After wondering about it myself for more than a week, I began to get clear on what I most love to do. It’s translating big, important, life-changing concepts into simple, practical things people can use. It’s also dreaming up, or downloading directly from the source, those same kinds of useful, life-changing tools. I’ve never quite been able to figure out whether I’m incubating and launching those concepts myself, or opening my gates to let in information from a different dimension. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter, as long as it turns out to be useful.
Kathlyn and I coached two women who were struggling in their corporate consulting business. They had both been successful on their own, and had brought their businesses together to increase revenues and reduce expenses. The synergy didn’t produce the desired effect, though, in terms of creating additional revenue, so they sought our counsel on what was holding them back. Rather than trying to figure out what could be done on the level of expenses, revenues, and other business-related items, we focused on love. We asked them, “What do you most love to do in your business?” Their answer revealed the problem and the solution. Rhonda and Cynthia both lit up at the question, and told us that the main reason they had wanted to work together rather than separately was that they loved the spirit of play that each of them brought to their work. In their individual consulting practices, they had each become well known for bringing a sense of play to seemingly dull corporate seminars on budgeting and goal-setting. They figured that if they integrated their businesses, a quantum enhancement of that spirit of play would bring even more success. After hearing this, we took a few minutes to examine their Web site and their slick, colorful brochure. The missing element was clear at a glance. “Where is the spirit of play in your materials?” we asked. The Web site and brochure were both beautifully produced and professional-looking, but they were devoid of any kind of playful aspect. Even their mission statement was worded in dull corporate-speak. Rhonda and Cynthia suddenly realized that in trying to become more “corporate” and professional, they had left out the key ingredient. They saw that leaving the play out of their work had created an integrity glitch that was reflected in the lack of business. We suggested that they revise their Web site and brochure while they themselves were feeling a spirit of play. If they stopped feeling that spirit, we counseled, they should stop and come back to it later when they were feeling playful again. We heard later that their business had taken a healthy upturn after they put the play back where it belongs in their world.
So, enter the outskirts of your Zone of Genius by asking yourself what you most love to do. Wonder about this until you have a clearly forming sense of it in your body. You don’t have to know it clearly or specifically yet. You just need to feel the glimmer of it in your inner world.
Genius Question no. 2
Now let’s render “what I most love” into something much more specific. Here’s the second Genius Question I’d like you to ponder:
What work do I do that doesn’t seem like work?
(I can do it all day long without ever feeling tired or bored.)
There’s something at the very heart of the work you identify when you ask yourself this question. When you’re doing this certain thing (and not burdened with the pressures and irritations of running a business), you are at your very happiest. When you’re doing it, you think “This is why I do the work I do.”
I counseled an executive in his mid-fifties, Bob, who had risen through the ranks in a major corporation, a few months after his promotion to CEO. He came to me because, as he put it, “I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since I took over the job. Something’s wrong and I can’t figure out what it is.” I flew out to Chicago to see if we could find out what was bugging him. Genius Question no. 2 turned the key. When I asked him what aspect of his work didn’t feel like work to him, he told me that what he loved best was wandering around, talking to other executives, for ten seconds or five minutes, about whatever was on their mind. He said he got more done in those casual conversations than in formal meetings. Suddenly the light dawned. He said, “You know, I haven’t done that a single time since I got promoted to CEO.” The reason was partly logistical; he was now in a suite of offices that was separate from where he did his “wandering around.” He had also been so inundated with new data that he had spent most of his time trying to get it all into his head. He made a commitment to start wandering around again, and even did an hour of it while I was there. I flew back home that night, and heard the next day that he got a good night’s sleep.
If you’re like most of us, you feel sad or irritated about the amount of your precious time that gets eaten up in the necessary trivia of your day. As you get more successful, it’s common to feel a mounting pressure about this issue, an unnatural hurry-up that feels unhealthy to your well-being. I believe that the sense of mounting pressure is the call to live in your Zone of Genius. I’ve seen it disappear with miraculous speed when people opened up to wondering about what their true genius might be. If you’re feeling any of that kind of pressure, you’ve made it to the right book, and I’m very glad you did.
Genius Question no. 3
Here is the third question I’d like you to entertain in that vast playground where your heart meets your mind:
In my work, what produces the highest ratio of abundance and satisfaction to amount of time spent? (Even if I do only ten seconds or a few minutes of it, an idea or a deeper connection may spring forth that leads to huge value.)
By asking myself this question, I discovered that part of my genius is the free play of ideas in my mind. It’s the ability to let ideas tumble and transform, free of criticism and censure, until something useful emerges. I’ve had projects where I’ve incubated and tumbled an idea for years before the fruitful outcome came forth, but I’ve also had experiences in which a few seconds devoted to free mind play have turned into millions in revenue. I never know exactly where it’s going to lead to or whether it’s going to lead anywhere at all. That’s part of the excitement of it—not knowing—and it may be that not knowing is the key to the success of the process.
