Practicing Divergent Thinking from the Front Porch to Save Humanity

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Radio. What's Working on Purpose?
Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer

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to this question. People ache for
meaning and purpose at work, to contribute

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their talents passionately and know their lives
really matter. They crave being part of

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an organization that inspires them and helps
them grow into realizing their highest potential.

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Business can be such a force for
good in the world, elevating humanity.

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In our program, we provide guidance
and inspiration to help usher in this world

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we all want Working on Purpose.
Now here's your host, Doctor Release Cortez.

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Welcome back to Working on Purpose program. Thanks turning in this week.

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Great to have you. I have
been proudly hosting the show since February of

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twenty eighteen, so as of this
recording us about eight and a half years.

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I am your host, Doctor at
Last Quartez. If we have not

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met yet, I'm a management consultant
specializing in meeting and purpose, organizational bogle,

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therapist, speaker and author. My
team and I at Elist Cortez and

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Associates help companies to enlighten and fortify
their operations by articulating their purpose and building

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inspirational leaders and cultures activated by meeting
and purpose to turn those companies from a

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flatline EKG to a vibrant destination workplace. There people are intransfically motivated to perform

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at their best, grown at their
fuller potential, and are committed to stay

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and help deliver on the company's mission. You can learn more about us and

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how we can work together at a
last Cortez dot com. Now for today's

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program with us is doctor Robert Lengel, who began his career designing jet and

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rocket proposition systems and bandered through fluid
computer design and industrial sales, a stint

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on Wall Street time and environmental think
tank academics, consulting, and now writing

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today he is a Sociate Professor emeritus
at the University of Texas at San Antonio

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and president of his consulting firm,
Leader Work, Inc. Is the author

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of a few books, the latest
one being A Place for Tea, Giving

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voice to the tortoise of our in
our hair brained world, which we'll be

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talking about today. Bob, A
very hearty welcome to working on Purpose.

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Thanks for having me at least great
So very welcome. I love it when

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I get to inadvertently cross paths with
people I wouldn't otherwise, maybe meet and

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then read their amazing books cover to
cover, of this one being yours,

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look at this beautiful thing you made, and then talk about them on air.

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I love that. So I'm happy
to meet you and have you on

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And as I mentioned, I thought
that I would DV a little bit from

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this usual program, which is really
meant to be quite educational. I try

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to teach from the book but also
inspire and I want to get into the

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spirit of your book, Bob.
So first I'm just going to get that

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as a teaser to our listeners and
viewers. I've been listening to this for

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a while. They're going to wonder, what are we going to do?

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Here. But first week, before
we get into that, I do want

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to talk about where this book came
from, what urged you to write it.

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This is no small undertaking of what
you did here. No, it

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wasn't. I don't know where to
start with this. I wrote this book

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during the COVID shutdown, and largely
it was a time where my consoling work,

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which was mostly face to face,
got shut down totally. I can

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relate, Yes, yeah, So
I had a Facebook group from my last

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book, The Front Porch Revolution,
and I posted to it daily with essays.

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And so after a year, I
realized that four hundred pages of text

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written on various subjects that I haven't
really played much with during my career.

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Most of my career focused on business
environment because I was in business school thirty

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two years. But my work listening
to the news and watching what was going

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on in the world when the whole
world slowed down a little bit, really

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inspired me to think back to where
I came from and what I was really

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trying to write as a life story. That's where the book came from.

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You know, I don't know,
you know, I was thinking about Kirky

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Guard once said that life's lived forwards
and understood backwards. And so this gave

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me a time to literally sit on
a rocking chair and look back to the

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pieces that were the seats for this
book, and they go look back and

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I the first thing that came to
mind that when I was in junior high

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school, I did a book report
on Ray Bradberry's Fahrenheit four fifty one and

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it was I don't know why it
hit me at the time. It was

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kind of a young guy just trying
to get a project out of the way

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in school. But the book stayed
with me my entire life, and I've

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reread it multiple times because it was
a prophecy about a day that would come

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that we'd have a dystopian society where
the spirit and I know you're interested in

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meaning and purpose, but to me, that's all wrapped up in the spirit

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well being alive, the way you
control people, which is what that society

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was trying to do that Bradbury wrote
about. He gave us a recipe to

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do it. Keep people busy,
which is a universal disease right now.

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I mean, just try to get
four people together for a meeting for a

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couple hours and see how long it
takes to schedule it. And the second

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thing which was intriguing was to eliminate
front porches on houses. And that really

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bothered me because I grew up in
a small town in Pennsylvania where all the

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houses had big, old front porches, and they were really the place where

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the immunity had a heartbeat. People
would get in those steps, share stories.

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Everybody knew everybody. And then I
reflected back to where I lived today,

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or I did live until three years
ago, in a development, not

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a community here in San Antonio,
where they build the houses without front porches,

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and all the places where we would
meet and converse would be behind the

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houses, behind privacy fences. And
those privacy fences and those conversation places behind

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houses are the inspiration for all my
work. We don't meet in the commonplace

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anymore, where everybody has an equal
opportunity to feel like they belong. So

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this book is about the fate of
spirit in a busy world and the fate

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of our front porches. Oh my
gosh, cop, so many things to

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talk about there. So what,
of course you do talk about that all

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of that in your book, which
I really appreciate it. So I feel

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like I feel like I really I
know you, I know who you are

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as a human being, and I
love that when I can access my guests

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like that. So so beautiful at
the way that you shared too. I

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think it's interesting. I also crafted
books during the pandemic. We had time,

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I had time to sit and reflect, and it was a big,

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you know, collective, collective breath
that we took across the whole world.

