Leadership – Page 2 – The Thrivable Society

Time Horizons

Much of what I do has to do with generating perspectives that are useful in offering us new information that enables wise action. And one of the most crucial in this area is time horizons. I have written in the past on zooming – that we can zoom in and out of a perspective, but when I wrote on that I focused on physical distance rather than time.

We can zoom through time as well. I can focus on the next five minutes or on the next century or millenium. When I was developing the thrivability cards (which in part became the Table of Contents for the Thrivability Sketch), I had a suit that was about time, because it is so valuable to move through time horizons.

If you are in a stuck place or holding a view of catastrophe, one very effective strategy is to expand a sense of time. Another is to shrink it. Let’s look in practice.
photo credit: Moe-tography

I can look at the current economic dynamics and become very depressed at the breakdown in our systems and the suffering that this is creating for millions of people. Pretty daunting. Very sad. If I think about it in a two year time frame, I might feel like screaming at people to do something – anything even – that will shift what is happening. Which is what I see Umair Haque doing a lot of.

To escape the fear, threat, disaster experience and focus on something productive I can do, I might look at a longer view. What if I consider it from a twenty year perspective? Can I imagine that the path in the short term might be quite painful, it will enable us to do something we could not have done otherwise? What would that be? What can I do now to catalyze that?

If I look at a hundred year flow. Can I look to the past and see how we have experienced challenging times before and had it work out for the greater good? Can I imagine, in another hundred years, people telling that same story about us – that we went through a challenging time and came out better for it?

Let’s say I can’t do that. (You know I can, but others may not or may think this is escapist thinking). Given the gritty reality before me, and my negative expectations of the future, what can I do in the next five minutes to make this one wild and precious life worth living for now? What can I do with this one day? While I have this moment in time, what will I make of it? The future will be what it will be, but we are not there yet. No, we are here, in this moment and only ever in the present moment. And the only action I can take is in this moment. So what do I want to make of this very moment?

Do I have ideas about how I want the succession of moments to be? Who am I? Start being who you want to be right now, because there is no other time but right now. So be the change you want to see in the world — already. Now. Not soon. Not in progress. Now.

Zooming in or out of our time horizons frees us from the fear-ridden anxiety of the uncertainty we face to hold a view that enable calm, intentional action. Make a choice. Be proactive about the perspective you hold. Don’t let fear blind you to the alternatives in time horizons.

Something Great Together Again

by Jean Russell

Thrivability is participating in something great together again.

Thrivability asks us – what might we achieve together that is great? What might we do to flourish? It asks us to move beyond the contraction and fear that resides in “sustainability” framing and create something fun, engaging, lively, creative, agile, resilient, enduring, and evolving.

We teeter on the precipice of the now, look back at all human culture and evolution itself has generated. Do we level up? Or do we fall over? Do we have it in us, together and individually, to co-create something worthy of that legacy? Or are we shame-faced at the errors of our past and retreat from our own creation and the consequences thereof?

If we step forward together, what is it that we create? How do we use what we have to create something more than what is there now? And do so responsibly? Responsibly to our ancestors? Responsibly to our future? Responsibly to each other? So we can collectively gaze back in the mirror on some future day and say we are proud of what we have done?

Did I connect people in ways that enriched their sense of meaning and purpose in the world?
Did I give them the information they need to make the best choices for our collective outcome?
Did I make a meaningful contribution to society? Did I improve the human condition?
Was I and am I a part of the breakdown or the breakthrough?
Did I dance gracefully with my follow beings and bring laughter and delight to human existence?

I have many questions. The answers are given each day, by each of us, knowingly or unknowingly.

Find Good Questions

by Jean Russell

Today I dropped a whole series of tweets that are part of an understanding I am working on. Each nuggets lives alone, but the whole, I hope, is greater than the parts, and thus I post it in whole here.

Hybridity. Transcend and include. Hard to see, wearing attributes of past paradigms when useful, past ideological fashion made functional.

Sometimes when you are inside of a thing, it is mighty tricky to pull your eyeballs out far enough to see what you are in.

Zoooooooooom way way out. Look as if an alien anthropologist at 10 years, 20, 50, 100 and see patterns, movement, fractals, direction.

photo credit: thskyt

The very idea of paradigm shifts (Kuhn) begets an age where no concept is presumed static. Flow, shift, evolve. The process of becoming.

