Lucid moments and humble pie

Christopher Bailey has an excellent post up this morning called Practicing Wide-Eyed Lucidity. What’s lucidity? As Chris says, “Simplified, it’s when you become aware that all the rules that govern the dream’s reality don’t actually exist.” As he explains, we can catch the concept quickest when we think about our dreams, but the real value is in practicing it consciously when we’re wide awake.

Chris relates an experience he had with lucidity in one of his team’s meetings that I’d wager happens millions of times each workday — in some version. It would create way more synergy if in all our meetings, these situations happened the way it did in Chris’s aha! moment. Team leaders can fall into the same trap managers do, feeling they are expected to provide all the answers, when they can facilitate instead, adding to their own learning in the process — even when they did have the right answer, for perhaps it was just one answer, and not necessarily the only right one, or the best one.

I had a similar lucid moment happen for me after giving a speech at an association luncheon just last week. Great conference concept: It reminded me of what I’d read about Matt Homann’s LexThink! I was the last of four speakers for a group of 60 participants, and after the lunch, we broke into four different groups of 15, where the speaker then had the guest spot for some Question and Dialogue in the group with a seasoned association facilitator.

They were there to drill me, for most of those in my group had read Managing with Aloha or Talking Story, and I must admit I was enjoying that part of the banter way too much at first, basking in their flattering attentions. However halfway through it I realized how much this group could teach me, and I stopped giving quick response answers and would ask more questions about their scenarios first. I learned a lot that afternoon, and ate my humble pie, again reminded that I don’t know everything! Not by a long shot.