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Last updated: 2025-12-18

Leading Through Fire (April-May 2022)

Background

Week 1: Learning to Learn: Meta Models

!?Learning to Learn: Meta Models

Course:

DAILY - Power Hour

We recommend completing your Power Hour at least 4 days this week.

As shared prior, it should include a combination of sleep hygiene, hydration, movement, biofeedback (or attention training), gratitude, and MITs (Most Important Tasks).

Share any insights below as you go.

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Mindset Reporting (1/3)

Growth vs. Fixed

Notice 3 places in your work this week that were (even slightly) coming from a fixed mindset.

Name one of them here:

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Review the Transtheoretical Model of Change

Where are you really?

Answer the two questions below:

1. How does reviewing this model and its fine-grained distinctions of the stages in the change process inform any of your prior personal or professional efforts to change?

(Use a specific example from both personal and professional to briefly explore)

2. Where do you identify on this model coming into this program?

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Trust 360: Find Your Stakeholders and Ask About Your One Big Thing

This exercise will be completed in your boat team session this week. Feel free to use this space here to reference the assignment and share your comments below.

Find the top two stakeholders in your life and work (one personal and one professional) and ask them this question:

–

If there was one thing I could do to increase my credibility, reliability, or empathy or decrease my self-orientation [have them choose the most important one they think you need to work on], what would make the biggest difference to you to improve our relationship?

–

At the end of this course, we’ll ask you to follow up with them to see how things have changed.

Recommended Reading: How Leaders Can Ask for the Feedback No One Wants to Give Them (HBR)

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Trust 360: Step Two - Schedule Your Check-In

Schedule your Check-In

Schedule and your end of course conversation with your stakeholders for a follow-up checkin in 6 weeks.

Check-in format:

Ask, “Have you noticed any difference in my… (your selected 1/4: credibility, reliability, empathy or self-orientation)?”

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Group Engagement

Get to know the group

Comment on at least three other posts in the feed this week. Use the Situation-Behavior-Impact format in your comments when applicable.

Here are a couple examples of the SBI format with appreciation:

Example 1:“Susie, when we were in the elevator at work (Situation), and you invited me to lunch today (Behavior), I felt included in the new team (Impact): Thanks!”

Example 2:“Mom, when I was on the train this morning (Situation), I saw a guy eating his brown bag breakfast and I thought of all the times you made me eggs before school (Behavior), and I am so glad you were there for us like that (Impact): Thanks!”

Following this format makes the appreciation targeted and specific and more likely to be absorbed and appreciated.

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Mindset Reporting (2/3)

Growth vs. Fixed

Notice 3 places in your work this week that were (even slightly) coming from a fixed mindset.

Name one of them here:

Source:

Week 1 Integration / AMA Recording

!?Week 1 Integration / AMA Recording

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Mindset Reporting (3/3)

Growth vs. Fixed

Notice 3 places in your work this week that were (even slightly) coming from a fixed mindset.

Name one of them here:

Source:

Week 2: Transactional Analysis 2.0

!?LTF Week 2: Transactional Analysis 2.0

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DAILY - Power Hour

We recommend completing your Power Hour at least 4 days each week.

As shared prior, it should include a combination of sleep hygiene, hydration, movement, biofeedback (or attention training), gratitude, and MITs (Most Important Tasks).

Share any insights below as you go.

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Schedule Your One Crucial Conversation

Transactional Analysis 2.0

We’re going to first run exercises around this in our boat team meetings this week. Afterwards, the assignment will be to schedule the actual conversation as follows:

Identify three relationships where you play each of the roles in the drama triangle (Victim, Rescuer, Persecutor).

Then, pick the most crucial ONE, and schedule that conversation (time/place/person).

Pick the most relevant other member of the triangle to have the conversation.

Guidelines

In each conversation, identify what is is you actually want.

Then discuss the following questions for each situation:

If you’re the Victim, ask: How will I take personal responsibility for my part in this dynamic?

