-
ness competitiveness, they are also good for employee health and
wellness and staff retention.

Flexibility and adaptability do not happen just
by reacting fast to new information. They arise
from mental and emotional balance, the lack of
attachment to specific outcomes, and putting care
for self and others as a prime operating principle.
Flexible attitudes build flexible physiology. Flexible
physiology means more resilience in times of
challenge or strain. Staying open — emotionally —
insures internal flexibility.
DOC CHILDRE AND BRUCE CRYER, FROM CHAOS
TO COHERENCE


In chapter 5 we explored the significance of team alignment.
However a team that is connecting deeply and aligning its energies
will still fail to survive or thrive if it cannot exercise creativity and
flexibility in the face of external challenges. In his book Good to
Great, Jim Collins states, “The good-to-great companies faced just
as much adversity as the comparison companies, but responded to
that adversity differently.” What was it that enabled them to respond
differently? They were able to stop, take stock of what was happen-
ing, and create a response. The difference is the co-creation of a
response to the challenge versus a knee-jerk co-reaction. Co-creation
instead of co-reaction.
With all of the advantages that creativity brings, you would be
tempted to think that the study of it as a tool within business has
been going on for a long time. Not so. Only in the last 20 years
has creativity become a formal part of the business school curricu-
lum. So we have not been consciously applying the creative process
within business for very long. This seems strange because healthy
business is such an inherently creative process. All businesses have
their origins with somebody and an idea they thought could be a
business. The tricky part occurs when business people try to quan-
tify the value that imagination (and creativity) bring to business. This
may explain the uncomfortable relationship between the two. It’s
time to get over this and begin to embrace creativity and flexibility
as important aspects of every business. One of the fundamental
questions we must ask is, “How can we develop more creative and
innovative teams?”

You never change things by fighting the existing
reality. To change something, build a new model
that makes the existing model obsolete.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER


Ways of Tapping into Creativity for Business

There are a number of factors associated with developing greater
personal/team creativity and innovation and they are as follows:

• orientation toward the creative process;
• the role of great questions;
• specific techniques/processes; and
• use of humor.

Orientation

As mentioned before, the approach we take toward creativity and
innovation, our own and that of others, has an impact on how suc-
cessful we will be. From an individual perspective it may be worth
while to take up a past-time that provides us an opportunity to
express our creative side. It could be as simple as taking a water
color class or learning to play a musical instrument. Learning a sec-
ond or third language can also have very stimulating effects upon
the human brain. Actions speak louder than words and doing some-
thing that requires we exercise our creativity can be a lot more
effective than simply reciting an affirmation about it.

The Role of Great Questions

The way in which we define challenges can have a huge impact upon
the way we relate to them. Therefore the questions we formulate
play a pivotal role in framing the issue or challenge. More specifically
great questions can do a number of things, including the following:

• determine whether we take a problem-focused or solution-
focused approach;


• focus our attention on particular parts of an issue;
• stimulate new ways to think about something;
• direct the attention of others; and
• challenge hidden assumptions.

Each of these effects, in their own right, expands the creativity
being employed. Formulating questions should be considered as a
discipline and disciplines require practice. In this instance practic-
ing the creation of great questions can pay significant dividends in
terms of, for example, focused and productive conversations, more
effective meetings, and greater clarity with executive decisions. Meg
Wheatley has commented that we would all be better off with a
“little more curiosity and a little less certainty”. Certainty is very
much like deep ruts in the snow, it will take us to very predictable
destinations, often the ditch.
Some of the responsibility for our approach to asking questions
lies with what we were taught in schools. Our educational system
encouraged us to supply answers to predetermined questions, not
to pose new questions. How
much larger and more inter-
How much larger and more esting would our conception
interesting would our of the world be if we had
conception of the world be if been taught to be experts at
we had been taught to be asking questions?
experts at asking questions? Questions, then, link
us to the very center of our
creative selves. The bacteria
mentioned at the beginning of this chapter was really addressing a
question — a question related to its survival and discovering how
to use oxygen rather then be poisoned by it was the bacteria’s
answer. Questions have been mentioned a great deal throughout
this book because they play such a central role in enabling us to be
more adaptable and resilient.


Because questions are intrinsically related to
action, they spark and direct attention, perception,
energy, and effort, and so are at the heart of the
evolving forms that our lives assume… Questions
function as open-handed invitations to creativity,
calling forth that which doesn’t yet exist.
MARILEE GOLDBERG

Questions play a role in understanding the assumptions at play
in our lives and the teams in which we work (chapter 1). They help
us explore how perceptions affect the way we respond to the world
(chapter 2). The type of questions we are able to address will have
an impact on our sense of self-mastery (chapter 3) and how effective
our communication is with other people (chapter 4). We shall be
visiting the theme of questions again in chapter 7, when we explore
the topic of meaningful participation.

Use of Specific Techniques/Processes

There are literally thousands of processes and techniques for gen-
erating creative solutions to problems. Thousands of books have
been written about creativity and how to expand it, personally or
as a team, so we shall not explore that topic in depth here. One of the
main ways to expand creativity is by exploring different perceptual
perspectives. At the end of chapter 2 (perception) there was an exer-
cise involving perceptual perspectives. These perspectives can
also be used to explore a problem or anything about which you
wish to be more creative. This process was developed by Robert
Dilts and was originally modeled from the creativity strategies
of Walt Disney. At the end of this chapter you will find the “Walt
Disney Strategy” exercise and can explore its benefits in relation to
expanding creativity.


GO DEEPER
Creativity: www.anthillsite.com

Role of Humor

There is an intimate relationship between “Aha” and “Ha-ha”. Inher-
ently all humor is based on some form of creativity. As people laugh,
they breathe more deeply than normal and send greater quantities
of oxygen to the brain. The human brain uses over 20% of the body’s
oxygen, so increasing the supply boosts performance significantly
and helps learning. A great deal of humor relies upon changing per-
spectives (or frames of reference) and this is also an integral part
of the creative process.
Humor plays a strong social function too. Almost all mythologies
have a trickster or fool of some kind. One of the roles this character
plays is to make fun of serious subjects, which provides a release
of nervous tension. In this case the trickster is acting as a safety valve
around important and potentially stressful situations. The trickster/
clown appears often at the most important social/religious rituals.
American Indian culture has the great rabbit, the coyote, the ravens,
and the blue jay.
The fool appears in other cultures as a joker or jester. In such
a position — masked and playing a part — they can provide valuable
feedback to the ruling class because they are allowed to disregard
the norms of the social order.
In the Sufi tradition, the wise idiot plays an important role in
helping “seekers” to go beyond the logical mind. The story of Mulla
Nasrudin and his lost coins in chapter 2 illustrates the point that
we fail to recognize our own inherent creativity, simply because we
are looking for it in the wrong place. The techniques and processes
referred to earlier can help us begin to look in some of the right
places for our own latent creativity.


Laughter is the jam on the toast of life. It adds
flavor, keeps it from being too dry, and makes it
easier to swallow.
DIANE JOHNSON

Creativity at Its Natural Best

It is becoming increasingly apparent that if teams and companies
are to adapt to the rapid changes occurring in society, they will have
to tap into their natural creative abilities and turn that capacity into
innovation. Smart companies are already doing that.
Meyer and Davis provide a fascinating set of examples, in It’s
Alive, where companies have emulated the creativity and innovation
of natural systems to build strongly adaptive businesses.
One example is the John Deere Company. One of their divisions
manufactures seeders. The business challenge the company faced
was that there were 1.6 million possible permutations for the con-
figurations that could be ordered by customers. Trying to create a
production schedule to optimize work hours and other resources
was challenging, to say the least. John Deere used the services
of a company called Optimax Systems. Using genetic algorithms
Optimax would “breed” the various possible schedules to test for
“fitness” — the fittest schedule would be the one the computers
bred over night before each working day. Using powerful comput-
ers, the breeding process could be repeated over 40,000 times in a
vastly accelerated version of natural selection. The results were
so dramatic at John Deere that suppliers had trouble keeping up
with John Deere’s requirements and production schedules met
target consistently.
So here we have an example of principles from natural systems
(cross-fertilization) being applied to a real-life business challenge.
Organic aspects of “adapt and respond” practices can be seen in the


more recent developments of software design. Here the software is
able to “learn” from its contact with the environment and change
how it operates in response. The Internet sprang out of something
called the World Wide Web, the design of which was very much
affected by the concept of a spider’s web and its inherent flexibility
and strength.

GO DEEPER
Creative Systems: www.anthillsite.com

Room for More?

Developing our creativity and flexibility requires that we are open
to the “new”. This can be more challenging than it appears. If we are
not open to new ways of doing things and, more importantly, new
ways of seeing things, it is unlikely that we will be able to learn
much. The following story told by Laurence Boldt, in his book Zen
and the Art of Making a Living (p. 50), illustrates the pitfalls of not
having room for new ideas.
A well-educated man once went to a Zen master to inquire about
the meaning of Zen. After greeting him, the master instructed the
visitor to be seated and proceeded to pour him a cup of tea. The cup
was filled, and still he poured. Tea spilled over the sides of the table
onto the floor, and still the Zen master poured. Finally, the visitor
could contain himself no longer. “The cup is already full! It can hold
no more!” The Zen master replied, “So it is. Just as you come to me
so full of what you know that you can receive nothing new.”
This story reminds me of an elderly in-law of my own, who used
to insist he did not read the newspaper because “his mind was so
full of stuff already” that he did not need any more. It should be
no surprise that the gentleman in question was well known for his


out-dated and inflexible ideas on most topics. He had inadvertently
adopted the sea squirt strategy toward life.

