The Innocence of a Child–Seeing Unlimited Possibilities

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. - Friedrich Nietzsche

There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men. - John Locke

When I was a child, I was challenged with a restless mind – a mind that roamed over an unlimited number of academic subjects.  I couldn’t acquire enough knowledge, having read entire encyclopedia sets, studied military history and Roman and Greek history by the time I was 10 years old.

It was a mind that dared to dream, when being on a breakaway during a hockey game on the marsh, I could imagine that I had just taken a pass from Montreal Canadiens’ great Larry Robinson in game 7 of the finals against our archenemy, the Boston Bruins.

It created without fear of embarrassment of what others thought when I played with my Tonkas in the the sandbox, making the all-important sounds of engines, signal lights (dinker, dinker, of course) and even vocalizing the exchanges between the “drivers” of the trucks.

It created adventure where at the age of 7, I wandered around the car ferry John Guy on trips to my ancestral home of Bell Island as I pretended I was a member of the crew monitoring the status of the ferry.  It didn’t seem obvious to me at the time that adults observing me knew that I wasn’t a member of the crew.

My childhood wasn’t perfect or without pain, but few people’s youth is.

As I reflected on these and other thoughts yesterday during Quiet Hour (a personal daily ritual of reflection, contemplation and planning), I emerged and presented a challenge to all of my teams.  In a nutshell, the challenge was this:

Describe a favorite thing you did as a child or a favorite memory that still brings happiness – something that made you come alive then and that brought joy to your childhood.

There was, as always, a method to my madness in instigating such an unusual conversation.

With the obvious exceptions of children who bore great pain and anguish in their childhood, many of us are blessed to have lived pretty decent childhoods.  We saw the world differently as children.

We were likely less biased, judgmental and skeptical (unless poorly formed by our parents or scarred by difficulty).

We were often less fearful and more open to adventure and possibility (again, with the same caveats).

We were (hopefully but not always) more accepting of others.

Most of us dared to dream impossible things for our futures.

And yet somewhere between then and now, many of us have acquired the baggage of fear of others, fear of how others perceive us, distrust, diminished spirit of adventure, diminished belief in potential, fear (not just understanding) of where the world is going, fear of disappointing others and a slew of other concerns, all of which have created a great disconnect between how we imagined our potential and how we live today.

All because we have allowed the difficulties of Life or the diminished outlook and beliefs of others to impair how we see our own potential, gifts and dreams.

I have told a lot of people over the years that I don’t care what others think of what I say or do (many of my colleagues marvel over this – I don’t know why).  I don’t present this as a license to hurt others or a right to run roughshod over people, places or things.  In fact, my belief that someday I will stand in judgment for everything I say or do prevents me from doing this.

However, I have found that the sharpest criticisms (excluding people correcting poor behavior on my part) of what I have said or done in the past are often from the mouths of people going nowhere in their own lives, people living with great insecurity or fear or people who have their own competing agenda and so they seek to diminish what they perceive as competition.

None of these are valid reasons for why I am not permitted to dream, to seek adventure, to create, to collaborate and to love.

And they are not valid reasons for you either.

The Bottom Line

A lot of people are going to their end of days with their song still inside them, unshared because of fear imposed on them by the diminished outlooks of other people or because they have not learned the lessons contained within the difficulties in their Life.

I believe the world is worse off because of this.

My great friend, author and psychotherapist, Leonard Szymczak once encouraged me to think about what I would say to “Little Harry” if I could somehow go back in time and share my lessons learned with the young person who dared to dream and in exchange, I could learn from the innocence of perception as shared by “little Harry”.

The question I asked of my teams is a variant of this suggestion by Leonard.

As I read and listen to the beautiful, powerful stories shared to me by my team members, I feel a responsibility to make sure that in some way, I encourage their childhood dreams and potential to be manifested in the projects we are collaborating on.

By encouraging a different way of seeing things, we also see new possibilities in how we create and manifest our potential, less inhibited by the baggage we have acquired, seeing things in awe and wonderment while simultaneously being more enabled by the wisdom (hopefully) we have acquired.

