I've often wondered about this process that happens when people go for a job interview, and I've heard many, many business owners talk about how impossible it is to actually ascertain who a person really is in a job interview.
So you interview people, and - of course - in an interview, everybody puts their best foot forward, and they get hired, and then they arrive at work.
Then there's this process of that person arriving into the organization and doing everything that they can to fit in and to belong, and one of the primary motivations for Thinking Environment and why it matters is to create the conditions in which a person can be themselves fully.
Yet what many business owners and many people working in organizations talk about is that what they actually end up doing when they arrive in their new job is that they try and be whoever it is that they think people are expecting them to be, particularly who they think the boss is hoping that they are.
So they spend time trying to be the person that they were in the interview.
The thing is, the person that you are in the interview is not the whole person that you are. Over time, all of who you are, has to be able to arrive in your job. People hire you, in order for you to be you, and yet we spend so much of our time editing who we are in order to try and fit in.
I think this is why thinking environment matters, and why I feel so passionate about it. Because I have seen over and over and over again, what happens when we create the conditions for the real human being - the one that sits behind the face - for that person to show up.
When you're in a group of people, where everyone is showing up and being who they actually are, and bringing their whole selves into the conversation, into the discussion, into the dialogue, into the thinking together about whatever the topic is that's on the table - the magic starts to happen.
That doesn't happen when we're pretending to be who it is that we think people want us to be, and that's why I think thinking environment matters so much: because it actually allows people to bring the skills, the talents, the real contribution that they have to offer.
When each of us does that, and each of us contributes who we are - to the collective, something happens.
It's that thing that they always talk about in Systems Thinking, which is that the whole picture is way more than the sum of its parts.
That's the magic that happens when each person can play their part fully. The full picture emerges, and it's way more than anything, any one of us could have contributed individually.