As I age, I’m guilty of what author Wes “Scoop” Nisker once called geezering.
One warm evening, I was chatting with a group of colleagues at a reception. Each of us had stories to tell of challenges and accomplishments. Instead, we spoke about our latest ailments and surgeries, until finally one guy pulled up his shirt to show a recent scar.
That’s when Wes shook his head and officially named what we were doing as geezering, the perfect word to name our unconscious mindsets about aging. We laughed and turned our attention to more fascinating topics.
Unconscious mindsets like this shape the narrative of our lives. They are ways of thinking, the worldviews and established attitudes that run our days, flavor our conversations, and direct the roles we play in life and as leaders.
Mindsets can be a good thing. Neuroscience research by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson and her team examines the neural mechanisms by which mindsets generate a spiral of positive emotions that broaden awareness and lead to prosocial actions and virtues, such as intellectual humility and generosity.
But too many mindsets set us on a downward spiral of negative emotions. They narrow our thinking and lead to exhaustion, persistent anxiety, and limited success. In a previous blog, I explored three of these depleting mindsets and the way they drive us into drama and struggle.
I know them well. Just yesterday I got myself stuck there. Someone said something unkind. I felt fearful and withdrew from the possibility of connection. In that moment, I keenly noticed the way unproductive, yet habitual patterns of thinking deplete life force, creating insecurity rather than confidence, illness rather than health, and wreak havoc in relationships.
It took a few minutes, but I remembered I have a choice. Flipping the narrative, I reached out to connect, reinforcing the positive mindsets in line with my deepest commitments.
Again and again, I discover how generative mindsets like the three I explore below bring out the best of who we are and open our minds to what is possible. The results are remarkably different.
By flipping the narrative, we unleash a passion to nurture, spark, and produce projects, companies, and systems aimed toward creating a positive future for people and planet, what Dr. Carol Sanford calls Regenerative Business.
How do we flip the narrative?
As I showed in my previous blog, when stuck in the Drama Triangle, we cycle through three depleting, conflict-producing roles that form an identity, an internalized, story of self and our relationship with the world around us. The narrative that emerges limits our ability to change.
We are all engaged, as the anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson puts it, in an “action of creation” in the “composition of our lives.” Our lives don’t follow a predetermined arc. Our identities are constantly shifting, depending on our interpretation of experiences. Creating an internalized story, or narrative, is how we make sense of it. We make narrative choices all the time.
The question is – do our mindsets set us up to repeat the past or create a flourishing future?
The three below are mindsets for change on the Generative Triangle. These mindsets inform the roles we play and the commitments that drive us. Reframing our narrative allows us to live with more meaning and purpose. The contrast in how we feel is palpable.
Exploring Three Generative Mindsets and How We Play Them Out in Life.
Designer (Creator)
The Designer envisions what’s possible, focuses intention, then builds workable systems that fulfill real needs. Designing processes that involve key stakeholders wisely increases buy-in before announcing a big change. We listen for deeper meaning, focus on purpose. Taking the long view, we skirt stumbling blocks and invent different conversations, to avoid getting stuck in the helpless mindset of the Victim.
The Challenger
Highly intentional, we encourage learning, growth, and change. Building others up, we engage from a place of interdependence and mutual positive regard. Provocative questions invite awareness, open possibilities, encourage expansive dreaming. Confrontations serve to find the truth and solve sticky problems. Catalyzing what is possible, the Challenger sets aside the blaming, criticizing, or controlling of the Persecutor.
The Facilitator (Mentor)
The Facilitator develops know-how. Setting up learning opportunities, we provide a circle of safety for others to work through difficult conflicts. Viewing others as capable and resourceful, we offer advice or guidance when asked. We nourish authentic connections, assess the best way to leverage skills and temperaments. As the Facilitator, we support troubled staff or family to implement an effective plan of action, in place of the Hero’s compulsive urgency to jump in and do it for them.
The Generative Mindsets in Action
Looking around, the examples are evident in organizations, clients, and people we know.