If you’re the Rescuer, ask: What questions do I need to ask? Of Whom?

If you’re the Persecutor, ask: What stand do I need to take? What uncomfortable truths do I need to address?

Use the SBI format in each conversation with your request being the substance of your desire to move into a more Self Authoring dynamic.

—-> Helpful worksheet to reference for these conversations.

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WEEKEND - Rest & Recovery

VIDEO

For FGP’s breakdown of Active vs. Passive recovery, see this above video from Flow Fundamentals.

Finding Flow is about learning to struggle more efficiently and recover more deeply.

Take the weekend to rest and recover and we’ll get back at it on Monday.

If you have any thoughts, comments, or insights, feel free to share them below.

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Reading - The Rise of Victimhood Culture

Read Conor Friedersdorf’s piece, The Rise of Victimhood Culture, in The Atlantic.

Next, please respond to these questions in the Main Feed:

  1. According to the author, what are the main qualities/characteristics of “honor culture?” How are grievances/imbalances addressed? (bonus points if you’re able to draw any comparisons to Malcolm Gladwell’s treatment of honor cultures in his book, Outliers)
  2. According to the author, what are the main qualities/characteristics of “dignity culture?” How are grievances/imbalances addressed?
  3. What social trends and initial conditions are necessary for the rise of Victim culture? How do its truth claims/appeals to legitimacy differ from either honor or dignity cultures?
  4. How does reading this article and assessing our contemporary social discourse inform your understanding of Drama Triangle dynamics?

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Power Hour Check

Double Loop Learning

Now that it’s been a week, how have you done on your Power Hour since the start of the course?

Do you need to make any modifications in timing, activities, etc.?

Post insights and (re)commitments below.

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Trust 360: Mindset Review

When you invited critical feedback from your stakeholder, did you ever find your identity threatened?

If so, did you notice changes in heart rate, breathe or other sensations?

How did you move through it?

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Week 2 Integration / AMA Recording

!?Week 2 Integration / AMA Recording

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Week 3: Accentuate the Negative

!?Week 3: Accentuate the Negative

Read “The Power of a Positive No” Introduction

Read the intro chapter here: —-> The Great Gift of No

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Read “I Have A Dream” Speech

Read MLK’s I Have a Dream speech.

Identify the three phases of the Positive No model with respect to this speech and share below.

Identify Your 5 Slots (Warren Buffet Rule)

Read the Inc article, Why Warren Buffett’s ‘20-Slot Rule’ Will Make You Insanely Successful and Wealthy
Identify 5 things that currently take up a “slot” in your life (time, energy and bandwidth) that you would choose to say “No” to.

This could be work related, family related, or personal (ex. your relationship to social media).

So identify 5 things in your life that are overgrown, cluttered, or taking up too much space.

Pick the most pressing 3, and use those to prompt your Positive No conversation for this week.

Map Out Your Most Critical “Positive No” Conversation

What’s your deeper yes?

Map the process of “Deeper Yes, Positive No, Invitational Yes” in three instances and choose the most critical one to have the conversation.

Who, when and where are you going to have the Positive No discussion?

For this exercise, think about…

Source:

DAILY - Power Hour

We recommend completing your Power Hour at least 4 days each week.

As shared prior, it should include a combination of sleep hygiene, hydration, movement, biofeedback (or attention training), gratitude, and MITs (Most Important Tasks).

Share any insights below as you go.

Report Back & Identify the Triple A Trap

Name if or how this dynamic showed up

Share how your Positive No conversation went below…

Then explore—-in the conversation, did you notice yourself (or others) Avoiding, Attacking or Accommodating?

