Day 1
Illustration by Simon Heath |
Happy 1st December and welcome to the Advent Blogs 2014! The theme this year is Paths and Perceptions…
Before I start, I
would like to thank and acknowledge the wonderful Alison Chisnell for coming up
with the concept of the Advent Blog Series and for curating it with such aplomb and
sensitivity since 2011. You can read former years' posts on her blog, TheHRJuggler. For this year, and this year only, she has loaned her
wand to me. I have received some wonderful pieces. I hope you enjoy them as
much as I have. I will be sharing one per day over Advent and into the holiday period.
It is an honour to
curate these writings. From its first year onwards I have been a participant in
the Advent Blogs series and have always been astounded and humbled by the
experiences and outlooks that individuals have shared. This year is no exception. It
is clear that people have trod some very varied routes and have exciting vistas
ahead; come join me and we can explore some of their paths and perceptions…
We are getting off to a hot start. The first post in the series is written by the talented Megan Peppin. Meg is a well known and much loved personality on Twitter - you can follow her via @OD_optimist or else read her thoughtful blog, Halls are Made for Madness, which was listed by People Management magazine as being one of the top 10 HR blogs worth reading. Meg was one of the first members of the Twitter community to welcome me into its ranks. She has been involved in the Advent Blogs series since its inception, so it seems appropriate for her to be the first voice this year. Meg is a specialist in organisational effectiveness. After an initial career in HR and OD, Meg founded her own business, which has gone from strength to strength since 2003. She helps a wide range of organisations and people to achieve their goals.
Here’s a short story about something that regularly happens, which I think illustrates how powerful our perceptions are and which makes me
really curious and sometimes tips me into irritation. My surname is Peppin. I’ve never met anyone else called Peppin
apart from my own family. So that might
mean it’s an unusual name (my perception?).
It’s not unusual enough though; there is a familiarity about it I think
which results in a perception filter kicking into action, and what happens is
that my name regularly gets remade into Pippin.
This doesn’t happen occasionally, it is a frequent occurrence; I might write an email as Peppin, but documentation
gets addressed Pippin; I’m asked what my name is, I spell out the E but it gets
remade into an I; name badges, invitations…. I could go on. (I did once get called Meggy Poppins by one
organisation, but that’s another story!).
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This is my third contribution to this advent series, and I
have undertaken each previous piece of writing without a plan. Stare at the screen, touch the keyboard,
close the laptop, go away, and think.
Think, think, think. In past
years, something good has arrived for me; when I clear space, the writing flows
without effort or design. This time has
been harder, but now that the thoughts are flowing in, I’m seeing how our
perceptions create our paths in everything.
One of my maturing processes has been an acceptance of
“being”. I see that being with negative
emotions increases peace, rather than battling with them which increases angst.
I can be happy sad, old young, wise
stupid, they all exist in me. I am not
one thing or another.
Paths open themselves up when I allow myself to “be”,
particularly when I feel uncertain or vulnerable. I accept my uncertainty and my vulnerability,
and I walk alongside them. I feel less
desire to know, and more inclination to explore.
This is the path that appeared…...
I’m curious about the need for certainty, where it comes
from, how it helps us make sense, and what it offers. The desire to quantify “human capital” for
example is an area in which so much is being invested. I’m genuinely puzzled at how much proof we
need to trust in our judgement.
- Don’t we already know that being treated with respect, being expected to be resourceful intelligent and responsible will lead to good things, good relationships, trust and in turn these will very probably lead to high performance?
- Don’t we know that arrogance, leader distance and greed distort reality and contaminate purpose? What more do we need to know?
- What else do we need to give us certainty?
We can’t quantify potential, love, power, respect – human
qualities; much of the work I and many others do are about creating the
conditions for our potential to be released.
Creating time, space to think, to be, to connect with no other
purpose. When we are looking for certainty, we look
for evidence to support our particular truth – I wonder, in what way are we
limiting ourselves when we search to validate our perceptions?
limited perception |
I’m torn between mild irritation and as I progress through
life – curiosity, you see, I also haven’t met anyone else called Pippin. But in
the lexicon there’s an apple and a character from the Hobbit that are Pippin. So the perception filter makes sense and
remakes my name. Somehow whilst uncommon
- Pippin is more familiar.
I wonder what this means; it appears to be unconscious
reconfiguring of the letters to fit some sense making need.
A redesign of a name – it’s easy to see what’s
happened. I can correct it.
This is making me very curious about all the other
reconfiguring we do that is outside our consciousness; reorganising, relabeling
– people, situations, experiences, to fit our perceptual expectations. We can’t correct those.
What are our perception filters protecting us from?
What is buried in us that we don’t know informs how we
perceive each other, what truth we see and a flood of other questions?
What are we making in organisations when we talk about
leadership, when we talk about talent, when we talk about management?
Where is this leading?
I don’t know. But I’m curious,
and I learn that the more we seek certainty, the more we are somehow rejecting
important truths. There are things we
can never know; but there is something at play that substitutes an I for an E
to make sense, or a you for a me to feel safe.
Substitution (with thanks to Japanfanzz for image) |
I was telling a friend how much this irritated me, when I’d
recently been to a large event where everywhere I was a Pippin for a day, and a
life for those who met me once. We had
fortune cookies – know what mine said?
Oh what a lovely coincidence.
What you call me doesn’t matter. It’s what I know about me that matters. That was my interpretation.
I have for the live of me been asking people to call me by my given name and its liberating to live that other name sometimes although sometimes I wonder why cant you just get my name - its written down, I've said it others have said yet you call me this other name. This advent piece made me smile
ReplyDeleteAlways great to start the month with a smile - thanks for sharing your enjoyment (and the fact that you, like both Meg and me, are a fellow sufferer).
ReplyDeleteI'm fascinated by this brilliant analysis of what we lose when we try to use a limited short-hand vocabulary in our perception of the world. For some reason it reminds me of the wonderful children's animation "Sarah and Duck" where the stories are as unexpected as they are delightful; I think children are perhaps better at taking the world at face value and I wonder at what age we lose that ability to see things as they really are, and start seing things the way we expect them to be.
ReplyDeletePS One of my sisters is called Keren, and she is always furious when people spell it Karen or Kieran. She was once even "corrected" by her class teacher at school who thought it was Karen!
Something in all this about our identity perhaps? I remember at school a teacher who I adored who also infuriated me - she insisted in calling me Meegan as opposed to Megan - I was a little girl proud of her welsh heritage indignant at the mispronunciation.
ReplyDelete(This is Meg as I had problems with my URL for some reason)
So many people have responded to this recognising my experience as their own. I am resolved to ensure I do not fall into this trap myself.