Designer – In its 35-year history, EMILY’s List shifted the narrative about the electability of women when they flipped from Victim to Designer. Designing contrasting approaches and original ways of looking at timeless issues, they raised levels of engagement. Employing well-executed fundraising strategies, on-the-ground teams systematically build local and national support for key women candidates. Over the past 11 years Emily’s List raised more than $460 million, electing women up and down the ballot. Most importantly, they designed a distributed educational function, where learning and instruction occur in many different locations via technology. To date they’ve trained more than 14,000 women across the nation.
Challenger – A couple months into the job, an Executive Director ran into real issues from the previous year’s rapid downsizing because of the loss of a main funder. As she imagined blasting the Board with anger, blame and criticism, she realized that acting from Persecutor would get her nowhere.
She switched into Challenger, engaged staff to list the tough questions, and the best of what was working. Strategically, she engaged key influencers. At the next Board meeting she was tough but not mean, direct while kind, compassionate at the chaos the staff had endured while taking a stand for what the Board needed to do to get the organization back on track. Her conscious leadership ensured that clients continued to receive critical services. Inspiring an audacious set of goals, services soon exceeded previous levels with improved hiring and IT systems she and the team put in place.
Facilitator (Mentor) – A fast-growing start-up hired a new Controller with impeccable credentials. Yet too often she stayed late to catch up. Work quality began to slip. Taking a closer look, the CEO recognized a repetitive pattern. Whenever the Controller felt overwhelmed by the mess she’d inherited, she became the IT Help Desk, the go-to person for the 23 people in the office.
The good news? Her IT improvements saved time and money. The bad news? She stayed late to get to the numbers. While receiving kudos for being the Hero, she exhausted her stamina and lowered the accuracy of financial reports. Stepping up to mentor, the CEO encouraged her to remedy this untenable situation by pivoting into Facilitator/Mentor. Outsourcing the IT help desk, she hired an assistant to handle the day-to-day bookkeeping, and scheduled uninterrupted time where she brought genuine insight to complex issues.
The Benefits of Choosing Generative Mindsets
Even making subtle changes to our personal narrative can impact on our lives. My clients report relief as they re-prioritize their time to plan as the Designer, rather than feeling like the overworked Victim. Instead of reacting with hostility when handed a poorly constructed spreadsheet, they become the Challenger, answering a question with a question. Making a bigger contribution as a conscious leader becomes possible.
Lo and behold the team figures out what’s missing, re-frames the analysis, and gets it right. Keeping an eye on the long-term health of the firm, my clients replace jumping in as the Hero with becoming the Facilitator (Mentor) to build capacity in key staff for faster and more sustainable results.
It’s good to remember that our ability to step out of the Drama Triangle and into the Generative Triangle is situation dependent. When emotionally hijacked, our brain and feelings are on high alert. It’s tough to change the narrative. It may take time before we can take a breath, focus on what we really intend, and be conscious in this matter of shifting mindsets and the roles we take on.
Once we do, we may discover we’ve unleashed a newfound freedom of movement, and a better sense of our true power. We learn what it means to lead from the courage of our hearts, returning to what really matters as we do our part in building a better world.
Learning to flip the narrative is a lifelong process.
This is a lifelong journey. We wander together on this awkward and elegant path of personal discovery, forgiving ourselves and others our clumsiness, learning and changing, doing the best we can.
Whether we’re setting aside the mindsets of geezering, innovating policy, designing solutions to the climate crisis, or building resilient communities, more empowered and resourceful ways of thinking, relating, living, and leading are part of what we need.
As we’ve seen, generative leadership starts from the inside out: the mindsets we adopt and reinforce drive the way we behave and give rise to the results we experience. Flipping the narrative, we can see the world through different eyes, intentionally choosing attitudes and language that further the joy of connecting and animate exciting possibilities of creating from a connected, global consciousness.
Let’s do it. Let’s keep flipping the narrative, becoming awake, aware, conscious leaders in our families, communities, and organizations, doing our best to ensure that all life gets a chance to flourish into the future.
Image by - Liam Shaw @churrbroskii
Resources - If you’d like to explore the Generative Triangle further, I enjoyed David Emerald Womeldorff’s The Power of TED, a fable on self-leadership.