Over and over I hear executives, in fits of frustration, give voice to complaints like this: “If I could just sit in my office and think for an hour without being interrupted, I could produce amazing results.” I don’t make that complaint anymore (although I used to hear it come off my lips fairly often). For many years now, I’ve spent at least an hour every day meditating and letting my mind roam freely. Setting aside time to do this every day is a practical way to make good on my commitment to one of my highest-priority activities.
The answer you come up with may be entirely different, but I promise you, there is some essential aspect of the work you do that produces the greatest payoff. Perhaps it’s connecting with your staff or your customers in a certain kind of way. Or perhaps it’s simply picking up the phone and having a certain kind of conversation with a key person. Whatever it is, I want you to find it, and I want you to put the highest priority on doing some of it every day. In my own case, I’ve found it helpful to structure it into my day. This morning, and every other morning for the last couple of decades, I sat down for a half hour of meditation and free mind play. I do this before I engage in any “official” work such as e-mail, writing, or project planning. To me, if something has the highest priority, it means I do it first.
It takes a certain ruthlessness to set a priority and stick to it. For example, some years ago I worked with Nancy, a woman who had a burning desire to write mystery novels. She also had three kids, a husband, and a big commitment to activities in her church and community. Nancy had published one novel that did well enough to make the publisher want more, but not well enough for her to hire household help or a personal assistant. In our first and only session, I asked Nancy to describe how she spent her day. She told me that after getting her kids and husband off to work, she straightened up the house and took care of infrastructure stuff like paying bills and making grocery lists. Th
en, she said, “if I’ve got any energy left, I sit down and write for an hour or two. If not, I take a nap and try to write for an hour or so before the kids start coming home.”
I summarized Nancy’s priorities, based on how she spent her day. “Your family is your highest priority, right?” She agreed. “Your second priority is housework and infrastructure, and your third priority is writing.”
“No!” she exclaimed. “Writing is much higher priority than housework and that sort of thing.” I pointed out that if that were true, she would do her writing before she did the house-related things. Her reply was the key to resolving the whole issue. She said, “But I can’t sit down to write unless I’ve got a clean house and things taken care of.”
“Sure, you can,” I said. “You just think you have to get that other stuff done first. Where did you get an idea like that?” She said, “But what if my husband came back from work and found a dirty house and me sitting up there writing?”
“He’d find a wife who put a higher priority on her creative expression than she did on keeping the house clean. Do you think he’d be upset about that?” “Not really,” she said. “I think he’d actually like it.” As our conversation developed, it became clear that she was holding herself hostage to housework for Upper Limit reasons. Nancy’s unconscious mind had constructed a doom scenario of what would occur if she went all the way into her Zone of Genius. In her imagination, if she put her full attention into her writing, she’d neglect her family, and they would languish in the absence of her attention. Nancy began to see the absurdity of that way of thinking. She also discovered the real fear that was underneath it all: that if she made a big commitment to her creativity, she might fail on a bigger scale. If she stayed small, she could avoid the possibility of big rejection.
We covered another important chunk of territory in the session. Nancy also realized that she had a major fear of outshining her siblings. One of four girls, she had received mixed reactions from her sisters when her first novel came out. One sister had been thrilled and very supportive, while the other two showed various signs of jealousy and competitiveness. Her unconscious mind’s solution had been to put the brakes on her creativity and let herself get consumed by housework and other pressures of daily life, in hopes that the strains in the relationship with her sisters would disappear.
I suggested another possibility to Nancy: Don’t hold yourself back to keep your sisters from feeling jealous. Go all the way, and inspire them with your full expression. You can’t manage their feelings. Their feelings are their business. They’d probably be just as jealous if you bought a new refrigerator, so you might as well go all the way and write a few best sellers. That way, they’ll be jealous about something worth being jealous about. They might just go in a positive direction, though, and get inspired to do something magnificent in their own lives.
As we wound up our session, I gave her a homework assignment: for one week, sit down and write before doing any of the house-related tasks. I told her, “After you get your husband and kids out the door, force yourself to go up and write for an hour or two. Break the pattern. Your mind may try to get you back in the old pattern. It might scream ‘No, no, no! Wash those dishes, put those clothes in the dryer before you write. If you don’t, civilization will collapse!’ Just politely thank your mind for the unsolicited advice, and then sit down and write anyway.”
I never saw Nancy again in person, although she called me a couple of times to report on her progress. The task she’d taken on was not an easy one. She had spent many years being programmed to do things a certain way. In her growing-up years, her mother had been a stay-at-home mom whose house was always spotless. It took her many weeks to get her literary life up to a higher priority than her domestic chores. There were more than a few days when she fell back into the old pattern, but over the next year she was able to move her creative activities up to where they belonged on her priority list.
