Remarkable Encounters – Part 3 : Contented

It is said that we discover some parts of ourselves only in the context of our interaction with others. Some of these interactions are so enriching that they leave us feeling more complete, integrated, alive and human. Similarly, some of the interactions prompt us to think more deeply about the underlying aspects, instead of just floating on the surface of life. In this series of posts, we have been looking at the impressions from some of the remarkable encounters that I have had.  

In the first post, we looked at my impressions from my encounter with a remarkable teacher (See Remarkable Encounters – Part 1 : Teacher). In the second post, we looked at a constant companion to many of us – fear (See Remarkable Encounters -Part 2: Fear). This post is based on an encounter that I have had a long time ago, that stayed with me all these years. 

My first job, after I made the ‘quantum jump’ to the management domain, was with a global management consulting firm. Management consultants, in general, tend to lead stressful lives. Some of them even glorify their high-stress fast-track lifestyles that also involve frequent business travel. Of course, since the business travel is often billable to the clients, the consultants often get to stay in the best of the hotels with a wide range of food options. One of the ironic things that I noticed was that, even among the consultants who ordered very highly-priced dishes, only a small percentage of them ate the food mindfully/enjoyed the food (as their minds were often preoccupied with other ‘more important’ matters).   

There was one exception to this in the office – though not among the consultants. This was provided by the elderly security guard in the office who always used to greet everyone, employees and visitors alike, with a warm smile. He was also very effective in his work and he could resolve tricky situations (that would have got the other security guards agitated) with a large degree of grace and ease.

He used to eat his lunch from the roadside food stall just outside the office. His lunch was always the same – a plate of rice with some gravy poured on it accompanied by two pieces of 'dal vada'. What caught my attention was the slow and mindful way in which he used to eat this simple lunch that too with a great deal of enjoyment.

Initially I thought there was something special about this apparently very basic meal. I was even tempted to try it myself. But, since I didn't see the same level of enjoyment on the faces of others who ate the same food from the same food stall, I came to the conclusion that it was probably more to do with him as an individual. Maybe, he had learned how to enjoy his food. Maybe, this was part of something larger – like being comfortable in one’s skin/being comfortable with where one was in one’s life. This did prompt me to explore some of the definitions of/approaches to ‘personal excellence’ that go beyond the traditional measures of success.    

One such idea is the Greek concept of areté. Though this word is often translated as 'virtue', it actually means something closer to 'being the best you can be', or 'reaching your highest human potential'. Areté is frequently associated with bravery, but more often, with effectiveness. The man or woman of areté is a person of the highest effectiveness; they use all their faculties to achieve real results. Areté involves all of the abilities and potentialities available to humans. Thus, being one's best self and realizing one's  human potential is a key part of this approach towards excellence.

Another relevant concept here is that of 'flow' or 'being in the zone' – especially the aspect of ‘being fully immersed in an activity and enjoying the same’. One of the defining features of ‘flow’, that is particularly relevant in the context of our exploration here, is that ‘flow’ can be achieved at various levels of skill, so long as the level of skill and the level of challenge are in sync. This enables an individual-specific approach towards achieving the ‘flow’ (at one's current level of skill). 

Yet another such concept is that of 'shibumi'. While there are many interpretations on what shibumi means, I am using it here mainly in the sense of 'great refinement underlying commonplace appearances'. The other interpretations of shibumi that appeal to me include 'simple, subtle and unobtrusive beauty', 'articulate brevity', 'understated beauty', 'tranquility that is not passive', 'being without the angst of becoming', 'authority without domination, 'harmony in action', 'invisible excellence', 'effortless effectiveness', 'beautiful imperfection' and 'elegant simplicity'. 

From this discussion, the similarities between shibumi and 'simplicity on the other side of complexity'(which is the primary theme for this blog) are quite obvious. No wonder I like the concept of shibumi very much! This does highlight the role of ‘resonance’ in the perceptions of excellence – the resonance of a particular thing with one's (subjective) self -  that go beyond any absolute/objective factors!

