The Distorted Lens of Familiarity

November 23, 2009 in My Journey | What's On My Mind · Follow Me on Twitter

Life Through a Lens

It sounds stupid, but I am often amazed that people don’t know what I do. I see the world through my lens, focused on my passions, and in my little world, I’m no more interested in a given topic than anyone else.

I don’t know what I know

In my distorted world, I know no more about the web, marketing, communications and culture than anyone else. To suggest that I am an expert seems silly, as the more I dig, the more I feel I have so much more to learn.

My passion provides clarity, as it focuses my attention on what matters to me, but it also distorts my view of my Self and my world. Sometimes my lens is all I can see. Sometimes, I actually believe that ‘everyone’ really is on Twitter. I forget that most people don’t see my world the way I do.

I can’t know what you know

It’s a ongoing challenge to identify my lens of familiarity and work to ensure that my zeal is not distorting my clarity. For the last thing I want is to be so caught up in my enthusiasm that you can’t hear me through it.

photo by: lytfyre

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  • Michael Yanakiev
    Tara, - I am always at your disposal to enlighten you on intelligence matters, even if I have to write an article getting in more details where necessary.Just ask and I will deliver.You are right in judging that the matter discussed is a bit more complicated and needs some clarification.What is not correctly conceptualized is not fully understood.
  • Michael Yanakiev
    Tara,
    I tend to agree with your concept of “The distorted lens of Familiarity.” You have explained it in a nutshell. Nothing must distort your clarity. But where do we go from there? I suggest that we look a bit more into investing in social and spiritual assets. Apart from financial wealth it is wise to pursue two other forms of capital as well: social and spiritual. These three types of capital resemble the layers of the wedding cake. Material capital is the top layer, social capital lies in the middle, and spiritual capital rests on the bottom, supporting the three.

    According to political economist Francis Fukuyama, who wrote Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Wealth, social capital can be measured by the amount of trust in a society, empathy people feel for each other, and commitment to the health of the community. The health of the community, he says, can be measured by criteria such as the rate of crime, divorce, illiteracy, and litigation.

    A New Paradigm of Intelligence
    Even more fundamentally, spiritual capital reflects what an individual or an organization exists for, believes in, aspires to, and takes responsibility for. Our spiritual capital includes our moral capital. Spiritual capital is a new paradigm that requires that we radically change our mind-set about the philosophical foundations and practices of leadership in business--or in any other enterprise, for that matter. I am not referring here to concerning ourselves with religion or spiritual practices. Rather, I mean the power a leader can unleash in individuals or organizations by evoking people's deepest meanings, values, and purposes.
    Leaders build all three forms of capital--material, social, and spiritual--by using their own intelligence. But here I am not just referring to IQ. I want to include the intelligence of the mind, the heart, and the spirit. I have written a great deal about the types of intelligence that correlate to the three types of capital:
    • IQ, or intelligence quotient, was discovered in the early 20th century and is tested using the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales. It refers to our rational, logical, rule-bound, problem-solving intelligence. It is supposed to make us bright or dim. It is also a style of rational, goal-oriented thinking. All of us use some IQ, or we wouldn't be functional.
    • EQ refers to our emotional intelligence quotient. In the mid-1990s, in Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, Daniel Goleman articulated the kind of intelligence that our heart, or emotions, have. EQ is manifested in trust, empathy, self-awareness, and self-control, and in the ability to respond appropriately to the emotions of others. It's a sense of where people are coming from; for example, if a boss or colleague seems to have had a fight at home before coming into the office that morning, it's not the best time to ask for a pay raise or put a new idea across.
    • SQ, our spiritual intelligence quotient, underpins IQ and EQ. Spiritual intelligence is an ability to access higher meanings, values, abiding purposes, and unconscious aspects of the self and to embed these meanings, values, and purposes in living a richer and more creative life. Signs of high SQ include an ability to think out of the box, humility, and an access to energies that come from something beyond the ego, beyond just me and my day-to-day concerns. SQ is the ultimate intelligence of the visionary leader. It was the intelligence that guided men and women like Churchill, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa. The secret of their leadership was their ability to inspire people, to give them a sense of something worth struggling for.
    12 Principles of Spiritually Intelligent Leadership
    I believe that all human beings are born with the capacity to use all three intelligences to some measure, because each contributes toward survival. A leader may be strong in one and weak in others, but each can be nurtured and developed. Spiritually intelligent leadership can be fostered by applying 12 principles:
    • Self-Awareness: Knowing what I believe in and value, and what deeply motivates me
    • Spontaneity: Living in and being responsive to the moment
    • Being Vision- and Value-Led: Acting from principles and deep beliefs, and living accordingly
    • Holism: Seeing larger patterns, relationships, and connections; having a sense of belonging
    • Compassion: Having the quality of "feeling-with" and deep empathy
    • Celebration of Diversity: Valuing other people for their differences, not despite them
    • Field Independence: Standing against the crowd and having one's own convictions
    • Humility: Having the sense of being a player in a larger drama, of one's true place in the world
    • Tendency to Ask Fundamental "Why?" Questions: Needing to understand things and get to the bottom of them
    • Ability to Reframe: Standing back from a situation or problem and seeing the bigger picture; seeing problems in a wider context
    • Positive Use of Adversity: Learning and growing from mistakes, setbacks, and suffering
    • Sense of Vocation: Feeling called upon to serve, to give something back







  • Mike,

    Your comments are so timely. I've been having conversations with my
    family lately about intelligence and what it means. Their idea of
    intelligence hangs exclusively on IQ and I was introducing the concept
    that IQ is just a piece of a person's greater intelligence, that there
    are more factors to a person's 'smarts' than whether they are good at
    math.

    As you have written "I suggest we look a bit more into investing in
    social and spiritual assets. Apart from financial wealth it is wise to
    pursue two other forms of capital as well: social and spiritual. These
    three types of capital resemble the layers of the wedding cake.
    Material capital is the top layer, social capital lies in the middle,
    and spiritual capital rests on the bottom, supporting the three."

    Your thoughts have got me thinking... which means an article can't be
    too far behind. I am going to share this information about
    intelligence with my readers... I think it is so important for people
    to understand that their intelligence is much more than their ability
    to solve a Rubik's Cube. We have far, far, far more to offer than that.
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