Everything as prototype (nods to @ladyniasan) Government, business, product, like software releases, always todays version open to iterate

Nature knows prototyping, she is always modifying. She doesn’t want yesterday’s world, she is making tomorrow’s by leveling up complexity.

It isn’t about truth, ideals, pure states, pure extremes. It is iteration toward what is useful. Let go of answers. Stick with Questions!

I don’t mean questions like: can this scale? or did we price this right?

I mean questions like:

in 5, 10, 25, 50 years, can we still operate under this purpose?
do my actions and choices contribute to the ecosystems that support me/us? do I or we fit in the ecosystems we are entering? And if not yet, how do we expand them to include us while encouraging the life of the whole interdependent systems to evolve?
how have we made room for ourselves to evolve? For what we do to evolve?
how am I being a contribution here? how am I allowing others to be a contribution?
what about this creates meaning for me, for those it touches, and for future society?
are we having fun yet? How can we encourage play, whimsy, emotion, serendipity, and synchronicity to join us?

These are the questions. The answers are not static. The system isn’t static. The interlocking systems of systems are not static. The answers change. Find good questions and stick with them.
photo credit: jronaldlee

Why the optimism?

by Thriver

In the face of all the catastrophe thinking and story-telling, why the optimism of thrivability?

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

This optimism is not blind idealism or the search for some dreamy utopia. A thrivable world will exist (and has existed) in a strange balance and tension where there is more health and generativity than illness and destruction. That does not mean there is not destruction. Old orders must fall, become the compost of new life, and cycle through. Ideas get refined and transcended. A thrivable world is not static. It is not the end of suffering or the birth of a hedonistic paradise. Instead, think of a garden or better yet a meadow.

So, let’s be pragmatic. What is the basis for being optimistic about thriving given stories of catastrophe and crisis. I will merely mention these – you can find more easily by digging deeper on any of it. This is the big picture overview. Also, it is not comprehensive. I offer here only a half dozen examples of why optimism is warranted.

communication – never before has communication been so possible – over distances, between languages, across cultures, etc. Information can flow. There is talk of a global brain (although at times that brain may seem primitive and dumbly focused on sex, superficiality, or bad news). It still remains – never before have we had such access to each other. (nods to Deanna Zandt)
cognitive surplus – never before have so many had so much liesure time. Not saying we are effective with it, but the possibility of people contributing their time, wisdom, and resources has never been greater. (nods to Clay Shirky)

Yeah, you heard those before….but it is working? What about people who are dying!

hearts break as we read of children dying, but what is the trajectory? UNICEF says:

“Research and experience show that six million of the almost 11 million children who die each year could be saved by low-tech, evidence-based, cost-effective measures such as vaccines, antibiotics, micronutrient supplementation, insecticide-treated bed nets and improved family care and breastfeeding practices.”
“While global immunization rates have risen from less than 20 per cent in the 1970s to about 74 per cent in 2002, millions of children must still be reached.”
“In its sixty years of existence, UNICEF has seen a fifty per cent reduction in under-five mortality between 1960 and 2002.”

Peace on the rise. I know it seems like the opposite. But let’s look at some charts to see what the numbers tell.
via systemicpeace.org

We can see from figure 8 that the conflicts that do exist produce more refugees and exist in poorer states and thus require more humanitarian relief. However, note, “The end of the Cold War, marked by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, had an equally dramatic effect on the general level of armed conflict in the global system.” A couple key points:

“Separate research indicates that the increasing level of societal war results from the protractedness of societal wars during this period and not from a substantial increase in the numbers of new wars.”
“At the peak in 1992, nearly thirty percent of the countries in the world were experiencing some form of major political violence. This percentage of the world’s independent states (with total population greater than 500,000 in 2008) has dropped by nearly one-half since the peak, registering at slightly more than 15% with major episodes of political violence in 2008.”
“There has been substantial improvement in general resilience in the global system since 1995.”
“Global gains are observed for seven of the eight fragility indicators; only “economic legitimacy” shows no improvement, indicating that there has been no substantive shift away from primary commodities production toward manufactured goods in the world’s more fragile states.”

There are a few counter-trends to be wary of (see end of page)

Okay, so kids are more likely to live (but we can keep improving that) and there is a downward trend in warfare/armed conflict. We can communicate better and have more time to make the world better (or be entertained or both). But what about the environment?