Apart from areté, ‘flow’ and shibumi, another key underlying theme for the kind of excellence we are talking about here could be the emphasis on 'presence of value' rather than on 'absence of defects'. Thus, 'goodness and authenticity' are preferred over 'correctness'. One interesting aspect that is common across all the three underlying themes mentioned above is that they all imply internal benchmarks. Maybe, that is the way it should be since here we are talking about 'personal excellence'!

In this context, the Zen concept of 'personalization of enlightenment' also comes to mind. It says that your work does not finish once you attain enlightenment (otherwise, there is no point in living any longer !). Actually, your true work begins only then. The real work is to personalize the enlightenment that you have attained by bringing in your unique gifts/perspective/life context.

Now, let’s come back to my encounter with the gentleman that triggered all these thoughts/prompted this exploration on personal excellence. I don’t remember his name. However, I still remember him, his quiet efficiency, the relish with which he was eating his simple lunch and his state of 'being at peace with oneself' – even after almost two decades since I moved out of that office. Come to think of it, what I noticed in him also has similarities with some aspects of  ‘wu wei’ , especially those related to ‘unconflicting personal harmony’, ‘effortless action’ and ‘perfect economy of energy’ ('Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished').

Of course, I am in no way suggesting that the challenges and rewards associated with various jobs are comparable or that less stressful jobs are better. I am also not trying to glorify the job of a security guard in any way. I guess what made this encounter remarkable was that I saw something in his behavior that stood out (beyond what can be attributed to job-specific factors) and that it was something that was missing in the behavior of most of the consultants including myself.  So, in a way, the experience served as a mirror to me. Yes, it did prompt me to examine some of the unexamined parts of my personality, my beliefs and my behaviors, apart from prompting me to explore the concept of ‘personal excellence’ in some depth. Hence, going by the definition that we had started this post with, it definitely qualifies as a 'remarkable encounter' for me!

 Any thoughts/comments?

Of developmental advice and the nature of wisdom

This blog claims to be on ‘HR, OD and Personal Effectiveness’. However, there are only a few posts on this blog on personal effectiveness (like ‘Passion for work and anasakti’, ‘ Job and Identity‘ , ‘Personal effectiveness and wisdom’, ‘Of shibumi, areté and personal excellence‘, ‘Of career development and sublimation‘ etc.). Of late, I have been wondering why this has happened. Was it just because most of my work is more directly related to HR and OD? Or is there something deeper, like the nagging feeling that ‘words might not outperform silence’ when it comes to talking about personal effectiveness?  

So, I decided to do an exploration of the nature of 'developmental advice' (any advice that is intended to improve the effectiveness of someone at the workplace or in life in general) and the assumptions underlying most of the developmental advice. This developmental advice can be provided by anyone (e.g. managers, mentors, colleagues, team members, coaches, teachers, parents, elders etc. and sometimes, they are represented by the generic term 'teacher' in this post).

The first thing that I realized was that we need to differentiate between two types of developmental advice - one that is more 'information oriented' and one that is more 'wisdom oriented'. 

Information-oriented development advice is more like development feedback - it provides a piece of information that the person receiving the advice was not aware of. It can be internal (e.g. 'pointing out a blind-spot'  that the person was not aware of) or external (e.g. related to a developmental option that the person was not aware of) in nature. This kind of advice, so long as it is factually correct, is indeed helpful for a person to get started on a development journey though it might not have any influence on how much progress the person is able to make on the journey.

Wisdom-oriented development advice is deeper and more complex. Process of gaining wisdom often involves struggling with (and some times even unsuccessfully struggling with) the complexities in life. 

When it comes to wisdom-oriented developmental advice, the basic assumptions are 

1. that the person giving the advice has gained a higher degree of wisdom (regarding the particular aspect covered in the advice) through his/her life experience   
2. that this wisdom can be communicated and 
3. that the receiver is able to 'absorb' the wisdom and is also able to act on the wisdom

To me, the problem is mainly with assumptions 2 and 3. In general, wisdom is much more difficult to communicate as compared to information. Also, without going through the corresponding life experience, this wisdom, even though it is 'true', might not make sense to the receiver. There is a huge difference between knowing something philosophically and arriving at the same knowledge through experience! 