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So it's interesting to me. There's
lots of things that we could talk about

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of what came out of that collective
breath. So many changes and elevations and

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how people think and feel. Your
notion of from the front Porch, and

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even the way you talk about where
people meet and the lighting in which they

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do so is fascinating. Bob,
I really really got so much out of

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that. So the idea too at
the front porch, and you talk about

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abundance versus scarcity in those moments,
and so I think it would be good

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for us, just like you do
in the book, to let our listeners

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and viewers in invite them in to
sit with us on that front porch,

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because, as you say, there's
a very different view from that front porch

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that affords very different perspectives and elicits
very different conversations. Yeah, it's not

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only just the perspective, but we
change in those places. And the book

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I talk about going taking my executive
NBA classes to Europe and going through the

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great cathedrals. When you walk into
those buildings, you change, and they're

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very different than walking into the boxes
that we put up overnight now in the

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big cities to do business. There's
a utility to the places we built these

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days, and there's a beauty to
the places those cathedrals represent. One thing

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about the cathedrals is they're all bigger
than they need to be. They're all

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more artistically our innate than they need
to be. Stained glass windows, statues,

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things that just cost money and take
endless time to build. But they're

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more about They used to be more
about who we were as beings and identity

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than the buildings today, which are
more about utility. So I think the

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places are very important part of this
book. We change in those places.

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I completely agree with that, and
I liked what you also said when you

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were talking about these beautiful European buildings, you said they reflect that what they

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valued, which was beauty and legacy
and magnificence, instead of what we see

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today, which is more about efficiency
and practicality. I have to say from

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that vantage point, just as a
small a side pet peeve like you've,

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you're mourning the loss of the front
porches, I'm mourning the loss of actual

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materials beyond aluminum sighting for new homes. Could we please stop that? I

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know it's very practical, but could
we please stop that? Well? The

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cathedrals, what they represent to me
are things that are not necessary and impractical,

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and those tend to be the things
that give human beings meeting. So

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what I did in my book is
has looked at the tension between the busy

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world where we're human doings and the
front porch world, where we're human beings.

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And when we're in conference rooms,
we're surrounded by things that have been

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created by our heads, and we're
all different. In fact, we value

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ourselves by our utility of how different
are We cannot be different than somebody else,

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And on front porches, especially when
we're sitting there watching the sunrise or

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at night and looking at the night
sky together, we're not different. We're

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all And the voices that come out
of the front porch, when we lose

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them, we're losing part of our
humanity. And to me, when I

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look at meaning and purpose and what
this program is about, the I read

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man search for Meaning when I was
in junior high school also and Victor frank

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idea of being able to almost create
a place of beauty even in a concentration

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camp. Can do it in the
worst places, and some of people who

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I know out there in the workplace
feel like they're imprisoned and they've real sad

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part about it to me is I
find so many people who don't have dreams

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anymore about their work. They've been
so unculturated in living in those boxes that

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are all about efficiency and practicality and
not the things that are extra that make

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us different from animals. Does that
make sense? Yes? And so I

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talk about this and probably at least
one of my books, and that what

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I've kind of come to on that
notion, Bob, when you say the

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gloss their dreams for work, I
think it's also across their whole entire lives.

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When I'm out speaking oftentimes about passion, inspiration and purpose, at some

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point of my talk, usually fairly
early on, I asked the crowd,

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what are you passionate about? And
then I watch the responses as they try

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to conjure something in return, and
I realized in that one moment, as

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I watched the sea of faces register
that they don't have an answer to the

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question. They don't know what they're
passionate about. And that's what I know

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I needed. Well, the other
part of this I go in classes,

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and the first thing I stand in
front of a class, I asked them,

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what are your questions? And they
stare back at me like that,

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yes, yes, indeed, indeed, I loved by their way. You're

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a section on creating asking beautiful questions
and the humanity that comes with that.

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Before we get into that, I
think it's important for our listeners and viewers

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who haven't read the book as I
have, I think we need to introduce

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and distinguish the Hair and the Tortoise, if you would. Yeah, that

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was sort of a late tagline to
what I was writing. I want to

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be creative. I'm so used to
writing articles that go into scientific magazines,

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and my two previous books didn't have
characters in them except for me. So

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The Tortoise and the Hair, the
classic ASoP fable was a story about the

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slow and steady winning the race in
life that the hair is fast and clever

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and the tortoise is slow and steady, but at the end of the race,

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the tortoise wins. In my version, we're in a competition between our

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heads and how we think, and
our intellect and our hearts, which represent

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and carry our spirit of who we
are as human beings. And we've evolved

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at two different levels. If you
think about I reflected in the book on

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the things that I experienced with technology, but if you go way back to

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the cave days and human beings,
the tortoise and the hair had an opportunity

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to talk to each other. When
we were creating something or building something.

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There was always a conversation, Okay, here's what we're going to do and

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how we do it, but also
how we want to beat doing it.

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Who who are we trying to become
as human beings. It was connected in

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the early days before all the technology
came on. But as this race between

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the tortoise and the hair evolved,
our heads have gone to the moon.

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I mean, we've gone into worlds
of nanoseconds and megatons, But inside,

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as we are a human beings on
the front porch, we haven't changed at

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all. Basically, we have the
same people who have the fears about our

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own mortality, who worry about feelings
and get get hateful, and anger and

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love all those things are the same. But what happens when our heads get

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so far ahead of our hearts that
we don't leave a place for a vote

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tortoise And I name the tortoise Tea. So the book title is a place

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for Tea. How to find a
place in our hair brained world, to

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give a place for Tea, give
him a voice. And so if you

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think about the way we meet these
days, Tea isn't welcome in conference room

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because it takes time to talk about
our feelings and our stories and all the

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things that he would want to talk
about that make us common. We just

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want to get down and be efficient, stick to an agenda, get to

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takeaways, and move on. But
what's coming really interesting, at least right

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now, it's all the problems I
hear people talking about relate to tortoise issues,

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air issues, the things that about
changing cultures. For example, that's

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a tortoise game that's not an air
game. And we're trying to change cultures

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with our thinking and not our feeling
We're trying to change and move the furniture

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on the stage with our intellects,
but the people they don't change that fast,

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and so there's a very different approach
to this. And I think you

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can change cultures in a couple of
days if you give tea a voice,

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and if you don't, you're not
going to change cultures period. You're speaking

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my love language, bomb, be
careful, you're going to get right into

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my heart. Let's let our listeners
and viewers reflect on that while we grab