Let’s try wikipedia this time:

In 1999, the United States EPA replaced the Pollution Standards Index (PSI) with the Air Quality Index (AQI) to incorporate new PM2.5 and Ozone standards.

The effects of these laws have been very positive. In the United States between 1970 and 2006, citizens enjoyed the following reductions in annual pollution emissions:^[48]

carbon monoxide emissions fell from 197 million tons to 89 million tons

nitrogen oxide emissions fell from 27 million tons to 19 million tons

sulfur dioxide emissions fell from 31 million tons to 15 million tons

particulate emissions fell by 80%

lead emissions fell by more than 98%

Please don’t take this to mean that we are done. We are not. AND, when was the last time you heard that we had made progress?

So we have been making some progress, and actually there are some positive trends. Now let’s add in a few juicy additions:

Purposeful or meaningful life pursuits are on the rise, in fact there is a convergence. Millenials – in general – prefer purposeful work and play, GenX is interested too, and the Boomers who made money so they could have a meaningful life later – well, that later is arriving. What happens when you have multiple-generations with a growing interest in living on purpose, with intention, and therefore being conscious about doing more good in the world?
Social entrepreneurship (probably in part as a result of the previous) is on the rise – a very hot trend with many subsets and variations in making money by or for doing good. Let’s call corporate social responsibility one of those variations.
A paradigm shift in leadership and collaboration is underway. Beginning a few decades ago with the birth of servant leadership, and reinforced by books like “Outliers” (which shows the supporting factors that go into supposedly independent genius)… now we have open source, crowdsourcing, and so much more. How we think about working together is changing. And that change makes more successful collaboration possible.
Green technology. Some of us find it so incredibly sexy. And sometimes it really is. Sometimes it is wishful thinking or innovation many years from implementation. However, I can count 4 wind farms on my 120 mile journey to see my family. I sense some potential black swan like shifts if some clean green energy or technology comes to market… whether that algae that eats pollution or cars run on the biofuel made by your food waste… I have hope that something out of the bright green movement is going to come to fruition in a way that changes the world dramatically.
I’ll close my brief list with metrics… we have been improving our metrics (and our intelligence in how those metrics can be used to tell different stories). The better our metrics – and the better we are at realizing what to measure, the tighter and more useful our feedback loops become. From using social network analysis to map out which congresspeople are being lobbied by what organizations (and who is paying them)… to stats on child mortality, the environment, and energy consumption and creation – we know more about our world than ever before. And that empowers us to do more about it.

These are just a few of the things that make me optimistic in the face of catastrophe stories. What are yours?

On twitter–

@jhagel: More cause for optimism – we are having fewer children and living much longer – great visualization of global trends http://bit.ly/c93ven

WonderWomanGang

by Thriver

Yesterday I was missing my friend @rachelannyes – so I looked at her twitter feed to see what she has been up to and get a sense of how she is doing. I found a lovely post:

@rachelannyes: What the world needs now is a Wonder Woman gang.

Absolutely.

So I hereby nominate for the Wonder Woman Gang the following amazing women. Please feel free to nominate those who inspire you and seem to have super powers in transforming our world.

@rachelannyes @randomdeanna@CDEgger @juneHolley @HildyGottlieb @amoration@amyrsward @VenessaMiemis @kanter @caseorganic@p2173 @kitode @ruby @silona@samsweetwater @wseltzer @rmchase @nilofer@deborah909 @sgleason @kristinwolff @staceymonk @joguldi @christinasworld@identitywoman @mariadeathstar @lizstrauss@ruthannharnisch @ladyniasan @beandlive @sheriherndon @nancywhite@alizasherman @CreatvEmergence @slboval

Then I asked for other nominations.

@kg posted: @NurtureGirl I nominate @sloane@beautifulthangs @ericaogrady@ShaunaCausey @willotoons@emgollie @khartline @Rapetzel #WonderWomanGang 🙂

plus: @kg posted: @NurtureGirl Are so many! @coachsizzle @nspilger @avivamo@realize_ink @snesbitt @susangordo@suzboop @penguinasana too 🙂#wonderwomangang

Who do you nominate? And when you think of wonderwomangang, what comes to mind? What super powers do you think these women have?

