Philosopher Richard Rohr talks about the first and the second half of life. The first half of life is all about our ego. It’s about getting things done, looking good and succeeding. It’s about fitting in and being part of our selected club. In the first half of life, it is important to us that we are right and we see things as black and white, either/or (this is called dualistic thinking).
We live in a first-half-of-life culture. Even pre-teens now are using anti-aging products and spending money having their breasts enlarged and their noses straightened so that they can approximate some artificial image and ‘fit in’. With the advent of social media, we find our tribe and cocoon in the knowledge that, as there are so many people who think like us, we are right, and those who disagree with us are wrong.
First-half of life thinking isn’t all about age. It’s about our level of adult brain development. With the huge support we get for staying in first half of life thinking most people never grow to the next stage.
Second half of life thinking moves us away from me-me-me to us and we. It widens our thinking from winning and losing to creating win-win-win outcomes for all stakeholders. We start to think about the common good along with short- and long-term consequences of actions. We become comfortable with paradox and ambiguity and uncertainty. We therefore become masters of change and easily face the chaos change brings. We start to think about ethics and wisdom and long-term sustainability of our decisions – not because of a need for compliance or acceptance but because it seems like the only sensible thing to do.
As change speeds up we will all need to face an uncertain, chaotic, and paradoxical future. Climate change and the technological revolution (most pressingly now AI) will bring change, chaos, and uncertainty like never before. AI can lead us into a better totally. It can also be the harbinger of a dystopian future. The choice is up to us. This is especially so if we are leaders.
Now, here’s the trick. To move from first half of life thinking to second half of life thinking we need to make mistakes, to fail and/or to suffer pain – e.g. go through a divorce, the sickness or death of a loved one, a challenging health diagnosis for ourselves or a big failure. Unfortunately, how we decide to promote an executive, or select a board member, is usually highly influenced by how good they look, how successful they have been in the past, how untarnished is their reputation. So, we select on first half of life values. Those who are best at supporting these values tend to be those chosen to lead our organizations, businesses, and governments. In other words, we select our elders by the value of our youth. When change was slow and the future predictable this was okay. Now, however, we need wise elders on your boards and leading our institutions because the decisions they make today will have huge repercussions tomorrow and with the speed of change tomorrow is very, very close and getting closer. If our elders, make immature decisions around AI and climate the repercussions will be felt within the next few years and they may not be pretty.
So how do we shift from a bias towards looking good to a bias towards wisdom? How do we select and train our leaders to mature into second half of life thinking?
It is important to note here that those who are at second half of life thinking can easily solve first half of life problems. They have been there they know how to do that – only now, having matured in their thinking, having grown up, they can approach first half of life problems with wisdom, foresight and maturity. Unfortunately, those with first half of life thinking are stuck there – unless misfortune befalls them, and they have support to use that misfortune to mature and grow into eldership.
For decades I have had the privilege of guiding leaders into higher levels of consciousness – using strategic challenges as the catalyst for growth. The consequences were breakthrough strategic results and functional teams and organizations where humans flourished and cared enough about their external surroundings to nurture both physical environment and communities.
None of these changes happened effortlessly, they were all a journey where the challenges of change became the learning lessons that encouraged personal, team and strategic growth. There are no one word recipes for becoming a corporate elder. To start however one needs:
- Recognition that the world is changing and that (as Einstein told us), ““We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”.
- Courageous leaders who are prepared to explore a new way forward combining strategic reality with personal growth and team learning.
- The right kind of support. Richard Rohr tells us that to go from first to second half of life thinking we need both great pain and great love. Our rapidly changing reality provides the pain – a skillful guide with a big heart provides the love.
- A willingness to start
Written by Margot Cairnes.
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