[](https://media1-production-mightynetworks.imgix.net/asset/31741194/Screen_Shot_2021-11-29_at_8.47.13_AM.png?ixlib=rails-4.2.0&fm=jpg&q=75&auto=format

If so, see if you can introduce the four commitments into your/their decision making. (Yes, No, Commit to Commit, Renegotiate)

Weekly AMA/Integration Call #3 - Recording

!?Week 3 Integration / AMA

LTF Week 4: Wicked Solutions to Wicked Problems

!?Wicked Solutions to Wicked Problems

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Read ‘Wicked Solutions to Wicked Problems’ Excerpt

Stealing Fire Excerpt

Now that we’ve mapped out the biology and phenomenology beneath STER, we’re going to turn our attention to a different couple of questions: While these states may make us feel better, can they help us think better? Do these short-term peaks enable us to solve real-world problems?

In 2013 we were invited to participate in the Red Bull Hacking Creativity project, a joint effort between scientists at the MIT Media Lab, a group of TED Fellows, and the namesake energy drink company. Conceived by Dr. Andy Walshe, Red Bull’s director of high performance (and a member of Flow Genome Project’s advisory board), the project was the largest meta-analysis of creativity research ever conducted, reviewing more than thirty thousand research papers and interviewing hundreds of other subject-matter experts, from break dancers and circus performers to poets and rock stars. “It was an impossible goal,” Walshe explained, “but I figured if we could crack something as hard to pin down as creativity, we could figure out almost anything after that.”

As of late 2016, with the initial phases of the research completed, the study came to two overarching conclusions. First, creativity is essential for solving complex problems— the kinds we often face in a fast-paced world. Second, we have very little success training people to be more creative. And there’s a pretty simple explanation for this failure: we’re trying to train a skill, but what we really need to be training is a state of mind.

Conventional logic works really well for solving discrete problems with definite answers. But the “wicked problems” of today36 require more creative responses. These challenges defy singular stable solutions: issues as serious as war or poverty, or as banal as traffic and trends. Throw money, people, or time at any of these and you may fix a symptom, but you create additional problems: financial aid to the developing world, for example, often breeds corruption in addition to its intended relief; adding more lanes to the highway encourages more drivers and more gridlock; fighting wars to make the world safer can make it more dangerous than ever.

Solving wicked problems requires more than a direct assault on obvious symptoms.

Roger Martin of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management conducted a lengthy study of exceptional leaders stretching from Procter & Gamble’s then-CEO A. G. Lafley to choreographer Martha Graham and discovered that their ability to find solutions required holding conflicting perspectives and using that friction to synthesize a new idea. “The ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas,” Martin writes in his book The Opposable Mind, “. . . is the only way to address this kind of complexity.”But developing Martin’s “opposable mind” isn’t easy. You have to give up exclusively identifying with your own, singular point of view. If you want to train this kind of creativity and problem solving, what the research shows is that the either/or logic of normal consciousness is simply the wrong tool for the job.

Scientists have discovered a better tool. The amplified information processing and perspective that altered states provide can help solve these types of complex problems, and they can often do so faster than more conventional approaches. Take meditation. Research done on Tibetan Buddhists38 in the 1990s showed that longtime contemplative practice can produce brainwaves in the gamma range. Gamma waves are unusual. They arise primarily during “binding,”39 when novel ideas come together for the first time and carve new neural pathways. We experience binding as “Ah-Ha insight,” that eureka moment, the telltale signature of sudden inspiration. This meant that meditation could amplify complex problem solving, but, as the monks needed to put in more than 34,000 hours (roughly thirty years) to develop this skill, it was a finding with limited application.

So researchers began to consider the impact of short-term meditation on mental performance. Was it possible, they wondered, to cut some monastic corners and still get similar results? Turns out, you can cut quite a few corners. Initial studies showed eight weeks of meditation40 training measurably sharpened focus and cognition. Later ones whittled that down to five weeks.

Then, in 2009, psychologists at the University of North Carolina found that even four days of meditation produced significant improvement in attention, memory, vigilance, creativity, and cognitive flexibility. “Simply stated,” lead researcher Fadel Zeidan explained41 to Science Daily, “the profound improvements we found after just four days of meditation training are really surprising. . . . [They’re] comparable to results that have been documented after far more extensive training.” Rather than pulling a caffeinated all- nighter to force a eureka insight, or devoting decades to becoming a monk, we now know that even a few days’ training in mindfulness can up the odds of a breakthrough considerably.

