SELF-ACTUALIZING LEADERS MORE RADICAL THAN EVEN I ANTICIPATED!

In the past week I have an the privilege of presenting the idea of Self-Actualizing Leaders and Companies in several different contexts, TV and newspaper interviews, a business luncheon, a presentation to lecturers and professors at an University, and of course at the Unleashing Leadership— Coaching Self-Actualizing Leadership workshop here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I have had these opportunities thanks to a visionary Meta-Coach, Tessie Lim and her business, “World Center of Personal Excellence.”

Now having presented these ideas numerous places, to a great many people for the past two years, and in many articles, in two published books and the one that will be published this year (Unleashing Leadership: Self-Actualizing Leaders and Companies) I think I had become too used to Self-Actualization Psychology. I think I had gotten so familiar with it and around so many people who share a vision of living life at the highest level—the self-actualizing life, that I had forgotten how radical these ideas are, especially to most people on this planet.

Several events during the past week have awakened this realization in me. They have stabbed me awake. They have sounded all of the alarm bells and sent the inner lights flashing on and off signaling me to just how radical is self-actualization as a vision, an idea, and a way of living. They have sounded the trumpets to the paradigm shift that this makes in companies and business.

In the past week I have had several wonderful debates and arguments about whether self- actualization in leaders, organizations, managers, and employees is even possible. One top executive challenged me as directly as anyone.

“That’s all nice and good, but let’s use some common sense now. There are people who won’t do what they are told and you just have to dictate to them! That’s just common sense.”

Of course, the nice thing about being a neuro-linguist and even more a neuro-semanticist is that I can hear frames in the very language that people use. And that really gives an NLP and Neuro- Semantic person a tremendous advantage, even an unfair advantage on the battlefield of ideas.

“‘Common sense,’ you say? Common to who? Sense—what sense? What ‘sense’ are you talking about—what pictures, words, sounds, sensations, smells, tastes? If you have a ‘sense’ about people, human nature, people taking on work, people working with passion, and so on, what is the basis of the way you are now ‘making sense’ of the idea that human beings want to learn, grow, develop, be engaged in their work, achieve, have

fun, and all of the self-actualizing components? Isn’t that just, as you say, ‘common sense’?”

It’s interesting the way a new radical, paradigm-shifting idea can upset the status quo, challenge the way people have done business, treated other people, and the semantics meanings that they develop about such concepts as power, control, authority, hierarchy, bureaucracy, rules, and so on. I also find it fascinating how we as human beings can try to defend our minds against entertaining ideas that take us out of the box of our conventional thinking. Later I said, “The words ‘just’ and ‘only’ are edge-of-a-person’s-mental-maps words. They indicate the place where meaning ends. ‘It is just this and it means nothing more.’ So the phrase, ‘It is just common sense’ powerfully sets a frame-by-implication. It essentially says, ‘All of your fancy and complicated talk about levels of human drives, needs, and impulses is find and good, but irrelevant in real life; what is actually real and relevant is how I am used to doing business, that’s ‘common sense.’ So let’s drop ideas about human psychology and just deal with people as they are.’”

Of course, making the covert frames explicit robs them of their power. So once you are able to hear frames and to detect frames—everything changes. Detecting frames opens the unseen, invisible structures of the mental and emotional boxes that we live our lives in. Recognizing the frames-by-implication (the FBI frames) above and beyond the content of a person’s words enables us to see behind the curtain and the Wizard there pulling the levers and making the presentation of “the great and wonderful Oz” at the content level. Now you are able to get to the heart of things and facilitate transformative change—sometimes in moments. I love it.

“So you’d rather remain ignorant of know how human nature works, of the mechanisms that drive yourself and others, of the highest possibilities of human nature? You would rather keep doing what you’ve always done which you already know doesn’t work in the long run?”

I asked that of one gentleman who took me on privately. He said, “Well, no, not when you put it that way.”

“Okay, then what shall we do? Shall we get beyond the shallow and superficial excuse about ‘the way we’ve always done it,’ the ‘common sense’ psychology of our primitive great, great grandfathers, and use the most transformative understanding of the bright side of human nature?”

Yes, he was willing to do that. Later he came back to say, “I have so many other old beliefs, old ideas, old experiences that keeps getting in my way. What do I do about that?”

“That’s great? You’re now fully ready for the next section on ‘suspending meanings.” And if you like, you could use the Crucible pattern to unlearn as you take those old formulations of meaning and let them melt down and transform them into more dynamic and empowering beliefs.”

With the entire group at the training, the old ideas were so much in the way for many that I provided a challenge.

“Right now these ideas are getting in your way so you can’t even cleanly hear what I’m saying. Is that right? Yes? Okay, so let me ask you to put all of this on the side for a moment (gesturing to their past) and at the end of this training during the last hour, let’s return to this subject and see where you are then. In this way you will be fully informed and able to make a comparison between your current thoughts on command-and-control leadership and self-actualizing leadership.”

Everybody agreed. And on the last day, at the last hour, I invited a return to that question. But no one wanted it then. They had been experiencing the processes of actualizing their best leadership style, leadership level, in their kind of leadership and so the old debate had become irrelevant, had become redundant.

In a country where there is still a strong tradition of old command-and-control leaders and organizations, in a country where equality of people is not yet the foundational assumption, where there is not a belief in the deep democracy of all people, of equal rights, of freedom of speech, or the right to criticize the government —here self-actualizing leaders and companies are really a radical paradigm shift. Revolutionary.

And considering all of that, I say, let the revolution begin! Let there be a new and true discovery that there’s one race on this planet, the human race; and that the human species have a higher nature and that the design of Neuro-Semantic NLP is to push for the highest values and vision in human beings so that you and I can experience and deliver our best performances and ways of relating. That’s my vision. If you share it, come join the self-actualization revolution!