Exploring the IDGs: Thinking
Understanding Our Complex World
The next category is Thinking. Something we are doing constantly! But how do we expand our thinking skills to serve the bigger picture and purpose?
This category pertains to developing our cognitive skills by taking different perspectives, evaluating information, and making sense of the world as an interconnected whole. These are important skills needed to cultivate wisdom and are essential for wise decision-making. Decision-making and problem-solving apply to all industries, sectors, and vocations. It’s a core capability required to be successful in contemporary leadership. And serves us in life as well.
Assessing our thinking includes our skills in complexity awareness, expanded perspective-taking, sense-making, long-term vision and orientation, and critical thinking. With any self-evaluation or looking deeply within, I always invite self-compassion. We set any internal criticisms or judgments aside and can start by asking ourselves a few questions.
Can I thoughtfully review others’ views, and consider their evidence and ideas without assumptions, interpretations, or bias?
Can I approach a plan and work systematically through actions while bringing awareness to what is emerging as I move forward?
Can I adapt my view based on evidence and differing perspectives, listening to others' views and sources?
How familiar am I with systems thinking and how easily can I see patterns and make sense of complex information?
Do I have a long-term vision and can I sustain commitment to those visions relating to the larger context over time?
In Cultivating Our Inner Life, I share a values exercise, which is equally relevant in developing your sense-making, long-term vision and orientation, and critical thinking. Self-compassion also aids the development of these skills, and you can explore more in my post about Befriending Your Inner Critic.
In my leadership development program, I include Polarity Management models and the Immunity to Change framework, which can help develop these skills. My signature learning program, “Clear, Compassionate & Conscious Communication-Following the Thread of Our Core Needs,” focuses on enhancing self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and communication skills using a structured model of human experience, including a deepening understanding of our thoughts.
I also offer a short workshop on learning to thrive in complexity. Our world is complex by nature, yet our nature as human beings is also complex. The good news is we are perfectly suited to live and thrive in this complexity. And yet, many of us have lost sight of this. We have forgotten our innate resourcefulness. We’ve become disconnected from ourselves. In this fast-paced, interconnected, and uncertain world, we often unwittingly fall into traps that result in us feeling stuck, or worse, taking action that might be in the opposite direction from what the situation calls for. This workshop dives into many of the critical IDG thinking skills needed for the future.
Creativity & Imagination
Creativity may be the skill most needed to find our path forward. Both individually and collectively. More than ever, we need to cultivate a way to bring forth our imagination. We are facing complex challenges that we haven’t faced before. We need each other to find our way through, and we need our imaginations. To turn towards your imagination, consider what creative endeavors you can include in your life. Or return to?
One of the most powerful methods I’ve discovered for activating my imagination is Dreamwork. Our dreams contain insights and wisdom and can lead us in positive life-serving directions, but only if we pause our interpretations. We can imaginally re-enter the dream to unfold the images and perspectives. Once unfolded, we discover new resources within ourselves that support us in taking steps toward our goals and commitments. It’s an untapped resource every single human has access to every night.
I’d love to hear from you if a learning workshop or coaching could help support this developmental discovery for yourself. Unlike some assessment approaches, I don’t take a gap analysis or start from a place of deficiency. We start where you are and explore the threads together.
Reach out if you’d like to chat.