This article by Claudia Filsinger, Executive Coach, Workshop facilitator and Coach Supervisor at Moving Maps Ltd explores how to harness the 'big data' of the body for decision making, problem solving and creativity to adapt and thrive in the changing world of work.
INTRODUCTION: Harnessing meta skills
The skills required by current and future workforces that operate in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) work context are frequently debated by those tasked with developing the talent of their organisations, industries and nations. The VUCA context and globalisation mean better decision-making capabilities are required for organisations to stay competitive, and the changing world of work (e.g. increasingly virtual working practices) calls on different attributes to support creativity and innovation. Contemporary leadership and talent development models place an emphasis on soft skills. However, globalisation and the increasing speed of change caused by technology and other factors mean it can only partly be predicted which skills are critical in the future, and what new skills requirements will emerge - for example those for managers who lead a hybrid team that blends human talent and AI services. Therefore, organisations have recognised the importance of supporting leaders and employees in developing their higher order meta-skills such as resilience and managing well-being, to enable them to respond to the ever-changing requirements of the current and future world of work. As we will see later, developing these meta-skills doesn’t just benefit employees’ well-being, but also supports better decision making, problem solving and creativity.
NEUROSCIENCE AND BODY INTELLIGENCE
Findings in neuroscience research substantiate a move away from a pure reliance on cognitive intelligence and can support the development of these meta-skills. Terms like ‘emotional, cultural and social intelligence’ are commonly used as frequently seen in job descriptions. These other kinds of intelligence draw on body intelligence, and advances in neuroscience have now evidenced the case for questioning the long-held view that intelligence equals cognition and is located just in the mind. Research has shown ‘that body and mind are so intricately and rapidly tied together that it makes no sense to locate all the ‘intelligence’ in one and none in the other’. It follows that how we should go about decision making, problem solving, conflict resolution and creativity should draw on this holistic understanding of intelligence that includes the body. Guy Claxton, in his book Intelligence in the Flesh summarises the supporting evidence for body intelligence comprehensively and puts it well in the book’s subtitle: your mind needs your body much more than it thinks! To illustrate this, he gives examples of body intelligence at play in decision making where body signals precede words. Further, learning theories have established that implicit or tacit knowledge is inarticulable and that the body is central to non-intellectual learning such as learning by doing, by noticing, by imitating and through imagination. Lastly, creativity is increased through movement and paying attention to the body.
BODY INTELLIGENCE: OPPORTUNITIES FOR ORGANISATIONS
Currently, in organisational working practices and business education, the tools and approaches used for strategy, planning and decision-making tend to be cognitive. Even many creativity and innovation techniques are limited to talking and thinking while sitting around a table and don’t go much beyond using post-it notes and white boards. The field of learning has been more open to utilising body intelligence: many experiential learning methods draw on body intelligence but are mainly applied in formal learning events like workshops, coaching or team days. Many facilitators and coaches increasingly train in how to use body intelligence and body awareness within their work. Examples are somatic coaching (from the Greek ‘soma’ for body), mindfulness, improvisation theatre, dance, martial arts, yoga and other bodywork.
Business Schools and Universities have started integrating body intelligence-based approaches into their curriculum. For example, the course ‘Leading from the Emerging Future’ based on the change framework Theory U developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is supported by a range of embodied practices which include exercises that use body sculptures to resolve stuck situations as we will see in more detail below (Presencing Institute). Ioana Popescu, Professor of Decision Sciences at INSEAD, includes embodied practices in her course ‘Making authentic decisions with the body’ for MBA students: ‘As we feel in our bodies if we are true to ourselves, we can use the body as an instrument to discover insights for decision making. Students are given practices to connect to embodied intelligence, giving them access to information that they didn’t have before. One of my students called this “using the ‘big data’ of the body”.
