Provision #677: Observations
Matter
by Bob Tschannen-Moran
Laser Provision
After a week of travelling in northern Germany and Holland, I can testify to
the power of observations. When you don't speak the language well, or even at
all, observations become paramount. They enable you to navigate your way through
the country. The trick, for both leaders and travelers, is to suspend the urge
to evaluate what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. The more accurate and
charge-neutral we become in our descriptions the better our experiences and
leadership will be.
LifeTrek Provision
Guten tag!
Can you tell I've spent the week in Germany?☺We've had a great time visiting
old and new friends; most of all we have had the pleasure of sharing in the
wedding weekend of a delightful young couple. We've known Luke since the time he
was born. We've known his parents longer than that – since our college days, in
fact. They have become fun travelling companions for us, and it was a pleasure
to spend time with them again on such a special and significant occasion.
Janina and her family are all relatively new to us, but they could not have been
more gracious, generous, and gifted hosts. We're confident that Luke and Janina
will share a happy and adventurous marriage. They are both filled with the
spirit of last week's Provision on
curiosity.
Since their education and experiences have anchored them both in the world of
nature, he with wildlife management and she with forestry and soilology, they
will never run out of things to observe and ways to contribute.
Hopefully they will learn to do that with each other, in the context of their
marriage, as much as in the context of their careers. Luke just returned from a
six-week expedition on the northern slope of Alaska, where he was tracking flora and fauna in
locations that no human being has ever recorded before. The point was to create
a baseline so the species there can be protected in the wake of increasing development
pressures for oil and other commodities. I'm glad he and his partner were doing
that; saving one little corner of the planet for us all.
I was struck by the work, as he described it, and the slideshow he put together of
various vistas, birds, land animals, and plants. His job this summer was to
observe. That's it. Not to evaluate. Not to manipulate. Not to agitate,
integrate, our extrapolate. His job was just to observe and to record everything
that he saw.
That's not to say that he had no emotions over the course of his six-week
adventure. As he shared his slideshow with family and friends, it was clear how
often he felt thrilled to see such beauty and wonder in the natural world. He
also felt honored and privileged to be among the first human beings on the planet
to observe these particular areas. And, on occasion, he felt distressed, both by
cold and by mosquitoes. As time went on, he also felt the longing and proleptic
joy of reuniting with his beloved in Germany for his wedding celebration.
These emotions and more were all part of the experience. But they were not to be
included in the observational dataset to be turned in at the end of the
experience. That's not because they are unimportant; they're essential. That's
rather because observations are the things scientists can work with to
understand and plan for the protection of this area. As passionate as Luke may
feel about what he saw and heard, that passion is not enough to change policy.
When it comes to science and the public interest, observations and data are our
strongest allied.
Yet the observations Luke collected would never have been gathered without that
passion. It was the passion that sent him into and sustained him throughout his
wilderness experiences (venturing out every day at 3:30 AM, since the
early-morning hours were the best hours for observing birds). It was also that
passion that made his observations so accurate and that, on occasion, informed
even his instincts.
Luke had to look and listen carefully, noticing even the most subtle of signs
and songs as to what
was going on and where the birds were likely to be. You can imagine, then, that
his slideshow was quite spectacular. Such observations are a thing of beauty,
made even more so when told in the first person by the observer.
My wife, Megan, and I have had our own experience of this, this week in Germany.
Although I had four years of German in high school, that was some 40 years ago
and most of it has worn off. Megan has never studied German. So we have had to
approached our time
in Germany much like Luke approached his time in Alaska: as careful observers.|
What is the context? What images accompany the words? What are people doing with
their eyes, hands, and other body parts? What about volume and tone? The more
carefully we attend to such observational data, the better we get along in a
country where we don't speak the language. And the more German words come back to me
with each passing day.
On our drive from Osnabrück to Rügen we had plenty of time to observe the sights
and sounds of Germany. Among other things, we were struck by the number of wind
turbines. Unlike Luke with his birds, I stopped counting after I reached 143 (in
part, because I started to write this Provision!). The number and variety of the
wind turbines, spinning away producing electricity, was far more prevalent than
I am used to seeing in the United States. In fact, most of the time,
in the USA, we see no such roadside evidence of renewable energy at all.
