Senge: Chapter 9

Personal Mastery

Prepared by James R.

PERSONAL MASTERY:
Introduction
The Spirit of the Learning Organization
Mastery and Proficiency
Why we want it
Resistance
The Discipline of Personal Mastery
Holding creative Tension
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Introduction, Continued
STRUCTURAL CONFLICT: THE POWER OF
YOUR POWERLESSNESS
Commitment to the Truth
Using the Subconscious
Personal Mastery and the Fifth Discipline
Fostering Personal Mastery in the
Organization

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Personal Mastery =
Personal Growth &
Learning

People with high levels of PM are

continually expanding their ability to
create the results in life they truly
seek.

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Mastery and Proficiency

Goes beyond competence and skills
First, we must continually clarify what is
important to us.
Second, we must learn how to see current
reality more clearly.
The gap between what we want and what our
current reality is generates creative tension

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What its like to have lots

of PM
For such people, a vision is a calling
rather than just a good idea
PM is not something you possess, it
is a process--a lifelong discipline
People with lots of PM are more
committed, they take more initiative
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Employers want PM for

their employees because
Full personal development has a strong
impact on individual happiness
Work should be seen as an opportunity to
build something to last, something of value
PM is a means toward the organizations
ends

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Resistance
Many individuals and organizations do resist
PM
No one will ever be able to measure how
much PM contributes to productivity and the
bottom line
Cynicism: humanistic management over
promised itself to firms in the 1970s
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More Resistance
Could it threaten the established order of a
well-managed company? YES!!
TO EMPOWER PEOPLE IN AN UNALIGNED
ORGANIZATION CAN BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE
Without this alignment, organizational stress will
increase

People dont resist change. They resist being

changed..

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The Discipline of Personal

Mastery
PM is a discipline, a series of principles and
practices that continually expand PM
Most adults have little sense of real vision
Our personal vision must be positive
An example of diminished vision is focusing on the
means rather than the ends or results
The ability to focus on ultimate intrinsic desires, not
only on secondary goals, is a cornerstone of PM

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Holding creative Tension

The gap between our vision and our current reality is called
creative tension
The principle of creative tension is central to the principle of
PM, integrating all elements of the discipline
Still creative tension often leads to anxiety, sadness,
discouragement or worry.
But these negative emotions are emotional tension and not
creative tension
Watch out for the eroding goals archetype

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STRUCTURAL CONFLICT:
THE POWER OF YOUR
POWERLESSNESS
Many of us have a dominant belief that we are
not able to fulfill our desires
a by-product of growing up

We believe in our powerlessness--our inability to

bring into being all the things we really care
about.
Page 157 illustrates the conflict--out vision
pulling us forward, while our belief in
powerlessness pulls us back

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Eliminating self-limiting
beliefs
Many of us do not believe that we
are worthy or deserving to have
what we truly desire
Manifestations are: loss of energy,
not able to finish the job, unexpected
obstacles develop, people let us
down, we dont believe we can do it
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Strategies for coping with

self-limiting beliefs--Bro
Ray Fritz
Letting our vision erode
Conflict Manipulation
Will power

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Focusing on what we
dont want: conflict
manipulation (negative
The way many athletic coaches manipulate
vision)
and motivate their players
The way many managers point out the highly
unpleasant consequences if the companys
goals are not achieved

Do you really want to live your life in a

state of fear of failure?
For such people, there is little joy in life
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Third-strategy--WILL
POWER
We psych ourselves up to overpower all
forms of resistance to achieving our goals
We motivate ourselves through
heightened volition
This dogged determination gets things
done at work, but doesnt turn the trick at
home
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The bottom line of SelfLimiting Beliefs (SLBs)

They are hard to change-psychologists widely concur

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To change SLBs, we need

a COMMITMENT TO THE
TRUTH

Tell yourself the truth

Continually broadening our awareness

Continually deepening our understanding
of the structures underlying current events
First, must recognize the structural
conflict--recognize the patterns
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Structures of which we are

unaware hold us prisoner
Discovering these structures at work
is the stock-and-trade of people with
high levels of PM

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Truth--seeing reality more

and more as it is
Pure observation--Buddhists
Witnessing--Hindus
What a tragedy that many must die
before he wakes up--Koran
You shall know the truth and the
truth shall set you free--Christianity
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Using the Subconscious;

Or, You Dont Really Need
to Figure
allofout
People
with high it
levels
PM can accomplish
extraordinarily complex tasks with grace and
ease

The subconscious is intimately involved in PM:

through it, all of us deal with complexity
The aspect of our mind that is exceedingly
capable of dealing with complexity is called the
subconscious
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Subconscious- What distinguishes people with high

levels of personal mastery is they have
developed a higher level of rapport
between their normal awareness and
their subconscious
Subconscious capacity is larger by a
factor of 10 as compared to the conscious

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The Core Values of PM

Integrate reason and intuition
See your connectedness to the
world
Be compassionate
Be committed to the whole
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Fostering PM in an
Organization
You cant force employees into PM-to do so is the most sure-fire way to
impede the genuine spread of
commitment to PM
Leaders must foster a climate in
with the principles of PM are
practiced in daily life
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The Organizational
Climate

establishing visions, being committed

to the truth, challenging the status
quo
Will reinforce the idea that PM is truly
valued in the organization
Will reinforce the idea that PM is a
continual, ongoing process
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The Climate, Continued

Work to develop all five disciplines
at the same time
Leaders should be a model

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If you cant picture it, you

wont make it
You have to know where you are
headed
Choose your companions as if your
life depended on it
Leaders know when to put their foot
down, and when to back down
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Copyright C 2000 by
James R. Burns
All rights reserved world-wide. CLEAR
Project Steering Committee members
have a right to use these slides in
their presentations. However, they
do not have the right to remove this
copyright or to remove the prepared
by. footnote that appears at the
bottom of each slide.
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