This brings to mind a Zen story that I came across in one of the books of Osho.  It is about the so called 'first principle of Zen'. The concept is that once you know the first principle of Zen, you become enlightened. The story is as follows:

Once, a beginner asked a Zen master, "Master, What is the first principle?". "If I were to tell you, it would become the second principle", replied the Zen master. 

Probably, it is this point (that wisdom can neither be 'stored' nor be 'communicated', in the normal sense of those words) is what limits the usefulness of most of the self-help books. Of course, self-helps books are often useful in providing hope (that there is light at the end of the tunnel) and encouragement. It is also said that the meaning that one derives from a great book often runs in parallel with or is even independent of what is written. May be, that holds true for all forms of developmental advice that we have been exploring in this post! 

It also makes me wonder if the 'wisdom-level consulting', that I was so keen to do, would really work (even if somehow I manage to 'become wise' in the future)! It is not that I haven't come across  HR consultants who are truly wise (See 'Truth and Beauty : Motivations and Elegance in HR' for an account of my interaction with one such gentleman). My concern is more about to the extent to which the clients would be able to 'absorb'  and 'apply' that wisdom. 

While wisdom can't be communicated, it can indeed be hinted at. While wisdom can't be given, it can be acquired. A wise teacher (or a wise coach or a wise manager) can 'create a field' or 'hold a space'  that maximizes the possibility that the learner is able to derive more understanding or even wisdom from the learner's own experiences (See 'Remarkable Encounters - Part 1: Teacher' for an example from my personal experience). Of course, we can't assume that the person giving the development advice is always correct or that the advice is the right one at the right right for the learner. This highlights the need for the learner to be discerning when it comes to accepting and absorbing developmental advice. This is a bit tricky as this discernment needs some kind of wisdom!

It is interesting to speculate what happens to this 'teacher-student'  relationship (that is so essential for the the above 'learning space' to materialize) when the teachers (or coaches) become (highly-paid/expensive) 'service providers' instead of being 'gurus'! Can the learners (especially when they are paying for it) hold the teachers/coaches accountable for results, and if yes, would that make the outcome (or Key Performance Indicators) move away from 'wisdom' towards 'information and skills'? Can this also lead to conflicts of interest between the teacher/coach and the learner?

While one can learn from the experiences of others, wisdom requires additional work in terms of 'personalization' before it can be absorbed and integrated. Yes, a certain degree of 'readiness' on the part of the student is required for welcoming the wisdom. If 'the teacher appears before the student is ready' the teaching (or coaching) is unlikely to work! When the learner is ready, wisdom might even appear unaided, like the proverbial butterfly that comes on its own and sits softly on one's shoulder. Now, developing this readiness is probably not just a matter of effort (and there is no algorithm for it), and, may be, some sort of 'grace' is involved in this process. Again, wisdom is more a matter of  'being wise in the moment' as compared to that of 'becoming wise for good'! 

Any comments/suggestions?

Note: It can be argued that there is another category of developmental advice called 'knowledge-oriented developmental advice' that comes somewhere in between the 'information-oriented developmental  advice'  and the  'wisdom-oriented developmental advice. This depends on how exactly do we define these three terms (e.g. information as 'processed data', knowledge as 'useful information gained through learning and experience' and wisdom as 'the discernment  to apply the appropriate knowledge to a particular situation'). Even if we bring in this additional category, it can be said that 'knowledge is useful only in those situations where it is almost superfluous'! Please see 'Driven to insights!' for more details.  

Renewable resources for thought leadership in HR

About 3 years ago, I wrote a post in this blog on “Thought leadership in HR in India” – based on an informal survey that I had conducted at that time. While the post mentioned that there does not seem to be consensus on the names of thought leaders in HR in India, it ended with a rather positive inference (especially for the people who want be thought leaders) that “There are a wide range of definitions of thought leadership. It seems that there is room for many types of 'thought leadership' and for many types of thought leaders in HR! This gives many of us a chance to become some sort of 'thought leaders' (or at least to 'call ourselves thought leaders’!) in some HR related domain, in some industry, at some point in our careers”. That post also raised an important ‘philosophical’ question - “Can leadership (including thought leadership) exist without followers?”