In the field of flow research, we see the same thing: being “in the zone” significantly boosts creativity. In a recent University of Sydney study42, researchers relied on transcranial magnetic stimulation to induce flow—using a weak magnetic pulse to knock out the prefrontal cortex and create a twenty-to-forty-minute flow state. Subjects were then given a classic test of creative problem solving: the nine-dot problem. Connect nine dots with four lines without lifting pencil from paper in ten minutes. Under normal circumstances, fewer than 5 percent of the population pulls it off. In the control group, no one did. In the flow-induced group, 40 percent connected the dots in record time, or eight times better than the norm.

And this isn’t a one-off finding. When neuroscientists at DARPA and Advanced Brain Monitoring43 used a different technique—neurofeedback—to prompt flow, they found that soldiers solved complex problems and mastered new skills up to 490 percent faster than normal. It’s for this reason that, when the global consultancy McKinsey did a ten-year global study of companies, they found that top executives—meaning those most called upon to solve strategically significant “wicked problems”—reported being up to 500 percent more productive in flow. Similar results are showing up in psychedelic research. Several decades ago, James Fadiman, a researcher at the International Foundation for Advanced Study, in Menlo Park, California, helped bring together twenty-seven test subjects—mainly engineers, architects, and mathematicians drawn from places like Stanford and Hewlett-Packard— for one specific reason: for months prior, each of these subjects had been struggling (and failing) to solve a highly technical problem.

Test subjects were divided into groups of four, with each group receiving two treatment sessions. Some were given 50 micrograms of LSD; others took 100 milligrams of mescaline. Both are microdosages, well below the level needed to produce psychedelic effects. Then subjects took tests designed to measure nine categories of cognitive performance enhancement (from heightened concentration to the ability to know when the right solution presents itself), and spent four hours working on their problems.While everyone experienced a boost in creativity—some as much as 200 percent— what got the most attention were the real-world breakthroughs that emerged: “Design of a linear electron accelerator beam-steering device, a mathematical theorem regarding NOR-gate circuits, a new design for a vibratory microtome, a space probe designed to measure solar properties, and a new conceptual model of a photon.”

None of these practical, technical achievements are the kind of result that most people associate with the navel-gazing world of psychedelics. But similar outcomes are happening in Fadiman’s current survey of microdosing among professionals. With more than four hundred responses from people in dozens of fields, the majority, as Fadiman recently explained, report “enhanced pattern recognition [and] can see more of the pieces at once of a problem they are trying to solve.”

With these developments, psychedelics have begun moving from recreational diversion to performance-enhancing supplement. “A shift began about four or five years ago,” author and venture capitalist Tim Ferriss45 told us. “Once Steve Jobs and other successful people began recommending the use of psychedelics for enhancing creativity and problem solving, the public became a little more open to the possibility.”

And, as Ferris explained on CNN, it wasn’t just the cofounder of Apple who made the leap. “The billionaires I know, almost without exception, use hallucinogens on a regular basis. These are people who are trying to be very disruptive. They look at problems in the world and they try to ask entirely new questions.”

Wicked problems are those without easy answers—where our rational, binary logic breaks down and our normal tools fail us. But the information richness of a nonordinary state affords us perspective and allows us to make connections where none may have existed before. And it doesn’t seem to matter which technique we deploy: mindfulness training, technological stimulation or pharmacological priming, the end results are comparably substantial. Consider the gains: a 200 percent boost in creativity, a 490 percent boost in learning, a 500 percent boost in productivity.

Creativity, learning, and productivity are essential skills and those percentage gains are big numbers. If they were merely the result of a few studies done by a couple of labs, they would be easier to dismiss. But there are now seven decades of research, conducted by hundreds of scientists on thousands of participants, showing that when it comes to complex problem solving, ecstasis could be the “wicked solution” we’ve been looking for.