D.I.Y. Creativity

Exercising our own personal creativity is an important first step
toward developing our personal resilience. It also plays an impor-
tant role in developing our CQ. By being flexible — and we can’t be
that without expressing our creativity — we are automatically open
to opportunities for collaboration. As Robert Fritz puts it, “If you
do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.”
Once we have accepted the idea that we have a creative self we
will be able to express it more frequently. We will also be able to
make a greater creative contribution to our team. When a team expe-
riences this contribution, they then shift their perspective on us
and come to rely more heavily upon our input. This forces us to tap
into our creativity further and so it goes on.

What Can Creativity Achieve?

A story from the Oswego Valley Peace and Justice Council illustrates
a very elegant application of a creative solution. An Indiana sheep


farmer was concerned about the effect his neighbors’ dogs were
having on his sheep. Rather than resort to legal action or violence,
the farmer gave his neighbors’ children pet lambs as gifts. The neigh-
bors then voluntarily tied up their dogs and even became close
friends with the farmer. The act of searching for and finding creative
solutions to problems could divide people and is also central to
expanding our CQ.
Within the business environment there are a multitude of sto-
ries illustrating how fundamental creativity and flexibility is to the
CQ of teams and organizations. The story of the 3M Corporation by
now is legendary. Their Web site chronicles a century in which they
became systematically more effective at applying creativity and
innovation to practical problems. The result is a highly successful
company and a foothold in many product areas.
As the world continues to change rapidly so companies and
teams have to adapt to the changing environment. The Phillips Cor-
poration is an example of a company that has embraced design as
a guiding principle in this new “age of creativity”. “It is not what you
do — it is how you do it” could be the mantra of design specialists.
As a result of Phillips taking the issue of design very seriously, 49%
of their revenue for 2005 was from products introduced in the pre-
vious 12 months (the figure for 2003 was 25%). The preoccupation
with design is just as pertinent to the design of our teams as it is to
our products. Highly effective companies of the new era will be those
that have put great thought into the design of their teams. CQ should
be a major consideration for those of us involved in the creation and
emancipation of functional teams.

WHERE WE’VE BEEN
A number of myths exists that can interfere with our ability
to express our own creativity. In this chapter we explored
these points:


• Creativity and flexibility is a central factor in all successful
and sustainable teams.
• Innovation is creativity turned into practical action.
• Questions play an important role in stimulating our
creativity.
• Creativity and innovation is not just important to the
design of new products, but also to the design and
emancipation of functional teams.

WHERE WE’RE GOING
With all the creativity and innovation in the world, if there is
not an answer to the “why” question for teams to perform,
chances are, effort will be minimal. Teams with high levels
of CQ are not only creative, they also have a strong sense of
purpose. This needs to make sense to the individual as well
as the team. Each individual needs to be able to feel that
they are participating meaningfully within their organization.
This is the topic of the next chapter.


CQ Tool 6

Developing Creative Capacity

There are three modes of thinking we tend to use when creat-
ing something or attempting to solve a problem. Walt Disney
called these modes “Dreamer”, “Realist”, and “Critic”.
The Dreamer mode is associated with ideas and thinking
that makes no attempt to connect up with real life. The product
of this mode of thinking tends to be very idealistic and can
be impractical.
The Critic mode is associated with fault-finding and dis-
covering the down-side of an idea or situation. The product of
this thinking tends to be very pessimistic, and problem-focused.
The Realist mode is associated with a mixture of the
Dreamer and Critic modes. The product of this mode of think-
ing tends to be idealism mixed with practical application and
is often a workable and creative solution.
None of the modes are better than the others. They each
have their strengths and weaknesses, so all are useful.
Walt Disney’s strategy (which Dilts so cleverly spotted) is
that during the creative or problem-solving process, all modes
should be explored systematically.

Special thanks to Robert Dilts for allowing us to use this exercise
from the Encyclopedia of Systemic Neuro-lingusitic Programming
and NLP New Coding.


By spending time in each position we are able to disen-
tangle the different types of thinking.
It was Disney’s belief that each of these three elements
needed to be represented in any creative process. It is reported
that he often toured the various studios where films were being
worked on and would spend time working out if any of the
rooms were missing one of the modes. When he spotted a lack
of dreamer or critic, he would take on that role and become
engaged in the creative process with that particular team. His
behavior provides us a great example of someone who has
expanded his behavioral flexibility to the degree of becoming
what the team needs at any particular time.

One of the signs of teams with high CQ is that its members are
able and willing to express that aspect of themselves (including
a mode of thinking) that best serves the team’s objective.

STEP 1: Create three physical locations for the three modes
of thinking. This can be achieved by placing three pieces of
paper on the floor labeled “Dreamer”, “Realist”, and “Critic”.

STEP 2: Establish modes of thinking for the Dreamer location.
Go to the Dreamer location and think of a time when you were
very creative in a very uninhibited way. Assume a physical
state of relaxation and evenly balanced body position, with your
eyes looking up. This physical state becomes anchored to the
dreamer location.

STEP 3: Establish modes of thinking for the Critic location.
Go to the Critic location and think of a time when you were able


to constructively criticize a plan or idea. The physical state you
assume is of an angular posture, for example one hand to your
chin with eyes down and head tilted down. This physical state
becomes anchored to the Critic location.

STEP 4: Establish modes of thinking for the Realist location.
Go to the Realist location and think of a time when you were
able to realistically assess a plan or idea and put them effec-
tively into action. The physical state you assume is of a balanced
posture, eyes and head pointed straight ahead, hands on hips
as if you were ready to take action. This physical state becomes
anchored to the Realist location.

STEP 5: Choose an outcome you wish to achieve and step into
the Dreamer location. Create an image of yourself achieving that
goal, almost as if you were a character in a movie. If you notice
a critical voice beginning to surface in your mind, simply switch
it off and remind yourself that this is the Dreamer location and
that you will visit the Critic presently.

STEP 6: Repeat Step 5 with the Critic and Realist locations,
each time shaking off the effects of each of those modes of
thinking. Note thoughts that come up from each of the loca-
tions. Criticisms should be turned into questions that can be
explored from the dreamer location.

STEP 7: After cycling through the three locations several times
you may wish to end by going to the realist location and assem-
bling a plan of action based upon all the things you have
discovered about the desired goal.


The difference this process makes is that you focus on one type
of thinking at a time. If you discover critical thoughts arising
while you are in the dreamer space you can do a couple of
things. You can step out of the dreamer space and step into the
critic space, or you can adjust your thinking back to dreamer.
A very useful development of this exercise involves creating a
dialogue between the different spaces (you switching between
spaces while exploring the different perspectives and vocalizing
their perspectives).

7

Meaningful
Participation

Do more than belong: participate. Do more
than care: help. Do more than believe: practice.
Do more than be fair: be kind. Do more than
forgive: forget. Do more than dream: work.

WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD

Everyone I know likes to think that what they are doing matters
and that their contribution to life makes a difference. This is the
essence of meaningful participation — making a difference. By def-
inition collaborative intelligence involves meaningful participation.
Intelligence that emerges as a result of collaboration must involve
participation. The “meaningful” part comes in, of course, when the
participants are aware that their contribution matters and is impor-
tant to the system as a whole. The challenge comes when we try to


achieve meaningful participation everyday. In the flurry of getting
things done and meeting deadlines, it is easy to lose sight of the big
picture. This goes on until we become exhausted and begin to won-
der, “what’s the point of all this?” At this time it is useful to stop and
ask ourselves, “What am I assuming about my part in the system?”

The only happy people I know are the ones who are
working well at something they consider important.
ABRAHAM MASLOW

Assumptions About Participation

The very first skill we explored in this book was assumptions. In
many ways, we have come full circle. Meaningful participation is one
of the most powerful assumptions you can make. To assume that
your life has meaning has many implications, just as the opposite
would have.
Another assumption that has a very specific (and limiting) effect
is that there is a “reality” out there to be discovered. Like a school
exam, we are then faced with the task of finding the right answer;
finding out as much about it as possible.
Nietzsche said that people can “survive any how if they have a
sufficient why”. We know that when we attach a great deal of mean-
ing to something, like the outcome of a football game or our child’s
first word, we get very excited and absorbed in the event. The same
is true of our work. When we have a strong sense of meaning attached
to what we are doing, we bring more of our attention and energy to
it. Sadly, many people have been so disillusioned by their experi-
ence of work and, beyond a paycheck, they have stripped it of all
meaning. This is one of the reasons volunteer work is so rewarding.
As a volunteer we have chosen to discover rewards beyond mone-

MEANINGFUL PARTICIPATION 173

tary gain. We feel as if we have made a difference and attach mean-
ing to that contribution. Something special goes on — meaning is
being made.