The objective of this post is to outline how my thoughts on some of the aspects covered in the previous post have evolved during the last three years. I hope that my thinking on this topic will continue to evolve (and that I will be writing another post 3 years from now).

At this point, what interests me more is the ‘nature of thought leadership’ in HR as opposed to the names of thought leaders in HR. Obviously, these two are not unrelated. A particular interpretation of the nature of thought leadership in HR will result in a particular list of thought leaders and vice versa.

Let us start by taking a closer look at the ‘philosophical’ question that was mentioned above - “Can leadership (including thought leadership) exist without followers?” This will depend on the definition of leadership. My preference these days is to think about leadership as an emergent phenomenon that takes place in the context of a relationship (or in the context of a set of interactions – face to face and/or virtual – including indirect interactions). Going by this definition, leadership can’t exist without followers*. So the focus of this post is on thought leadership in HR that others (e.g. fellow HR professionals, Business Managers etc.) find useful.

From this perspective, thought leadership in HR has to deal with key challenges and opportunities related to people management. It also has to focus on those aspects where others (potential followers) feel the need for such thought leadership. Hence ‘core’ ‘messy’ areas in HR – where standard/algorithmic solutions are not feasible - are good candidates as domains for thought leadership. Often, this path can lead to the key ‘Paradoxes in HR’ that we have discussed often in this blog (see here, here, here, here and here for some examples).

Attempting ‘thought leadership’ in these areas related to Paradoxes in HR has interesting implications for the nature of thought leadership. As mentioned above, it won’t be feasible to prescribe effective standard/algorithmic solutions (that can apply to a wide range of contexts) in these areas. The kind of thought leadership that is likely to be useful here will be more in terms of providing a new perspective, deepening the richness & understanding of the paradox, providing an experience that provides company (‘provide a feeling of being understood’/ demonstrate compassion) hope and amusement to the people grappling with the paradox etc. It can also be inferred that this kind of thought leadership need not necessarily involve providing any sort of 'answers' - it can exist purely in the form of providing questions - questions that would help others to see the problem/paradox in a new way - which in turn could enhance their understanding and trigger solutions in their mind. Thus, the purpose of thought leadership in these cases will be to trigger solutions in the mind of people dealing with the paradoxes as opposed to prescribing solutions directly. Since these questions are about the essential nature of the issues involved, they might sound like riddles (or even like koans in Zen) that can be solved only by struggling with the same for an extended period of time to reach a level of understanding/awareness where the solution presents itself.

Obviously, this creates difficulties in terms of mass-production and marketing. But there is also an advantage here. The basic paradoxes in HR (and hence the pains/problems created by them) are unlikely to be ‘resolved’ (in terms of having a final and permanent solution). With effective thought and action (possibly aided by thought leadership!) they can be ‘managed’ (if we use the term 'manage' to mean ‘to cope with’) and even celebrated. But these paradoxes/problems/ needs won’t go away. Thus, these are the ‘renewable resources for thought leadership in HR’ – where solutions to problems will create new problems to solve -that will continue to provide opportunities for thought leadership – that will sustain an entire ecosystem of ‘HR Managers, Consultants and Thought Leaders’ - for a long time!**

Now over to you for your comments/thoughts/ideas!

* Note 1: Technically speaking, this does not preclude the possibility of ‘self-leadership’ as ‘interactions with self’ can also be interpreted as interactions. Moreover, the question “Will I follow my own advice if it came from someone else?” can serve as a useful reality check – to guard against some types of ‘delusion’ that can affect some of the thought leaders.

**Note 2: I feel that these paradoxes/problems won’t go away in the foreseeable future as these arise directly from the very nature of people management as it is practiced today. Hence, unless there is a fundamental change in the nature and philosophy of people management, they will continue to exist.

