Hello, Whole Life Leader

It’s the end of the traditional school year, graduation season for high schools and colleges. I’m especially aware of this since our younger son will be graduating from high school the Friday after Memorial Day.

My “reticular activator” is tuned to graduation themes as I ponder his high school accomplishments and his future in college and discuss them with others. I have noticed blurbs, not recalling if they were bits of news stories or references to business articles, saying that recruiters are less interested in all the education a college student receives in their four, or more, years of coursework and far more interested in their ability to communicate clearly, confidently, accurately, and persuasively.

What’s missing for millennials?
I have noticed similar blurbs that bemoan the dominance of digital devices, both how they distract people in interactions and how they impede the development of conversational competence and social awareness. This reminds me that a few years back I was on the perimeter of a conversation about millennials who became attorneys and how the texting lifestyle prevented them from developing abilities necessary to be negotiators or courtroom litigators.

I’m hopeful that our son will not fit in to this millennial cookie cutter. He is very comfortable in conversations – Man! He talks a lot! He speaks with confidence, perhaps a touch too much. He is genuinely happy to talk with adults and connects with them authentically, with real energy and a real smile. No mumbling, no treating adults as if they can’t possibly understand the things that are important to him. Yes, there’s still a lot of fine-tuning to be done, but I’m confident friends and classmates and professors at college are up to that task.

What is our culture teaching them?
When I shift my focus from specific concern about my son’s preparedness for a relational world, inhabited by relational beings, to the culture at large, I start wondering about our culture’s view of the nature of human beings. How have we let the fundamentally relational nature of human life be diminished? It seems to me that those of us committed to the evolution of culture and the enlightenment of people have a lot of work to do.

With these thoughts bubbling around this week I heard a radio advertisement for a local university’s executive MBA program. One of the benefits promoted was working with an executive coach to develop the “soft skills” of leadership.

SOFT SKILLS?!?!

It’s ironic how this patriarchal “dis” of essential qualities of human beings riles my own testosterone-fueled tribal-minded patriarchal side. I want to STOP this nonsense and FORCE a change in language. I have a patriarchal response to opposing patriarchy. A low-emotional-intelligence approach to advocating for emotional intelligence. Yes, I have a long way to go on my own enlightenment path! But I’m still committed to doing my part to drag society forward.

Let’s Stop Calling Them “Soft Skills”

Let me step on my soapbox and “mansplain” something to you about the patriarchal bias in most cultures. I live in, grew up in, and was enculturated in the United States, a modern western industrially advanced society, so it’s what I can describe best. However, as a committed lifelong student of psychology and anthropology, I can explain general cultural processes and trends pretty accurately.

I’m really trying to keep it interesting here
Culture is created through habits adopted by a group, through rituals that convey certain meaning about people’s roles within the group at different points in life, and through shared “myths” or stories that explain the nature of people and our purpose. The narrower our shared stories to explain people’s places in society (myths) the more the society forces people into homogeneous roles. The more varied the roles in the shared stories, the more people can feel accepted in a variety of personality types, careers, and lifestyle choices. A detailed look at this tendency of culture to include and exclude is for another discussion at another time. But this is the process that has resulted in our cultural bias to elevate “traditional” masculine qualities, meaning masculine-energy-as-aggression.

Culture is passed “from generation to generation” broadly, but it’s actually passed to each person from all the people that person encounters from their arrival at infancy until the end of their life, or at least until they become rigid in their beliefs. Seeing other people interact, how they handle their roles, how others treat them in their roles, and how they seem to regard themselves and their roles all become bits of information that a person weaves together into their inner representation of the culture they live in.

Culture is stubborn
Since culture is passed by experience, from person to person, it’s hard to make swift changes in culture. Trying to do so provokes pushback, in fact, because everyone carrying around their inner tapestry that tells the story of the world they live in will resist attempts to change the external world too far away from their inner story. One reason this matters is that culture contains old patterns, old roles, and old beliefs that aren’t useful and effective in current circumstances. But they are strong stories, absorbed collectively “from everywhere” over a person’s lifetime, so they are very hard to change.

Culture has a masculine bias
One such outdated story is a patriarchal tale about the supremacy of competition and dominance over caring and connecting. Thousands of years ago, when physical survival was the most important daily consideration for people, physical strength, aggression, and domination were highly valued. Masculine power ruled in a fear-based world.

With advances in civilization we don’t need as much masculine power for day-to-day survival. But cultural stories about the supremacy of masculine power persist. They were written in distant millennia when physical threats were intense and passed on, person to person, in the myths that defined most cultures.

These stories are inaccurate. They exaggerate the importance of competition, aggression, and domination in a world where physical threats are no longer as intense.

Science, a masculine energy sort of thing, agrees!
Research into neuroscience and the biology of communication, bonding, relationships, and affection show strongly and clearly that human beings are hard-wired in our DNA for caring and connection. Physical affection – cuddling – is as great a need for a human infant as food. From childhood on, we are all more innovative, more resilient, better problem-solvers, more productive, physically healthier… and on and on when we are emotionally connected with other people.