Catastrophe Thinking

by Thriver

I am pretty sure my entire life has been lived under the hovering cloud of the apocalypse. Sure there were moments of possibility – the fall of the wall, the election of Obama, the end of apartheid in South Africa. But mostly the global events we hear about focus on the end of civilization as we know it, albeit in small chunks at a time. It is still framed as disaster…. we are losing what we had and aren’t moving into a better world (except in small isolated ways). From AIDS to Bird Flu, from Rwanda genocide to Sudan and Burma, nuclear proliferation, the Gulf Coast disaster 2.0 (and Katrina as 1.0), Haiti (and so many other earthquakes, mud slides, volcanoes, and other weather/geological disasters for humans) – plus economic crisis and climate change, the extinction of so many species, and the war on terror (which just grows fear and terror) all converge – even for those of us who don’t watch the news. There is overpopulation, sex slaves, and child mortality issues as well as deforestation, crumbling infrastructure, and coach potatoes living in suburban nightmares. There are activists working cancer into their bodies with their martyr-like dedication. There are those in sedated near oblivion – zombie-living. There are hedonic wealth-seekers facing doom with greed and opulence. This is the story of crumbling and disintegration. Our globalized post-modern world tumbling through catastrophes.

We tell this story, and we have been telling this story, for my whole life. And the fear-mongering started long before I was born – the the cold war threatening nuclear annihilation for half a century.

I am tired of this story. I am tired of seeing faces worn down with the contraction of fear. I am weary of the negativity and desperation driving people to hate, divide, hoard, and fight. I am sick of finding out my government is justifying killing people in order to obtain more resources (because, I guess, we are in such a state of lack!).

We victimize ourselves, and in that suffering, we victimize others with our trauma.

Enough. Put it down. Don’t believe the hype. Don’t fight for a world you already gave up on.

Look for the flower emerging in the sidewalk – life pressing through without complaint or blame to assert its urge for sunlight. Nature is incredibly resilient and adaptive. Work within the world we have to co-create the world we want. Focus on what is going well and right, and encourage more of it. Breathe and be the serenity prayer.

Do not deny the brutal facts before us, but know that you see those facts through a filter of the story you are telling yourself (and others) about the world. You can transform that story and see those facts in a fresh light – from a different vantage point. Turn on the thrivability light, and recognize that life gives rise to more life. Never before in human history have we known a greater wealth of possibility.

After three days in Philadelphia discussing philanthropy and philanthropic strategies for transformation, I feel deeply convinced and inspired by a model I can see of thrivable philanthropy. Gerard calls it evolutionary philanthropy, and there might be some subtle distinctions. However, let me explain. And then I hope it will be more clear why our stories about our world could shift to transform our experience of it and the world itself.

Let’s call charity the work that we do to address immediate needs of others who can not, for whatever reason, care for themselves. It is as if you are standing on a riverbank, see a baby floating downstream, and you rush out to save the drowning child. Only, there are not enough people pulling drowning babies from the river, and the babies have suffered from being in the river. Our hearts break open. Some savvy volunteer wonders aloud – “who is tossing babies in this river?” And a crew of helpers decide to go upstream to find the cause. And they discover a system out of balance allowing babies to land in the river. They decide to change the system and set up programs to help mothers and advocate for social justice. We call this social change and social justice work. Still, babies are floating down the river. The philanthropist supporting this work starts to wonder – huh, what impact is my giving having? I want babies to stop ending up in the river – this is madness! And the social justice worker says – well, we think we have decreased the number of babies in the river, but this is a complex adaptive system so I can’t name all the causes and effects! I can’t clearly attribute your dollars having saved babies without acknowledging other programs and the dynamic changes in the system in which our town operates, babies are born, the economy shifts, and nature takes her course. We might have even changed our baby counting practices in a way that changed how many babies we can account for, which skewed the numbers giving an artificial bump. But we are not sure.

Then a thinker stands up and says – it is the very culture and beliefs in which we operate that give rise to these systems that aren’t taking care of all these babies. And the philanthropist has to choose now – either fund better metrics to know whether there is an impact… or fund cultural shift. And there are still babies in the river, and everyone’s hearts break open knowing it and seeing it. And they are sad.

Transforming culture takes longer, it is harder to measure, the complex dynamic system of it all makes it next to impossible to attribute agency clearly. And, it is where the greatest possibility for creating a culture that ever more deeply transforms itself, cares for each other and the whole, and enables the world we want.

Change your story.

