One theme I am working with in my professional life this year is approaching work with a more expansive perspective, using a lens of abundance, possibility, and collaboration instead of scarcity, limitation, and competition. However, we’re seven months into the year, and if I were evaluating my success so far on this effort, I would have given myself a B-. That is until I read The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.
The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life is a beautiful guide to unlocking creativity and potential in all areas of life, drawing heavily on the worlds of classical music and personal development as it presents twelve practices designed to help readers shift their perspectives and embrace a mindset of possibility.
Let’s pause on this phrase ‘mindset of possibility,’ because many scientists, myself included, have an aversive reaction to this sort of phrase. It usually draws to mind ideas about ‘manifesting possibility in the world’ and feels a little too woo-woo for my analytical brain. Luckily, that is not what is meant in this case.
In the words of the authors, “This is a how-to book of an unusual kind. Unlike the genre of how-to books that offer strategies to surmount the hurdles of a competitive world and move out ahead, the objective of this book is to provide the reader the means to lift off from that world of struggle and sail into a vast universe of possibility. Our premise is that many of the circumstances that seem to block us in our daily lives may only appear to do so based on a framework of assumptions we carry with us. Draw a different frame around the same set of circumstances and new pathways come into view. Find the right framework and extraordinary accomplishment becomes an everyday experience. Each chapter of this book presents a different facet of this approach and describes a new practice for bringing possibility to life.”
In this book you find practices that resonate with modern management thinking around growth mindset and psychological safety before any of these concepts became buzzwords.
Mindset of Possibility
Most books on management and leadership fall into two categories. The first category is comprised of overly theoretical tomes written by professors who have limited experience actually managing in the real world. Interesting frameworks; hard to apply. The second category contains tactical advice offered towards specific scenarios— how to give better feedback, how to create more compelling presentations, how to collaborate more effectively. Highly useful when brought to bear in the right context, but not usually transformative.
The Art of Possibility falls into a unique third category, one that opens up new ways of framing the world that allow for more effective patterns of interaction and thinking. While expansive in their goals, these patterns are offered in set of 12 practices, making them approachable and practical to put into use in the context of your choosing. The end result is something both useful and expansive, and I am so incredibly grateful to have encountered this book.
Practical Implementation
I will let the reader explore the 12 practices in the book themselves, but I want to touch on how I applied the practice of ‘Giving an A’ with my team recently.
The “Giving an A” practice is about shifting from a mindset of judgment and comparison to one of possibility and empowerment. Instead of evaluating people based how well they can match their performance against a set standard, you start by assuming they are already capable and worthy of an “A.” Individuals are still encouraged to reach their full potential, but without the fear of failure or judgment holding them back.
This practice originated from an observation that Benjamin Zander made among his elite music students: the high-achieving students often felt so anxious and inhibited by the pressure to perform perfectly that they weren’t fully developing their musical talents because they weren’t taking risk. By giving them an automatic “A,” he created an environment where they felt free to take risks, express themselves, and grow. But he didn’t just give them an automatic ‘A.’ He required every student to write from their future self a letter dated at the end of the course about what they had done over the course of the year to deserve that ‘A.’ Through the process of writing the letter and connecting with the vision of their future selves, students showed up in class as ‘A’ students.
I’m not a teacher and don’t award grades, nor do I work on time scales of semesters or academic years. Nonetheless, the practice of imaging the person you want to be in a year’s time helps us all see more clearly the behaviors and activities needed to get from here to there, and help us show up differently in our day-to-day interactions in a way that supports reaching our goals.
With that in mind, I took my team through a version of it as part of our mid-year development practice. Technically, what I call ‘mid-year development practice’ is actually my company’s mid-year review cycle, but I have long felt that referring to these practices as a ‘review’ is counterproductive. Using the word ‘review’ sets a tone of evaluation instead of collaboration. If you are managing well, any performance issues should be part of ongoing conversations, not presented in twice yearly processes. As a result, in my organization, we use these ‘review’ cycles as an opportunity to make sure meaningful professional development conversations are happening. The practice of ‘Giving an A’ fits nicely with this perspective.
In a recent team meeting, we set aside our usual agenda of reviewing progress and looking at data, and spent 30 minutes ‘alone, together’ working independently on such letters from our future selves. I did not require anyone to share these letters, but am hoping that the development conversations that ensued were richer and more inspiring as a result.
Of course, during this exercise I was forced to reframe my B- into giving myself an A. And I’m looking forward to earning that A this year!
Happy reading!
The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. Penguin Books; Reprint edition (September 24, 2002)
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