Leadership #LikeABoss

Maximize Your Leadership Capacity And Plane Of Possibility: Interview With Dr. Daniel J. Siegel

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I recently attended a workshop run by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, and New York Times best-selling author of the new book Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human. The book is a scientist’s exploration into the mysteries of the human mind: a powerful and immensely readable exploration of the how, what, when, where, and even why of who we are. But it was not until I saw Dr. Siegel speak and engage his audience that I realized how his book and research also provide some scientific understanding of the arguments I have made about leaders for years now.

When Dr. Siegel told us about how the mind is not just a function of the brain but also social and cultural interactions, it really spoke to me. Wanting to explore this connection further in terms of leadership, I asked Dr. Siegel to join me for an interview on how leaders can become more mindful – indeed human – and not only lead through this time of great uncertainty and change but also be comfortable with it and evolve as leaders.

Glenn Llopis: Linear thinking and diversity of thought seem to reflect the peaks and plateaus of what you call the "plane of possibility." Leaders should expand their planes of possibility and move between the peaks and plateaus but they don’t. I see leadership and the way it operates in America today as very linear. Diversity of thought expands our leadership capacity and fuels an innovation mentality mindset. That’s closer to the plateau of possibility – anything can happen and you are the most open-minded and diverse in your thinking. Linear thinking is about completing a task with absolute certainty.

Dr. Daniel Siegel: The "plane of possibility" is what physicists see as potential or the quantum vacuum: It’s a mathematical space that includes all possibilities. So, you wouldn't expand your plane of possibilities – you would access them. How do you access them? This is my interpretation of how to apply quantum physics to mental processes: You start at what is infinite and narrow down as you get closer to what is possible. Of course, you say, I am human not a guinea pig or a guppy so you are already defining a set of possibilities out of the infinite. But we the farther away you get from the plane the more narrow the probabilities become and you think, as you say, more linearly.

Llopis: I think that’s why people tend to surround themselves with people who are like themselves instead of finding like-mindedness in others through their differences . Does that mean we have become shortsighted in what our planes of possibility are? In other words, we define our identities by who is “like me”?

Dr. Siegel: People can define an issue of “like me” in too narrow a way. In terms of how people are gravitating towards like-minded people, there is a whole set of research called terror management that says when people are feeling threatened in their experience, they tend to activate the “in group/out group” distinction. Whether you are in a business environment or just reading a newspaper, we are living in a time when people feel very threatened. Whether the threat is real or not, people have been bombarded with information that makes them feel threatened. What these studies show in these situations is an intensification of a drive to align yourself with people “like you” however you define that and are more hostile and dismissive of people who are “not like you” however you define that. Unfortunately, human beings have these ways of trusting who is in your in group and distrusting who is in your out group. Sadly in our world people have a lot of exposure to people who are not like them and that combined with a lot of economic, terrorist, political, climate, business issues and more, people are feeling that their very survival has been threatened so you get more of a tendency to move to in groups.

Llopis: So in a time where there is more difference in society than ever before culturally speaking how does one get to thinking of our differences as a “mosaic” – “like me” and “not like me” together in business? How do we get our minds wrapped around the understanding that to expand our planes of possibility we need to be much more integrated and accepting of diversity of thought to maximize our potential as leaders?

Dr. Siegel: You want to expand your “circle of identity” so that within the phrase “like me” you include a lot of diversity. What I would say is the plane of possibility is accessed more when people integrate consciousness. People are too confined so they are excessively differentiated and not accepting the value of other life forms including other humans that do not fit into that initial high plateau of identity.

[At this point Dr. Siegel refers to his “wheel of awareness”: The hub represents the experience of awareness itself – knowing – while the rim contains all the points of anything we can become aware of, that which is known to us. For a visual representation click here.]