When we’re in a positive frame of mind we’re 31% smarter and more productive according to common sense and also research. And yet,
There are so many reasons for our reason to be blinded by anger right now. To feel righteous indignation. On every side of any issue at all hours of the day or night. It’s inescapable. I don’t have a television and I don’t watch the news, but even I can’t escape it at the gym or when friends ask, “What do you think about what’s happening...?”
Plus, we’re overwhelmed. We’re wired to identify what hurts and make it stop. We're wired for direct response to pain, cruelty, and suffering. We aren’t wired to see and hear about so much pain, cruelty, and suffering and not make it stop.
To survive the onslaught of exposure, we adapt. Day by day, piece by piece, we harden ourselves to blunt the blows we fear are incoming and the powerful emotions we fear are outgoing. We build up psychological body armor to cope with adversity, with the hard things in life.
The ability to arm ourselves is a good sign. It means we can dig deeper than before and find reserves we didn’t realize we had. We become experts on what’s working right now on our behalf and for those who depend upon us.
Every day we wake up alive, we adjust to the weight of our armor as the new normal.
For this ability to adapt, though, we pay a price.
Focus narrows vision. Safety seeks the company of like-minded. Shelter shields us from the discomfort of difference. When we feel safe and secure in our ability to defend ourselves, we don’t have to listen. And yet,
You can only run so far in armor.
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Operating unarmed on the frontlines of 21st century conflict as a humanitarian aid worker gave me insight into human interaction tested by insecure environments. Over and over, I was dropped into places of extreme uncertainty, volatility, and where I had little or no knowledge or experience. In these settings, my education, upbringing, and culture were irrelevant. What was left? Instinct, intuition, and the opportunity to adapt.
Operating unarmed elevates the importance of relationships.
From the moment I landed on each new assignment, I knew two things to be true:
First, as a foreigner who needed local cooperation, the burden of proof was on me to prove my trustworthiness. My knowledge and experience were secondary to what the locals knew. Deference was my default in every encounter.
Second, as a foreigner who was unarmed in the middle of a warzone, my survival depended on the will of the local population. I needed them to want me alive more than the price they could get for my head.
Equally, their survival depended on the life-saving resources, my colleagues and I were positioned to deliver.
Over time, I realized that without an understanding that in every interaction our needs were interconnected, all the education, training and expertise in the world was of little help. The success of my decisions was determined by the quality of my relationships.
Operating unarmed elevates the importance of relationship with yourself.
As civilian non-combatants and aid workers know all too well, vulnerability is not negotiable. Vulnerability is our starting point. In fact, I discovered being unarmed is a defensive tactic. It’s a way to disarm. When armed soldiers and fighters saw I was defenseless, it freed them to put their weapons down, or at least put the safety back on.
Operating unarmed in places like Afghanistan, made it easier to have truly productive conversations with the locals—providing me access that the military simply never could have. Being vulnerable led us to a new level of cooperation.
Operating unarmed is powerful on and off the battlefield.
Why does this matter and why now? What’s does this have to do with the weight we carry as humans burdened by divisive attacks on every front and the heaviness of an incessant news cycle?
If operating unarmed was such a powerful tactic that it could get conservative, Taliban-supporting farmers to work with me, a Western female they viewed as having brought shame to my family’s name by leaving my father’s house alone, consider…how might it help you in executive leadership? What’s the difference between insurgents who target unarmed civilians and CEOs who treat their colleagues with suspicion and employees like disposable liabilities?
When the pressure’s on, no matter who are where you are: unhealthy teams turn on each other. When we’re not working well together—in the office or at home—we become protective of our “turf” and suspicious of “the enemy”. We become competitors when we are supposed to be on the same team. As a result, we become less productive as organizations, communities, and citizens. We short-circuit our capacity for critical and creative thinking that could instead build a bridge across difference.
Sound familiar?
If so, the good news is: it doesn’t have to be this way. Just like physical health, we can train for a positive, collaborative frame of mind. We can choose to acknowledge our armor and find the opportunity to disarm.
When you have the courage to willfully, strategically remove your armor, you can discover that in every encounter—even, and especially, when we fundamentally disagree or feel threatened—our needs are still interconnected.
Ready to learn how to anchor yourself and your team, so that you can keep your head on straight when everyone else is losing theirs? Let’s connect.
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