Genius Question no. 4
Take a deep breath, and expand to embrace a new conception of yourself. The fourth Genius Question invites you to think of who you are in most unusual terms. It asks you to identify a unique and priceless gift you carry within yourself. Your exploration into this aspect of yourself is not about self-flattery or expansion of your ego. It’s a clear-eyed look at a deep, innermost quality, with the intention of applying that quality to make your own life and the lives of others more valuable. Here’s the question:
What is my unique ability?
(There’s a special skill I’m gifted with. This unique ability, fully realized and put to work, can provide enormous benefits to me and any organization I serve.)
We’re in search of the deepest essentials here; if you look into the essence of who you really are at the deepest level, you’ll find a unique gift you’ve been blessed with. That gift is your greatest contribution to the people around you. It’s the pinnacle skill of your working life. You can also use it to great benefit in your nonworking life. (The ability is not unique in the whole world. There may be millions of people who have it. However, it’s usually unique in your particular circle or work setting.)
Do you know what your unique ability is? You may have discovered it already, but if you haven’t, I’d like to show you how to find it. First, let me share with you an image I like to use. Have you seen a set of those little Russian dolls? When you open the big doll there’s a smaller one inside it, and hidden within that doll there’s an even smaller one. Using that image, think of your unique ability as a skill within a skill within a skill. Here’s what I mean: your unique ability is usually camouflaged inside a larger skill you possess. You may not even realize that your unique ability is what is driving your success in applying the larger skill.
For example, I didn’t learn about my unique ability until well into my thirties. I had been using it all along, but it was like water to a fish: I had taken it so much for granted that I didn’t know it was a definable skill that could be described and refined. I knew I had a skill in helping people solve problems. I didn’t get any formal training in therapy skills until I was twenty-four, but according to a family story, I had an early leaning in that direction. I set up a cardboard-box “office” in my grandmother’s living room when I was a preschooler. I told my family that my job was to help people solve problems. According to the story, I was very clear that I didn’t handle medical problems. They could take those to an ordinary doctor. I told them I specialized in problems around the house. Since I grew up in a small southern town with no psychiatrists, psychologists, and such, I haven’t a clue where I might have picked this idea up. (I should also mention that this first foray of mine into the consulting business was an utter flop: none of my family members ever took advantage of my services. In retrospect, I can forgive them for being reluctant to consult with a therapist who wore short pants and commuted to work on a tricycle.)
My unique ability occurs within the larger skill of helping people solve problems. The best way I can describe it is that I can be with people in a certain way that enables them to come up with creative solutions they hadn’t thought of before. I can create a space that brings forth innovative solutions from inside myself or from people I’m working with. I can feel this ability inside me right now. It’s a feeling of respect for the creative process, coupled with a nonjudgmental listening for something new to emerge. I can wait patiently as long as it takes for a new solution to emerge. Possibly because I’m willing to wait for as long as it takes, it usually doesn’t take long.
Let me give you a real-life example of how this ability works. I consulted once with the top two executives of a Fortune 500 company. They had gotten into a conflict about whether to build a new factory in South America. By the time I got called in, they had been at loggerheads for two weeks. The conflict had erupted into emotional displays that were unsettling to the other executives. The first thing I asked them was whether they would be willing to have a creative solution emerge from our conversation, whether
it took two minutes or two days. They said they would be, so the second question I asked them was “What do you think is really going on here?” This question confused them, and I explained that whenever a conflict had gone on as long as theirs had, there was almost always some other factor that was the real cause of the problem. They said they understood, but they had no idea what it might be.
Here’s where I put my ability into play. I said, “Then let’s just wait and listen. Maybe something will emerge.” We sat in silence for ten seconds, then twenty. One of them coughed; then silence reigned again for another twenty seconds or so. Finally the top guy said, “I feel like I’m losing control of the company. If we build this factory down there, it’s good-bye to the company we started with. I’m an engineer; I like to walk through the R & D section and shoot the breeze with the engineers anytime I want to.” The number-two guy just sat there, looking stunned. “Yeah,” number one continued, “I used to be able to stand in the parking lot and see the whole business. I liked that feeling. It felt manageable. Now we’re growing so fast I see employees in the halls I haven’t even met. It scares me.”
Finally, number two said, “I get it. I couldn’t figure out what was going on with you. Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
Number one raised his palms in a gesture of helplessness: “I didn’t know it myself until a moment ago.” A few minutes later they came up with an innovative solution: build the factory in South America as planned, but expand the research and development functions they would need there and base them at their present headquarters. That way, the head guy could continue his walk-arounds among the engineers and have the parts of the business he loved close to home.
The Big Leap Page 10