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our first break. I'm your host, Doctor Elise Cortez. We're on Near

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with doctor Robert Lingel who is the
author of A Place for Tea, Giving

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Voice to the tortoise in our hair
brained world. We've been talking a bit

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about where this book came from and
why it's important. After the break,

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we're going to we're going to get
into one of his key concepts, which

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is the importance of divergent thinking stake
works. We'll be right back. Doctor

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Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing
in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker

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and author, she helps companies visioneer
for a greater purpose amongst stakeholders and develop

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purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures
that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment

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within the workforce. To learn more
or to invite a lease to speak to

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your organization, please visit her at
Elise Cortez dot com. Let's talk about

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how to get your employees working on
purpose. This is working on Purpose with

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doctor Elise Cortez. To reach our
program today or to open a conversation with

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a lease, send an email to
a lease Ali se at Elise Cortez dot

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com. Now back to working on
purpose. Thanks for saying with us,

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and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez,

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as I am also dedicated to helping
to create a world where people realize

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our potential at work and they're led
by inspirational leaders that help them find and

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contribute their greatness, and we do
business of vetters the world. I keep

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researching and writing my own books.
So one of my latest books, which

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came out in March of twenty three, is called The Great Revitalization. How

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activating meeting and purpose can radically enliven
your business, which helps leaders understand what

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today's workforce wants and then offers twenty
one best practices to equip them to provide

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it through their leadership and culture.
You can learn more about my books and

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how to work with me at at
least corotest dot com, and you can

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check out Amazon as well for them
if you are just now joining us.

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My guest is doctor Robert Lingo,
who is the Associate Professor Emeritus at the

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University of Texas at San Antonio and
president of his consulting from leader Work,

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Inc. He's the author of A
Place for Tea giving voice to the tortoise

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and our hair brained world. So
I hope our listeners and viewers got a

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chance to be able to settle into
themselves as I continue to do as I

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read your book and have a conversation
with you, because next to I want

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to situate one of the most key
concepts in your book, at least from

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what I could tell, and that's
the notion of developing divergent thinking. So

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if you could, if you could
talk a little bit about what is divergent

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thinking and why is it important?
Well, there are a number of ways

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I could approach it, and maybe
I'll approach with a tortoise and air thetise.

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The book is about the fate of
spirit. And I do something interesting,

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at least at the beginning of almost
every program in every class I run,

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and that is to give people journals, sit them in a circle and

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ask them to make two lists.
One list is the things that give them

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spirit in their work, and the
second list is things that kill it or

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diminish it. And I've done this
in hundreds and hundreds of groups, all

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the way from high school students to
senior teams in Washington, and I always

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get the same results. The things
that give people spirit. They all know

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what gives them spirit, and meaning
is part of it. Doing something that's

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bigger than themselves, having a voice, being respected, being trusted, having

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a healthy culture that's safe. I
could go on and on, but everybody

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knows what gives them spirit and they
all agree to it, no matter what

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they're doing. When I go to
the kill spirit side, bureaucratic red tape

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and nonsensical rules, things that make
them feel like they're in a straight jacket

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and can't be themselves, an unsafe
environment, lack of voice, work that

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seems meaningless and purposeless, and you
could go on and on and after.

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What I do is go around the
circle and have each person give one thing

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on each list, and I have
a graphic reporter record that works with me,

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and I have two walls filled with
paper list those things. So they

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sit between these walls of spirit and
no Spirit. And the question I asked

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them next is which wall represents your
workplace? And I've never had any workplace

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tell me it wasn't the no Spirit
wall. It's universal. And then the

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question that starts my program is,
well, if we all agree what spirit

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is, and we all agree we
want to in spirit, why do we

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collaborate to create environments that leave us
without spirit? And so that's the entry

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to this. The tortoise carries the
spirit and the hair carries the thinking about

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the spirit. And so if you
have things at the spirit level like trust,

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convergent thinking, which is the opposite
of divergent thinking, takes trust and

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to create in words where we can
think about it, it becomes contracts,

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and we live in contracts, and
the spirit of trust disappears. You take

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morality and the spirit of morality in
those values. When they get intellectualized in

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the hair brain thinking, they become
laws. And so we live in the

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spirit that we live in the letter
of the law. And we lose the

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spirit of the morality behind it.
And you could go on and on.

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Organizations are living cultures, but when
the hairbrain starts to think about it,

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we reduce them convergently to org charts
and job descriptions. And that's what we

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do to human beings too. They
hold human beings at the tortoise level.

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When we think about them at the
hair brain level, we reduce them to

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job descriptions. So i'mbody, ask
you who you are, I'm vice president

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of finance. I'm not so and
so, so our resume is start is

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written by our hair brains, and
our legacies are written by the tortoise.

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And we don't have any time anymore
to put time into the legacy stories.

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That's the story in the book.
Divergent Thinking takes us from the contracts back

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to trust. It takes us from
the from the laws back to the spirit

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behind the laws of the morality,
and from the ORG charts back to the

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culture. And so you can you
can go on and on and from the

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job description back to the human being. I take that vice president out of

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the conference room, put them around
a campfire by a lake, and that

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human being comes to life and you
talked about lighting these spaces. After I

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do that, spirit, no spirit
check in. It's so fascinating that the

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next conversation is about candlelight and flashlight. These are sophisticated people with multible degrees,

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and now I'm introducing them to candlelight
and flashlight conversation. And I asked

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them to list in their journals the
qualities of candlelight and the qualities of flashlight.

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And when they finish that exercise,
I put those on the opposite walls

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too. And the spirit lines up
with candlelight. Candle light is soft,

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it's inviting, it's eternal, it's
mysterious, it's all the things that capture

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the spirit of human beings. The
flashlight is distant, it's cold, it's

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technical. The flashlight represents the lighting
in the conference room. That candlelight represents

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the light lighting under on the evening
sky. Is sitting on the front porch,

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and the tortoise carries the candlelight and
the hair uses flashlight to see the

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world. And if the tortoise moves
too fast, the flame blows out.