What all these examples have in common is that they rely on facilitators or coaches. However, all employees in organisations can make more use of body intelligence in their every-day work, particularly in meetings that focus on decision making, problem solving and innovation. This article introduces embodied approaches and methods, some of which are adaptations of long-established productivity, management and learning tools. This is followed by an evaluation of using embodied methods when working and communicating virtually assisted by conferencing technology.
BODY INTELLIGENCE AND GLOBALISATION
Globalisation has resulted in virtual teams spread across geographies. This, combined with the need to reduce business travel due to climate change and cost, and improvements in virtual conference technology, means meetings will increasingly take place virtual via voice or video conferencing calls. There is a danger that virtual meetings could reduce innovative working practices such as having meetings while walking or using spatial approaches to planning that have started to emerge. However, it is often wrongly assumed that these practices and methods can’t be adapted for virtual use. With organisations operating in the much discussed VUCA environment, drawing on all information available, including body intelligence, is increasingly important and can assist professionals in navigating and managing these uncertainties in a more resilient way.
BODY INTELLIGENCE AT WORK
Some people are naturally aware of information they are receiving from their body which is indicated through their use of language such as ‘gut feelings, hunches, having a sense etc’. The easiest way of helping people to become more aware of the information they are receiving from their body is movement and standing on spaces that have been assigned to represent something specific to what is being worked on. Standing and inhabiting a designated space allows people to notice the ‘felt sense’ of being in that space. ‘Felt sense’ is an internal bodily awareness that is different from recognising emotions. A lot of the tools used in facilitating planning, decision making and conflict resolution can easily be adapted to be used spatially in 3D and 4D mapping methods. This can make accessing and articulating the felt sense easier as shown in the following examples.
Examples of Body Intelligence: mapping models
1. Linear Models: timelines, scaling and curves
Commonly these are used on paper, but timelines (e.g. career paths, project plans), curves (e.g. change curve) and scales (e.g. How important is a project 1-10?) can also be mapped on the floor with tape or ropes. The experience and felt sense of standing in different places on these floor markers can then be explored. For example, inhabiting the future, the present and the past on a timeline allows deeper exploration of related emotions and body sensations; standing in different phases of the change curve, a manager can relate to what team members are experiencing and how this is different to where they are themselves on their own change journey; to find the true point on the importance scale one can move up and down and find the spot that feels most true. By slowing down and being truly aware of the felt sense of standing in different places on the timelines, scales and curves, more authentic information based on both cognitive and body intelligence can emerge, mitigating the pitfalls of self-deception.
These activities can be done individually or with teams. Using floor-mapping is less exposing and less likely to lead to group-think in teams than, for example, putting dots onto a model on a flip chart as it is harder to keep the high-level overview when participating in the activity. People can then exchange their felt sense from the place in which they are standing with colleagues next to them and discuss resulting actions from this new information.
2. Mapping with body intelligence
Spatial maps can be very simple, for example by dedicating corners of the room to whatever elements need exploring. Floor markers and ropes can be used here as well: to map out 2x2 or other matrix models which allows standing in and exploring each quadrant, e.g. when evaluating what actions, resources or communications are required.
Another use of maps is in the representation of relationship systems. Commonly stakeholders of a project or decision makers within a client are mapped out on paper. However, mapping the relationship system between stakeholders with 3D objects on the table or on the floor with floor markers allows us not just to step literally ‘into the customers shoes. Through using other people as representatives of each stakeholder, it gives as a 4D version, the felt sense of what it is like to be your customer in relation to other stakeholders, including the relationship to yourself. Apart from people, abstract elements such as goals and values can also be mapped and explored. This practice draws on tacit and pre-verbal knowledge we hold on complex relationship systems. It makes inner images visible and shareable with others, and is called ‘Constellations’. It has been emerging over the last 20 years in business consulting and offers clarity and insights for problem solving and decision making. It is useful particularly in complex contexts by mapping first the current situation, and secondly a future scenario with a more balanced relationship dynamic. This second map acts then as a compass for future action. The information collected in this way is much richer than doing traditional stakeholder and influencer analysis on paper, as it allows working with the complexity and hidden dynamics of the relationship system. Maps can also be used purely to map abstract elements. For instance, some data analysts working with ‘big data’ use constellations mapping to access the ‘big data’ of body intelligence in order to decide which parts of their data sets are worth analysing.