What Have We Chosen Our Work to Mean?

Notice that this question assumes that we can choose meaning. One
of the things that we so frequently forget is that we do have choice.
It is easy to become distracted by the number of things in which we
have no choice. Viktor Frankl took this observation to its logical
conclusion and discovered that we are the meaning makers and
that ultimately we define our lives by the meanings we choose to
adopt. If we wish to change our lives, Frankl advocates that we
examine closely the meanings we have assigned to the various parts
of our lives.
There is an old story about a man who came upon three stone-
masons — each carving a piece of stone. When asked what he was
doing, the first man replied he was “earning enough money to feed
his children”. The second said he was, “applying his art to the best
of his ability”. The third said he was, “building a cathedral”. All of the
men had the same job — the meaning they applied was quite different.
We are fortunate that we live in a society where we can ask the
question, “What is meaningful participation at work and how can I
find it for myself?” The dynamic between freedom and responsibil-
ity emerges here again — with the freedom to ask such questions
comes the responsibility to ask the other questions, such as “What
are we here for?” — and eventually — “Can I make a difference?”
The faint of heart may step back from asking that question, which
is one of the reasons we talk about courage in this chapter.
“Generation Y” is creating an impact upon the way we organize
ourselves at work. One of the defining characteristics of this very


large cohort (second only to Baby Boomers) is their concern that
the company they work for has values that match their own. Also
they need to understand how their work contributes to the organi-
zation’s bottom line. In short, Gen Y needs to know they can make a
difference; meaningful participation is extremely important to them.

Saying Yes

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a
purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one;
the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown
on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature
instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments
and grievances complaining that the world will not
devote itself to making you happy.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, MAN AND SUPERMAN,
EPISTLE DEDICATORY

The whole idea of meaningful participation can be a little over-
whelming. I am not suggesting that in order for teams to achieve it
they must make some heroic gesture. We all start where we are and
work out from there. Small is good. Small enables us not to be dis-
couraged by the thought of how much there is to be done and how
important it is.
To become the force of nature that Shaw talks about does not
necessarily mean all our actions must be grand gestures. First steps
are often small, and initial visions that focus energy effectively often
address immediate problems. What matters is engagement in the
service of a larger purpose rather than lofty aspirations that paralyze
action. This becomes even more important when we consider teams.
The team can provide a context for the individual members, in the


same way that a department provides a context to the team. On the
macro level the organization is providing a context to all its groups,
divisions, and teams. This is why the values that an organization
embraces become so important; they create a context for the activ-
ities of everyone who works there. Increasingly employees want to
know if their employer operates a
“triple bottom line” (financial, social,
and environmental considerations What matters is
with respect to business planning). engagement in the
As people become more systemically service of a larger
aware, they want to know if their purpose rather than
company is having an adverse or ben- lofty aspirations that
eficial effect upon the community paralyze action.
and environment.

Courage Under Fire

The scene in Oliver Twist, in which Oliver goes back to ask for more
porridge, reveals the courage he displayed in the face of unknown
consequences. To me the request for more is symbolic not of greed
but of saying, “I need more and am willing to ask the question”. It
could also represent asking to have more meaning. Too often we have
learned to keep our heads down, not asking the tricky questions.
Earlier in the book I spoke about the possible transformation
effects of asking good questions. In this case it could be, “What is
the deeper meaning of my work?” or “What could my work mean?”
It is said that the Red Sea did not part for Moses until Naashon
had waded into the water up to his nose. What better way to demon-
strate our own inner leadership than to be willing to wade into
the water up to our noses? True courage is never a calculation of
risk, a quadratic equation of factors determining what we do — it


is a commitment to what needs to be done irrespective of the cost
or risk.
Deciding to have meaningful participation in our work will even-
tually test our courage. A famous bull fighter was once asked to
define courage. He said that to step into a ring when you are not
afraid is nothing. To not step into
a ring when you are afraid is also
True courage is never a nothing. To step into the ring when
calculation of risk — you are afraid, now that is some-
it is a commitment to thing, he added. Sometimes the
what needs to be done most fear is associated with doing
irrespective of the cost the right thing and tests our dedi-
or risk. cation to the ‘higher path’.

Work as Contribution

Juanita Brown in World Café says, “Contribution has a different
tone and feeling than individual participation. Important as it is, the
focus on individual participation can lead to an overemphasis on
the I: I’m voicing my opinions. I’m speaking up. I’m participating. In
contrast, focusing on contribution creates a relationship between
the I and the we.”

GO DEEPER
Contribution: www.anthillsite.com

I think this makes a beautiful point about the connection between
ourselves and the teams we are on. We are required to let go of ego
to make this type of contribution possible. When we can contribute


rather than participate, our team benefits by having a model of what
contribution is really about — that is, serving the team and its purpose
first, rather than our own ego needs.
For most of us, what we do for a living has become an extension
of who we are as a person. Eight plus hours per day, five days per
week is a lot of life tied up in something. I am reminded of the car-
toon of the man lying on his death bed, his family around him, and
he shares with them, “I watched a lot of TV, ate a lot of junk food,
and sold more ceramic tiles in May of 1998 than anyone else in the
northern region. My work here is done.” What will we be able to say
on our death beds? Sobering question.
The argument is that most of us spend too much time at work
for it to have no meaning at all. Helping people to see the part their
contribution plays in the grander scheme of things enables them to
get the best out of themselves. This goes for teams as well. A good
team leader (whether they have been asked to or not) connects the
dots for the team members in terms of the larger organizational
objectives. Among other things this provides a context for requests
around performance. For example if I needed to ask a team to work
a portion of the weekend, it helps to make sense of this request if I
explain that the department needs the work completed because of
an audit that is being carried out the following week.
I am sure we have all had to do something like this and such
requests can have varying results. The difference in the responses
we receive has less to do with the kind of request and more with
whether the team members feel as committed to the organization
as they are to the team. When the organization is striving to do
something with which the individual can identify and support, then
commitment (instead of compliance) is much more likely.
Freiberg’s heroic causes show how companies can help employ-
ees connect with the larger purpose of what they are doing. For
example, when Apple says, “We want to educate the world” they are


effectively saying people who work for us can say, “I work for a
company that is in the business of educating the world” — a lofty
ambition indeed. Even the character in the cartoon (the ceramic tile
salesman) could have said, “I help people create clean and hygienic
homes for their families to grow up in,” if he had chosen to view it
that way.

The Most Difficult Question of All

The most important questions in life also tend to be the most chal-
lenging — the question of purpose is no exception. Pema Chodron,
in Brach’s Radical Acceptance, relates the story of a lady who sat
next to her mother as she lay unconscious, close to death. One morn-
ing the dying mother opened her eyes and looked in her daughter’s
eyes and said, “You know, all my life I thought something was wrong
with me.” She then shook her head as if to say, “What a waste.” The
mother then closed her eyes and died shortly after. None of us wish
to reach this point where we are viewing our whole life as a waste.
This makes meaningful participation the most important issues, not
only from a personal perspective but also from a professional one.
My wife once accused me of being a little morbid because I liked
to read the obituaries. In my defense I explained that I enjoyed read-
ing what those closest to them, thought about them and the life they
led. Beyond the devoted father, committed Christian, and faithful


friend, there are often singular and surprising comments that pro-
vide an insight into the real impact the deceased possessed, when
alive. Beyond the clichés these latter comments often indicate how
the person engaged with life.

When we are born, we are crying and everyone
around us is smiling. When we die, may we be
smiling while everyone around us is crying.
JEWISH PROVERB

In many workshops I ask at the beginning for participants to
identify a personal hero. When sharing with the group, it is surpris-
ing the number of people who have chosen their mother, father,
grandmother, or an old high school teacher. Many of the heroes are
deceased and continue to have a deep impact upon our lives. If the
people are no longer physically around, what is it that continues to
affect us? Often as not, it is the values they championed, values that
we ourselves wish to honor. And yet we are all a work in progress
and every moment is another opportunity to ask the question, “How
can I participate more meaningfully in my work?” or “How can I
honor the values that matter to me in my work?”

Finding Meaning at Work

One hundred years ago it would have seemed absurd to write about
people’s need to find meaning in their work. In the early 1900s a very
small proportion of the population of the world were aware of the
value of meaningful work. For everyone else work was only a means
of feeding themselves and their family. The industrial revolution
created a world in which people were cogs in a giant machine.
Society, in first world countries, is emerging from the industrial age


to the information age. There are the beginnings of a knowledge or
creativity age appearing beyond that. These layers of development
can be viewed as levels of evolution. As William Gibson said once,
“The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”
We live on a planet where there are people still living in near-
stone-age conditions (e.g., the isolated aboriginals of Australia) and
where probes are being sent to explore Pluto.
For those of you wishing to explore a model that explains the
different levels of society and the process of their evolution, refer
to the Spiral Dynamics Model (Beck and Cowen, 1998) and the
book A Theory of Everything (Wilber, 1996).