Personal effectiveness and wisdom

Ravindra requested me to comment on his new book (Give me back my guitar). This book focuses on 'personal energy management' (which is aligned to one of the key themes for this blog - personal effectiveness) and it explains 'why the wise and successful need not struggle'. The book talks about doing the work that one enjoys, avoiding ego traps, making thoughts powerful, importance of right desires and about choosing one's environment carefully. Ravindra presents these concepts through stories. These are well known stories, though he introduces interesting twists to some of them. For example, he narrates the story of the 'hare and the tortoise' and asks the question - 'Would the 'slow and steady' approach of the tortoise have won the race if the hare had not decided to take a break/sleep before he had completed the race?'. Then he goes on to examine 'why did the hare decide to take a break during the race' in order to show that 'the hare should not have chosen to race with the tortoise at all' (as the hare had nothing to gain and everything to lose in that kind of a race).

Overall, I agree with the concepts presented in the book. But it did trigger a couple of thoughts on somewhat related aspects. For example, can we say that 'wise need not struggle'? I can think of at least two kinds of 'struggle' associated with being 'wise'. While we can learn from others and from the 'wisdom of the ages', I feel that true wisdom (as opposed to knowledge) can be gained only though personal experience. This process of gaining wisdom often involves struggling with (and some times even unsuccessfully struggling with) the complexities in life, often for an extended period of time. The second kind of 'struggle' comes out of the paradoxical nature of wisdom. In a way wisdom (as it embodies 'simplicity on the other side of complexity') does make one's life simpler. But often it also increases one's level of awareness and sensitivity [You might have come across this question : "Which one would you like to be - an unhappy Socrates or a happy pig?". This of course is an exaggeration as happiness and wisdom are not necessarily mutually exclusive - but there is some merit in this argument]. The increased awareness brings in more complexities (and hence ' more struggle'), though these are complexities at a 'higher level'. However, the 'wise' seem to handle this (new) struggle more gracefully(and even gladly). Based on the above discussion, we could say that, for a given set (or level) of problems, 'wise need not struggle' as much as people who are not so wise !


In this context, the Zen concept of 'personalization of enlightenment' comes to my mind. This says that your work does not finish once you attain enlightenment (otherwise there is no point in living any longer !). Actually your true work begins only then. The real work is to personalize the enlightenment that you have attained by bringing in your unique gifts/perspective/life context. This also has similarities with what Richard Bolles says on the three stage process for finding your mission.

Of problems, paradoxes, koans and wisdom

This post was triggered by a comment on one of my previous posts (see making problems disappear ). The comment also contained a request that I discuss 'other problem solving methods that I know'. I must admit that while I do have a basic understanding about the problem solving methods (that can be used to solve the problems that can be solved in the usual meaning of the term 'solve'), I don't really have any thing special to say on that matter at this point. So what I am trying to do in this post is to talk about a couple of ideas related to problems and problem solving and link them to the basic theme for this blog - 'simplicity at the other side of complexity'.

A few months ago, I had written a post called U-curve and simplicity at the other side of complexity which mentioned that many phenomena follow a pattern that resembles a 'U' - shaped curve over a period of time. They start in one state (i.e. in a particular manner), then move towards the other end (i.e. the opposite manner/state) and then they come back to the original state at a higher level/plane. I feel that something similar might be involved in the case of many of the complex problems. It works something like this. The first stage is when one does not recognise that a problem exists. Here one does not (have to) do anything/exists in blissful ignorance. In the next stage the pendulum swings to the other side and the existence of the problem is recognised. This is also accompanied by a powerful desire (bordering on compulsion) to find a neat solution to the problem immediately. In the case of complex problems often these attempts to find a neat solution fails and this makes the pendulum swing to the other side. In this phase, the existence of a paradox (and not just a problem) is recognised and the nature of attempts to resolve the problem shifts from traditional problem solving to methods similar to making problems disappear. It is interesting to note that one of the definitions of wisdom is 'the understanding of paradoxes'. This in turn leads to approaches like wisdom-level consulting.

I have always been fascinated by Zen- especially the koans in Zen. Initially, I used to think of koans just as 'impossible problems' that are used to break the logical mind. Only recently I came to know that each koan has a more or less unique solution. The critical point here is that these 'solutions' make sense only at a particular state of awareness, which is reached by working on the koan for a long time. Of course, in this context, what is important is the 'achievement of the particular state of awareness' and not the koan or it solution per se.