Personal Mastery

Mastery means

a) Gaining dominance over people or thinking

b) Also a special level of proficiency (personal growth & learning)

Personal Mastery is discipline of a) Continually Clarifying

b) Deepening personal vision

c) Of focusing energies

d) Developing patience &

e) Seeking reality objectively

PM-Roots

Lies in both

a) Eastern and western spiritual condition

b) In secular traditions as well

The discipline of PM, by contrast, starts with

a) clarifying the things that really matter to us,

b) of living our lives in the service of our highest aspirations.

Here authors tells usa) Connection between personal learning & organization learning.

b) Reciprocal commitment between individual & organization

c) Special spirit of enterprise made up of learning

The spirit of the Learning Organization

Organization learn only through individuals who learn.

Few organizational leaders are recognizing importance of individual learning.

If people are not

sufficiently motivated to

challenge goals of

growth and technology

development.. There

will be no growth, gain

in productivity.

If people are not

sufficiently motivated to

challenge goals of

growth and technology

development.. There

will be no growth, gain

in productivity.

Tap potential of people

What does it require?

New understanding of people’sa) Subconscious mind

b) Will power

c) Action of the heart

d) Desire to serve the world

People with high level of PM are

continually expanding their ability to create the results

in life they truly seek.

Mastery & Proficiency

PM becomes discipline – an activity we integrate into our

lives– integrating in two movements

Continuous clarifying- we forget “why we are on the path?”

often spend too much time coping with problems along our path.

Deepening personal vision- continually learning how to see

current reality more clearly.

Contin..

Juxtaposition of vision(what we want ?)

Clear picture of Current reality(what we are relative to what we want)

Generates “creative tension”

Natural tendency of Tension is to seek Resolution

PM is learning how to generate and sustain creative tension in our lives

Learning in this context doesn’t mean acquiring more information, but expanding the ability to produce the results we truly want in life.

Learning organizations is possible --- if they have people at every level who pratice lifelong generative learning.

People with high level PM share several basic characteristics

1.A vision is a calling rather than simply a idea

2.“Current reality” seen as ally, not an enemy

3.Learned to work with forces of change instead of resist forces

4.Deeply inquisitive

5.Feel connected to others & life itself with out loosing

uniqueness

6.Feel part of large creative process, which they can influence

but cannot unilaterally control.

What do they do?

1. Live in continual learning mode

2. They never arrive

3. For them PM is not you possess, it is a process

4. A life long discipline

5. Acutely aware of their ignorance, incompetence

6. Aware of growth areas, deeply self confident, values

7. Make commitment to goals larger than themselves, being

open, exercising free will, try to form accurate reality picture.

Why we want It ?

We believe there is no fundamental tradeoff between

Higher virtues in life --- economic success

We believe we have both

People have a broader and deeper sense of responsibility in their work. They

learn faster.

Traditionally there was a contract

Example: Honest day’s pay for an honest day’s labor.

Now there is a different relationship between Employee and Institution

Shift in attitude of work

From Institution to a Sacred View of Work

Institution: work is a instrument to generate income

Sacred: People or objects are sacred in the sociological sense

Traditionally organizations supported people’s development instrumentally.

O’Brien says that type of organization we seek to build–

a) development of people on equal plane with financial success.

b) Practicing the virtues of life & business success, both are not only

compatible but enrich one another.

c) This is far from the traditional ‘moral of the marketplace.’

Covenant --- Contract

Max de Pree, speaks of a “covenant” between organization and individual, in

contrast to the traditional “Contract”

Covenant: Relationship rests on a shared committeemen to

Ideas– issues—values—goals– to management process.

Covenant relationship reflect Unity—grace—poise. They are expressions of

sacred nature of relationship.

Contracts: are a small part of a relationship.

Resistance

Who could Resist the benefits of personal mastery?

Yet many a) People b) Organizations. Because of radical departure from

traditional contract between employee & institution.

Why companies resist encouraging PM, because

a) It is “soft”

b) Based in part on unquantifiable concepts—intuition & personal vision

In materialistic culture as ours, it is difficult to discuss some grounds of PM

Worst for m of resistance is “Cynicism.”

This can be avoided by accurate view of human nature

Resistance- continue…

Some fear that PM will threaten the established org of a well managed co

Discipline of personal mastery must always seen as one among the set

of discipline of a learning organization ( common vision, common mental

models..).

If leaders are capable of building shared vision & motivated to guide local

decision makers then we say organization committed to PM.

How to develop sense of PM

1. Personal Vision

2. Holding Creative Tension

3. “Structural conflict”: The power of your powerlessness

4. Commitment to Truth

5. Using the Subconscious, or you don’t really Need to figure it all out

6. Integrating Reasons & Intuitions

7. Seeing our Connectedness to the world

8. Compassion

9. Commitment to the Whole

Personal Mastery

Holding Creative Tension

Structural Conflict: The

Power of your Powerlessness

Commitment to the truth

Using the Subconscious

Personal Vision

Personal Vision

Personal vision come from within

Real vision cannot be understood in isolation from the idea of purpose

Vision with no sense of purpose is just good idea

Vision is a specific destination, picture of desired future

Vision is concrete, while purpose is abstract

Vision often gets confused with Competition– competition is useful way of

calibrating a vision ,of setting scale.