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Comparing Polarities and Leadership

Bhagavad-Gita & Kipling

Compare the Bhagavad-Gita passage to the two lines in Kipling’s famous poem *If. *

Then answer the following questions:

  1. What notion is captured between the Gita and Kipling that applies to Polarities Management?
  2. Why did Emerson, Thoreau, Gandhi, and King all reflect on these sentiments in their own leadership? What was it in particular about these leaders and their historic challenges that might have drawn them to these sentiments?
  3. How might it inform yours?

If: Rudyard Kipling

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same…”

Bhagavad-Gita: A Conversation between Sri Krishna and Arjun

Five thousand years ago, when Arjuna refused to fight against his relatives in the upcoming battle at Kurukshetra, Krishna (a Hindu god who had taken the form of Arjuna’s charioteer), overcame Arjuna’s reluctance to fight by showing him how personal preference and seeking of good, or avoiding of suffering is sometimes inadequate for a true leader. Instead, Krishna insists that Arjuna must fight despite his personal ambivalence, and that his only redemption lay not in achieving his desired outcomes, but in the singular surrender to his dharma or life’s purpose.

Arjun: “Hey Govind, the very thought of war itself gives me grief and I feel dejected, therefore, I will not fight.”

Krishna: “Hey Arjun, you grieve for those who should not be grieved for and yet seemingly speak like a wise man; but the wise men do not grieve for the living or the dead.”

Arjun: “Wherever I look, I see nothing but evil and unpleasant omens in the upcoming battle.”

Krishna: “a karma-yogi does not care for omens. He is unattached to everything because he neither rejoices when meeting pleasant circumstances nor does he ever feel dejected if he encounters any unpleasant events.” And furthermore: “my devotee always renounces good and evil premonitions and circumstances, and he, while fixing his mind on me, by my grace, overcomes all difficulties.”

Arjun: “In this battle, I do not foresee any good resulting from the slaughter of my friends and relatives.”

Krishna: “there is nothing more welcome to a warrior than a righteous war, Arjun. *One’s own duty though devoid of merit is preferable to the duty of another well performed, *because even death in the performance of one’s duty brings happiness.”

Arjun: “But I do not covet victory, kingdom or even luxuries. And of what use will this kingdom, luxuries or even life be to us, if we kill all the friends of our childhood days.”

Krishna: “A Karma-yogi should fight while treating victory and defeat alike, gain and loss alike, pain and pleasure alike and fighting thus, he does not incur sin.”

Arjun: “those for whose sake we seek kingdom and pleasure- teachers, uncles, sons, nephews, grand uncles and other relatives, they all stand here today on the battlefield staking their lives, property and wealth.”

Krishna: “Dedicating all actions to Me and with your mind fixed on Me, freed from the feelings of hope and sadness and cured of mental fever, Hey Arjun, you must fight. Because he who has given up all desires and has become free from the feelings of “I” and “Mine” eventually attains peace.”

Arjun: “Hey Govind*, *I have yet to understand, what delight can we derive by slaying the relatives of Dhritraashtra.”

Krishna: “…Delight is not derived either by fighting or by not fighting. On the contrary, it is derived by being free from likes and dislikes and that too, only after controlling one’s senses.”

Source:

Read ‘Did we evolve to see reality as it exists?’

Read the following article from Big Think:

—-> Did we evolve to see reality as it exists? No, says cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

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Paradoxical Koans

Never the Same River Twice

Of the below quotes, pick your favorite and describe how it has shown up in your life.

