In yesterday's post I talked about how breakdowns are openings for new designs. But I didn't really talk about what breakdowns are. Breakdown is a key concept for leaders, designers, and coaches, so let's spend a little more space exploring it.
Breakdown is a term borrowed from the German philosopher Martin Heidegger who studied and wrote about what is most ordinary and everyday in our human lives. In fact, what he studied was so "ordinary everyday" that for the most part what he studied is invisible to us. In some sense, his life's project was to make visible to us what it is that makes us human beings. And breakdowns are one of these ordinary everyday occurrences that reveal our humanness.
Cognitively, a breakdowns appears to us as an moment where - unexpectedly - what to do next in order to accomplish our task is no longer obvious and transparent to us. When we're in breakdown we are stuck.
Somatically (in our bodies), being in breakdown can feel unsettling and even shocking. It can also summon or increase the flow of energy.
Emotionally, being thrown into breakdown can give rise to anger, sadness, and even shame. And breakdowns can shift our mood to one of confusion, frustration, resignation, guilt, despair, depression, and even panic.
Breakdowns are also opportunities for our inner critics (superegos) to attack us with negative self-assessments like "You never get it right!" or "You idiot!" or even more colorful criticisms. But experiencing breakdowns doesn't mean there is something wrong with you - it means you are encountering something new about yourself and life.
Linguistically, a breakdown is a declaration that we make to ourselves and others that we are stuck.
Breakdowns in and of themselves aren't necessarily a bad thing. After all, life is mysterious and the mystery presents us with breakdown after breakdown. What matters in life is not that you manage to avoid breakdowns - an impossibility - but instead how you cope with the breakdowns that you are thrown into.
is mastery in dealing with breakdowns." - Alan Sieler
Mastery in dealing with breakdowns starts with the recognition that declaring yourself in breakdown is a powerful and empowering move (quite the opposite of what we usually assume). The power of this move is that it creates an opening for learning and designing something new.
If, on the other hand, we deny being in breakdown to ourselves or others, we close ourselves off to learning and designing something new. We create a closing instead of an opening. And this produces entrenchment rather than evolution in our current way of being and living. One of the more visible and significant examples of this today is the Bush administration's refusal to declare they are in breakdown in Iraq and the entrenchment in current policy that they are buried in.
Declaring a breakdown is a powerful move for any leader. It opens the space for new designs, new practices, new ways of being and living. And with these changes come new results. And leadership is about creating new approaches and new results in the face of approaches that aren't working.
Steve, I did a sketch on the subject of breakdowns. Take a look at http://www.guillermowechsler.com/writings/writings.html#breakdown and let me know what you think.
Posted by: mowechsler | February 09, 2007 at 02:29 PM