Few things about fears (and shadows)
What is worth knowing and how it influences you or your team’s behaviour.
Your fears might be part of something much greater called “shadow”. The research and my own experiences with working with shadow were eyeopening and forever changed my focus on working with people and organizations. I believe it’s the future of how we will work and how people will need to change. If you are a Scrum Master, an Agile Coach or a Interim Manager you are bound to experience the below whether you want it or not. The faster you get to know the mechanism the more effective you’ll be. In the following series of articles (this is part one of three) you can learn why, get to know case studies and tools. Read on.
I recently found a short video about fears. It’s a perfect metaphor on how our brains work and how subconsciousness deals with our fears and desires. Still, this is a simplified version of the things that happen in our minds. Great work by Nata Metlukh (a fantastic artist by the way). I wanted to give it a broader context and show you the mechanism that influences your behaviour and give few observations on how you can trigger it to your benefit.
Emotions and the subconscious mind
Fear is one of many negative emotions that we experience on daily basis. Often it seems though that it can be the strongest and most common one preventing us from taking action or, on the other hand, pushing us to action but with poor consequences. There are also other negative emotions such as grief, anger, envy, frustration, sadness, guilt to name a few. These can also influence us such as the small black creatures on the movie — all in a bit different way.
Our subconscious mind on the other hand is a common name for some processes that happen in our mind without us knowing it. Our subconsciousness can be influenced or we can communicate with it using abstract concepts. Still, it is out of our logical (based in the prefrontal coretex) understanding.
So how these two work together and what changed my understanding of people? Learn about Jung’s shadow.
Jung’s shadow
The concept of “shadow” is not new and has been coined by Carl Jung — a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Wikipedia defines shadow as:
“an unconscious aspect of the personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself. Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one’s personality, the shadow is largely negative”
To simplify a bit we can say that shadow represents negative and positive thoughts, feelings, ideas, talents and traits that our subconscious mind hides from us and blocks us from dealing with them to protect us from negative consequences. To give you an example:
Tom’s Dad (let’s call him Jack) was always a hard-worker. The everyday toil has enabled him and his family to have a moderate home on the outskirts of a larger city. Jack had few incidents during his career when he was used by his superiors or company in a way where he was overworked & underpaid. Jack did not fancy the private sector and his boss driving an expensive car not doing much (or so he thought). Many times he said to Tom to watch out for these kind of crooks with millions in their pockets. All that with a good intention of keeping his son safe in live.
Tom grew, went to work and started working in a corporation. As a millennial he did not like being a very small wheel in a large machine and wanted a change. His friend was impressed by the potential and skills that Tom had and offered him to be a co-founder of a startup with a fantastic idea that could change the world and, hopefully, make them rich some day. Tom got really pissed and accused his friend of being dishonest and wanting to use him for a bad cause. They lost touch. Tom kept working in the corporation although with less energy as months passed by.
This short story shows how a potential talent or an opportunity has been pushed to the shadow by our subconsciousness. Tom was trusting his father and had a great deal of respect for him. Therefore, he did not want to disrespect him. Subconsciousness has taken care of that defending this belief with a negative reaction towards Tom’s friend. Although many things might have influenced Tom to react this way and the cause & effect are just examples there is a similar pattern here for our fears.
Working with your shadows
One way of dealing with that belief or presuposition that Tom had could be answering the question: how can he respect his father and still be able to earn high salary or start a company? When a solution is found these conflicted elements become one and the limiting emotion or belief is freed figuratively speaking or, according to Gestalt theory, a closure happens.
The above are simple examples. Often working with one’s shadow is not so simple and does not provide simple answers. One does not need always to use services such as coaching or therapy to get things done. It might be beneficial for many but not needed for some. Sometimes a simple conversation with someone else can be sufficient. A sentence or a passage in a book can also get us thinking and, in effect, alter the belief. That being said, knowing how the mind behaves and noting down our excessive reactions to rather normal or simple conversations is one way of getting to know where the problem might be.
These limiting beliefs, emotions and talents that are in the shadow are often discovered when we are put out of our comfort zone, in a new situation, context or during a life altering event. The whole concept should be especially important for leaders (formal or informal) in various companies — irrelevant of their size or context. Some shadows that a leader has can stop his or her Team from achieving great results. The higher the person is in a hierarchy or the more important product or project he has the more “collateral damage” can happen. The more important it is to be self-aware and deal with the things that might negatively influence others around you.
Friend or a foe?
In the short video that you watched you can see that everyone has a fear — in the context of what you have learnt let’s call it a shadow. Some have it for a long period of time and some acquire it as they go. Often we have more than one. The author shows at the end that the shadow can also be our friend. It’s true. To my mind, one’s life should not be dedicated to breaking all the limitations as it’s a futile and not that passionate of a life’s journey. Some of those shadows can come in handy like in the movie or a life-threatening situation. The way where I draw the line is how it influences you and others around you. If it stops you from being who you want to be, living a good life (remember the woman in the elevator?) and does harm to others around you then it’s worthwhile to spend some time on it.
Agile & Change
Same as each of us can have a shadow, teams and companies can have their shadows as well. These are the things that people don’t speak about out of certain reasons as well as the history of a certain group of people.
Companies using agile are prone to change due to the agile mindset, nature of doing software (most of the cases) and the environment in which they work. Times are speeding up and the change will happen or be required faster. Agile techniques, methodologies, frameworks have another feature. They show what is and what is not working. They also can brutally show the shadows that are present but were hidden in a team. Going through change and achieving another level of success (defined by the team or company) requires working with the shadow. At a certain stage no amount of trainings, workshops or meetings will make a difference. People, teams, the whole organisation needs to pass a certain threshold yet this involves dealing with a shadow.
Apart of working as an Agile Coach I use my coaching toolset to work with Clients (like Agile Coaches, developers and others) with their limiting emotions, beliefs and, sometimes, the subconscious mind. I also, regularly, work with another Coach on my own problems so that they do not impact my Clients on our sessions. It’s a never-ending story as we discover ourselves during the whole span of life while changing or in a new context.
Now.
Take a moment and think:
What is your biggest fear at the moment? What stops you from being who you want to be?
On a company level:
What would your company / team achieve if you tackled things that are limiting you? What people don’t like to talk about in your company / team?
Afterwards, when you know the answer use the “5 whys” technique and tackle the problem described by the last “why” which is believed to be the root cause. Sometimes the problem is deeper so try to go further with the question if you feel it might help. This is the very beginning of a change. In the subsequent posts you will learn about case studies and some tools that will assist you in this journey. Stay tuned.