“Love tells me I am everything, wisdom tells me I am nothing and between these two banks flows the river of my life!”– Nisargadatta

“When you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same” - Kipling

“We are not expected to finish The Work (nor are we excused from It!)” - Talmud

“You’re perfect exactly as you are (and you could use a little work).” - Suzuki Roshi

“To dare is to risk losing one’s footing. To not dare is to risk losing oneself” – Kierkegaard

“I don’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity. I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.” - E.B. White

“One man gathers what another man spills.” – Grateful Dead

“The closer to the Gate, the fiercer the Dragons.” – Zen Proverb

“We must be aware of our shadows or beware our shadows.” Herman Hesse

“The difference between a tonic and toxin is the dose.” - Paracelsus

“Take the hit as a gift.” - George Leonard

“Find what you love and let it kill you.” – Kinky Friedman

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DAILY - Power Hour

We recommend completing your Power Hour at least 4 days each week.

As shared prior, it should include a combination of sleep hygiene, hydration, movement, biofeedback (or attention training), gratitude, and MITs (Most Important Tasks).

Share any insights below as you go.

Source:

Schedule a Professional Polarity Mapping Session

Professional Setting

Print out (or feel comfortable sketching/drawing/reproducing) the Polarity Map and schedule and facilitate one professional mapping session with your team at work.

In the session:

  1. Identify the most pressing polarity in play for you and stakeholders, e.g. (Investment vs. Profit, Centralization vs. Decentralization, Remote vs. In-Person, Efficiency vs. Redundancy, Growth vs. Stability, Legacy vs. Disruption, Purpose vs. Profits)
  2. Frame them in mutually neutral/negative terms
  3. (Bonus move) Switch roles so that you fill in the negative of the position you normally take, and the *positive *of the role you normally oppose
  4. Be sure to include as many Next Actions and Early Warnings as possible

—-> Here’s a link to our sample Polarity Map Template

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Polarity Mapping Conversation Report (Organizational)

How did the polarity map for your organization go?

As a reminder, here was the task regarding polarities in your organization:

Identify the most pressing polarity in your organization, create a polarity map and post it.

Bonus: Find an opportunity to facilitate mapping the polarities with a leadership team

Share any insights below (or post a photo of the map).

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Weekly AMA/Integration Call #4 - Recording

!?Week 4 Integration / AMA

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Week 5: Immunity to Change

!?Immunity to Change

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Read ‘The Real Reason People Won’t Change’

Read the HBR article, The Real Reason People Won’t Change, by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey

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Leverage Unconscious Processing: The Zeigarnik Effect

  1. Write Down a Serious Question You Are Wrestling With
  2. Sleep On It (Delta Waves + Unconscious Processing)
  3. Wake Up—Write Down “What Am I Pretending Not to Know?”
  4. FreeWrite Non-Stop for Five Minutes Your Unfiltered Answer

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DAILY - Power Hour

We recommend completing your Power Hour at least 4 days each week.

As shared prior, it should include a combination of sleep hygiene, hydration, movement, biofeedback (or attention training), gratitude, and MITs (Most Important Tasks).

Share any insights below as you go.

Source:

Weekly AMA/Integration Call #5 - Recording

!?Week 5 Integration / AMA

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Week 6: Heroic Leadership

!?Week 6: Heroic Leadership

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Trust 360: Final Check-In

Host your check-in

Host your end-of-course check-in with your two stakeholders for the Trust 360 exercise.

Check-in format:

Ask, “Have you noticed any difference in my… (your selected 1/4: credibility, reliability, empathy or self-orientation) this week?”

Post your results and thoughts below. Name the quality you’ve selected plus the stakeholder scores.

Source:

DAILY - Power Hour

We recommend completing your Power Hour at least 4 days each week.

As shared prior, it should include a combination of sleep hygiene, hydration, movement, biofeedback (or attention training), gratitude, and MITs (Most Important Tasks).

Share any insights below as you go.

Source:

Week 6 Integration / AMA

!?Week 6 Integration / AMA

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Bonus: Surviving & Thriving in VUCA Conditions

!?Bonus: Surviving & Thriving in VUCA Conditions

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Appendix

Might Networks Course Index

Leading Through Fire [April-May 2022] - Future Proof Your Leadership This course shows you how to deal with volatility, uncertainty and complexity… and lead with resilience and grace through challenging times.