Will the grown-ups in the room please stand up? |
Hope you had a good summer/winter (depending on where you're reading this!)
In August, what used to be my pleasant morning coffee ritual with my partner had deteriorated into Life Admin meetings about our house move and crazy upcoming schedules. In Agile speak, these would be called Daily "Standups", but, more agitated than agile, they were turning into Daily "I-Need-To-Go-Lie-Down"s.
The teen, overhearing one such meeting as he walked by, casually lobbed this truth bomb:
There's a reason that moving house is up there with death and divorce in the stress leagues. These transitions throw up extra decision-making and administration at a time when we're caught in emotional undercurrents of loss and uncertainty, plus sleeplessness and loss of routine.
In some *Deep Nattering in September, I spoke with friends about the general sense of displacement in the air. Many are going through key transitions of location, career, family life. But more than that, the very ground of our being seems to have shifted in the post Covid years. We've been dislodged from a sense of stability in homes, jobs, families - but also in society and the environment at large.
Gen Z has given us the 'glow up'- noticeable positive physical or psychological transformation. But there's also its opposite, the 'glow down'. Could displacement-itis have us in a big ol' global 'glow down'? In a year of dangerous elections, wars, geo-political tension and yet more climate chaos, it's easy to ask like Gen Alpha, "What the Sigma?" or as we Gen X's would say it, a la David Byrne, "How did I get here?"
What's more, as Dr. Jean Twenge observes in "Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Baby Boomers, and the Silent Generation", the crucial transition from adolescence to maturity seems to be slowing down. Twenge examines not just external maturity markers - increased stability in partnering, jobs, having children - but also internal markers, like responsibility, independent decision-making, emotional regulation, and developing and maintaining deep social relationships.
Just as adolescence is extending, so is middle age. Sandwiched between boomerang kids and longer living yet infirm parents, the middle aged are hitting the snooze button on the 'mid life crisis' wake up call to wising up. Locked into so-called 'greedy' jobs and familial responsibilities, many can't find time or energy for the big existential issues we all face. And if they can, they are at a loss for skilful responses.
In other words, at a time when the world desperately needs more grown-ups, the road to wisdom is getting longer, bumpier and windier...
Bringing wisdom back |
In the coaching and leadership world, thought leaders and friends such as Dr. David Drake, founder of Narrative Coaching and the Moment Institute, Steve March of Aletheia, Dr. Paul Lawrence of Leading Systemically and Dr Josie McLean of the Climate Coaching Alliance have been thinking and writing about how we might all wise up. Integral philosophy too has been calling out the need for us all to 'wake up, grow up, clean up and show up'.
So what might it mean to be wise in our times? Wisdom seems to be deeply out of fashion: the last time I heard the word 'wisdom' used in a sentence was from a hair colourist insisting on 'blending wisdom' rather than covering it up. Turned out he was talking grey hair strategy...
Just as we turn to Eskimos for distinctions about snow, we can count on the ancient Greeks for a helpful heap of words for wisdom. 'Sophia' and 'episteme' refer to deep knowledge or understanding of particular fields, which doesn't seem to be what we're in need of right now. Instead, we might think about how to cultivate 'metis' and 'phronesis'. These are both types of practical wisdom concerned with how to make wise decisions and act wisely.
Metis is the type of strategic wisdom that generates wise tactics in dynamic environments: it's the version of wisdom that supports us to step forward wisely in the moment and do what we need to do.
Phronesis, on the other hand, is the type of contemplative wisdom that supports long term ethical decision making. It's the sageness that supports us to take a step back and think things through in order to do the right thing for the long term.
Where I grew up, in an east London suburb, men proudly declared themselves as street-wise students at the 'School of Hard Knocks'. The Greeks might have described them as higher in metis: but the School of Hard Knocks, often leaves ethics off the curriculum and a few of my schoolmates ended up graduating into the 'University of Crime'....So we need to temper the action-oriented metis with the reflective version of practical wisdom, phronesis.
Similarly, trying to cultivate phronesis thorugh contemplation alone is too abstract. We need to apply the reflection to real world scenarios.
It's clear that we need BOTH types of practical wisdom, and cultivating them needs us to be taking action AND reflecting on our actions. Are there other ingredients?
Generations of British schoolkids were raised on the idea of practical wisdom expressed in Kipling’s famous poem,"If". Reading the poem (or better still watching Michael Caine reciting it) I was struck by how well the poem describes something that in modern terms is often called adopting a 'growth mindset', namely, taking aim to give of one's best ("If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run") whilst detaching from outcomes ("If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same")". Its called growth mindset as the aim is growth rather than wins: ie longer term development of ourselves rather than only short term performance.
So how about: Practical Wisdom = growth mindset + action + reflection?
Deep Nattering |
"If" was notably written as from a father to a son. We could take the view that this was a poem of its time and ignore the gendering. But what if cultivating practical wisdom was traditionally different for men and women?
This brings me back to *Deep Nattering, a term co-coined by Julia Vaughan Smith, author of "Coaching and Trauma", and I. Our nattering was on how, historically, women didn't get chances to forge themselves in the crucibles of Life that Kipling describes for men. In the confines of domesticity, community played a big part in cultivating practical wisdom.
In craft circles, kitchens and community centres, women 'nattered' (a perjorative term) while simultaneously tending to the needs of others. But Julia and I agreed that 'nattering' often filled a deep need for women, excluded from the institutions and workplaces in which men could grow, to make sense of their often atomised worlds. For women, community was where they gained the practical wisdom they needed to respond skilfully to their more limited circles of influence.
Anyone who has ever had to unpick a whole sleeve of knitting, turned a soup blue or sewn their sewing project to the clothes they were wearing (yep, me, me and me) will know the relief and joy of wise and patient elders teaching us skilful workarounds. But even more than that, in the discomfort zone of trying and failing something new, there is tremendous restorative and generative power in the overlooked everyday magic of tea and sympathy, of giving people time and space - not just to develop their skills but as safe space to land in a world of shifting sands and find themselves anew.
In my experience then, Practical Wisdom = growth mindset + action + reflection + community of practice
If you're longing, as we are, for different and beautiful possibilities to emerge from the emergencies we are in, we hope you're finding the people, places and practices that support you. And if not, as we branch out from offering coaching and coach training into creating spaces for people to cultivate practical wisdom for whichever field they're in, we hope you'll come join us. Lastly, in the words of poet John O'Donohue:
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