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But what's interesting, when we're almost
so much about change these days, that

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the change when the biggest moments of
change in our lives are when involve our

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mortality. The loss of a loved
one is a huge change. Yes,

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the shooting at you know, the
horrors like the shooting at Uvaldi, which

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is about thirty or forty miles from
here in San Antonio. That was a

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horror. And what's interesting to me
at the days after it, and I

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think in nine to eleven, and
I remember the days right after nine to

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eleven that stopped the world and we
stopped flying, and everything's slowed down,

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and people started to think differently.
How did they meet. They didn't meet

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in conference rooms. They met around
music and poetry and candle light. Yes,

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and which is how the tortoise,
What the tortoise brings into our lives.

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If we want big change, and
we want to change ourselves, we

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look better in candle light to each
other. I definitely am going to be

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requesting candle light for my next date, for sure, because you said I

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look better in candle light. So
I'm going to set that up. Thanks

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Bob, who has romantic flashlight dinners, I don't know or even just horrible

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regularly your artificial light dinners. Thank
you very much. So what it's wonderful

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about this conversation and why I am
so delighted to have you on this program,

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Bob Is I think that the work
that you're putting forth is exactly what's

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necessary to be able to take the
world of work where it needs to go

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next. We have an opportunity right
now after not just after COVID and the

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pandemic and what gave people the opportunity
to pause their lives and consider what do

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I really want from my life and
my work? What am I willing to

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tolerate and not tolerate, and how
much am I willing to accept for pay

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to do all that? Everybody there
was a lot of consideration for that.

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And now the workforce, we have
an empowered workforce that is really leading the

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charge here. And now what we're
finding, of course is leaders are really

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and trying to figure out, well, how do I address this? What

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do I do here? It's a
perfect opportunity to reinvent how work gets done,

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where it gets where it gets done, and how we do it together.

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And that's definitely a big part of
the work that I'm out to do

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in the world. So I'd be
learning from someone like you and adding those

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ideas into what I keep learning each
week is just critical. So I see

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your work as a way to help
us create the healthy path, to restore

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us back to humanity, back to
a wholeness in ourselves. So I want

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to talk a little bit about how
some of these concepts, you know how,

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because I know some of these people
are listening to the shows like this

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is all amazing, and what do
I do with this? I want?

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I know, of course, we
want the tortoise to get them to think

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and let it work through their minds, hearts and souls, and let's help

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them connect the dots just a little
yeah, they you know. I have

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I presented in the book a cloud
also, and that is that when the

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tortoise and the hair the beginning of
our evolution, they were together and talk

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together. But when the hair adapted
technology to aid its thinking, things started

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to speed up and getting more complex, and the hair still took care of

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the tortoise because we created with our
thoughts structures that slowed the world down so

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we could still be in them.
That's the root of aureaucracy, that's the

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root of structures. That's the root
of rituals and traditions and culture. Fascinating.

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We thought about how we could clothe
slow the world down so the courtis

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could still breathe and be part of
the conversation. But I'll tell you what

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I talk in the book about it
the technology being a little tiger cub and

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when we adapted it early on,
it was cute and cuddly. But we've

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been feeding it and it's been growing, and it's growing to the point now

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where I want to put a question
mark over all. This is whether or

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not the tiger wants to be in
this race anymore. And that's the birth

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of artificial intelligence. And what's happening. All the structures in economic theory are

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best in economic theory that we don't
have time during the day to talk about

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everything, so we substitute things like
authority and struck. That's slow thing down.

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And human beings are only capable of
processing very small amounts information when it

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comes right down to it. Do
you know what the random axis memory the

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human brain is. Well, I'm
sitting in my office here. I have

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a computer on my credenza that my
parents gave me when I was a junior

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in high school. Think about that. Does the thing still run? Yeah?

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But it's not anything like a computer
you would recognize. It's just a

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bunch of wires and relays and switches. The random axis memory was twenty eight

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bits, you know, one,
two, three, four or five access

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memory. In my smartphone, I
can get gigabytes and we talk terabytes.

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We don't even know what that means
anymore. But the random access memory of

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the human brain, what we can
hold in consciousness in the moment, is

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about seven bits. And in order
to think about those bits, we have

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to boot what we were thinking about. So we can't capture ourselves the least

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by thinking about it. And that's
why we work, and that's why purpose

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is so important, because we work
to take the candle flame I think is

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a mirror of our consciousness. That's
why it's so mysterious to us, because

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we can't catch that either. But
why do people sculpt or write books?

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Why do they want to see themselves
in their work? Because they can't see

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themselves in their consciousness, so they
want something that has some temporal stability to

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it. So the whole idea of
purpose. People are inspired to work if

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they can see themselves and learn about
themselves in the process. But too often

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we've created structures that have gone extreme
to try to control people to do precisely

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what we want them to do,
and we value them for your utility and

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not for their uniqueness. So I
just wanted to get that in because I

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think what's happening now is the way
computers are going their capacities, and we're

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going to have biological computers and quantum
computers coming right up on the horizon,

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and with artificial intelligence, it is
just a matter of time before those machines

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develop a consciousness. And I've been
writing invited articles about my book that are

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all related to artificial intelligence now because
they invalidate the assumptions on which all structures

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have been thought through with our hair
brains, we don't need them anymore,

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Oh my gosh. I think the
challenge, at least is this work on

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meaning and purpose is fighting a bigger, uphill battle, and in the background

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is a shadow of whether or not
the human species will have a purpose and

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a meaning, and we're all part
of that species. I don't know.

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I just like to keep that in
the background because it makes for creative thinking

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to think about that, because it's
not just about us individually anymore, but

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we're fighting an uphill battle to keep
afloat m All right, let's let our

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listeners think about that as well.
Let's give them some time, some tea

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time, shall we, bob as
we take our last break Here, I'm

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your host, Doctor Elise Cortez.
We've been on the air with doctor Robert

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Lingel who's the author of A Place
for Tea, Giving Voice to the tortoise

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00:32:12.039 --> 00:32:15.640
in our hair brained world. We've
been talking a little bit about some of

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the concepts he discusses in the book, the importance of the virgin thinking on

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00:32:19.680 --> 00:32:22.319
the importance of coming back to where
we have stillness, and how we decide

408
00:32:22.359 --> 00:32:25.400
where we're meeting, what kind of
light do we use in those meetings.

