1. Senge: Chapter 9
Personal Mastery

2. PERSONAL MASTERY: Introduction
The Spirit of the Learning Organization
Mastery and Proficiency
Why we want it
Resistance
The Discipline of Personal Mastery
Holding creative Tension
Prepared by James R. Burns

3. Introduction, Continued
STRUCTURAL CONFLICT: THE POWER OF YOUR POWERLESSNESS
Commitment to the Truth
Using the Subconscious
Personal Mastery and the Fifth Discipline
Fostering Personal Mastery in the Organization
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4. Personal Mastery = Personal Growth & Learning
People with high levels of PM are continually expanding their ability to create the results in life they truly seek.
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5. Mastery and Proficiency
Goes beyond competence and skills
First, we must continually clarify what is important to us.
Second, we must learn how to see current reality more clearly.
The gap between what we want and what our current reality is generates creative tension
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6. What its like to have lots of PM
For such people, a vision is a calling rather than just a good idea
PM is not something you possess, it is a process--a lifelong discipline
People with lots of PM are more committed, they take more initiative
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7. Employers want PM for their employees because
Full personal development has a strong impact on individual happiness
Work should be seen as an opportunity to build something to last, something of value
PM is a means toward the organization’s ends
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8. Prepared by James R. Burns
Resistance
Many individuals and organizations do resist PM
No one will ever be able to measure how much PM contributes to productivity and the bottom line
Cynicism: humanistic management over promised itself to firms in the 1970s
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9. Prepared by James R. Burns
More Resistance
Could it threaten the established order of a well-managed company? YES!!
TO EMPOWER PEOPLE IN AN UNALIGNED ORGANIZATION CAN BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE
Without this alignment, organizational stress will increase
“People don’t resist change. They resist being changed..”
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10. The Discipline of Personal Mastery
PM is a discipline, a series of principles and practices that continually expand PM
Most adults have little sense of real vision
Our personal vision must be positive
An example of diminished vision is focusing on the means rather than the ends or results
The ability to focus on ultimate intrinsic desires, not only on secondary goals, is a cornerstone of PM
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11. Holding creative Tension
The gap between our vision and our current reality is called creative tension
The principle of creative tension is central to the principle of PM, integrating all elements of the discipline
Still creative tension often leads to anxiety, sadness, discouragement or worry.
But these negative emotions are emotional tension and not creative tension
Watch out for the eroding goals archetype
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12. “STRUCTURAL CONFLICT”: THE POWER OF YOUR POWERLESSNESS
Many of us have a dominant belief that we are not able to fulfill our desires
a by-product of growing up
We believe in our powerlessness--our inability to bring into being all the things we really care about.
Page 157 illustrates the conflict--out vision pulling us forward, while our belief in powerlessness pulls us back
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13. Eliminating self-limiting beliefs
Many of us do not believe that we are worthy or deserving to have what we truly desire
Manifestations are: loss of energy, not able to finish the job, unexpected obstacles develop, people let us down, we don’t believe we can do it
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14. Strategies for coping with self-limiting beliefs--Bro Ray Fritz
Letting our vision erode
Conflict Manipulation
Will power
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15. Prepared by James R. Burns
Focusing on what we don’t want: conflict manipulation (negative vision)
The way many athletic coaches manipulate and motivate their players
The way many managers point out the highly unpleasant consequences if the company’s goals are not achieved
Do you really want to live your life in a state of fear of failure?
For such people, there is little joy in life
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16. Third-strategy--WILL POWER
We psych ourselves up to overpower all forms of resistance to achieving our goals
We motivate ourselves through heightened volition
This dogged determination gets things done at work, but doesn’t turn the trick at home
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17. The bottom line of Self-Limiting Beliefs (SLBs)
They are hard to change--psychologists widely concur
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18. To change SLBs, we need a COMMITMENT TO THE TRUTH
Tell yourself the truth
Continually broadening our awareness
Continually deepening our understanding of the structures underlying current events
First, must recognize the structural conflict-- recognize the patterns
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19. Structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner
Discovering these structures at work is the stock-and-trade of people with high levels of PM
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20. Truth--seeing reality more and more as it is
Pure observation--Buddhists
Witnessing--Hindus
“What a tragedy that many must die before he wakes up”--Koran
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”--Christianity
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21. Using the Subconscious; Or, You Don’t Really Need to Figure it all out
People with high levels of PM can accomplish extraordinarily complex tasks with grace and ease
The subconscious is intimately involved in PM: through it, all of us deal with complexity
The aspect of our mind that is exceedingly capable of dealing with complexity is called the subconscious
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22. Prepared by James R. Burns
Subconscious--
What distinguishes people with high levels of personal mastery is they have developed a higher level of rapport between their normal awareness and their subconscious
Subconscious capacity is larger by a factor of 10 as compared to the conscious
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23. Prepared by James R. Burns
The Core Values of PM
Integrate reason and intuition
See your connectedness to the world
Be compassionate
Be committed to the whole
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24. Fostering PM in an Organization
You can’t force employees into PM--to do so is the most sure-fire way to impede the genuine spread of commitment to PM
Leaders must foster a climate in with the principles of PM are practiced in daily life
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25. The Organizational Climate
establishing visions, being committed to the truth, challenging the status quo
Will reinforce the idea that PM is truly valued in the organization
Will reinforce the idea that PM is a continual, ongoing process
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26. Prepared by James R. Burns
The Climate, Continued
Work to develop all five disciplines at the same time
Leaders should be a model
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27. If you can’t picture it, you won’t make it
You have to know where you are headed
Choose your companions as if your life depended on it
Leaders know when to put their foot down, and when to back down
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28. Copyright C 2000 by James R. Burns
All rights reserved world-wide. CLEAR Project Steering Committee members have a right to use these slides in their presentations. However, they do not have the right to remove this copyright or to remove the “prepared by….” footnote that appears at the bottom of each slide.
Prepared by James R. Burns