GO DEEPER
Human Society Evolves: www.anthillsite.com

It is impossible to explore the topic of collaborative intelligence
and resilience properly, without bumping into the issue of meaning.
I expect that you are no different from the majority of the popula-
tion — you want your life to have meaning and to have it make a
difference. If you are to spend on average 20,000 hours of your life
at work over the next ten years then does it not make sense to want
what you do to contribute to that sense of “making a difference”
(the odd hours of voluntary work outside of it hardly makes a splash
in comparison). Maslow mentions this connection to a cause when
he refers to, “An easy medicine for self-esteem: becomes a part of
something important. …This identification with important causes,
or important jobs, this identifying with them and taking them into
the self thereby enlarging the self and making it important, this is
a way of over coming also actual existential human shortcomings
e.g. IQ, talent, abilities etc.”


Holding Our Lives

Like each strand of the spider’s web, each life is an integral part of
the whole. Though at some level it is indistinguishable from all the
rest. The paradox of individualism and collectivism is resolved
not by choosing one of them
as an option, but by realizing
that they are a dynamic (just Like each strand of the
like freedom and responsi- spider’s web, each life is an
bility) and a dynamic is lived integral part of the whole.
rather than resolved.
Errol Flynn, the 50s Holly-
wood actor, got his start in the movies as a stunt man — he had been
an Olympic fencer prior to that. A journalist once asked him to reveal
the secret of being a great fencer. Flynn’s reply bears some contem-
plation. He said that it all depended on how you held the sword. If
you held it too tightly your movements would be stiff and predictable
and you would be beaten. On the other hand if you held it too loosely,
it would be knocked from your hand by your opponent. When pressed
to explain how would he know how tightly to hold it, Flynn simply
explained that depended on what was going on in the moment.
How tightly do you need to hold onto your life? Too loosely and
it will be knocked from your hands — it will become part of someone
else’s plan. Too tightly and your life becomes a stiff and predictable
dance destined to leave you feeling that somehow life walked right
past you.
One thing seems to be pretty consistent — the universe has a
strange and subtle sense of balance — you get back what you put in.
Your “outer life” (as much as you would like to believe otherwise)
is a mirror of what is going on with the “inner life”. This is the first
furrow; this is where personal development meets professional
development — you are not two people — the one with the brief


case and the one with the golf club in your hand. Laurence Boldt
talks about the illusion of the balance between work and life as if
they were the opposites of each other. If we choose to perceive
them as such so shall it be and never the twain will meet. What a
waste I say, what a crying shame that each time you go off to the
office you bring just some part of you to the activity and leave
another part behind.
Work can be (as I’m sure it is for some of you already) another
way for us to express ourselves. If it is not, we are technically not
different from being a slave. Never have human beings had more
choice; never has the call to live our authentic life been easier to
hear. It hasn’t got any easier to answer the call. The call will always
be challenging to respond to, always have appreciable costs, and
always frighten us.

Courage Under Fire

The question of courage always appears when we begin to factor in
the costs of meaningful participation. True courage is never a cal-
culation of risk, a quadratic equation of factors determining what
we do — it is a commitment to what needs to be done irrespective
of the cost or risk. Deciding to have meaningful participation in our
work will eventually test our courage. A story from Viktor Frankl’s
The Unheard Cry For Meaning provides us with a way of thinking
about the courage required (p. 53).
“During World War I a Jewish army doctor was sitting together
with his gentile friend, an aristocratic colonel, in a foxhole when
heavy shooting began. Teasingly, the colonel said, ‘You are afraid,
aren’t you? Just another proof that the Aryan race is superior to the
Semitic one.’ ‘Sure, I am afraid,’ was the doctor’s answer. ‘But who is
superior? If you, my dear colonel, were as afraid as I am. You would
have run away long ago.’ What counts are not our fears and anxieties


as such, but the attitude we adopt toward them. This attitude is
freely chosen.”
Practically every single major contribution humans have made
to life was through some aspect of what could have been called
“work” — Michael Angelo and his art; Madame Curie and her sci-
ence; Schweitzer and his medicine; and Martin Luther King, Jr. and
his politics. These people could be perceived as driven, however I’m
sure they would have still done what they did even if they thought
their work might go unnoticed. They did it because it was an expres-
sion of who they were. Everyone’s life (including the work part) can
be an expression of who they are.

“A Hammer, a Hammer, my Kingdom for a Hammer”

We don’t need any more tools, we have piles of them. In Stewardship,
Peter Block once counted how many suggestions were made for how
people could improve their working life within just four books —
Thriving on Chaos, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The
Empowered Manager, and The Fifth Discipline. He came up with
925 suggestions about how people could make positive changes to
their workplace. Block’s conclusion to this observation was that
“how” was not the question that needed to be asked — we are awash
in “how-tos”. The question is, “What will it take for you to take the
next step; to embrace the challenge?” Life requires us to look inside
and say “yes” to the challenge. We are drowning in strategies,
processes and tools; what we need is commitment.

Swallow or Be Swallowed

When I was seven, my parents bought me the Larousse Animal Life
Encyclopedia. In it I found the most gruesome picture I had ever


seen. It was two Egyptian Vipers; each had bitten opposite ends
of a single rat. The commentary beside the picture explained that
because Egyptian Viper’s fangs are permanently angled backwards,
once they have seized their prey they can never let go — they are
committed to swallow whatever they bite. I immediately became
very curious what was going to happen in this situation — an Egyptian
Viper committed to opposite ends of the same prey. The commentary
went on to explain that one of the vipers would have to swallow the
rat and then the other viper. I realize that this is a pretty gruesome
story, but I think that our own lives are no less dramatic and the
stakes no less considerable.

To have meaningful participation we must be committed. Stop
and think about the word for a few moments and what it means to
the snake as it strikes its prey, knowing that its fangs are angled
backwards. Once impaled upon its prey, it is committed, there is no
letting go, no dropping the idea, no “I’ll let this one go and take the
next one”, no way out. Sounds so final, drastic.
An example of this level of commitment can be found in Mahatma
Gandhis battle with the British Empire. Gandhi would never let go,
even though his only “weapons” were intent, love, and a philosophy
of non-violence.
If we do not fully live our lives then who will live them? The
cliché of having our children live out our aspirations is a cul de
sac at the very least and more commonly, disastrous for everyone
involved. No matter what our parents taught us — we now know


that our lives are our responsibility. What we say “yes” to will shape
our lives for ever, just as what we are saying “no” to right now is
shaping it. If we stand still and ask “how” forever, then that is a
choice, though one that will probably not bring us what we seek.
Saying “yes” does not necessarily take
away the pain, but gives it, and our
lives, a richer meaning. If we do not fully
Peter Block quotes Sister DeShano live our lives then
(the director of a large health care sys- who will live them?
tem he worked with). She said, “the
call comes from a place that we do not
know, that the demands placed on us will be more than we ever
expected, and that if we knew what was in store, we never would
have said yes. These are excellent tests for the pursuit of what
matters.” The “call” she is referring to was, of course, the call to
participate meaningfully in her life and her work.

The Magic of Action

Many people have reached this crossroads in their life. You may
have already reached it. When we take that step over the line and
commit ourselves, something special happens. W. H. Murray of the
Scottish Himalayan Expedition in 1951 put it this way:
“Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one
elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and
splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one
that would not otherwise have occurred. A wild stream of events
issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unfore-
seen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man
would have dreamed would come his way. I have learned a deep


respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: ‘Whatever you can do, or dream
you can, begin it. Boldness had genius, magic, and power in it. Begin
it now.’”
Rationalizations are described by Steven Pressfield in The War
of Art as the right-hand man of resistance. The person who coined
the phrase “resistance is useless” obviously hadn’t thought it through.
Resistance is very useful — it prevents us from doing a great many
things that require commitment. It stops us short of achieving great
things many times. It tells us “it’s not worth the bother” and saves us
from disappointments in life. It saves us the trouble of discovering
deeper levels of our own resiliency.

Meaningful Participation Means Creating
the Future

To be a meaningful participant is to realize that we are creating the
future moment–by-moment through what we choose to say “yes”
to. When I think of this important aspect of meaningful participation
I remember a story from Paul Rogat Loeb’s book, The Impossible
Will Take a Little Longer.
Rogat Loeb relates a true incident in the life of surrealist poet,
Robert Desnos, during the Second World War. He was being taken,
with a truck load of other prisoners, to be gassed. Everyone on the
truck knew where they were going and there was a dreadful silence
as they disembarked beside the gas chambers. Suddenly Desnos
stepped into the line and grabbed another prisoner’s hand and began
to read his palm. He foresaw many children and much good luck.
Soon many others were reaching out their palms to have them read.
Each time the story was similar — long life, abundant joy, and many
children. By that time the mood among the prisoners and the guards
had changed — whether they were so disorientated or moved by


the unfolding scene — the guards became unable to follow their
orders and simply loaded the prisoners back into the truck and
drove them back to the camp. Desnos had saved the lives of everyone
by creating an almost absurd but contagious prediction of the future.
By choosing to see something different Desnos was able to
carry the imaginations of his fellow prisoners and even the guards
to a new place and the result — the creation of a miracle. The fright-
ening and beautiful truth is that each moment we live, we can ask
the “what if” question. What if my work or the work of my team
could be meaningful?

