Coaching to Specific States of Mind

We offer a series of essays that relate specific coaching perspectives and practices to a specific city. While much of what we have to present is metaphoric in nature (for cities don’t have a state of mind), there are multiple ways in which specific cities exemplify a certain, unique way of viewing reality and acting on this reality. The “state of mind” can be represented in the arts of the city, in the kind of problems this city uniquely faces, and in the kind of people who are attracted to this urban center. Most importantly, each of these essays provides some insights regarding how one might best serve as a professional coach to the diverse set of clients that are seeking mid-21st century services.

When we visit and work in cities around the world, they often help to frame the way in which we are experiencing our own internal world as well as the environment of the city. Each city has its own character, its own history and its own culture. Just as organizations have their own cultures and subcultures, so cities have their own “state-of-mind.” This state of mind can influence the way in which we view and work in the world both short-term (as visitors to the city) and long-term (as residents of the city).

We propose that there are frames of mind that exist in our coaching clients (and in our own minds as professional coaches) that parallel those of specific cities. If nothing else, the “state-of-mind” analysis of a specific city can serve as a rich metaphor for our coaching clients. They can talk about being in a Chicago-state-of-mind or in a Paris-state-of-mind or in a Tokyo-state-of-mind—even if they have never been to this city but have only heard or read about the unique character of this city.  While any single analysis of a city’s state-of-mind is clearly metaphoric, a generalization and even a stereotype, it doesn’t hurt to play with this metaphor as a coach if this is done on behalf of the client’s own self-awareness regarding underlying assumptions and ways in which her environment (inside her organization or inside her own city or town) influences the ways in which she thinks, feels, decides and acts.

State of Mind I: New York City

As experts in ecological systems tell us, it is at the boundaries between systems that there is to be found the most abundant life.  Much of the life on our planet, for instance, is to be found at the boundary between sea and land. Environmental richness—the diversity of species—exists where one system collides with another.  One of the prominent scholars of complexity, Scott Page, writes extensively about the benefits to be derived from diversity.  According to Page, diversity enhances the robustness of complex systems, drives innovation and productivity, makes any system more interesting and absorbs large scale events that would otherwise have a profound impact on the functioning of an ecological system.  Perhaps most importantly, diversity in any system, such as New York City, increases complexity.

This is a real challenge for anyone living in a diverse system, for complexity produces ambiguity, bewilderment, anxiety and sheer exhaustion. It is not only because complex (and diverse) systems contain many moving parts (this is a complicated system), it is also because these moving parts are all interconnected. When any one part moves (changes) then all other parts of the system have to change. That’s what makes complex systems (such as New York City) so “tippy” (unstable) and unpredictable.  One thing gets messed up (an auto accident or construction project on the Lower East Side) and the ramifications are widespread (traffic jams all the way to the Upper West Side and on the bridges leading into and out of Manhattan).  Thus, a diverse city such as New York and a state of mind that is filled with diversity tends to offer great opportunities –and many challenges.

Link: New York City State of Mind

State of Mind II: Las Vegas

Several decades ago, Robert Bellah and his colleagues wrote about lifestyle enclaves in America. This enclave might be a short term but frequently reoccurring gathering of the weekend car club (for Porsche owners or Model T owners). It might instead be an enduring community of like-minded people (often from a single demographic group) such as a Mobile Home park for retired middle-class folks or a condominium complex exclusively for the 20 something Singles.

Las Vegas is a different kind of life-style enclave. It is a series of temporary communities that are each built around a specific illusion. Sometimes called by a very fancy name (“simulacra”), each of these temporary communities of illusion is an elaborately constructed representation (in distorted form) of a real community somewhere else in the world or somewhere else represented in a movie or TV program.  More formally, a simulacrum is a representation of some other structure or environment. This representation is often a smaller or simpler version of the other structure or environment.

Link: Las Vegas State of Mind

State of Mind III: New Orleans

As Stephen Heuser (2013, p. K1) has recently noted (after the Boston Marathon bombing) with regard to the allure of many major urban areas that are also quite dangerous: “what we felt this week [after the bombing], the collective vulnerability, is an exact reflection of what makes cities work in the first place, what makes them productive, and vital, and almost unimaginably resilient . . . Increasingly we are recognizing that when new things happen, they happen in cities: the places where people stand shoulder to shoulder, meet strangers, have conversations they didn’t expect. Where they accept unpredictability.”

As Heuser mentions with regard to all (or many) cities, New Orleans encourages us to think of a different kind of “multi-tasking.” It is not the usual multi-tasking associated with doing a number of different cognitive tasks and seeking to accomplish a number of chores at the same time. We all know this kind of challenge in our busy lives—especially with the emerging world of multiple apps and social networking. When in New Orleans, all of our senses are alerted and they are intermixing. While walking down a street in the French Quarter we are surrounded with the sounds of music and the smell of food. We can ease-drop on conversations being conducted in many languages and Louisiana dialects and feel the rich scented breezes arriving from the Louisiana Bayous. When sipping on a cup of hot chocolate or eating a sugar-frosted beignet at the Café du Monde, we listen to the jazz being played by musicians lingering around the edge of the Café. We may also hear bells being tolled at the nearby cathedral and smell the flowers from the even closer Jackson Square. This is not the matter of multiple tasks occupying our mind or pressing business in many different sectors of our life. This is a matter of multiple source saturation that leaves us not exhausted, but rather exhilarated and filled with many new impressions and ideas.

Link: New Orleans State of Mind