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Leadership Skill: The Meaning of Meaning
By harveyrobbins | December 9, 2002
The “Pull” approach toward change (looking to the future) derives in large part from the writings of psychotherapist Viktor Frankl. In 1959, he published a remarkable account of survival, Man’s Search for Meaning. Because of the insights in this short, readable book, Frankl was hailed by the psychological world as a liberator from the dominance of Sigmund Freud. His ideas center around a “will to meaning” that is a strong or even stronger than Freud’s pleasure principle, which depicts people as, essentially, living for their next cheeseburger or sex experience.
It is sweet triumph that Frankl is regarded as a liberator because his pivotal experiences were as a prisoner in three different Nazi camps, including Auschwitz. For the inmates of these camps, there could be no more horrible disruption, no more unthinkable change than to be plucked from a life of normal liberties and choices and set down in a factory whose end product was their own deaths.
What interested Frankl was how prisoners coped with their prospects. Many, treated like animals, became little more than animals, abandoning their sense of self and any vision of the future that had once carried them along. Others, to his astonishment, adapted even to those unadaptable circumstances, by focusing on a future they were determined to experience. That future became their meaning, and that meaning sustained them through their plight
The final freedom, Frankl concluded, is what is left after every other freedom has been taken away - the freedom “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Now page ahead fifty years. Nazism is dead. Ours is in nearly every way a brighter age. The world is not at war, at least not yet. The democratic impulse burns brighter than ever. We have the technology to link soul to soul and to communicate more perfectly than humankind ever dreamed possible. While hate is not extinguished, it has acquired a bad reputation. There is a global consensus that competition is healthy, that diversity is good, that individuals matter, and that systems can be improved.
Yet we live in a world of sullen rage because the promised improvements are not coming easily enough, or quickly enough, or they are not coming at all.
The modern workplace is not a concentration camp, but Frankl’s insights are relevant nonetheless.
We change, Frankl says, by envisioning very intensely what we want to happen in the future. Once that picture or vision is clear in our minds, we intuitively take whatever steps are necessary to make the vision reality. The man determined to survive and reunite with his family will take care of himself to guarantee that the dream comes true. The company determined to keep its people employed in the years ahead will stake out new markets, make changes in processes, and lay out strategies and tactics to make it so. The team that wants to make the dream of all its members come true needs to commit to achieving team goals in order to bring individual goals into focus.
Once we identify a dream, things become clear. We see where resistance is coming from, why it’s happening, what our part is in keeping it alive, and what it takes to mold the organizational imagination to focus more on the positive of change and less on the negatives.
The organization and the people that will succeed in changing are those that master the art of living in the future and advancing toward it from the past, able to convert the fiction of resistance into positive propulsion.
For information about consulting and training that makes change work for your organization, contact Dr. Harvey Rohe “Pull” approach toward change (looking to the future) derives in large part from the writings of psychotherapist Viktor Frankl. In 1959, he published a remarkable account of survival, Man’s Search for Meaning. Because of the insights in this short, readable book, Frankl was hailed by the psychological world as a liberator from the dominance of Sigmund Freud. His ideas center around a “will to meaning” that is a strong or even stronger than Freud’s pleasure principle, which depicts people as, essentially, living for their next cheeseburger or sex experience.
It is sweet triumph that Frankl is regarded as a liberator because his pivotal experiences were as a prisoner in three different Nazi camps, including Auschwitz. For the inmates of these camps, there could be no more horrible disruption, no more unthinkable change than to be plucked from a life of normal liberties and choices and set down in a factory whose end product was their own deaths.
What interested Frankl was how prisoners coped with their prospects. Many, treated like animals, became little more than animals, abandoning their sense of self and any vision of the future that had once carried them along. Others, to his astonishment, adapted even to those unadaptable circumstances, by focusing on a future they were determined to experience. That future became their meaning, and that meaning sustained them through their plight
The final freedom, Frankl concluded, is what is left after every other freedom has been taken away - the freedom “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Now page ahead fifty years. Nazism is dead. Ours is in nearly every way a brighter age. The world is not at war, at least not yet. The democratic impulse burns brighter than ever. We have the technology to link soul to soul and to communicate more perfectly than humankind ever dreamed possible. While hate is not extinguished, it has acquired a bad reputation. There is a global consensus that competition is healthy, that diversity is good, that individuals matter, and that systems can be improved.
Yet we live in a world of sullen rage because the promised improvements are not coming easily enough, or quickly enough, or they are not coming at all.
The modern workplace is not a concentration camp, but Frankl’s insights are relevant nonetheless.
We change, Frankl says, by envisioning very intensely what we want to happen in the future. Once that picture or vision is clear in our minds, we intuitively take whatever steps are necessary to make the vision reality. The man determined to survive and reunite with his family will take care of himself to guarantee that the dream comes true. The company determined to keep its people employed in the years ahead will stake out new markets, make changes in processes, and lay out strategies and tactics to make it so. The team that wants to make the dream of all its members come true needs to commit to achieving team goals in order to bring individual goals into focus.
Once we identify a dream, things become clear. We see where resistance is coming from, why it’s happening, what our part is in keeping it alive, and what it takes to mold the organizational imagination to focus more on the positive of change and less on the negatives.
The organization and the people that will succeed in changing are those that master the art of living in the future and advancing toward it from the past, able to convert the fiction of resistance into positive propulsion.
For information about consulting and training that makes change work for your organization, contact Dr. Harvey Robbins.
Topics: Leadership Skill |