Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

by Dave Gray

Beliefs are unconsciously defended by a bubble of self-sealing logic, which maintains them even when they are invalid, to protect personal identity and self-worth.

theory: I don’t think John is happy with his situation in life. And like most people, he wants to believe that he is important, that he matters.

Beliefs are explanations of the world. When an emotional need is unfulfilled—especially when it remains unfulfilled for some time—the brain seeks to fill that gap with some kind of explanation.

A belief that is deeply tied to identity and feelings of self-worth is called a governing belief.

some beliefs are deeply connected with your sense of self, your identity. They define who you are. Those are the beliefs that are most deep-rooted and hard to change, because to change them would mean changing how you see yourself.

governing beliefs are so important to group cohesion that their very existence depends on not talking about them. The governing beliefs usually sit comfortably out of sight, and are never discussed. When someone brings them up, they can be faced with rage, sometimes violence, and expulsion from the group.

Governing beliefs form the foundation of your (version of) reality. They generate feelings of self-worth, group identity, and social stability. They give order and meaning to life. When you feel that your governing beliefs are threatened, it’s like you, yourself, are being threatened.

Governing beliefs, which form the basis for other beliefs, are the most difficult to change, because they are tied to personal identity and feelings of self-worth. You can’t change your governing beliefs without changing yourself.

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.

This illusion of objectivity is often particularly acute in senior leaders, because there’s a tendency for people to tell them what they want to hear.

So often, we try to solve problems as if we are outside them. When people describe a problem, you will often see them pointing away from themselves. You will hear the word them a lot. That’s because “they” are seen as the problem. But in most cases, “they” are only one part of the problem. The problems that are most resistant to solutions are system problems. In a system problem, if you’re part of the system, you’re part of the problem.

If you’re part of the system you want to change, you’re part of the problem.

A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever. —Eckhart Tolle

But when Petraeus asked questions, he didn’t give clues about what he wanted to hear. He might have asked questions like “What did you do this morning?” or “When was the last time you had contact with the enemy and what happened?” Good leaders supplement the information that’s coming to them through official channels with a lot of walking around and sense-making on the ground.

In order to learn anything truly new, you must empty your cup, so your existing knowledge, theories, assumptions, and preconceptions don’t get in the way. In Zen practice, this is called beginner’s mind. Beginner’s mind means that you take on an attitude of openness, curiosity, and eagerness to learn, that you come to a new situation with a blank slate and an open mind, just as a beginner would, even if you are already an expert in a subject. This is much harder than it would seem. It requires you to suspend disbelief, at least temporarily—to forget things that you know like the back of your hand, to discount things that seem obvious, and to open your mind to ideas that seem strange, absurd, incoherent, and sometimes even impossible. This opening up of your mind, this willingness to feel dumb, to be vulnerable, to, in effect, rewire your brain in times of change, is the essence of liminal thinking. Empty your cup.

You can’t learn new things without letting go of old things. Stop, look, and listen. Suspend judgment. What’s going on?

I was convinced that the biggest problems of organizational change were complexity and confusion, and that if we could help companies explain things more clearly, their change problems would go away. Boy, was I wrong. I’ve discovered that people will often say they agree when they don’t agree. They will say they are on board when they are not on board. They will say that they don’t understand something when they understand it perfectly well. In a top-down organizational hierarchy, “I don’t understand” is a polite way of saying “No, I’m not going to do this.” Why does this dynamic play out time and time again, in organizations large and small, all over the world? It has to do with emotion. Feelings.

Emotions are an important and necessary part of the reasoning process. If you had no emotions, no feelings, no needs, then there would never be a reason to do anything.

we achieve results in life not because we are objective but because we care.

Reason does not get people to act. Emotion is what causes people to act. People can think something is perfectly logical and still not do it because they don’t care enough about it, or they don’t have any emotional attachment to it. The reason that people do things, especially heroic or major things, things that take a lot of effort, is because they care.

People will often reveal their beliefs in casual conversation. But people’s emotional needs are not easy to uncover. Why? If I reveal my emotional needs to you, that makes me vulnerable to being manipulated by you. That’s not an easy or comfortable place to be. It requires a lot of trust. So if trust is lacking for some reason, people will conceal their needs.

Actions and results are observable, beliefs less so. But needs are not only invisible, they are often intentionally hidden, because exposing them makes people feel vulnerable.

David Rock of the NeuroLeadership Institute has developed a brain-science-based model for thinking about emotional needs, which he calls the SCARF model.1 SCARF is an acronym that stands for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. If your emotional needs are not being met, the brain reacts in the same way as it would if you were starving. It activates the primary fight-or-flight reactions in the brain. To the brain, at least, emotional needs are as real as physical ones.

Here’s a set of questions, based on the SCARF model, which I have found useful. Status: Does this person feel important, recognized, or needed by others? Certainty: Does this person feel confident that they know what’s ahead, and that they can predict the future with reasonable certainty? Autonomy: Does this person feel like they have control of their life, their work, and their destiny? Relatedness: Does this person feel like they belong? Do they feel a sense of relatedness? Do they trust the group to look after them? Fairness: Does this person feel like they are being treated fairly? Do they feel that the “rules of the game” give them a fair chance?