On Hope and Fear

In Buddhist philosophy hope
is not the opposite of hope- If we do not fill our hearts
lessness — fear is. Vacal Havel with hope then fear will
once stated, “Hope is not the rush in to fill the space.
conviction that something will
turn out well, but the certainty
that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.”
Nature abhors a vacuum and if we do not fill our hearts with
hope then fear will rush in to fill the space. It’s our choice.

How Real is Real?

At work, it can be so easy to assume we have to be a certain type
of person to be accepted and make progress within the team and
organization. It is so tempting to put on our game face each time we
enter the workplace. Palmer J. Parker relates an old Hasidic tale
that reveals, with amazing brevity, both the universal tendency to


want to be someone else and the ultimate importance of becoming
one’s self. Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, “In the com-
ing world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will
ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’”
I used to work with a colleague who often joked that 80% of
success was showing up, an old Woody Allen joke. In the morning,
when he had arrived at the office, he would say, “Well that’s 80%
of my work done for the day.” I am quite sure he was unaware of
another meaning for the term “showing up”. This second meaning
relates to the act of bringing our true selves to work. This enables
us to be more authentic with those around us. After all, 20,000 hours
over the next ten years is a long time to be playing a part. Like any
other attribute, it grows as it is exercised.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when
they were lying side by side…. “Does it mean hav-
ing things — that buzz inside you and a stick-out-
handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin
Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a
child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play
with, but REALLY loves, you, then you become real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was
always truthful. “When you are real you don’t mind
being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound
up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin
Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why
it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily,
or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully


kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of
your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop
out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.
But these things don’t matter at all, because once
you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people
who don’t understand.”
MARGERY WILLIAMS, THE VELVETEEN RABBIT

Being “real” in the professional arena is not always easy. More
and more people want their work to be an extension of their life, an
expression of who they are, rather than an uncomfortable appendage
that they must accommodate. For these people meaningful partici-
pation is a vital ingredient of the work experience. Forward thinking
and evolved organizations will increasingly champion opportunities
for building meaning into how they function. This will, in turn, enable
employees to bring all of themselves to their professional roles. The
end result? Employees, teams, and organizations sharing a sense of
aligned purpose that brings forth their collaborative intelligence in
a meaningful way.

WHERE WE’VE BEEN
• We need leaders to support us, as we strive to live and
work by our values.
• “Why” is an important question when it comes to how
we relate to our work.
• We are the meaning makers and ultimately we decide the
meaning of our work.
• Being personally authentic is an important part of discovering
meaningful participation at work.
• Discovering meaningful participation will often test
our courage.


• Building a sense of meaningful participation within teams
automatically builds CQ.
• Companies that champion meaningful participation will
attract the employees best equipped to take the company
into the future.

WHERE WE’RE GOING
The skills we have explored so far have been designed to
help develop the CQ of individuals and teams. We have also
touched upon the topic of resilience throughout the book.
Building resilient teams is an important way to develop the
collaborative intelligence of organizations. The next chapter
explores this topic.


CQ Tool 7

Exploring Values to Discover Meaning

Values can act as a compass to provide us direction through-
out our lives. When life becomes turbulent or we sail through
foggy weather, it is useful to have our values close at hand to
help us navigate.

STEP 1: On a separate sheet of paper recall a time when

• You have been most creative;
• You have been most committed to something;
• You have made your mind up to do something (despite
people telling you couldn’t do it) and did it despite all the
obstacles; and
• You have been so absorbed in something that you ceased
to notice time passing.

Take a few moments for each question and jot down some
notes about what comes to mind.

STEP 2: For each of the instances that come to mind, deter-
mine the value being suggested. What was it that was motivating
you to do what you were doing? Write down your answers.

Note: To get the juices flowing you may want to Google values;
you will find many sites displaying long lists of values.


STEP 3: You should be able to spot some values that have
emerged from this exercise. Place them in order of priority.

STEP 4: Ask yourself, “How can I honor these values in my
work place?” or “If I were honoring these values in my day-to-day
work, what would that look like?”

Note: Your team might like to explore this exercise together. It
could help to bring team members to a deeper understanding of
the values that are important to their colleagues. This can lead
to the next step — a shared set of values for the whole team.

You have now taken some simple steps towards identifying how
to bring more meaningful participation into your work life.

8

Building High
CQ Teams

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives
the test first, the lesson afterwards.

VERNON LAW

So what does a team with high CQ look like? Is it a spectacular
sight that takes your breath away when you see it in action? Like
the Cirque de Soliel, would it baffle and mesmerize the audience
with its death-defying feats? Not really. Such teams metaphorically
appear more like a flock of starlings at twilight. As you look at the
flock you may recognize it as a group of individuals; however, it seems
as if they are informed by the one group mind, as they twist and
turn, adapting to their environment. It’s difficult to make out who
the leader is and yet the group as a whole behaves in a purposeful
and effective fashion. Each member of the flock/team has their own


freedom of action and takes every chance it gets to choreograph its
flight with that of the flock.

Collaboratively Intelligent Teams Are Boring

It could be said that teams with high CQ are quite boring. There
are very few dramas and no exciting heroes the team relies on to
save the day. People pull their weight and support each other to an
extraordinary degree. There is a vigorous pursuit for learning, not
only at the individual level, but at the team level also. There is a
sense of community within the team or department. People from
outside sense this very quickly and notice something special is going
on. We have all had this experience and most of us can’t put our
finger on what it is. Like the difference between listening to a well-
rehearsed orchestra and a
group of novice musicians
A team with high CQ that are playing out of key.
expects challenge and meets A team with high CQ
it with one eye on results; expects challenge and meets
the other on what it can it with one eye on results and
learn from each encounter. the other on what it can learn
from each encounter with
something new.
A collaboratively intelligent team realizes that all great teams
are a process, not a thing. This is based upon strong bonds between
its members. There is an awareness that each person in the team is
also a process and not static. Personality profiles are perceived as
general guides but each person is encouraged to grow and change
in positive ways. Team members know that a great deal of behavior
is determined by the situation and they consciously create situations
where collaboration is easy and fruitful. The assumption is that no

BUILDING HIGH CQ TEAMS 195

matter what the personality of the team member, there will always
be opportunities for high levels of collaboration.
The purpose of this book was not to make you and your team
boring — there are others benefits of building high CQ teams.

• A High CQ team is able to share the stress and strain evenly
throughout the team — like a tennis racket takes the impact
of a ball at one point in the racket and the pressure is spread
throughout all the strings.
• A High CQ team has a strong network of connection and
support between its members. This accelerates learning
enabling the team’s reactions to be rapid and responsive to
the challenges the team encounters.
• A High CQ team looks after its own; individuals are not left to
fend for themselves and staff retention is high because people
feel a strong sense of belonging.
• A High CQ team is well connected with other teams and with
corporate objectives. Like a healthy organ in the body — it
knows what its function is and serves the greater good
through rough times and smooth.
• A high CQ team achieves its objectives more through people
and less through politics
• A High CQ team replenishes itself, growing its members, and
is constantly learning to better adapt to its environment.
• A high CQ team displays a strong sense of meaningful
participation, which the members are all nourished by.

So teams with High CQ are already out there and as the impor-
tance of collaborative intelligence becomes more recognized, more
will emerge. Other factors are at work within this mix, however.
There is a “changing of the guard” within businesses, most notice-
ably in those countries with large baby boomer populations.


Y are They Important?

As the baby boomers begin to leave the stage another generation
begins to makes its presence more obvious — generation “Y”. North
Americans born between 1977 and 2003 make up this generation.
“Gen Y” is the second largest cohort after the baby boomers and
while much more varied in their characteristics, these cohorts may
share many of their values. Asked what their three most important
values were when choosing a company to work for, they choose
integrity, social responsibility, and loyalty. Asked what they valued
most about their work and Gen Y quickly isolated teamwork, work-
life balance, stimulating work, and lots of feedback. Honoring these
values in the workplace, we will build businesses that will help the
Gen Y’s become and remain engaged. Gen Y is also much more mul-
ticultural than the baby boomer cohort and so training in the area of
diversity will help in the process of developing high CQ teams.
The shifting generations are having a huge effect upon how
business can work through teams. As Gen Y begins to infuse the work-
force with different values and perspectives, we will have to find a
way to accommodate their arrival and prepare for the departure of
the baby boomers.
Mentoring and coaching will become more important as a way
to effectively transfer all the soft information and skills between
the generations within the business environment. Other manage-
ment strategies to assist Gen Y in the process of taking over the
reins include:

• providing training in time management;
• offering community involvement opportunities;
• creating a system for frequent public praise for performance;
• creating many opportunities for team involvement; and
• customizing the career paths for employees.


GO DEEPER
Gen Y and Baby Boomers: www.anthillsite.com

Knowledge management is clearly an issue here. Valuable infor-
mation the baby boomers are carrying around with them needs to
be transferred across to their Gen Y colleagues. For these reasons
we have chosen multi-dimensional coaching as the CQ Tool for
this chapter. This tool enables coaching to occur in many directions.