Experiencing trust with others leads to feeling emotionally close with others, which opens the pathway to sharing ideas in an amazingly powerful way so that what we do is co-creative. Co-creative means what we come up with together is beyond what any of us could do alone. And it’s not additive. You can’t get this high quality result by having each person work on something in isolation and send their ideas to one person, who then picks and chooses the best of the best. That result won’t be as innovative and effective as a co-created result. There are ideas and qualities and facets that only emerge when developed in conversation between people who have an authentic connection built on trust, respect, and valuing one another.

A masculine-bias culture devalues part of human nature
And yet we still refer to the complex, high-level ability to promote trust and foster these connections between people and across groups as “soft skills.” Why “soft”? To diminish them, to feminize them, from a masculine-power-as-aggression point of view. “Hard” skills build things. “Hard” skills conquer things. “Hard” skills dominate the boardroom, the market, the world.

Why “skills”? Because when you combine the masculine-power-as-aggression point of view with sequentially logical scientific materialism, also derived from a masculine emphasis, 1) you don’t understand the integrative complexity of the qualities of human conversation and relationship and 2) you believe improvement in anything comes just by learning new skillsets.

Culture passes through language, so let’s change the language
The ability to cultivate the conditions for trust and bring people together into respectful connection is not something to be diminished. It shouldn’t be belittled as “feminine” from a masculine-power-as-aggression point of view. When co-creating in connected relationships is the way human beings are most productive, most innovative, and most successful, it’s obvious this ability is essential, not secondary.

The ability to cultivate trust and bring people into relationship is not merely a skillset that is learned. Yes, there are skills that enable these processes, but simply learning the skills is insufficient. To become proficient at this, a person must develop both knowledge, about the processes of culture and conversation and biological responses, and intuitive wisdom, the ability to read a situation in the moment to feel the “energy” (a metaphorical term) of each individual and of the group. This sort of awareness of the states of others requires the development of self-awareness of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and inner states. These are interconnected capacities, not merely skills.

I’ve grabbed the megaphone now
These abilities are not soft. They are essential. They are not merely skills. They are innate capacities that must be developed with intention to become effective.

Essential Human Capacities – to guide and promote essential human interaction.

A glimpse into the process of culture change
A person adept at using these capacities will introduce some rituals to a group to begin a process of building trust and coming together, and then guide the community to co-create their own rituals for establishing and maintaining trust and open connection. That person is doing far more than facilitating a meeting or even facilitating a crucial, important conversation. They are facilitating the co-creation of a culture that promotes people working in engaged, connected ways to perform at their best. That means they are facilitating the conditions for people to be most innovative, most effective, and most productive while also feeling most satisfied and fulfilled. This is really important stuff.

Piling on the science
Minds that focus on competition and dominance are shaped by fear. Fear is a response when our survival is threatened. So we can choose to live as if we must fight for survival everyday, or we can choose to commit to thriving everyday.

We cannot do both.

The neurochemical responses and neurological pathways of fear are very different from the neurochemistry and pathways of trust and connection. They light up different parts of the brain. Fear is more primal and shuts down higher functions like innovation and connection.

The rational, logical argument against rational, logical bias
Even logical, linear science with it’s mechanistic, materialistic western worldview has shown this to be true: the ability to establish trust and connection is essential for human performance, productivity, and overall success and wellbeing.

Lead it forward: I invite you to become a thought leader on behalf of the evolution of culture. Let’s lead culture away from an over-emphasis on competition and aggression and towards connection and co-creation. Let’s lead people away from a fear-based survival mindset towards a hopeful, meaningful mindset of thriving in community. Let’s start by recognizing the primacy of attunement, authentic conversations, relationships, and social emotional intelligence in human nature. Let’s change the language, because as we change the language we will change the culture.

How does “Essential Human Capacities” sound?

I’m not convinced my language is the best. I’m just convinced we need to change how we talk about these abilities, because it determines how we talk about our own humanity. I know a co-creative answer will definitely be better! Join me in designing one.

[stepping off the soapbox]

May you be well, may you do well, may you stand proud and tall on your own soapbox, and may you Thrive!

Take Care,

Stephen Coxsey, MA, LPC, PCC
Whole Life Leadership Coach

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About Steve Coxsey

Steve collaborates with people to design and implement a customized Whole Life Leadership plan that promotes success, fulfillment, and well-being for themselves and the people they lead. They thrive on a personally meaningful path and promote a culture of thriving wherever they are in charge, from families to professions, from small businesses to organizations.

Steve is a supportive ally. His typical clients have to juggle competing responsibilities in a variety of roles. They have a compelling vision of what they would like to create or accomplish as leaders in their families, careers, or businesses and are committed to turning their vision into reality. To make that happen, they develop the Leadership Agilities to be able to empower and direct themselves, design and guide meaningful work, and inspire others.

Would you like that to be you?

Are you ready for a creative, dynamic, collaborative partnership focused on turning your vision into results?

Get started with a no-risk 30-40 minute consultation. It’s complimentary, so all it will cost you is a little bit of time. You can schedule the complimentary call using this online tool. You can also call 817-416-8971 or e-mail Steve@SteveCoxsey.com to set up the call.

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