What dreams did you have as child?

What brought you joy?

Some of you are living your dreams and experiencing that joy as adults – be grateful for that opportunity.

Many of you are not blessed to live this way.

Are the reasons for not living your joy and not folding it into your personal and professional experiences as adults legitimate ones or are they only excuses?

Would your Life be any different if you decided to bring back some childhood innocence (not ignorance) into your adult Life?

Are you sure?

How do you know?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Addendum - Robert Greene's Views On Seeing Things as a Child

In his apprenticeship in the jungles of the Amazon that would later lead to his career as a groundbreaking linguist, Daniel Everett came upon a truth that has application far beyond his field of study. What prevents people from learning is not the subject itself–the human mind has limitless capabilities–but rather certain learning disabilities that end to fester and grow in our minds as we get older. These include a sense of smugness and superiority whenever we encounter something alien to our ways, as well as rigid ideas about what is real or true, often indoctrinated in us by schooling or family. If we feel like we know something, our minds close off to other possibilities. We see reflections of the truth we have already assumed. Such feelings of superiority are often unconscious and stem from a fear of what is different or unknown. We are rarely aware of this, and often imagine ourselves to be paragons of impartiality.

Children are generally free of these handicaps. They are dependent upon adults for their survival and naturally feel inferior. This sense of inferiority gives them a hunger to learn. Through learning, they can bridge the gap and not feel so helpless. Their minds are completely open; they pay greater attention. This is why children can learn so quickly and so deeply. Unlike other animals, we humans retain what is known as neoteny–mental and physical traits of immaturity–well into our adult years. We have the remarkable capability of returning to a childlike spirit, especially in moments in which we must learn something. Well into our fifties and beyond, we can return to that sense of wonder and curiosity, reviving our youth and apprenticeships.

Understand: when you enter a new environment, your task is to learn and absorb as much as possible. For that purpose you must try to revert to a childlike feeling of inferiority–the feeling that others know much more than you and that you are dependent upon them to learn and safely navigate your apprenticeship. You drop all of your preconceptions about an environment or field, any lingering feelings of smugness. You have no fears. You interact with people and participate in the culture as deeply as possible. You are full of curiosity. Assuming this sensation of inferiority, your mind will open up and you will have a hunger to learn. This position is of course only temporary. You are reverting to a feeling of dependence, so that within five to ten years you can learn enough to finally declare your independence and enter full adulthood.

Source: Mastery by Robert Greene.  A powerful analysis of how one moves from apprentice to master in all walks of life, personal and professional.  This is a highly recommended read!

A Purpose-Filled Life–Applying Your Strengths

Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses. - Marilyn vos Savant

Figure out what you really love doing and use your strengths on a daily basis. - Tom Rath

I spend a lot of my day helping people and organizations figure out how to do things better, whether it is in the area of strategy definition and application, extremely large-scale IT architecture, team collaboration or whatever other need serves those who interact with me.

When establishing or attempting to understand the foundation for the project, I always ask the people I am interacting with questions such as “What do you do well?  What are your strengths?” and even in the 21st century, I continue to be amazed by the people and organizations who cannot answer the question at all.

For those who can answer the question by parading their Myers-Briggs test, Strengths Finder 2.0 result, Teamability report or any other test, most can’t answer my obvious follow-up questions – “What do they mean to you?  How are you applying them?”

They seem to have taken the test (or tests) and having ascertained that they are an INTJ, a crouching tiger, a blend of red and blue, a squirrel or whatever other result their specific test told them, they move on without applying the important information that was just handed to them.

Information without application is mere entertainment but when one applies information, it becomes knowledge, which when applied produces results, which when learned from produces wisdom.

When people or organizations apply the information provided to them, they discover a number of things, including but not limited to what make a person most / least productive, what makes a person a better or worse contributor / collaborator, what turns them on / off, etc.  Since the net of these attributes, the good and the bad, roll up to produce a strong or poorly performing organization, knowledge of these attributes is essential to creating a healthy, strong organization.