Multi-Dimensional Coaching

With fewer layers of management, employees must assume greater
responsibility (with the support of their management team) in tak-
ing initiative and sharing in the leadership process. The most resilient
companies will be those through which
leadership flows. Leadership in such
companies will become a fluid process Every employee
that touches every one at every level. must be willing to
Every employee must be willing to lead and be lead.
lead and be lead. A different way of relat-
ing to others is required to make the shift
from depending on others to contributing through others. Team
members who are contributing through others will have the ability to:

• develop technical breadth;
• broaden business perspective;
• stimulate others with ideas and knowledge;
• be involved as a leader, mentor or idea-generator in developing
others; and
• build strong networks (internal and external).


Teaching an Anthill to Coach

Developing the CQ of teams requires that we look closely at how
we interact with each other. One of the most effective ways to
accomplish this task is by developing team members’ ability to coach
each other. Coaching develops the team’s ability to learn from and
contribute through each other. It is a central strategy of a flattened
organization. Coaching can be directed in three main ways as demon-
strated in Figure 8.1.

Figure 8.1
Multi-Dimensional Coaching

‘Up‘ Across
(Manager) (Peers)
LEAD
Coaching
Process

Supervisory

We refer to this approach as “multi-dimensional”. Organizational
structure and management accountability taken to one side, the
actual process of performance coaching consists of essentially
the same process whichever direction it is conducted. A coach is
someone that helps others with the tools, knowledge, and opportu-
nities they need to develop themselves and become more effective.


Coaches don’t develop others — they help others develop them-
selves. By definition, then, most employees have the potential to be
effective coaches in all three directions. Informal coaching processes
offer tremendous potential for releasing untapped energy from teams.
With informal coaching comes the prospect of every employee
becoming involved in the organization’s growth and development.
This makes multi-dimensional coaching an important CQ Tool in
the development of CQ within teams.


CQ Tools 8

The LEADing Change System

The LEAD System represents a simple coaching method that
can be used in any of the three coaching directions. The acronym
ensures that important elements are addressed during each
coaching conversation.
The system consists of four stages:

• Leverage
• Environment
• Alternatives
• Development

We can also represent this system in a diagram.

LEADing Change

Environment
Leverage

Development Alternatives


Leverage is the point of entry and represents the opportunity
for change. It may be discovered when someone says something
about a change they would like to make in their effectiveness
or something with which they are unhappy. For all intentional
purposes it represents the goal of the coaching session. The
leverage stage achieves the following:

• discovers a topic for discussion;
• explores the reason for desired change;
• establishes an objective for the coaching conversation;
and
• creates a long-term goal when appropriate.

Environment represents the present reality. This includes a
description of what is presently happening. Jim Collins would
describe this stage as the “brutal facts”. It may include behaviors
(including those of other people involved) and a description of
the situation that lead to the “leverage point”. The environment
stage achieves the following:

• encourages self-assessment;
• provides an appreciative feedback sandwich;
• surfaces assumptions; and
• discounts immaterial history.

Alternatives represent the range of choices available for making
changes. It may involve imagining the ideal future or brain-
storming paths forward. Assumptions have such a strong impact
on our lives; this stage can be a second chance to evaluate any
assumptions that may affect the generation of alternatives. This
stage achieves the following:


• explores the full range of alternatives;
• brainstorms with coachee around ways forward;
• carefully offers suggestions; and
• coaches them to a choice.

Development represents the point at which the coachee pre-
pares to take action. This is also the place that the coachee
identifies how and where they will make changes. The LEAD
system is a cyclical process and the final stage is really a con-
nection to revisiting the leverage stage. By doing this the coach
and coachee are able to have another conversation around the
coaching issue. However this time around the issue has been
(all being well) moved forward by the coachee. If necessary
the LEAD process can help the coachee make further progress.
The development stage achieves the following:

• gains commitment from the coachee to take action;
• anticipates potential obstacles;
• creates specific timelines and plans for next step; and
• provides support for change process.

Use the LEADing Change diagram in this exercise to guide
the process. Start with low risk issues to practice with the
system. Arrange to have follow-up sessions with the person
you are working. This can be achieved by saying you would be
interested in hearing how they got on with the next step.

2

So Where Are We
Going…

Can you teach an anthill to fetch? It depends on how you define
“fetch”. If we are using the term as a metaphor for enabling a large
number of individuals to achieve an unprecedented level of coordi-
nation, then yes it is possible to teach an anthill to fetch. This book
has been an exploration of the principles and processes that make
that possible for teams and organizations.
In this hyper-linked world, harnessing the attention and energy
of a team has never been more challenging. IQ and EQ (Emotional
Intelligence) are necessary but no longer sufficient to deal with the
present rate of change. Getting people onboard and keeping them
there demands a new level of collaboration.
Teaching an anthill to fetch is a metaphor. A metaphor for all the
things we know our team could do. Moving a group of people from
one way of operating to another is very like teaching an anthill to
fetch. Given the right approach to the challenge and the right tools,
we can develop the CQ of our teams and organizations.
The Collaborative Intelligence of a team is defined as the
capacity to create, contribute to, and harness the intelligence
within the group. By raising the level of CQ everyone benefits. This
unique combination of practical CQ Tools and processes helps
teams to:


• attract and retain high quality team members;
• create a sense of meaningful participation;
• collaborate in highly effective ways;
• connect to a strong sense of purpose; and
• balance leadership and followship.

Developing CQ enables teams to build strong connections and
tap into the awe-inspiring power within each of us. It also helps teams
realize that none of us is as intelligent as all of us.

Good teams and organizations have developed good levels of CQ;
great ones have great CQ. There has never been a more opportune
moment in time to decide to do something — for our teams, our
employees, our organizations, and ourselves.

2

Bibliography

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Mastering Values, Leadership and Change (reprint). Blackwell
Publishing, Incorporated, 2005
Block, Peter. Stewardship. Berrett-Koehler, 1996
Block, Peter. The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters.
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2003
Block, Peter. The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at
Work. Jossey-Bass, 1991
Bloom, Howard. Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from
the Big Bang to the 21st Century. Wiley, 2000
Boldt, Laurence. Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical
Guide to Creative Career Design. Penguin (Non-Classics), 1999
Brach, Tara. Radical Acceptance. Bantam, 2004
Brown, Juanita with David Isaacs and the World Café Community.
The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations
That Matter. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005
Buckingham, Marcus and Donald O. Clifton. Now, Discover Your
Strengths. Pocket Books, 2005
Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of
Living Systems. Anchor, 1997
Carroll, Lewis. Alice Through the Looking Glass. Gramercy, 2004
Childre, Doc Lew and Bruce Cryer. From Chaos to Coherence (The
Power to Change Performance). HeartMath, 2000


Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...
and Others Don’t. Harper Collins, 2001
Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 15th
anniversay edition. Free Press, 2004
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow the Psychology of Optimal Experi-
ence. HarperCollins Publisher, 1990
Dilts, Robert. Encyclopedia of Systemic Neuro-Linguistic Pro-
gramming and NLP New Coding. N L P University Press, 2000
Eidser, John. Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the
Big Bang to the 21st Century. Wiley, 2001
Flemons, Douglas G. Completing Distinctions: Interweaving the
Ideas of Gregory Bateson and Taoism into a unique approach
to therapy. Shambhala, 2001
Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, 2006
Frankl, Viktor Emil. The Unheard Cry For Meaning. Touchstone
Books, 1979
Freiberg, Kevin and Jackie. Guts! Companies that Blow the Doors
off Business-as-usual. Currency, 2003
Fritz, Robert. The Path of Least Resistance. Butterworth-Heinemann
Ltd., 1994
Gerber, Michael, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses
Don’t Work and What to Do About It. Collins, 1995
Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. Bloomsbury Publishing
PLC, 1996
Gozdz, Kazimierz (ed). Community Building: Renewing Spirit and
Learning in Business. New Leaders Press, 1996
Hammond, Sue Annis and Andrea B. Mayfield. The Thin Book
of Naming Elephants: How to Surface Undiscussables for
Greater Organizational Success. Thin Book Publishing Co.,
2004
Hankins, Gerald W. Rolling On: The Story of the Amazing Gary
McPherson. The University of Alberta Press, 2003

BIBLIOGRAPHY 207

Isaacs, William. Dialogue: The Art Of Thinking Together. Currency,
1999
Johnson, Steven. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains,
Cities, and Software (reprint). Scribner, 2002
Kao, John. Jamming. Harper Collins Canada, 1997
Katzenbach, Jon R. and Douglas K. Smith. The Wisdom of Teams:
Creating the High-Performance Organization (reprint). Collins
Business Essentials, 2003
Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines. Penguin (Non-
Classics), 2000
Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend
Biology. Penguin, 2006
Loeb, Paul Rogat, ed. The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A
Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear. Basic Books, 2004
Meyer, Christopher and Stan Davis. It’s Alive: The Coming Conver-
gence of Information, Biology, and Business. Crown Business,
2003
Norretranders, Tor. The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down
to Size. Penguin Press Science, 1999
O’Connor, Joseph and Ian McDermott. The Art of Systems Thinking:
Essential Skills for Creativity and Problem Solving. Thorsons,
1997
Peters, Tom. Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management
Revolution. Harper Paperbacks, 1988
Peterson, Christopher. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
University of Michigan, 1989
Pressfield, Steven. The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and
Win Your Inner Creative Battles. Warner Books, 2003
Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community. Simon & Schuster, 2001
Scharmer, Otto, et al. Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change
in People, Organizations, and Society. Currency, 2005


