Let’s Grow Up

Age really is just a number and maturity in any respect is available at any age.

Unfortunately, in our cultures, human development scholarship has us limited and limiting each other.

We like to have certainty, I guess it is part of being a human conditioned in Western culture. It makes us somewhat lazy about thinking outside that box of limitations. There is much more available than has been prescribed.

As a result of the limitations we put on children as an example, we don’t pay attention to them and the possibilities of their life. As a result of my journey to being a parent, when I was pregnant with my daughter, I used to speak to her, read to her and play music for her. I was keenly aware that everything I did affected her and was informing her.

It is bad enough that because of our limitation fostering socialization, people treat children like they are invisible, even when they haven’t learned to communicate like we do until they are older. One of the things I noticed many years ago is that when children have been around when one is bad mouthing a person, when that person comes around, they behave exactly as they have been socialized to think about that person regardless of the lies the adults around them are performing.

I am taking the long way around the tree right now, but thanks for taking the journey with me.

I have always believed that we are all leaders. When I’ve shared that idea in the past, many looked at me like I was off my rocker because they have been conditioned in what is called a "command-and-control" culture. A culture predicated on one all-knowing boss, probably because of the construct of God many have been taught.

Ever since I digested the Cells in the Body of God concept my friend Corey shared with me, it probably led me to understand David Marquet’s leadership ideas. Well, not that alone. I am certain it came along with all the lessons I have lived and learned up to then. Also, being an Agilist, Marquet’s approach aligned perfectly.

Through command-and-control structures, we are taught a model that reflects the lie of superiority that results from hegemony/caste and all its children, what I have often called “-isms.”

In parenting, so many of us fail because we exercise an “I have to have all the answers” approach to parenting, besides the "I have to act like I have it all together" approach. If we tune into each child individually, we wouldn’t have to take that approach. The world needs people who are alive to their purpose, not crushed people in need of repair from the choke hold on development we seem to be accustomed to meting out. As if as parents we are supposed to turn out our clones.

If children can’t be leaders or at least partners in their upbringing, least of all, having any rights we are bound to respect and honor, we are less enabled as a society. What if people were spending their post teenage years trying out their new wings and legs trying versus recovering from childhood trauma?

How more empowered would our society be to succeed and innovate?

If you haven’t heard any of David Marquet’s talks or read Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, I highly recommend that book and the plethora of YouTube videos out there.

Because we are not as mature in every aspect as the numbers that denote our age might indicate, we seem to blindly carry schoolyard dynamics well into adulthood, and definitely into the workplace. No knock on that reality. The idea that we have it all together is a fallacy that keeping it up is taking people out, or at least shortening their lives. As I always promote, being human is awesome and our vulnerability is our superpower. In many corporate situations I have been in, I have often reflected on high school dynamics in the politics of work. At this point, you will have to dive in and discover all of them yourself.

I will touch on just one here. Some years back, I heard a preacher talk about what good is our Christianity if we only do it with people we like? Similarly, this applies to any of our virtues. And then a colleague said to me a couple years ago, people gravitate to those they like or with who they feel comfortable. And in that moment, I said to myself, "That's not enough."

I knew then, and I still know now, "that's not enough." We need to index on what David Marquet talks about as, leader to leader execution versus, "you are my people and I will only promote and execute with my people" approach, especially to work.

Yeah, definitely do this in our workplaces, but also do it in our families. Doing it in those to places will beautifully flow into how our society flows and maybe we will achieve that "humane society for humans" that I am always talking about.

One last thing, throw away the word, “normal”. Like I have said in the past about “pure” and “perfection”, they are lies.

I will take this moment to promote a friend's book and a comment I made on his post about it.