Five Aspects
Is it possible to combine meaning, joy and financial success? Is it possible to have you and your co-workers look forward to coming to work because you can see your contribution to society’s well being and are rewarded fairly? Within the context of today’s performance oriented world, it probably does not seem so. It is, however, the responsibility of the leader to create the atmosphere and to exemplify the life which allows all to have meaning, joy and financial success in the organization.
We often try to separate our private and professional lives and balance the pressures of the professional lives with the pleasures and satisfaction of our private lives. Try as we might, the pressures of one area cannot be isolated from the other. Work pressures us to be more efficient, reduce our overhead, respond to competition and be available to our boss at all hours. Our fears grow as we worry if we can live up to all the competing expectations of us. After a long commute home we find we have to quickly eat dinner to get to the little league game for our children and then run to the store to pick up groceries. We internalize our anger and fear until it erupts in frustration and we lash out at the closest target. Maybe it’s the umpire at the game or the coach or maybe our spouse or the checkout person at the grocery store who receives the outburst.
We are one person, one being, and we do not easily subdivide. Our private and professional lives are each part of us and there must be meaning, joy and financial success in both. We can start to build meaning, joy and financial success only when we gain greater insights into ourselves and the others around us who influence our lives. Often people in our organizations are known only by their departments, faces and productivity. We deal with them on one level only with little thought to other aspects of their person. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could see and understand more of them and therefore more of ourselves? We could help them and help ourselves be more balanced and responsible, if we understand the pressures we put on ourselves and each other and how we react to it.
Five Aspects To help us deal with this we have developed a model called the Five Aspects. It is not the truth about everything, but it does provide a framework to help us find out more about ourselves and those around us.
Body When we attend a meeting in our organization and look around we first notice the physical presence of those others in the room. These bodies employ their senses to create their perception of the world. We touch, taste, smell, see and hear to gain knowledge. Everyone in the room, however, perceives the world somewhat differently. So when we make a presentation to the group and they acknowledge full understanding, we must realize that with all the different perceptions each one of them will have a different understanding. Our bodies also carry out our conscious and unconscious intentions. We can decide to climb a hill consciously, but as we carry this decision out our body will make unconscious decisions to adjust to its changing needs. We will start to breathe more heavily to bring in needed oxygen and our heart will beat a little faster to speed circulation of the blood carrying oxygen to the muscles. All these things about our body can be altered or developed in some way. They can be trained and improved or even chemically altered.
Emotions Our emotions are another aspect of ourselves. Within the same body, we can be happy, sad, angry, fearful, or we can even feel lustful. When we experience these basic emotions it is instinctual and immediate. If we recognize the emotions we can control them. Sometimes we feel a flash of anger and wish to lash out, but it’s our boss at whom we are angry so we suppress the emotion. Perhaps fear of retribution was aroused and caused the suppression of the anger emotion. When suppressed, our emotions remain with us and mix with all the other emotions that are part of our makeup. They will be expressed in various ways and frequently at inappropriate times. Fear and lust may manifest themselves in a jealous rage at our girlfriend or boyfriend for imagined wrongs. Anger and sadness may lead to frustration or anxiety and we may become upset at the bank teller who takes too long with our transaction. Emotional reactions cause the body to release chemicals which themselves further affect our physical body. Sometimes we keep our emotions suppressed for so long that it results in physical illness.
Mind At the end of the day we can go home and use our mind to analyze why we became emotional and reacted in the way we did. The mind as an aspect of ourselves is used to think, reflect, plan, imagine, analyze, fantasize, interpret and misinterpret. This powerful aspect of ourselves can address the past, present and future. Most of our time in our mind is spent in the past or future. We remember and we look forward.
Soul There is also the part of us in which we find our loveful side and our will, passion, creativity, playfulness, spontaneity, humor, empathy and curiosity. This part we call soul. If it sounds like the way a child would act, well, it is. This part of us is driven deep inside of us as we grow. We lose this in many situations where we are supposed to act like an adult. This part of us is there, but hidden, or rather, suppressed.
Spirit We also have the aspect of ourselves where we find our life energy, meaning, our hope, faith and search for the universal. It is where we connect with everything around us and where we express our need for connection. We call this spirit, from the Latin “Spiritus” or breath of life. When we are born, we breathe in; when we die we breathe out and depart this realm. Our breath is directly related to this aspect. When we are feeling good and everything is right we stand tall, with shoulders back and breathe deeply. When we receive dispiriting news, our shoulders slump and our head drops and we take shallow breaths.
In our modern, western world we have no problem accepting the body, emotions, and mind as aspects of ourselves. The soul and spirit aspects are more difficult to deal with and especially difficult in the business world. We cut ourselves off from these aspects of ourselves when we focus on our performance or financial success only.
