Why is the deeper territory of deep listening, the road less traveled. Because it required some intentional inner work to illuminate the blind spot, our interior condition.
Connecting to our source of creativity at the bottom of the U required crossing the 3 gates, or thresholds.
The 3 enemies the 3 inner voices of resistance are :
- Voice of Judgment
- Voice of Cynicism
- Voice of Fear
Voice of Judgment blocks the gate to the Open Mind. Every creativity technique starts with this instruction: Suspend your voice of judgment. It is the critical starting point because without it we shut down the creative power of the open mind.
Voice of Cynicism blocks the gate to the Open Heart. This is the source of all our emotional acts of distancing. What is at stake when we begin to access the open heart? We must be willing to put ourselves in a position of true openness and vulnerability towards another, which is the opposite of distancing.
Voice of Fear blocks the gate to the Open Will. It seeks to prevent us from letting to of what we have and who we are. It can show up as a fear of losing things. Or a fear of being ostracized. Or a fear of death. And yet dealing with that voice of fear is at the heart of leadership today: to hold the space for letting go of the old and for letting come, or welcoming the new.
The root of the word ‘leadership’ means ‘to die’.
Sometimes when you need to let go,it feels exactly like that: dying.
A subtle inner threshold must be crossed before something new can show up, before the ‘field of the future’ can begin to manifest.
The above write up is based on Theory U by MIT Prof. Dr. Otto Scharmer
MANAGEMENT INNOVATIONS 