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HandsHeartAndMind
MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | Categories- "Lead only by your hands, heart, and mind." -- a MeatballMantra.
In the world when everyone has the RightToLeave, you only gain power when people lend it to you. You have to convince them, rather than force them or manipulate them in other ways. That means you have to lead by your "hands, heart, and mind."
- Hands. Be constructive, build, act.
- Heart. Be empathetic, caring, and supportive. Listen.
- Mind. Be knowledgeable, intelligent, wise. Know what is valuable.
This triple is not uncommon. Comenius speaks in Didactia Magna of learning with Head, Hand and Heart, not just with the head.
More generally speaking, to lead people, you want people to find it necessary to follow you. You want to entice them to put their interests through you. To do this, you continuously AddValue? to their interests through your PersonalRelationships with them. If they see you as a source of value, they will be motivated to maintain a stronger PersonalRelationship with you. It's not lock in, but love in.
The danger is making this relationship unilateral. Then you will be bogged down as a ReveredLeader by AdoringFans who have a strong attachment to you but you have no comparable interest in them. That imbalance of attachment will lead to conflicts. Instead, ExchangeValue? rather than simply adding value. Or rather, AddValue? but only to those who AddValue? to you as well. This exchange of value is the essence of the BarnRaising metaphor.
Fortunately, you are a RoleModel when leading by your HandsHeartAndMind. Others will follow you.
There is a deep relationship of this mantra to the thinking of ChristopherAlexander, who focuses on architecture, the act of building, the art of being an architect. Naturally this needs a mind that is seeking, exploring in a scientific sense, knowing about experiences in history. But this mind and knowledge is not enough. There is no way to understand the process of building without doing it yourself (DesignByDoing?), without getting your hands dirty, to really act as a builder, not only as a planner. In building one has to make many decisions, CA talks about 50.000 decisions in a normal house. Each of these decisions can go right or wrong, influencing the overall outcome. The way to get things right is in the resonance between ones heart and the system built and the whole. People have a natural feeling for the order that living systems embody, that is perceivable in the soothing sound of the waves of the sea, the beautiful view of a wild garden, the play of a child, the majesty of an old town like Venice, in masterpieces of art and culture. This is not simple, CA describes it in more than 1200 pages in his TheNatureOfOrder, but it means that HandsHeartAndMind isn't something arbitrary. It holds a deep truth, anyone can trust and build on.
Translation
En français, voir la traduction sur MainsCoeurEtEsprit.
CategoryPower CategoryManagement CategoryJargon