If you have not done so already, please read the foundation post The Achilles Heel that Haunts the Best of Us before reading this one.
When innovators find themselves feeling disrespected, their ideas not appreciated or understood, can find themselves sliding down the slippery slope toward interrogation. This is often caused by their strong commitment to being the wisdom in the room. They have a deep emotional sense that they should be able to make things better for themselves and others through development of relationships and strong positive communication.
They are required by their value structure to maintain their compassion toward others and to be tolerant of a lack of compassion that may be expressed towards them. They can find that they have to suffer a reality that some people don’t see the need for their wisdom. This is based first upon their intuition supported by their collection of facts and reason through brainstorming and curious questioning. They have a need to believe in the sufficiency of their wisdom energy to sole the most difficult and complex problems. In fact this need is so great that some fall victim to their own need for proof of wisdom that they make everything more complex than it needs to be or they may procrastinate until the consequences of waiting to solve a problem become great enough to attract their wisdom’s attention.
The Achilles Heel is activated by circumstances in which the innovator finds himself left out of the decision loop, or when his own performance is less than desired and he feels judged that his ideas and solutions are not respected or understood. There is a tendency in wisdom individuals to make their idea complex enough that others see how wise they are, but the complexity causes the ideas to be misunderstood so the wisdom person is perceived as being unwise. The shift to interrogation happens when someone important in the innovator’s life is being dismissive of the individual’s wisdom and not putting the great strategies into play. When the innovator feels foolish or his ideas disrespected by others it is difficult for him to resist shifting into interrogation to prove the foolishness of others.
When the innovator’s wisdom is not sufficient to solve current problems, or there is insufficient time to come to a truly wise solution, his compassion for others and for himself causes a doubt in his basic capacity for wisdom. His own capacity to be the wisdom in the situation is diminished. He starts feeling anxious that maybe his wisdom is insufficient, that his observations about the way things are might be faulty, that he cannot trust his intuition or his reasoning capabilities. This causes increasing anxiety. The anxiety works like the dimmer switch in your dining room at home.
When the dimmer switch is fully open and there is no anxiety the wisdom energy is free to flow into the room and bring light to the darkness. When the anxiety gets excited the dimmer switch begins to restrict the flow of the wisdom Core Value Energy into the situation, causing further failure to make the ideal contribution of wise observations and best strategies to be deployed.
This causes an escalation of human wisdom energy, trying to force it into stronger influence and fuller participation. The effect is usually that people begin resisting and denying the wisdom agenda. They begin to feel interrogated and controlled by the requirement for more process, more study and isolated thinking on the part of the wisdom person. They feel tricked by the wisdom person who is now trying to force his wisdom and his required wisdom process into the situation.
People around the wisdom person get the sense that they have no room for error with the person who is escalating the wisdom energy, especially when most believe that wisdom is not what is needed. They tend to believe the wisdom person is not interested in their ideas, and not interested or supportive of anyone else’s knowledge, love or power. Wisdom people (and anyone who is operating in their wisdom mode) tend to ridicule others, express impatience toward the ‘stupidity’ of people who can’t seem to ‘get it. People who are around the wisdom person when he decides to quit being wisdom and start his interrogation process in order to gain control, feel dismissed, not welcome and not trusted to decide things on their own.
The tendency is to continue to try to be the wisdom in the situation, long past the time then they would have benefitted and been more effective by shifting into one of their lower capacity Core Value Energies.
Note: Learn more about how to shift from one Core Value Energy to another in my book, Choices, available in our Taylor Protocols store. I will be writing a new series on the art of shifting just following this four week series on Achilles Heels.
When the wisdom person has failed to listen to his anxiety, he finds himself judging others as being trite and simple minded and not worthy of trust. The innovator may become very sarcastic and demeaning, scathing in criticism and harsh with interrogative practices. This dismissal of other and interrogation that threatens ridicule of ideas is a very controlling tactic, causing others to give in for the moment, looking for chances to undermine the innovator’s future effectiveness. This causes a fear based response in the innovator that is either a seething rage or total control through interrogative destruction of everything that is being said or done.
The best response for an innovator who finds himself in this situation is to remember one simple truth, one simple fact… The most foolish thing a person can do is to continue to be the presence of wisdom in a situation that needs more knowledge, power or love.
The smart (awake and conscious) wisdom person shifts to one of these other essential human energies and gets back into a contributing mode.
This series of posts includes an overview and a post for each Core Value.
- Overview of post series – The Achilles Heel that Haunts the Best of Us
- The Achilles Heel of Merchants
- The Achilles Heel of Builders
- The Achilles Heel of Innovators
- The Achilles Heel of Bankers