PM is the process of continually focusing & reinforcing on what on etruly

wants, on ones vision.

Personal Vision—conti…

Vision is Multi features

1) Material

2) Personal

3) Service

Material – such as Where we want to live?,

How much money you want to have in bank?

Personal– Health – Freedom – being true to ourselves

Service– Helping other– contributing to the state of knowledge in a field

It takes courage to hold vision that are not in the social stream

( Clarifying vision is one of the easier aspects of Personal Mastery)

Holding Creative Tension

We are acutely aware of gaps between our Vision & reality

These gaps can make a vision seen as unrealistic or fanciful, which

discourages us make us feel hopeless.

Gap is source of “Creative Energy” – we call Gap as Creative Tension

Tension seeks Resolution or release

How to reduce this?

“2” possible ways

a) Pull reality towards the vision depends on whether we holds

b) Pull vision towards the reality steady to the Vision

Creative Tension

Creative Tension leads to

Creative Tension is the Central principle of Personal Mastery

Creative tension leads to

a) Feeling/emotional associated with anxiety

i. Such as sadness

ii. Discouragement emotional tensions

iii. Hopelessness/worry

“Negative“ emotions that may arise when there is creative tension are not

Creative tensions itself

Creative tension is completely under our control ---the Vision.

Creative Tension

Current reality becomes the Ally not the enemy

An accurate insightful view of current reality is an important as a clear vision

Truly creative persons knows that all creativity is achieved through working with constraints

“Structural Conflict”: The Power of Your Powerlessness

The Reactions are evidence of deep-seated beliefs

“Most of us hold one or more opposing beliefs that limits our

--ability to create what we really want”

Name belief centers

a) Powerlessness—inability to bring into being all the things we really care

about

b) Unworthiness– that we do not deserve to have what we truly desire.

Fritz calls the system involving both the tension pulling us towards our goal

and the tension anchoring us to our underlying belief

Structure conflicting forces: pulling us simultaneously towards and away

from what we want.

Structural Conflict

How do we overcome the forces of structural conflict ?

Fritz identified 3 generic “strategies”

1. Letting our vision erode

2. Conflict manipulation or negative vision

3. Will power

Belief changes gradually as we accumulate new experiences-- as we

develop personal mastery

Commitment to Truth

People always want formula, a technique, something tangible that can apply

to solve PROBLEM of Structural conflict

--- but Commitment to Truth is far more powerful than any technique

Here truth is --- relentless willingness to root out the ways we limit or deceive

ourselves from seeing what is.

--- continually broadening our awareness

( this means continually Deeping our understanding of the structure

underlying current event)

Critical task in dealing with structural conflict

Recognize them and resulting behavior when they are operating.

How do I recognize ? ---- warning signal i.e., blaming something/someone for

our problem.

Develop skill or know how to identify problem as structure. So that able to

look at “what I could do?, rather than at “What they had done?”

High level of PM here is discovery structures.

These structures readily change, gradually change, then need to work

more creatively within them acknowledging their origin, rather than

fighting the structure.

Structure—current reality

“Either way once an operating structure is recognized

The structure itself becomes part of “ Current reality”

They more committed to truth, the more creative tension comes into

play, because Current reality is seen more for what it really is?

Context of Creative tension

Commitment to truth

becomes a generative force

Just as vision becomes a

generative force

Using The Subconscious, or, you don’t Really Need to Figure it all out

Implicit in the practice of personal mastery is another dimension of the mind

(subconscious)

Through subconscious that “all of us” deal with complexity.

We have all mastered a vast repetitive of skills through “training” the sub

conscious. Once learned, they become so taken for granted. We don’t

even notice when we are exciting them.High personal

Mastery High level of

Rapport

Normal Awareness

Sub consciousness

develops

Meditation Practice

In working more productively with the subconscious mind

helpful

Integrating Reason & Intuition

People with High level of Personal Mastery achieve

“naturally” Integrating Reasons & Institution as a by product

of their commitment to use all resource at their disposal.

System thinking May hold a key to integrating Reason & Institution

Institution can’t be explained in terms of linear logic

As experienced managers find that many of their intuitions

become explicable by gaining facility with systems thinking

as alternative language.

Fostering personal mastery in an Organization

Personal growth is a matter of choice.

If forced guaranteed to back fire

Similarly organizations with aggressive in promoting PM for their

members get into difficulty

Leaders building organization where it is safe for people

a) to create vision,

b) Inquiry

c) Commitment to truth are the norms

d) Where status quo is expected

(obscuring aspects of current reality that people seek to avoid)

Organization climate will strengthen personal

mastery in “2” ways

1. Continually reinforce the idea that personal growth is truly valued in

organization.

2. The extent that individuals respond to what is offered, organization

provide an “on the job training”.

Core leadership: is simple be a model.

a) Commit to yourself to your own personal mastery.

b) Actions always speak louder than words.

Thank you