Awareness of this information also provides individuals with a filter by which they can evaluate the cacophony of information, requests and demands flowing in their direction, thus allowing them to choose what they allow to enter their spheres of influence and to decide what is worthy / necessary for them to respond to - for their betterment and for the betterment of those who interact with them personally or professionally.

A Personal Illustration

My Myers-Briggs profile is INTJ (the Mastermind profile).  Specifically, the four letters mean the following:

• Introversion – I prefer to be quiet and reserved in interaction.  Quiet observation allows me to learn more than walking in with a swagger that suggests I know it all already.
• Intuition – I prefer abstraction and big picture thinking (i.e. “where is this project / intention going?”).
• Thinking – I prefer data over emotion / rhetoric to make decisions and to measure results.
• Judgmental – I prefer plans and predictability over “winging it”.

Meanwhile, my Strengths Finder 2.0 strengths are:

• Futuristic – I am focused on long term outcomes – yours, mine, your organization, etc.  I never stop thinking about this.
• Strategic – I prefer focusing on strategic planning around measurable outcomes and goals over tactical execution or setting out without a measurable destination in mind.
• Connectedness – I believe everyone has a role to play if we can ascertain what their strengths are commensurate with what we need and we can find a way to leverage their strengths.  Too often we don’t do this and end up with “problem children” on our project, blaming them for something that they can’t prevent because they are hardwired to do what they are doing.
• Achiever – results are everything.  If we can’t measure them, we don’t know if we have achieved them.
• Learner – the constant acquiring, application and sharing of knowledge is essential to my well-being.

My Teamability report suggest that I am a Founder, binding vision and action together and acting as a “conductor / orchestrator” to produce results that improve the lives of people, organizations and the world at large.

Most people, having acquired their “official list” as noted above nod and smile and then move on with their Life, not applying what they have just discovered.

They also miss the importance of understanding the relationship between their strengths and to see how they support / feed each other.  Observe how my strengths support each other in the following diagram (click on the diagram for a larger version).

In the diagram above, ideas feed my futuristic strength (where my brain casts a vision), the vision flows to my strategic strength (where measurable outcomes, goals and plans are defined), the measurable outcomes are sent to my achiever / connectedness strengths where collaboration with others becomes critical to achieving the desired result and the strength of learner is used to measure progress and adjust where necessary.

Meanwhile, my INTJ attributes tell myself and others how I will apply these strengths and my Teamability role drives my need to inspire others and to orchestrate the desired result.

The impact of my strengths on my behavior and results is easily observed.  For example, one can see that if I am given gory details to accomplish, I will not like doing it and I am unlikely to produce a useful result.  While I am an empathic person, if you give me a role where I need to be empathic all the time, my need for data application (on their side and mine) will eventually overrule my sense of empathy, which may not be desired.  While I am considered a strong communicator, if you make communication my primary role, I may get frustrated if I don’t have a role in casting the future, designing strategic plans, etc.  If you give me a role where I am an order taker, my Teamability role as Founder will cause me to resist.  I can follow direction – just not day in and day out.  If you invite me to an agenda-less meeting, I always say no since a predictable, effective use of my time and contribution cannot be defined.

The list goes on and on but if one understands my strengths, how I react to the request of another in fact becomes quite predictable!

And so, if I am asked to participate in something where I cannot see a way to leverage and apply my strengths and attributes, then I will usually decline the opportunity since I will likely not be happy with the project, those around me will likely be unhappy with me and what I / we produce will likely be less than ideal as a result.

Some people think this makes me aloof.

I think it optimizes my result (and theirs).

Applying the Illustration

A senior executive of an organization reached out to me the other day because he wanted to speak to me about something I had written on my blog.

The request was somewhat vague, where he indicated that he wanted to discuss “general stuff” with me.

Think of how this request gets processed by my strengths (which are hard-wired inside me and are non-malleable and non-negotiable).

