As an executive coach, I have visited with people for over 35+ years. I have listened to hard times, complicated times, and complex times. I have listened to many problems and struggles as people think through what is before them.
The challenge with listening is to be present rather than just to be quiet. We live in a distracted and noisy society. Our phones, tablets, and computers often rule our lives and demand our attention. Yet, in the midst of all of this noise and distraction, there are good people seeking realistic answers to complex questions.
When you listen for a living, you learn that words matter. When I taught the From Vision to Action Leadership Training, a year long course on leadership and organizational change, I would tell my students that speaking was a powerful action. As Krista Tippett wrote in her book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living (Penguin Press, 2016): “I take it as an elemental truth of life that words matter. This is so plain that we can ignore it a thousand times a day. The words we use shape how we understand ourselves, how we interpret the world, how we treat others. From Genesis to the aboriginal songlines of Australia, human beings have forever perceived that naming brings the essence of things into being. The ancient rabbis understood books, texts, the very letters of certain words as living, breathing entities. Words make worlds.”
For me, this is a profound truth. In the world of leadership and organizational change, words do make worlds. And as we move into this time period after a long global pandemic, I think we need to remember that words matter. In particular, they can shape understanding and create clarity, or they can fragment and polarize people. When we take the time to build a shared language, we can create a shared adaptive mindset, which will result in a common perspective and understanding. This is particularly important, because a problem called Shifting Baseline Syndrome is surfacing in more and more workplaces.
Shifting Baseline Syndrome was discovered two decades ago in the fisheries industry, as noted by David Attenborough, in his book, A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and A Vision for the Future (Ebury Publishing, 2020). As he explains, over time, knowledge is lost about the state of the natural world, because people don’t perceive changes that are actually taking place within it. This is perpetuated when each new generation perceives the environmental conditions in which they grew up as “normal”. This also describes how people’s standards for acceptable environmental conditions are steadily declining.
When we translate this concept into the business world, we realize that each new generation defines normal by what it experiences while not knowing what normal once was. Furthermore, each new generation perceives the work environment in which they grew up in as “normal.” This also describes how people’s standards for acceptable work conditions are steadily declining or changing over time. With an incremental lowering of standards or a redefining of standards and expectations, each new generation that enters the workforce lacks the knowledge of the history or previous conditions within which people worked.
For example, a word or concept may mean one thing to one generation in the work force and mean something completely different to a different generation, e.g. think about the differences in perspective about work-life balance between a Baby Boomer and a Gen Z person. By choosing to create a shared language, which results in a shared understanding and thus a resilient company culture, we are preventing a downward shift in the cultural baseline of the company. Instead, we are building a common foundation that transcends time and place.
FYI: To be continued on Thursday.
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