Senge, Peter M. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The
Learning Organization. Currency, 2006
Senge, Peter M., C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue
Flowers: Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in
People, Organizations, and Society. Currency, 2005
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Kessinger Publishing, 2005
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Pressure, and Bounce Back from Setbacks. Berrett-Koehler
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Politics, Science and Spirituality. Shambhala, 2001

2

Index

3M Corporation 164 Attention 15, 30, 32-36, 72, 108, 111,
Actor’s perspective 56 138, 158, 172
Adaptability 2, 29, 153 Attitudes 61
Adaptation 2, 149 Aurelius, Marcus 42
Adaptive learning system 134, 139 Auto-pilot 10, 32
Adaptive system 2 Awareness 30, 111
Age of Spiritual Machines, The 2
AI 140-141 Baboons 131-132, 134
Akashic Fields 127 Baby Boomers 174, 196
Alignment 62, 80, 83, 153, 156 Back-tracking 105, 110
Allen, Woody 188 Bacteria 150-151, 158
Alternatives 202-202 Bannister, Roger 14
Ambiguity 69 Beck, Dr. Don 180
American Automobile Association 33 Behaviors 80-83, 97
Andes 31 Beliefs 11, 14, 15, 65, 81
Answer to How is Yes, The 53, 54 Believe 18
Answers 23 Ben-Jacob, Eshel 151
Anthill 1,128, 135, 203 Blame 63
Ants 1, 128, 135 Blanchard, Ken 151
Apartheid system 75 Block, Peter 53, 114, 183, 185
Apple computer 138 Bloom, Howard 131
Appreciative inquiry 17, 115, 139-141 Body language 48, 103, 107-108
aRas 15 Bohm, David 40
Art of Systems Thinking, The 69 Boldt, Laurence G. 72, 162
Assumptions 3, 5, 8, 10, 16-24, 29, Bottom-up 70, 71, 94,133-137
38, 43, 49, 68-69, 95, 97, 102, Bowling Alone 133
105, 113, 153, 158, 172 Brain Gym 80
Athletes 33, 67 Branden, Nathaniel 68


Brown, John Seely 29 Communication 3, 60, 93-116,
Brown, Juanita 109, 113, 176 121, 125
Buckingham, Marcus 141 Community 1,123-126, 193, 196
Buddhist philosophy 52,187 Community building 133
Bull fighter 176 Community Building 125
Community Intelligence Ltd. 125
Campbell, Joseph 23 Competition 7
Capabilities 80-83 Completing distinctions 99
Capital One 1 Compliance 111
Capra, Fritjof 8, 123, 150 Congruence 104
Carroll, Lewis 22-23 Connection 3, 121-147
Certainty 158 Conscious mind 32,
Challenging 63, 67 Contribution 163, 171, 176-177
Change 60 Conversation 139, 158
Character 41 café 114, 117
Childre, Doc 155 Cook, Captain 37
Chimpanzees 131 Cooperrider, David 115, 140
Chodron, Pema 178 Co-react 139
Churchill, Winston 78 Co-reaction 156
Cirque de Soliel 193 Cowen, Christopher C. 180
Clause, Santa 14 Cows 11
Coach 33 Cowshed 79
Coaching 196-202 CQ 1
Co-create 139 CQ Tools 27
Cole, Edwin Louis 67 Cray computer 32
Collaborate 122, 126, 144, 204 Creative
Collaboration 48, 69, 94, 112, 121, process 156-157
145, 163, 203 tension 74, 75,142
Collaborative Creativity 3, 145, 149-169
intelligence 1, 2, 121, 132, 150, Credit 63
151, 171, 180, 189, 195, 203 Critic 166
relationships 72 Cryer, Bruce 155
software 143 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly 34-35
Collective intelligence 6, 111-12, 129 Curie, Madame 183
Collective mind 131
Collectivism 181 Davis, Stan 134, 136, 161
Collins, Jim 61, 156, 201 De Vinci, Leonardo 47
Commitment 111 Dennison, Dr Paul and Gail 80

INDEX 211

Desnos, Robert 186 EQ 67, 122, 143, 151, 203
Destabilize 134 Evidence 18, 19
Development 201-202
Dialogue 93, 109-112 Failure 63, 96
Dilts, Robert 159, 166 Fannie Mae 138
Director’s perspective 56 Fantasy 15
Disconnection 133 Fear 67
Dishonest 17 Feedback 63, 96
Disney, Walt 159, 166 Feedback sandwich 147, 201
Diversity 106, 150 Filter 17, 30, 41, 42, 110
DNA 5,136, 138, 153 First furrow 60, 61
Donehey, Jim 1 First position 45
Don Juan 65 Fish 9, 68
Dreamer 166 Flemons 99
Flexibility 3, 72, 97, 143, 149-169, 154
E. coli 151 Flock 127, 193
EBay 136 Flow 34-35
Edison, Thomas 96 Flynn, Errol 181
Education 154 Followship 62, 69, 71, 204
Egyptian Vipers 184 Forrest People, The 44
Eidser, John 9 Four noble truths 52
Eighth continent 143 Frames 30, 48, 49
Einstein, Albert 24 Framing 48
Electric fence 11 Frankl, Viktor 65, 77, 173, 182
Elephant 44, 48 Freedom 173
Emergence 128 Freiburg, Nancy & Kevin, 24,
Emergent properties 128-130, 138, 177
139, 144 Fritz, Robert 4, 73, 74, 142, 163
Emotional From Chaos to Coherence 155
intelligence 6, 67, 122, 203 Fundamental attribution error 42
management 62, 67, 68
self-mastery 103 Gallup Research Organization 141
Emotions 36,103-104 Gandhi, Mahatma 184
E-Myth Revisited, The 155 Generation ‘Y’ 173, 196-197
Encyclopedia, of Positive Questions, Gerber, Michael 155
The 115 Gibson, William 180
Entanglement 6 Gilbert, Daniel 42
Environment 80-83, 201 Global Brain 131


Goal-setting 41 Inukshuk 35
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 186 IQ 1, 143, 151, 203,
Gold coins 43 Isaacs, David 113
Goldberg, Marilee 159 Isaacs, William 94, 109
Goleman, Daniel 67, 122 It’s Alive 134, 136, 161
Good to Great, 61, 156
Gozdz, Kazimierz 7 Jailor 76
Guts 24, 138 Jamming 152
Gutenberg 142 John Deere 161
Johnson, Diane 161
Habituated 12 Johnson, Steven 128
Hammond, Sue Annis 112
Happiness 52 Kao, John 152
Havel, Vacal 187 Kaplan, Brian S. 115
Helplessness 13 Katzenbach, Jon R. 137
Heroes 14, 138, 179 Kellner-Rogers, Myron 128
Heroic cause 138-139, 177 King, Martin Luther 183
Hierarchy 70 Koans 16
High CQ 61, 195-196 Kurzweil, Raymond 2
Hopelessness 13
Humor 157, 159 La Rocefoucauld, Duc De 62
Ladder 23
Identity 81-83 Lao-Tzu 149
Imagination 156 Larousse Animal Life Encyclopedia
Immune system 65 183
Impossible Will Take a Little Longer, Laszlo, Ervin 127, 129
The 186 Law, Vernon 193
Incongruence 104 Leadership 2, 62, 70, 204
Individualism 181 Leading Change System 200-202
Influence 94 Learning 152
Information 97-99, 103, 113 Learning organization 125, 151
Information age 180 Leverage 200-201
Innovation 154-157 Limitations of our beliefs 12
Intention 15, 41, 62, 72, 73 Limiting assumptions 37
Interconnectedness 125 Limiting beliefs 13, 14
Interdependence 122 Listening 108-109
Internet 142, 143, 162 Loeb, Paul Rogat 186,
Interpersonal 101-102 Logical levels 80-83
Intrapersonal 101-102 Logotherapy 66