Closing Triangles

by Thriver

I think of myself as nurturing networks and communities as well as individuals and organizations. And one strategy I use is network weaving. Network Weaving describes the connection made between two people I know who don’t yet know each other as closing a triangle, because in a network map, this is exactly what it looks like!

credit: NetworkWeaving

Here, in this post, I want to talk specifically about my practice of making introductions. I had been connecting people for a long time before I met Ken Homer, but his introduction format really set the bar for me. When he introduced me to another one of his connections, I felt like I was glowing! Wow, that is how I want people to feel when I connect them.

Sure, I want them to feel good and associate that with me. Less egotistically, I want the time I take to make an introduction to be time well spent for all of us. I want them to feel great about connecting to the person I introduce them too. I want it to be useful all around. This is not about quantity for me, it is about quality. So, here is the pattern I use, developed in part through what Ken demonstrated.

I described it on twitter today.

describing strengths of each
After stating the purpose of the email (useful for any and all starts to email conversation), describe relevant and positive strengths of each person to each other.
My wording for this is usually, “Person A, please allow me to introduce you to Person B. Person B is passionate about x, has terrific skills in y, and wants to explore z. ” Followed by the inverse, “Person B, please allow me to introduce you to Person A. Person A is passionate about m, has terrific skills in n, and wants to explore o.” This is a rough format, each one is different, but they all fit within that general pattern. Also, the adjectives are always chosen to fit the people I am describing. Use your own.
point to alignment & mutual benefit
I like to point to something that makes the people I am connecting clear about what they have in common. I don’t mean that they both read books. I mean that they are both within a particular field or sub-domain, know people in common, or have a similar passion about making the world a better place (and do so coming from a similar mindset).
I also like to point out what I imagine might be the mutually beneficial initial outcome from each party taking the time to make the connection. It might not be what actually happens, but it gives them some sense of why I am making the connection and what each might gain from it.
name small first step
Sometimes I forget to leave this in. However, after receiving several wonderful network weaving emails from others, I realized how vital this is. I received some letters, saw the alignment, and yet I might not know what to do about it. So in my introduction, I have been adding some suggestion for a first step – “In a 15 minute phone call, I think you could discuss your shared interest in x.”
That examples covers part of #2 and also #3. It doesn’t have to be long. Often I might have had an extended discussion with one of the parties, so I can point to what I have refined as a conversation starter for them.

I find that this often makes clear too what role I want one to play to the other. Maybe I am asking Person A to mentor Person B on a subject area. Or maybe I want Person B to introduce Person A to someone within their network who can help in a more targeted fashion. Being clear on roles can help people feel the respect I am offering them as well as make choices about what they want to be.

I hope these patterns help you make connections between two people.

If it were not for….

by Thriver

HildyGottlieb

What created the today you will build your future upon? Fill in the blank: If it weren’t for __ I wouldn’t be/have ___.

This twitter post inspired me to share my gratitude.

If it were not for… my network… I would be or have nearly anything I do have and am.

I can name names here. And I have at time in public and in private shared with those people that I am clear have been instrumental in getting me where I am. When I picture answering this question, I see a rippling wave spreading out from this moment. It converges at this time and this place, but the factors and people that had to be in place and in time in order to arrive here are manifold. Many many manifold. And this is not just true for me, it is also true of everyone else in this great overlapping ripple that at its best creates a wave. Perhaps even a rogue wave.

On a skinny puppy song I used to enjoy… there was a sample at the beginning, “is it me and my head or me and my body?” Now I think of this as “Is it me and my network or me and my environment.” Am I even a distinct thing beyond my network? Or distinct from my environment? I am so deeply comprised of the people who have touched my life. Their influence on me forms this palimpsest that makes up my being. In this layered collage, there are colors and sections that seem more vibrant than others, more noticeable. But the whole of the composition is from the whole of the experience. And so too with the landscapes I have been in. I am both the product and the agent of the environments I inhabit.

If it were not for you, I would not be me. Ripple ripple, overlap, and gap.

Solution-Focus

by Thriver

How much time do you spend in each of the following states?

Oh, look, that isn’t working! See how it isn’t working? Did you notice this part over here doesn’t work either?
Hey, I am trying to fix this, can you hand me a lever?

Many of us get fascinated by the first state. Point to all the facets of what is not working. And there is a way that is valuable, as we design new ways of working that address and transform those issues. We need to know what we are looking at.

And, we can get lost in seeing challenges. Stuck in a state of awe and overwhelm. When do you pick up a lever and start creating something in response to the challenges you perceive? What stops you from doing more of that? Who can you ask to help you get started?