409
00:32:25.799 --> 00:32:30.720
After the break, we're going to
get into some comparison and thinking and contrast

410
00:32:30.799 --> 00:32:35.119
into how what we look through which
pairs of glasses, the hair glasses or

411
00:32:35.119 --> 00:32:37.640
the tea glasses, what they actually
illuminate. Stay with us, will be

412
00:32:37.720 --> 00:32:58.720
right back. Doctor Elise Cortez is
a management consultant specializing and meaning and purpose.

413
00:32:58.839 --> 00:33:02.640
An inspirational speaker and author, she
helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among

414
00:33:02.720 --> 00:33:08.799
stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and
meaning infuse cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance

415
00:33:08.799 --> 00:33:13.640
and commitment within the workforce. To
learn more or to invite a lease to

416
00:33:13.680 --> 00:33:17.240
speak to your organization, please visit
her at Elise Cortez dot com. Let's

417
00:33:17.279 --> 00:33:27.640
talk about how to get your employees
working on purpose. This is working on

418
00:33:27.680 --> 00:33:31.000
Purpose with doctor Elise Cortez. To
reach our program today or to open a

419
00:33:31.000 --> 00:33:37.279
conversation with Elise, send an email
to Elise ali Se at Elise Cortez dot

420
00:33:37.279 --> 00:33:46.400
com. Now back to working on
Purpose. Thanks for staying with us,

421
00:33:46.400 --> 00:33:50.480
and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez.

422
00:33:50.559 --> 00:33:52.759
I mentioned too in the last break
that I have a My latest book

423
00:33:52.839 --> 00:33:57.359
is called The Great Revitalization. It
is for leaders and for business and for

424
00:33:57.440 --> 00:34:00.559
culture. So what I did to
a company that is I created a short

425
00:34:00.640 --> 00:34:04.559
three page assessment and it's there on
my website for you to be able to

426
00:34:04.559 --> 00:34:07.720
download. It's free. You can
go to at Las Cortes dot com and

427
00:34:07.720 --> 00:34:09.480
then go to how do we help
tab and you'll find that you'll find it

428
00:34:09.519 --> 00:34:14.000
there if you're just now joining us. My guest is doctor Robert Lingel He's

429
00:34:14.039 --> 00:34:17.159
the Associate Professor Emeritus at the University
of Texas at San Antonio, the president

430
00:34:17.199 --> 00:34:21.840
of his consulting from Leader Work,
Inc. And the author of a place

431
00:34:21.880 --> 00:34:25.159
for tea giving voice to the tortoise
in our hair brained world. So for

432
00:34:25.239 --> 00:34:30.400
this last bit here, I think
it would be amusing, entertaining and also

433
00:34:30.599 --> 00:34:36.320
uplifting to be able just to compare
and contrast a little bit what it looks

434
00:34:36.360 --> 00:34:40.320
like when we have hair glasses on
versus tortoise glasses. Where shall we start?

435
00:34:43.559 --> 00:34:50.599
Ambiguity? I love it. Okay, you know my first two college

436
00:34:50.639 --> 00:34:54.840
degrees, we're an aerospace engineering and
you can talk about hair brained world and

437
00:34:55.880 --> 00:35:04.960
being but everything was the idea was
to be precise, and the idea communications

438
00:35:05.280 --> 00:35:12.800
was always to make sure that whatever
message you're sending is received in an objective

439
00:35:12.880 --> 00:35:17.039
sense. Think about how we teach
managers and NBA programs communication. I don't

440
00:35:17.039 --> 00:35:22.320
want to communicate to a bunch of
people and have any ambiguity about it if

441
00:35:22.360 --> 00:35:27.760
I'm trying to give directions. But
there's a whole part of organization that is

442
00:35:27.800 --> 00:35:32.599
silent if we do that. And
I think that there's a chapter in there

443
00:35:32.679 --> 00:35:37.360
called t risk, where it's the
risk of what's not being said and not

444
00:35:37.480 --> 00:35:44.159
being heard in organizations, and often
that's the t voice that speaks with the

445
00:35:44.239 --> 00:35:52.599
value of ambiguity. I think about
intelligence at three levels, and my co

446
00:35:52.719 --> 00:35:54.119
author would hate me to go into
this. She hates when I do it,

447
00:35:54.159 --> 00:35:58.320
but I love it. And you
know, for there's three kinds of

448
00:35:58.360 --> 00:36:01.360
intelligence we're playing with here. It's
the intelligence on the mountaintop that has no

449
00:36:01.480 --> 00:36:07.280
frame and everything's just there without thinking. That's a spiritual intelligence. When we

450
00:36:07.320 --> 00:36:14.199
come off the mountaintop, we pick
up binoculars and we essentially have a choice

451
00:36:14.239 --> 00:36:19.960
as to where we point those binoculars. Those are our questions. So the

452
00:36:20.079 --> 00:36:24.360
kinds of questions we ask determine the
kind of world we see. And if

453
00:36:24.360 --> 00:36:30.719
we ask convergent questions that seek answers, we bring our world down to be

454
00:36:30.800 --> 00:36:35.880
something smaller. If we ask what
you call beautiful questions, we open up

455
00:36:35.880 --> 00:36:39.679
the world to something that's better.
Well, the things that appear on that

456
00:36:39.760 --> 00:36:45.320
middle stage are about aesthetics. The
choice is to where to point those is

457
00:36:45.360 --> 00:36:49.840
an information base. It's aesthetic base. What do we find attractive or beautiful?