3. Analysing Forces with body intelligence:
Many business models are used to identify forces and influences on change or strategy to allow for consideration of the wider context. I will illustrate how body intelligence can enrich the work with these kinds of models using the example of Force-Field analysis: a tool analysing forces at play ‘against’ and ‘in favour’ of change. After mapping out two spaces representing the ‘for’ and ‘against’ forces on the floor, standing in each space can help in two ways: to explore which forces are actually at play in-depth in order to get a more complete list of forces to consider. Secondly, to experience the strengths and quality of the relevant forces. This can aid decision making on how to minimise the forces working against, and maximise the forces working in favour of the desired change.
A 4D variation of the force field analysis is the ‘stuck exercise’. This is a sequence of body sculptures developed as part of the embodied practices supporting the change Framework Theory U. The person who is working on an issue they feel stuck with makes a body sculpture expressing the issue. Others are invited to represent the forces at play that keep the person stuck, e.g. by gently pulling an arm or pressing down shoulders. This amplifies the stuck situation for the issue holder. Together the group then moves in silence from the stuck situation to a better situation. Apart from the visible 3D body sculpture that is created, a fourth dimension can be explored: the activity creates a body memory for the issue holder of what it feels like to be to unstuck, towards which they can now work. (Presencing Institute).
CONCLUSION & Recommendations
As we have seen, a lot of the tools commonly used in facilitating planning, decision making and conflict resolution can easily be adapted using movement, floor-markers, working with 3D or 4D maps and body sculptures to draw deeper on body intelligence. Many of the approaches discussed above are equally suitable in a virtual context and I use them routinely in business coaching, training workshops and learning communities via video conference or telephone. It does require a bit more preparation: expectation setting with participants, ideally rooms with a little more space and in some cases materials, but this is not critical. Lots of activities can be done in normal or small-sized meeting rooms or staying at the table. For example, slowing down the pace of a conversation to make more time for reflection and giving more awareness such as the felt sense in the body when talking about decision alternatives can already augment the data available for decision making. When working on the telephone, not being able to see the spatial activities the other person is working on means there is a higher need for both parties to precisely articulate what is happening at their end, and what insights are perceived. This is often experienced as deepening reflections and insights.
Recently, organisations have recognised the need to support their employees’ well-being and the driver for this is often stress reduction. In the business cases justifying expense and time for well-being activities, another benefit is often overlooked: as most well-being practices increase body awareness, they benefit employees not just with stress-release and their health, but also their core work responsibilities, such as problem solving by enabling them to draw more on their body intelligence. Therefore body-based well-being offerings are needed not just during an annual well-being week, but throughout the year and as part of ongoing business practices. This article has focused on how to work with body intelligence in using business models, but some pioneering companies have started changing working practices in meetings such as starting with mindfulness exercises. The global IT company SAP has engaged 10,000 employees in a Global Mindfulness Practice programme and shares easy-to-implement practices for employers and employees.
In summary, the call is for organisations to be more conscious about how to integrate embodied activities into meetings and daily business practices. We have seen that it is easily achieved through small adaptations of existing ways of working. Currently embodied activities are used mainly for experiential learning, team interventions or nice-to-have meetings such as networking walking meetings. In the case of creativity, this is often approached through ‘places to be creative in’, like the famous bean bag areas and creativity rooms in office buildings. We have our bodies always with us, so it is an easily accessible and free resource. If organisations use approaches that draw on body intelligence as part of their general business practices and strategic work, it can lead to better problem solving, decision making, innovation and creativity as evidenced by neuroscience.
Claudia Filsinger is an Executive Coach, Workshop facilitator and Coach Supervisor at Moving Maps Ltd and an Associate at the International Centre for Coaching and Mentoring Studies at Oxford Brookes Business School.