• Futuristic – I don’t know what vision he has and he is not asking me to cast one so I can’t apply this strength.
• Strategic – I am not being asked to evaluate or create a plan with measurable outcomes and goals so I can’t apply this strength.
• Achiever – I am not being asked to produce a result nor evaluate one so I can’t apply this strength.
• Connectedness – There is no sense of collaboration present as I am not being invited to collaborate or leverage my network to collaborate so I can’t apply this strength.
• Learner – I may learn a few things in the interaction but I am not being asked to apply or share that learning, thus the knowledge nuggets are more for entertainment purposes than anything and don’t really serve the need of this strength.

Then consider how my Myers-Briggs attributes evaluate the request:

• Introversion – I prefer to be quiet and reserved in interaction.  He has attempted to condescendingly “talk down to me” in the past and while I never back down from a fight if required, his past performance suggests that his future intention will be much the same, something I have no interest in.
• Intuition – I prefer abstraction and big picture thinking (“where is this going?”) but he doesn’t want to tell me in advance, so likely my thoughts on “the big picture” aren’t desired.
• Thinking – I prefer data over emotion / rhetoric to make decisions and to measure results while his intention is to “talk down to me” or influence / intimidate me with nothing other than emotion so my desire to apply data usefully will not be satisfied.
• Judgmental – I prefer plans and predictability over “winging it” but he prefers a meeting with no agenda (which could produce anything but most likely nothing of value).

Meanwhile, my Teamability role of Founder calls me to orchestrate results that positively impact people around me, something I will not be provided the opportunity to accomplish here.

Now a yes-person, a person who has no understanding of their strengths and attributes makeup or a person who doesn’t value their own time would likely have said yes, either feeling intimated to attend, feeling a need to feed their ego with “I’m in demand / I’m important” or hoping to produce “a result” (any result) but instead they produce a meeting with little results of any value but potentially a lot of frustration (or worse) amongst the participants in the room.

I on the other hand, understanding how the request feeds into my strengths (or not) decline the request since I see myself as offering no value in regards to the things that “turn me on” or serve others.

Some people get indignant when their requests (or demands) are turned down.

I prefer to honor who I am, what I bring to the table and what value I bring.  If I don’t bring value, I don’t show up.  If you don’t bring value, I don’t invite you.

Again, some people think that this attitude is aloof or “stuck-up”.

I disagree – I think I am honoring and respecting one of the most important gifts that exists – your time and mine.

Where it really bends people’s brains is when I obtain their strengths profile in advance of a meeting (which I often do).  I use to maximize collaboration and results but more devious people use it to manipulate participants who don’t know how to honor their own strengths.  Knowing your strengths, defending how they are used and knowing how to apply them can protect you from such miscreants.

The Bottom Line

Most people I interact with cannot identify their strengths and even if they have done so, have no idea how to apply them, how to use them as a filter for information coming their way or how to use them as a lens by which others can see how to interact with them effectively and appropriately.

When we learn to honor, apply and communicate our strengths, we find that our results improve, our interactions improve and our future (as well as the future of those around us) improves both personally and professionally.

Are you aware of your strengths?

Do you understand how they work together?

Do you know how to apply them?

Do you apply them?

Do you honor and respect them (especially their hard-wired nature)?

Do you communicate them to others to enhance interaction with you?

Are you sure?

How do you know?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS I am not overlooking the importance of values, ethics, morals and faith since knowledge and application of these are essential components of a healthy, purpose-filled Life.  However, because I consider these to be essential, foundational components that underlie everything we think, say and do and because we all define these a little differently, I didn’t get into a detailed analysis of them here.

Also note that many self-improvement programs fly in the face of our natural, hardwired strengths, making a one-size-fits-all approach very difficult to apply successfully.  For example, people who say you should end your day with your inbox empty and your desk cleared may have something that works for them but it doesn’t work for me.  That is why awareness of one’s strengths is essential if one is shopping for such programs to make sure they work together effectively.