458
00:36:50.760 --> 00:36:53.079
And when we point the binoculars in
that direction, the next thing we

459
00:36:53.119 --> 00:36:57.840
do is we bring in the hair
brain, and we that little central control

460
00:36:57.880 --> 00:37:01.519
we turn to get the pictured to
be absolutely clear and precise. So we

461
00:37:01.599 --> 00:37:07.320
take the trust that's beautiful and we
reduce it to something that's very clear in

462
00:37:07.400 --> 00:37:13.199
contracts, and that's how we do
it. But when we think of vision

463
00:37:13.360 --> 00:37:17.360
statements and inviting people to be part
of something, when we communicate, the

464
00:37:17.400 --> 00:37:23.360
ambiguity is critically important. And the
story I tell in the book as a

465
00:37:23.440 --> 00:37:29.400
story about my grandfather, and we
lived in a small town in Pennsylvania when

466
00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:31.639
I grew up, and my grandfather
had one of the very first TV sets,

467
00:37:32.440 --> 00:37:36.239
and that thing he'd sit in the
living room and it had rabbit ear

468
00:37:36.320 --> 00:37:39.480
antennas. Most of my younger your
younger listeners probably don't even know what they

469
00:37:39.480 --> 00:37:44.599
are. But we only had so
many shows on it, and most of

470
00:37:44.639 --> 00:37:46.679
the time was just a test pattern. But when a show did come on,

471
00:37:46.760 --> 00:37:51.239
like on a Sunday night, he
would tune those rabbit ears till we

472
00:37:51.239 --> 00:37:53.760
got a clear picture. And then
the rest of my family would sit around

473
00:37:53.760 --> 00:37:58.760
there, mesmerized by the magic of
what was coming on that screen. But

474
00:37:58.960 --> 00:38:05.159
he disappeared into the kitchen, turn
off the lights and listen to radio dramas

475
00:38:05.840 --> 00:38:08.639
in the old days, there were
a lot of interesting things on the radio

476
00:38:08.760 --> 00:38:13.239
that people paid attention to, and
he was used to that. And as

477
00:38:13.239 --> 00:38:15.360
a young kid, I walked in
and said, why didn't you come in

478
00:38:15.400 --> 00:38:19.719
and watch the pictures. They're so
beautiful and so clear, And he said,

479
00:38:20.039 --> 00:38:23.039
I think the pictures on the radio
are clearer to me than they are

480
00:38:23.079 --> 00:38:28.280
on the TV. And I took
that to heart because I said, what

481
00:38:28.320 --> 00:38:35.840
are you talking about. The TV
leaves nothing to the imagination. His pictures

482
00:38:35.840 --> 00:38:40.360
were clear because his imagination created them
to create the characters and setting in the

483
00:38:40.400 --> 00:38:45.360
place, and books are one step
past that where they invite the imagination.

484
00:38:45.480 --> 00:38:52.480
They invite the reader, the listener
to be part of something, not separate

485
00:38:52.679 --> 00:38:58.440
from it. And to me,
that's what poetry is and the arts is.

486
00:38:58.480 --> 00:39:01.760
They leave holes. There are a
language with holes in it where invites

487
00:39:01.880 --> 00:39:06.360
us, our t to get into
that picture and be part of it.

488
00:39:06.480 --> 00:39:10.840
So it's not the objective communication that
we won, but it's this subjective space

489
00:39:10.920 --> 00:39:16.039
we want people to be in.
Wed I was part of a team at

490
00:39:16.039 --> 00:39:21.119
the university a number of years ago
where they were trying to write a vision

491
00:39:21.159 --> 00:39:24.519
statement. I always hate being invited
to those groups because you get eight academics

492
00:39:24.559 --> 00:39:29.880
trying to write a paragraph to agree
to, and we we wound up with

493
00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:37.320
these uninspiring vision statements that we're almost
a page along with footnotes academics, and

494
00:39:37.440 --> 00:39:39.760
we were frustrated. We've been gone
on months for this and we couldn't come

495
00:39:39.760 --> 00:39:45.440
down to it. And one day
at a meeting that we were just about

496
00:39:45.440 --> 00:39:49.840
ready to throw it in, the
door opened and one of our vice presidents

497
00:39:49.880 --> 00:39:53.559
walked in with a guest. That
guest was mya Angelin. Oh my gosh,

498
00:39:53.960 --> 00:39:58.360
she oh, yes, you do
talk about this. She had friends

499
00:39:58.360 --> 00:40:01.039
in San Antonio often came down walk
the river walk, and so she came

500
00:40:01.079 --> 00:40:06.400
out to the university and she knew
about the university and she looked at us

501
00:40:06.440 --> 00:40:09.320
and says, what do we all
do? And we're writing a vision statement?

502
00:40:09.360 --> 00:40:13.440
And then she's asked how's it going, And we all had a break

503
00:40:13.519 --> 00:40:16.360
up because it wasn't going very well
at all. She said, well,

504
00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:20.719
I'm sorry to hear that, but
you know, keep up the good work.

505
00:40:20.760 --> 00:40:23.719
And then she started to walk out, and one of my colleagues asked

506
00:40:23.719 --> 00:40:30.079
her, miss Angelou, what do
you think the vision is for this university?

507
00:40:30.960 --> 00:40:35.199
Now you've got to understand that we
live in a multicultural community down here

508
00:40:35.960 --> 00:40:39.559
of almost fifty percent of the population
of Morris Hispanic, and we lived in

509
00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:45.400
this culture all the time, and
a lot of first time people going to

510
00:40:45.480 --> 00:40:51.920
school, so we weren't getting the
traditional student that most schools do, and

511
00:40:51.960 --> 00:40:54.280
nobody knew about us. We were
a new school. When I came to

512
00:40:54.440 --> 00:40:59.519
UTSA in nineteen eighty two, there
were five thousand students. Now they're at

513
00:40:59.559 --> 00:41:07.920
thirty five thousand. Recognize Maya without
skipping of the said I think you're a

514
00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:13.000
rainbow in the clouds. And she
left and that was beautiful. That's what

515
00:41:13.079 --> 00:41:16.480
we were, a rainbow of colors. But people couldn't see us in the

516
00:41:16.480 --> 00:41:22.559
cloud Unfortunately. Our hair brain's got
to work on that and by the time