Observing those wind turbines generated a mix of emotions, ranging from excitement, to
sadness, to hope. Excitement to see it being done in one place. Sadness to know
it is not being done in every place. Hope to think it can be done in any place.
Yet those emotions, without the data, are not enough to make that hope a
reality. It takes observations and data to make the case for change.
So let that be a lesson to us all. As prone as we are to talk about what we like
and what we don't like, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and bad,
what is possible and impossible, what we want and don't want, what is causing
things to happen and what is not causing things to happen, the longer we can
suspend those judgments the better it will be when it comes to making our way in the world.
For lunch, we stopped at a restaurant where only limited English was spoken.
There was definitely a bit of confusion as we tried to navigate our way through
the experience. It would have been easy for us to get frustrated with them and
them to get frustrated with us. But that was largely avoided. Why? Because we
didn't expect to understand each other. We all knew that we would have to navigate
slowly together.
Wouldn't it be great if we could all learn to navigate a bit more slowly, on the
basis of observational data rather than evaluative judgments? That's especially
true for leaders. We are quick to size up situations and to fly into action. We
want results, and if we see or hear of someone who is "not doing his or her job"
we want to fix the problem as promptly as possible.
But moving too quickly into action, before we have collected enough
observational data, can often lead us astray. More often than not, we escalate
problems by such highly-charged interventions, rather than relieving them with
the creativity and curiosity that I have been writing about over the past few
weeks.
If we hope to serve as great leaders, then it's important to become greats
observers. Forget your assumptions as to who is to blame and how to move
forward. Take a new tack. Open your eyes and ears. Navigate slowly to get their
more quickly. Then and only then will your passion become a path to the
possible. Then and only then will your people delight, share, and contribute in
making dreams come true.
Coaching Inquiries: What helps you to be a great observer? What helps you
to suspend your judgments and your urge to fix things without all the facts? How
can you move more slowly through the trek of life and work? Who could become your
observation buddy? How could you better track those observations over time?To reply to this Provision, use our
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LifeTrek Readers' Forum (selected feedback
from the past week)
Editor's Note: The LifeTrek Readers' Forum contains selections from the comments
and materials sent in each week by the readers of LifeTrek Provisions. They do
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Email Bob.
Thank you deeply
for today's Provision,
Curiosity
Matters; love it, laugh about it, and share it.
I celebrated my birthday yesterday and reflected on who I am, what I stand for, and
what I would like to do. Upon writing all those questions down, confirmed once
more that my central essence is ... curiosity! That's what has brought me to
working and living in Bogotá, New York, and Taipei and who knows where else. I
share moreover an intricate curiosity on what inspires people.
I also share the curiosity about Amsterdam the city I lived close by before
embarking on rooting up. What will have changed in the 12 years I am away?
Still, even more curious, if I could drive "eyes closed" to Osnabrück where I
passed time deliciously, did business on occasions and where I enjoyed one of my
most interesting university excursions, what would I find? I wondered immediately how one of the
hosts would be who spoke actively and fluently 18 languages and understood
another dozen – talking of curiosity! I started a search on the Internet to find
him.
Enjoy the German language and test from time to time how fluid you still are. When
it comes to enjoying the world cup soccer on German radio and TV I still do
well. You reignited my curiosity about the Enneagram and started learning about
it.
Still, your Provision most struck a chord with me as I am writing a book on
powerful questions in coaching. That requires a curious mind. And asking can
bring us further than answers alone can. What's more: I am investigating what
happens if we reach for the right answers without asking the right questions.
Thank you for the inspiration, gute Reise für Megan und dich und eine glückliche
und frohe Hochzeit für das Ehepaar.
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May you be filled with goodness, peace, and joy.
Bob Tschannen-Moran
President, LifeTrek Coaching International,
www.LifeTrekCoaching.com
CEO & Co-Founder, Center for School Transformation,
www.SchoolTransformation.com
Immediate Past President, International Association of Coaching,
www.CertifiedCoach.org
Author, Evocative Coaching: Transforming Schools One Conversation at a Time,
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