I admire those go-getters that not only fix or improve something but also totally trick it out. My mom didn’t just make me a prom dress, she used the scraps to make a cape, a purse, and a garter (all while I was doing my hair). No, I am not posting pictures. 😛

Avoid the overwhelm of what isn’t working. Focus on a solution you can dig into. And see what you can do to trick it out and make use of what you have.

I would love to hear your stories about making more of your resources and the power of solution-focus. Please share with us.

Zero-Sum Games

by Thriver

Have you ever heard of zero-sum games? How about non-zero sum games? For those of you who have not heard of zero-sum games, allow me to briefly explain and share some links. It comes from political and economic theory, and it means if wins are plusses and losses are negatives, the equation will end up with zero. Think about money. We start with zero, Alfred borrows 10 so he can buy widgets from Zeno. Alfred gives Zeno the 10. Alfred has -10 and Zeno has +10, and the system has zero sum.

While there are lots of games we play that actually add up numbers, such as football, in the end one team has more points than the other and is therefore the winner. What matters is not how many points but the difference between them and who has more. This zero-sum game mentality shows up in our behaviors toward each other. Do we act as if my having something means you can’t have it? It puts us in a competition mind frame, and we behave like opponents.

What if there are non-zero sum games? Can we, as humans, transcend the competition mindset and behave cooperatively? What if there are games where helping you do well helps me do well? Sure, there are lots of places we interact where this is appropriate! I have always been surprised that business plans have competition analysis and yet don’t adequately describe the cooperation network the organization will be embedded in.

The real question I want to address here, now that we know a bit about zero-sum and non-zero sum games: how do we work in non-zero sum ways when people we need to work with operate from a zero-sum mind frame?

First and foremost, trying to change others through argument or explanation often just makes them defensive and resistant. I suggest a two-prong approach.

Use their zero-sum mentality to your advantage – and the advantage of the group. Ask where the zero-sum games are – because they exist, and point these zero-sum minded folks to those opportunities.
Demonstrate success of non-zero sum approach. Model what you want to see in the world. Be the change you seek. Through demonstration, others can see the success that comes from it. What they are truly after is success.

That sounds all well and good in an abstract theoretical way. But the situation at hand is not an ideal – it is a specific. And likely in that specific, you, my non-zero sum friends, are on a board of an organization having to navigate decisions about the organization with a zero-sum thinking collaborator, for example. What do you do?

photo credit: Evil Erin

First I want to talk about body work. So much of what we communicate happens in the body rather than through our words. Avoid sitting across from people who want to act oppositionally. Sit beside them. When they talk about a problem, be sure they gesture toward a shared space in front of them rather than at you. Imagine that they are playing dodgeball as if they were one of those tennis ball launching machines – stay away from the physical space they are launching at with their gestures.

Second, I want to talk about a model of understanding interpersonal dynamics. I use this model often when talking about relationships between people. The diagram, at right, shows two people, A and B, as well as a third node – the WE of A and B. Zero-sum thinkers usually think of their connection as the gray line from you to them. Helping them think beyond zero-sum involves helping them understand the WE connection. When we are in the AB relationship, we still use words like: I, me, mine, you, yours. When we are in the WE of AB, we talk about: we, our, ours. These pronouns point to what we have together in the relationship. demonstrate WE language. Start with you and the zero-sum person. As the language becomes reflected in their statements, you can begin to expand the WE to include others. Keep expanding until you reach we as a community (or what level you need to be at for the group objectives).

Next I want to share a bit about facilitation questions. Our zero-sum thinkers say they want to do something. Ask, “what will that get for you/us?” When they give an answer, ask again, “What will that get for you/us?” First, this helps them feel heard. They have the attention. Be sure to ask in a kind and inquisitive way, because they will quickly intuit if you are asking in order to undermine them. Remember, they think in competitive ways. When you get to a gem – something that is common ground for the collective – in the answer you get from the “what will that get for you/us” THEN ask, “how else might we be able to get that?” Bring in others to help answer that.

This is a brief introduction to ways to navigate zero-sum thinking. We can continue to explore, especially with specific stories. If you have specific needs you want to discuss, we can discuss your issues in a private context via my coaching services.

I would love to hear ways you have navigated zero-sum thinkers in the comments or on twitter (@nurturegirl).