517
00:41:22.679 --> 00:41:25.480
we were finished with it, it
became two paragraphs that we published in the

518
00:41:25.519 --> 00:41:30.800
graduate catalog, and nobody saw the
rainbow in the clouds. So I think

519
00:41:30.880 --> 00:41:37.480
ambiguity is such an important tool.
Is don't make vision statements clear. Make

520
00:41:37.519 --> 00:41:43.159
them ambiguous with holes in them so
people can get inside of them and be

521
00:41:43.280 --> 00:41:47.440
part of it. But like the
radio program, not the TV, and

522
00:41:47.639 --> 00:41:52.880
be inspired by them, be enlarged
by them. Yes, Oh, my

523
00:41:53.000 --> 00:41:59.559
goodness, that was ambiguity versus T's
precision. Yes, indeed, I would

524
00:41:59.559 --> 00:42:04.519
love for us if we can to
distinguish the hair glasses of motivation versus the

525
00:42:04.639 --> 00:42:07.679
ti glasses of inspiration. We know
I have to ask about that. Well,

526
00:42:07.679 --> 00:42:15.079
the hair brained world creates external structures
that invite actions through incentives, and

527
00:42:15.199 --> 00:42:21.239
that's pretty much what I call management
work, and where incentives are used to

528
00:42:21.280 --> 00:42:27.559
motivate people. Right, the tortoise
lights the fire inside, and it lights

529
00:42:27.559 --> 00:42:32.880
the candle flame on our bellies,
and so that's leaders inspire. They get

530
00:42:32.920 --> 00:42:42.000
people to act through inspiration. And
it's interesting because I think inspiration requires that

531
00:42:42.039 --> 00:42:49.159
we have places where we can be
ourselves completely and experiment to find out who

532
00:42:49.159 --> 00:42:54.400
we might become, and the incentives
sometimes drive that away. So, if

533
00:42:54.400 --> 00:43:00.639
you think about it, the pay
when we're paid to do something, the

534
00:43:00.760 --> 00:43:06.159
pay is compensation for a piece of
artis place, and so the more you

535
00:43:06.199 --> 00:43:10.559
get paid, quite often, the
more they're buying of your inspiration. And

536
00:43:10.639 --> 00:43:16.800
so the most sometimes the place where
we have the most inspired people are places

537
00:43:16.840 --> 00:43:21.719
where they don't get paid at all, where they're working for habitat for humanity

538
00:43:22.440 --> 00:43:25.840
or the project I had at utsa
where the kids work for pediatric cancer family

539
00:43:28.400 --> 00:43:31.599
no pay. It's all about an
invitation to service, to open up.

540
00:43:32.199 --> 00:43:37.400
And that's the difference I think between
the inspiration and the leader work and the

541
00:43:37.480 --> 00:43:45.239
motivation, which is management work.
And the reason leadership is much a huge

542
00:43:45.360 --> 00:43:49.880
challenge. You know, have done
research to look at the effects of leadership

543
00:43:49.920 --> 00:43:54.760
programs and organizations, and the top
level the c suite people want to change

544
00:43:54.760 --> 00:44:00.039
their organization. That's why they're investing
in leadership. But the programs that focus

545
00:44:00.079 --> 00:44:07.079
on individual leaders have not led to
organizational impacts, and they're almost universally dissatisfying

546
00:44:07.480 --> 00:44:13.920
to the people who are investing them. And so it's again it's we're leaving

547
00:44:13.960 --> 00:44:17.519
no place they can go out and
inspire their tea at a beautiful program.

548
00:44:17.519 --> 00:44:22.039
And some of the programs on leadership
for individuals are incredible, they're inspiring,

549
00:44:22.559 --> 00:44:27.639
they're well received, they're well evaluated. But if they come back to an

550
00:44:27.719 --> 00:44:32.360
organization that is all external, hair
brained and they have no place to practice

551
00:44:32.400 --> 00:44:37.880
that, it sometimes is actually a
negative because I'm inspired to do all this

552
00:44:38.159 --> 00:44:42.920
and I try it and my boss
won't let me do it, or there's

553
00:44:42.920 --> 00:44:46.920
no place by the way, Bob, what's fascinating about what you said earlier

554
00:44:46.960 --> 00:44:53.079
about the three kinds of intelligence?
That aligns extremely well with the last three

555
00:44:53.119 --> 00:44:57.079
chapters of my book, The Great
Revivialization, where I put forth those twenty

556
00:44:57.119 --> 00:45:01.800
one best practices and I organize them
around intellectual quotient intelligence IQ intelligence, logical

557
00:45:01.880 --> 00:45:08.360
rational EQ, emotional intelligence, kind
of issues of carrying esthetic qualities, and

558
00:45:08.639 --> 00:45:16.039
spiritual intelligence. It's so what you're
talking about in different parlance has very much

559
00:45:16.039 --> 00:45:20.119
aligned and found its way into into
my heart, my mind and my work.

560
00:45:21.039 --> 00:45:22.320
That, by the way, is
one of the things that was really

561
00:45:22.320 --> 00:45:28.280
inspiring to me when I thought about
my work during the COVID shutdown, and

562
00:45:28.320 --> 00:45:34.000
that is that the dissonance we had
people during the shutdown was the twenty twenty

563
00:45:34.039 --> 00:45:38.559
election, and there were fights in
grocery stores, people putting up their political

564
00:45:38.599 --> 00:45:44.599
signs, neighbors who couldn't talk to
each other anymore, the hate field rhetoric

565
00:45:44.639 --> 00:45:47.639
we're seeing in Washington. All that
stuff drove me that there's got to be

566
00:45:47.679 --> 00:45:53.159
something better. And so there's an
analysis of dissonance in the book that it

567
00:45:53.199 --> 00:45:59.599
comes at two levels. The dissonance
we normally think about is intellectual dissonance where

568
00:45:59.639 --> 00:46:04.440
there's also an esthetic dissonance about what
we like or don't like that has nothing

569
00:46:04.480 --> 00:46:07.719
to do with information or truth or
logic. And for example, there's no