How do you think that made her feel? In one fell swoop, he ticked off three out of five SCARF points: he diminished her status, took away her autonomy, and treated her in a way that she felt was unfair. If you’re a boss and you’re acting like this, I can guarantee that your best people will be leaving to find other jobs, and you will be left with those who are afraid to leave. They will stay out of fear, because they are afraid they can’t get anything better. And that will hurt your company in the long run, which will probably hurt you, too. Stories like this are all too common. People need to feel that they matter, that they have control over their lives, and that they can make decisions for themselves. They need to feel that they are being treated fairly.

When people’s basic emotional needs are met, they do better work. When they feel valued and important, they perform at much higher levels. When they have a sense of control, they will take initiative. When they feel a sense of belonging, they will contribute more. When they feel they are being treated fairly, they will go the extra mile. If you take these things away, you are starving them emotionally. When people are emotionally starving, they come up with conspiracy theories. They cover up, hide, and hoard information. They play political games.

What was Chris doing? Is there a method to this madness? Yes, there is. He was carving out safe space, space for people to be vulnerable, space where people could safely reveal their anxieties, frustrations, and emotional, unmet needs. Sharing food and drink is a powerful way to create safe space.

Liminal thinking requires these kinds of safe spaces. It’s not possible to have a meaningful dialogue across belief bubbles if people don’t feel safe, and safe space requires trust.

The only way that you can really understand what people’s motivations are is to create a space that’s safe enough for them to come out of their self-sealing logic bubble, to cultivate curiosity and openness, and to give them a feeling of safety.

Safe space does not mean that you have to agree with everything that they say. But it does require you to suspend your judgments, at least temporarily. If you want someone to share their real motivations with you, they will need to feel that they’re accepted for who they are. They will need to feel respected. They will need to feel that they are not being judged, that they’re being treated like a human being, and that even if you don’t agree with them, you are at least open to hearing what they have to say. This can be very difficult, but if you can create that space for other people, you will learn a lot about why they act in the ways that they do. And the more you can understand about that, the more doors of change will open for you.

If you don’t understand the underlying need, nothing else matters. People will not share their innermost needs unless they feel safe, respected, and accepted for who they are.

Late one night, Adrian was so frustrated that he went over and confronted the guy about the issue. He expected a confrontation, but to his surprise, the guy broke down in tears. Adrian discovered that this guy was not working late because he was trying to prove something, but because home wasn’t a safe place for him. They were able to achieve a breakthrough, but it was only possible because Adrian went up and talked to him. Without that conversation, there wouldn’t have been a breakthrough. It’s easy to make up theories about why people do what they do, but those theories are often wrong, even when they can consistently and reliably predict what someone will do.

So what makes a good theory, anyway? A scientist and philosopher named Karl Popper spent a lot of time thinking about this. Here’s the test he came up with, and I think it’s a good one: Does the theory make a prediction that might not come true? That is, can it be proven false? What makes this a good test? Popper noted that it’s relatively easy to develop a theory that offers predictions—like a horoscope—that can never be disproven. The test of a good theory, he said, is not that it can’t be disproven, but that it can be disproven. For example, if I have a theory that you are now surrounded by invisible, undetectable, flying elephants, well, there’s no way you can prove me wrong. But if my theory can be subjected to some kind of test—if it is possible that it could be disproved, then the theory can be tested. He called this trait falsifiability: the possibility that a theory could be proven false.

Sometimes people come into conflict not because they disagree, but because they fundamentally misunderstand each other. This can happen when people are viewing a situation from completely different points of view.

far more often, saying another person is crazy is just a way to create internal coherence within your belief bubble. Your “obvious” is stopping you from seeing clearly. The “crazy person” may be acting based on beliefs that are inconceivable to you because they are outside your bubble. If you think to yourself, this person is just nuts, and nothing can be done about it, it can’t be changed, then it’s possible that your theory about that person is constrained by a limiting belief. Most people don’t test their theories about other people, because it’s a potential bubble-buster: if you give your self-sealing logic bubble a true test, then it just might collapse on you. People do fake tests all the time, of course. Here’s an easy way to do a fake test of your beliefs. Just search the Internet. No matter what your belief is, you’ll find plenty of articles that support and reinforce your bubble. The Internet is like a grocery store for facts. It’s easier than ever to find “facts” that support pretty much any belief. Fake tests will help if your goal is to feel better about yourself and reinforce your bubble. But if you want to figure out what is really going on, a fake test will not help. What will help is triangulation: the practice of developing multiple viewpoints and theories that you can compare, contrast, combine, and validate, to get a better understanding of what’s going on.

The insights in this case came not from one map or another, but through overlaying them. This is the practice of triangulation. Each map represented one theory of the world, one version of reality. It was only by viewing the situation through multiple perspectives—multiple theories—that he was able to gain insight and see the situation differently.

Most of the time we are all walking around with our heads so full of “obvious” that we can’t see what’s really going on. If you think something is obvious, that’s an idea that bears closer examination. Why do you think it’s obvious? What personal experiences have you had that led to that belief? Can you imagine a different set of experiences that might lead to a different belief?