Where do we get our inspiring thoughts from?

I was on the train the other day, travelling as I often am. I was reading a novel on my Kindle and looked up in time to see a colleague who I hadn’t had contact with for 2 or 3 years passing by. He’s in a similar line of business – Training & Development.

We got to chatting about the current state of Further and Higher Education, about global events and the price of rail tickets and as is often the case lately, he started to enquire about my Kindle and what I was reading.

I was reading a novel – the latest Bernie Gunther mystery by Philip Kerr entitled “Prague Fatale”.

“Ha! Said my colleague, “What a luxury, I haven’t read a novel since I left University (over 30 years ago!!!!!) I only read non-fiction. And mainly books on management”.

After a few more minutes of ‘catching up’ he left to return to his seat in another carriage.

I do read a fair crop of books, journals and blogs on leadership & management issues, but was left wondering whether my predilection for a well-written novel was indeed a luxury.

The more I thought about it, the more concerned I became, not so much about the novels I do read (he didn’t push far enough to uncover the Poetry collection on my Kindle) but more about my colleagues sole focus on so-called ‘management books’.

When I think about it, the leadership programmes I design and deliver and the developmental relationships I establish with others – be they coaching, mentoring or simply supporting – are inspired by a broad span of thought, feelings and activities. And, I suppose that as a divergent thinker, I’m a little distrustful of those who proclaim the certainty of specialist ‘categories of knowledge’.

Many of the ‘subject boundaries’ we take for granted today, be they economics, politics, management, physics or whatever, are the result of a Victorian desire to create a ‘hierarchy of knowledge’ and then stuffing each identified ‘subject’ with what they thought ought to be in there. It’s a little like taxidermy, and once the thing is ‘well-stuffed’ it sits on its shelf to be poked and prodded by (so called subject) experts.

If you’re not careful, the deeper you climb into the ‘subject’, the more it frames your perception and thinking, and the less responsive you become to possibilities that don’t fit snugly into it’s assumptions and approach.

By contrast, I believe that leadership must often be iconoclastic, it has to challenge assumptions, and develop new ideas that engage more meaningfully with the changing world around us.

But new ideas will not necessarily come from ‘deep mining’ our conventional ‘pockets of knowledge’. They are just as likely to arise from breaking down traditional barriers and boundaries between ideas and beliefs and our new approach will probably entail something that’s been locked up in another ‘subject area’ for years.

At a personal level, my training and experience as a counselor has provided as much if not more to my understanding of leadership as any text that had leadership or management in the title (the emotional domain, resonance, congruence, relationship building, empathy, letting go, dealing with my own stress are a few things that come immediately to mind)

And as I tucked deeper into the ‘luxury’ of my novel, I plucked out another jewel that I’m sure to build into the training we provide in developing communication and trust –

“I like to talk. Talking is something you need to do if you’re ever going to encourage a man to talk back at you. And you need a man to talk a little if he’s ever going to say something of interest. Men don’t trust other men who don’t say much.”

Where do your inspiring thoughts come from?