570
00:46:07.840 --> 00:46:14.719
truth in the color blue, and
you might you like red and I like

571
00:46:14.880 --> 00:46:21.840
blue. If we argue about that, we go nowhere. On the other

572
00:46:21.840 --> 00:46:27.239
hand, it's a language thing.
If we differ about something like gun control,

573
00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:34.719
where you're in favor of gun rights
and unlimited and you live in Texas,

574
00:46:34.760 --> 00:46:37.679
after all, you have to be, and on the other side,

575
00:46:37.719 --> 00:46:40.559
you want total gun control, we'll
argue with our hair brains till we don't

576
00:46:40.559 --> 00:46:45.000
like each other anymore, and we'll
live with separate silos for the rest of

577
00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:52.239
our lives. But if I show
you an ambiguous painting or an ambiguous poem

578
00:46:52.360 --> 00:46:55.960
or an ambiguous piece of music,
you might like it or not like it,

579
00:46:57.000 --> 00:47:00.920
but it's not true one way or
the other. But we won't disagree,

580
00:47:01.280 --> 00:47:06.119
because beauty is in the eye the
beholder. The language of the arts.

581
00:47:06.119 --> 00:47:12.840
The ambiguous languages are open and accepting
a diversity naturally without emotion. So

582
00:47:12.960 --> 00:47:16.840
what I do in creating meeting places
where there's a lot of disagreement is I

583
00:47:16.880 --> 00:47:22.039
don't work and hare's intellectual language at
all. I go almost immediately to image

584
00:47:22.079 --> 00:47:30.320
your music or poetry. People understand
the likes and dislikes you might You might

585
00:47:30.400 --> 00:47:34.320
almost agree with me, but not
like the way I say it, and

586
00:47:34.360 --> 00:47:38.840
that will create dissonance, so you
won't listen to me. I hate to

587
00:47:38.880 --> 00:47:43.039
give you up. This is so
beautiful, and yet we found our way

588
00:47:43.039 --> 00:47:46.280
to the end of the show,
and everything that you have said, I've

589
00:47:47.000 --> 00:47:50.800
as you can see, I'm hanging
on your words. You know, this

590
00:47:50.880 --> 00:47:53.599
show is listening to my people around
the world that are interested in improving their

591
00:47:53.639 --> 00:47:58.159
experience of work, and that in
changing and elevating the way that we actually

592
00:47:58.199 --> 00:48:01.519
lead people. What would you like
to leave them today? You know,

593
00:48:01.679 --> 00:48:06.800
I think I don't have five bullet
points. The book isn't like that.

594
00:48:07.079 --> 00:48:13.400
I can leave them with two things
that they have been ringing in layers my

595
00:48:13.559 --> 00:48:17.239
entire life. When is a quote
I've created from my own old website.

596
00:48:17.719 --> 00:48:22.519
The only real tragedy in life is
to have something special inside of you the

597
00:48:22.519 --> 00:48:28.920
world will never see. That's one
and the other one is don't sell your

598
00:48:29.000 --> 00:48:36.719
dreams for a salary. And I
you know we've somehow we've become slaves to

599
00:48:36.760 --> 00:48:39.880
an economic engine that we have to
feed more and more. And I know

600
00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.719
people who believe they don't have a
choice but to do things that are economically

601
00:48:44.760 --> 00:48:47.719
practical, that they have a choice
to go down and pay more for gas

602
00:48:47.760 --> 00:48:55.800
because the person who owns that station
donates to the food bank. So I'm

603
00:48:57.000 --> 00:49:00.159
hair brain thinking is essentially on a
thinking of scarcity, and that's economics,

604
00:49:01.119 --> 00:49:07.440
and the tortoise is more into the
humanities and the arts. Beautiful way to

605
00:49:07.480 --> 00:49:10.239
finish, Bob. I'm very very
agreeable to know you to have read your

606
00:49:10.280 --> 00:49:13.280
book, to check with my listeners
and viewers, and I look forward to

607
00:49:13.320 --> 00:49:16.800
staying in touch and sitting on the
front porch with you and under candle light

608
00:49:16.880 --> 00:49:20.400
if we can, or any candle
light if we can. You have an

609
00:49:20.400 --> 00:49:23.400
open invitation. You're not that far
away. Thank you. Take it up,

610
00:49:23.880 --> 00:49:27.920
all right, listeners and viewers.
If you'll learn more about Bob his

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work at Leader of Work, Inc. Or his books, you can just

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00:49:30.480 --> 00:49:35.480
start by going a place fort dot
com. So that's a place for T

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the LETTERT dot com last week.
If you missed the live show, you

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can always catch it be a recorded
podcast. We are on the Earth with

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00:49:42.239 --> 00:49:45.320
Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley talking about
their new book, The Empathy Advantage,

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00:49:45.440 --> 00:49:50.760
Leading the Empowered Workforce, which I
found to be incredibly eliminating of today's workforce

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00:49:50.800 --> 00:49:53.760
wants and needs and what leaders need
to be and do to attract, motivate

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00:49:53.760 --> 00:49:59.000
and retain them. That their message
actually very much aligned with mine and my

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latest book To Realization as well.
Next week, we'll be on the air

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with Atigrafique talking about his book Decision
Sprint, the New Way to innovate into

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the unknown and move from strategy to
action. I've been reading this book for

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00:50:10.440 --> 00:50:15.000
the last couple of weeks. It's
actually very intense and extremely accessible. We'll

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be talking about it. We'll be
talking about then next week. Remember that

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work as an integral, an important
part of our lives. It can be

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00:50:21.400 --> 00:50:23.679
one of the best inventors and means
of realizing our potential and make any impact

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00:50:23.760 --> 00:50:30.000
we crave. So let's work on
Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's

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00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.960
program. Be sure to tune into
Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor

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00:50:35.039 --> 00:50:38.400
Elise Cortez, each week on W
four CY. Together, we'll create a

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world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership
inspires and passion. Performance and employees are

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00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.079
fulfilled in work that provides the meaning
and purpose they crave. See you there.

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Let's work on purpose.