INDEX 213

Making meaning 62, 65, 67 Nervous system 37, 40, 41, 127
Man and Superman 174 Networks 1, 143
Man’s Search for Meaning 65 Newton, Sir Isaac 70
Mandela, Nelson 75 Ngikona 107
Manipulation 94 Nietzsche, Friedrich 172
Margulis, Lynn 122, 150 Norretranders, Tor 32
Maslow, Abraham, 24, 180 Northern Ireland 11, 30, 46
Maslow’s hierarchy 41 Now Discover Your Strengths 141
Matching 107-108
Matrix, The 16 O’Connor, Joseph 69
Maturana, Humberto R. 37, 51, Oliver Twist 175
Mayfield, Andrea B. 112 Optical Illusion 38, 42
McDermott, Ian 69 Optimax Systems 161
McPherson, Gary 19-21 Optimistic strategies 62, 63
Meaning, 18, 66 Organization 94
Meaning makers 66, 189 Organizational development 17
Meaningful participation 3, 159, Orion 100
171-192, 195 Ornstein, Dr Robert 80
Mechanistic view 70 Ownership 111
Meditation 34 Oxygen 150
Medtronic 138
Mental models 62, 68, 69 Palmer, Parker J. 187
Mentoring 196 Path of Least Resistance, The 73
Meyer, Christopher 134, 136, 161 Patton, General 105
Mind-body connection 65 Pearce, Joseph Chilton 153
Monkey 100 Perceive 50, 53, 67, 68
Monks 78, 79 Perception 3, 16, 29-57, 59, 67, 73, 159
Morhpogenic Fields 127-128 Perceptual
Moses 175 filters 41
Mount Everest 13 flexibility 39, 40, 45, 50, 62-64
Multi-dimensional coaching 198-202 perspectives 159
Multiple reframe 50 position 46, 47
Murray, W.H. 185 strategies 62
Periscope 32
Naashon 175 Persistence 62, 78-80
Nasrudin, Mulla 43, 160 Personality 42
Natural systems 7, 8, 122, 161 profiling 41
Necker tube 39 Perspectives 30, 43-48, 63, 73, 110,
Negative messages 14 159-160


Pessimist strategies 63 people 63, 67
Peterson, Christopher 64 systems 7, 106
Philippians 37 teams 6, 9, 22, 59, 61, 71, 85,
Phillips Corporation 164 121-122
Piece of string 11 Resiling 126
Polio 19 Responsibility 77, 95, 173
Por, George 125, 143-144 Rogers, Kenny 79
Presence 112, 131 Rose-tinted glasses 63
Pressfield, Steven 59 Rubber-necking 33
Prisoner 65 Russell, Peter 36
Problem 18, 68, 69, 112, 133
Problem-focused 73, 114, 157 Salesperson 74
Professional development 54 Santa Claus 14
Psychiatrist 76 Scalpel 95
Psychoneuroimmunology 64 Scharmer, Otto 131
Putnam, Robert 133 Schwab 138
Pygmy 44 Schweitzer, Albert 183
Scientific breakthrough 24
Quantum mechanics 122 Sea squirt 5, 163
Questions 23, 33, 34, 61, 114-115, Second position 45
157-159 Second World War 66
Self-esteem 14, 68, 85, 180
Radical Acceptance 178 Self-expression 62, 84, 85
Rapport 95, 104-107 Self-fulfilling prophesies 17, 18
Rating system 136 Self-Mastery 3, 52, 59, 61-64, 68, 71,
Ray, Michael 153 72, 77, 80, 93, 104, 159
Realist 166 Self-organizing 71, 134
Reality 38, 39, 51, 139 Self-perception 53
Recombine 134 Self talk 102
Reframing 49 Seneca 30
Relationship 53, 61, 69, 85, 97-99, Senge, Peter 112, 129, 151
121-122, 129 Sense and respond 134
Relativity, theory of 24 Shapiro, James 151,
Resilience 2, 16, 19, 21-24, 29, 33, 59, Shared assumptions 38
65, 102, 123, 126, 163, 180 Shaw, George Bernard 65, 174
Resilience Advantage, The 126 Sheldrake, Rupert 127, 129
Resilient 2, 16, 65, 69, 123, 124, 135, Siebert, Al 126
153, 158 Signal lights 77
individuals 22, 72 Simpler Way, A 113, 128

INDEX 215

Six blind men 44 Unheard Cry for Meaning, The
Smith, Douglas K. 137 65, 182
Social capital 143 United States 77
Social software 126 User Illusion, The 32
Socrates 59
Software 12, 41 Values 81-83, 191-192
Soldier 76 Van Riper Colonel 136, 138
Solution-focused 73, 75, 142, 157 Velveteen Rabbit, The 189
Southwest Airlines 138 Varela, Francisco J. 37
Sowabona 107 Voice tone 103 -104
Spiral Dynamics 180 Volunteer 172
Spirit 81-83
Stanford Business School 153 War of Art, The 59
Statue of Liberty 77 Ward, William Arthur 171
Stewardship 183 Water 9, 67
Strategies 62, 63, 73, 74 Web of Life, The 52
Strength-based approach 141-142 Well-formed outcomes 72, 75, 77
Stress 99 Wheatley, Meg 112, 113, 138, 139,
Stress management clinic 46 158
Sufi 16, 43, 159 Whirlpool 130
Systems thinking 68, 129 Whole Foods Company 24
Williams, Margery 189
Team alignment 84 Williams, Robin 107
Teams 143, 193-199 Wilson, Timothy 42
Technology 125-126, 142-144 Wise teams 136
Termite 127-128 With Every Breath I Take 21
Thin Book of Naming Elephants, World Café, The 113, 176
The 112 World Wide Web 162
Third position 45 Worthlessness 13
Through the Looking Glass 22-23
Toffler, Alvin 154 Yin and Yang 71
Top-down 94, 111, 133-137 Young soldier 75-76
Trickster 159
Triple bottom line 175 Zen 9, 16, 50, 68, 162
Trosten-Bloom, Amanda 115 Zen and the Art of Making a
Truman, Harry S. 60 Living 162
Trustworthiness 17 Zukav, Gary 15
Turnbull, Colin 44

2

Go Deeper Index

This is an alphabetical listing of the Go Deeper topics found
throughout the text. You can explore these ideas in more
depth through the Web site www.anthillsite.com. There you
will find web links connected to various topics.

Appreciative Inquiry, 141 Gary McPherson, 21
Assumptions about Reality, 16 Gen Y and Baby Boomers, 197
Attention, 35 Good Questions, 115
Bottom-up and Top-down Human Society Evolves, 180
Processes, 137 Making Meaning, 67
Brain Gym, 80 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, 41
Building Character, 42 Mind Body Connection, 65
Community Building, 133 Natural Systems, 8
Contribution, 176 Perceptions, 40
Conversation Café, 114 Resilience, 123
Creative Systems, 162 Self Talk, 102
Creativity, 160 Self-Esteem Survey, 68
Dialogue, 111 Solution Focused Thinking, 142
Emergent Systems, 130 Social Software, 126
Emotional Intelligence, 67, 122

Speaking & Consulting
Contact us at:

WWW.CQatWork.com

Toll Free 1 866 912 5210

@ info@CQatWork.com

Take the CQ Challenge
When has your teams’ CQ been at its most obvious? We would
love to hear about it.

• What was going on?
• What made it special?
• And what did the team achieve?

The example you send us could be featured in the next edition
of Teaching an Anthill to Fetch, so send us your CQ stories,
we’d love to see them.
In the meantime you could also go to WWW.CQatWork.com
and take the CQ Quiz. Everyone who takes the quiz receives
a free report on the ten ways of developing more CQ @ work.

2

About the Author

Stephen’s first presentation was to a large group by anyone’s stan-
dards; 40,000. However, at the tender age of 12 he realized that
chickens are a tough audience. Inspiring them to change their lives
was very hard work. He often wonders where those chickens who
did listen to him are now.
Stephen comes from a long line of story-tellers. After all, in Ireland
it is a national sport. But everything wasn’t sweetness and light as
he grew up during the “troubles” in early 70s Northern Ireland. The
farm he grew up on was situated in the so-called “murder triangle”.
Political violence was an everyday reality. Although the Irish are
bright people, they had very poor collaborative intelligence. This was
where Stephen’s fascination with what enables people to “get-on”
was born.
An accomplished psychotherapist and business consultant
Stephen has been consulting for over ten years in health care, non-
profit, professional associations, education, and government. He is
the founder and principle of Zenergy PD and acts as the resilience
content expert for one of Canada’s largest health authorities.
For over a quarter of a century Stephen has been researching the
dynamics of change, problem resolution, group dynamics, and his
greatest passion — collaborative intelligence. Extensively trained
in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), facilitation, improv, and
group dynamic techniques, Stephen engages his audiences with

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 219

customized “one-off” events that bring each participant deeply into
the topic.
Just as important for Stephen, he is a father, husband, and an
active participant in his community. He serves on several boards
associated with socio-economic development and is a staunch advo-
cate of the triple bottom line as a path towards a sustainable society.

Little Known Facts about Stephen Joyce

At one point in his life he managed to run himself over with his own
car. Not a great idea granted, but you must give him some credit for
sheer inventiveness.
In 1982, while at Bristol University, Stephen held the UK Guinness
Book of Records title for the most live earth worms eaten in 60 sec-
onds (long before the days of Fear Factor). Stephen claims he did
it to raise money for charity and that he had the written permission
of every last worm.
When he was a child, Stephen’s best friend was a paraplegic pig
called Herbie to whom he told all his darkest secrets. Unfortunately
Herbie disappeared one day when Stephen was at school and was
never seen again. It’s a cruel blow to discover you’ve eaten your
best friend.

Stephen lives “outside the box” but drops in occasionally
to collect his mail — stephenjoyce@CQatwork.com

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