The body, emotions and mind aspects of self, operating without the soul and spirit support, leaves us wallowing in our fears. We focus on future success and live with nagging doubts. “Am I good enough?”, “Am I earning enough money to support my family?”, “Does my boss appreciate the job I am doing?”. We deal with these fears by developing compensation ambitions. “I will become the best salesman in the company.”, “My unit will be more productive than any other.”, “I will work longer hours than my coworkers to show the boss my commitment.”. “I will exceed my sales goals every year.”. We then work toward them to the exclusion of any distractions. We create a situation where we see our satisfaction and happiness in the future. “I will be happy when I meet the budget.”, “I will be happy when I get promoted.”, “I will be happy when I get my children through college.”
This extreme focus and postponement of our personal satisfaction and happiness can lead us into an ego trap when we think that we have all the answers to the exclusion of all others, especially if we are achieving these compensation ambitions. To achieve these ambitions we also neglect or shut down other aspects of ourselves. We work late and order in pizza and neglect our physical condition. How many of our coworkers are overweight and out of shape? We shut down our emotions, because we don’t want to appear weak. What would happen if the Chief Financial Officer cried when he announced to the management team that there was a negative budget deviation? We analyze and analyze and eventually we burn out our ability to concentrate. Colleagues are treated like they are PCs: they are retained with no upgrades until they crash and then are replaced. We get to the point where we said we will be satisfied and happy but there is always the next budget target, the next promotion or the next new car. We feel we are on a treadmill. This is a potentially dangerous state of mind especially if the person in the ego trap is the leader.
Integration To create an organization which is known for providing meaning, joy and financial success, an effective leader will take responsibility to look to all the aspects of his co-workers for the good of the person and for the good of the organization. When each aspect is integrated, the organization and the individual will be working in a much more satisfying way.
A leader can develop the Five Aspects of his organization in several ways:
Start the change with yourself. It is easy to see how others should change. We believe that the best way to make a change is to start with you. How can you develop your five aspects? What changes can you make to recognize and integrate your body, emotions, mind, soul and spirit? A leader should set the example. Living a Five Aspects life is better than telling about it.
Raise the consciousness of people by discussing the concept with them. When we speak with leaders about this in a business setting, several have responded: “I didn’t know you could talk about this in business.”. When people have a model to use for discussion, insights and awareness will rise and you will be able to take concrete steps to address their fears. The leader creates the environment of safety and support which allows people to recognize and discuss their fears and show their support and lovefulness to others.
Create Experiences. It is not enough to talk about these concepts. That is working only in the mind. Find ways to experience them. For example if you wish to develop creativity in the group, making a plan to be more creative is next to useless. Having the group go down to the company cafeteria kitchen and use utensils to create a kitchen band will unleash creativity in them. People will then confront and overcome some of their fears of embarrassment when they see others participating and enjoying themselves.
Stimulate outside-in thinking. Ask people to start their thinking with the world around them and not at what they want or need or even what the company wants and needs. It is all too easy to create a vision of what we want, but harder to create one of what we want the world that we deal with to be like. Looking outside first will give us clues about what we can contribute to today’s society and to coming generations.
Take time to gain a return on reflection. It is rewarding and stimulating to step back from the day to day pressure and reflect on why things are as they are now and how we would like them to be. We gain new insights from this reflection and are able to contribute even more. The performance oriented world will still be there when we come back, but we will be re-energized to deal with it.
Apply the Five Aspects to your relationship with your customers and others with whom you must have good relations. These people are too often seen only as buyers of our product or service, who make their decisions on a price or perceived value basis. Get to know them in their Five Aspects and you will find much more about them and how they decide what is good for them and their own situation.
Develop new leaders who are Five Aspects people. If you want to live up to this concept it must be reinforced throughout the organization. Process oriented leadership using the Five Aspects model can be taught to others and will reinforce these concepts so that all will understand that meaning, joy and financial success are not incompatible in an organization.
To build an organization with meaning, joy and financial success, we must recognize the personal satisfaction we can find in the here and now and not postpone it until the future. We need to build into ourselves and our coworkers the understanding of what we are contributing to society today and to coming generations. We can recognize the soul and spirit aspects of ourselves and our coworkers so that these aspects can influence the body, emotions and mind aspects in our life today. In doing so, we will build an organization which utilizes all the potential of our people, not just a portion, leading to success for all involved.
Hans Akerblom
hans@scandinavianleadership.com
+46 705 136602
John Dunnigan
john@scandinavianleadership.com
+1 908 788 9661
Hans Akerblom is the creator of the Five Aspects. He has also created Lots® where the Five Aspects is a common viewpoint. He is the founder of Scandinavian Leadership and a member of the World Business Academy and is based outside of Stockholm, Sweden.
John Dunnigan is president of Lotscenter Inc. in New Jersey. He has been working with leaders in business with Lots® since 1986.