Vedere Consulting

A client of mine is, like many others, afraid at some basic level that he does not have enough to survive retirement. By “survive” I mean having enough money to get through the remaining years of one’s life without worrying that the money is going to run out.

If you knew my client, you’d be wondering why the concern. A successful executive at a mid-sized company and a wise investor, he has amassed a comfortable nest egg. My client knows this. Yet, at some visceral level, the he believes he has to fight for survival—that he still has to “make money” or it will run out.

This fear is deep. It isn’t limited to people thinking about retirement. It isn’t even really about money. Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money, says we all, rich or poor, are suffering in our relationship to money—that no matter how much we have or don’t have, we worry that “we will never have or be able to keep enough of it.” She says our relationship to money is largely unexamined and unconscious.

Twist should know. As a fundraiser for The Hunger Project and other humanitarian organizations, Twist has gotten to know people with great fortunes and people who have virtually nothing. She tells us that this niggling fear, this unhealthy relationship with money, is surprisingly similar in both groups. So-called “rich” people worry just as much about getting and keeping money as “poor” ones do.

Twist says our relationship to money is based beliefs about money that aren’t really true. The biggest assumption of all is the “lie of scarcity.” The lie of scarcity tells us that “we live in a world where there’s not enough to go around and someone, somewhere is going to be left out.” We are forced to do what it takes to make sure we’re not left behind. We also believe that the more we have the better we are. The final belief—the one that leaves us paralyzed—is that even if we believe the lie is morally wrong, we think that this is just the way the world works and there’s nothing we can do about it.

The radical and surprising truth, according to Twist, is that while at one time the world did not produce enough, humanity has crossed “the most important threshold we will ever cross.” We are at a point in our history where, because we can do so much more with so much less, that we have enough for everyone everywhere to lead a healthy and productive life. It turns the win/lose proposition of the lie of scarcity into the win/win of enough. It is policy and our beliefs that create lack, not productive capability.

Where does this leave my client? You? Me? What can we do with such large issues, such pervasive beliefs? Twist says that if each of us can let go of trying to get what we don’t really need, it frees up “oceans of energy to make a difference with what you already have.” Twist invites us to connect our souls and our money, to treat our money as a means to live the values we most cherish. If we can appreciate what we already have, if we can see the wealth that is already ours, it increases our longing to share what we have in the way that is most meaningful to us. Seeing what we do have releases the fear of what we don’t have.

As I write this I realize how easily I’ve been slipping into the lie of scarcity. That I am forgetting all I have and worrying about where the next client is coming from or the next lucrative piece of work. I am realizing again how stressed out I feel and how overworked I get when I operate from this perspective. This is what the lie of scarcity does to us. Twist invites us to think and act differently--to pay attention to all we have. I believe thinking this way can set us all free.

“Our work, our relationships, and, in fact, our very lives, succeed or fail, gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time.”

Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations

It started innocently enough. I wanted to support our sons’ elementary school’s fundraiser so I bought and planted eight wood hyacinth bulbs. Last weekend (several years later), I spent many back-breaking hours digging up the hundreds of offspring of those eight bulbs. Exhausted and sweaty, I cursed the day I first planted them.

Many of us, like me, become the victims of the unintended consequences of our actions. Often, those unintended consequences impact others—sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. We leave behind us what Susan Scott calls our “emotional wake,” which she describes as the “aftermath” of a conversation. It’s how the other person feels after a conversation with us is over. The more powerful we are, the bigger the wake.

Executives leave a very big emotional wake, often without realizing it. When the wake is positive, when what he or she says inspires others, motivates others, leaves them feeling like they could conquer the world, the wake is a powerful force that moves the people in the organization toward greater productivity and accomplishment. When the wake is negative, people struggle and progress falters.

Why? According to Daniel Goleman in his book Primal Leadership, we work better when we feel good. Research shows we have greater mental efficiency and are more flexible in our thinking. Our emotions impact the quality and creativity of our work.

Executives and leaders have a great deal of influence on the moods of their employees because our limbic system, our emotional center, is an open-loop system. That means our limbic systems talk to each other. Our moods are influenced by others moods. Have you ever walked into a room and immediately felt the tension? Your limbic system picked up the cues before your “thinking” brain analyzed the situation. You just knew it right away.

The process of mood impacting mood is called entrainment. It occurs unconsciously. Goleman’s key point is that the most important person in the room has the most impact on mood. If you are the boss, it’s your mood others pick up. It’s your wake that’s the biggest. Your mood inspires or deflates others, whether you know it or not. Every single conversation can, as Susan Scott says, change “the trajectory of a business, a career, a marriage, or a life.”

You have a responsibility to your organization and your employees to pay attention to your mood--to learn how to calm yourself, to temper your responses to others. This is something you can’t fake. Limbic systems are telling each other the true story.

Is your emotional wake—how you make people feel--strengthening or sabotaging your organization or your career?