Peter Koestenbaum on Peter
Block
By Bill Brewer
B: Over twenty-five years since its
publication, Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting still has a life
of its own. Has nothing changed in 30 years in companies or in people?
P: I’m not sure what to do with that
question. But having had a chance to speak with Peter just a few minutes
ago, I was reminded of something that’s been apparent since I met Peter.
That A - he is a born therapist. And B - probably one of the best
therapists ever born as a therapist.
It reminds me of what Freud said of
Nietzsche, He said that Nietzsche understood himself better than maybe
any man who ever lived or who was ever likely to live, which is quite a
compliment coming from Freud.
People often wonder what did he mean by
that. Basically, he meant that a philosophical mind which Freud had, is
sort of a prerequisite for understanding more deeply the structure of
human experience. No person is more sensitive to what happens
intra-psychically and inter-psychically than Peter Block. He is
extremely capable of being intra-psychic which means to go vertically
down into the lower levels of the psyche and to really know what’s going
on there as well as inter-psychically which means to communicate
horizontally with people and to have the most engaging therapeutic
skills of making people feel that they want to talk more, they’re
gaining insight and they’re gaining helpful questions. Finally, he is
creative, which I sort of add to the mix as coming up with new ways of
thinking every time he opens his mouth.
I’m sure that the entire 30 years of
Flawless Consulting has been an expression of that.
You said has nothing changed in business.
People need this always - like breathing. These are the things we need
for sustenance. We need an environment in where we’ve been heard, where
we have felt valued, and where we have felt included because these
experiences give us a voice and make it possible for us to say ‘I am’.
B: Do you think we have a role in creating a
world where we can be heard, included, and valued, or am I dependent on
others for that world?
P: Of course we have a role. I think that
that is how Peter makes a living, by giving people the tools to be like
him. If you want to talk about the world, love is not enough. It is a
hard world of war, killing, hunger, competition ,envy, betrayal and
humiliation so that love alone is not enough.
Martin Buber fits right into our
conversation, to which the most important thing in life is to know how
to stand your ground with another human being. Essentially that is not
love. That is the capacity to confront, challenge, and say ‘I am’, when
someone else is saying “I’m so sorry, but you’re not”. I think Peter’s
demeanor is of that sort. In a very gentle way, he is never afraid to
make a strong courageous point.
B: I was struck by what you said before that
love is not enough.
P: In Iraq today, love is not enough.
B: In a world of betrayal, and war, and bad
things, it can be overwhelming--- so how do we find goodness or God?
P: Well, God is also a powerful being who
destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah – who turns Sarah into a column of salt.
The Old Testament is sort of shamelessly distinguished from the new
testament by being all about the power of God whereas the new testament
is about the love of God. So there is a god of power, and frightening
terror referred to by theologians as the “mysterium tremendum” as
opposed to the God of infinite love that is so strong in the New
Testament. That is why my leadership diamond is not just about ethics.
It is about reality, vision, and courage. Ethics is not enough. There
is the S.O.B. factor in human beings as well that you have to deal with.
B: You stated recently on your website (www.pib.net)
that all we need to understand and take advantage of anxiety as an
opportunity. I suppose that might include my anxiety about being
authentic and saying “I am”.
P: That is central to Kierkegaard. You’ve
got to take a leap of faith because you don’t know the truth. My
contribution to this work, as infinitesimal as it may be, or as wrong as
it may be, is to have lived with philosophy all my life. I’m no longer a
spring chicken. If I’ve made a contribution, it is to use the history
and insight of philosophy which in my view are the very best thinking of
mankind because cultures have elevated their philosophers to the
pinnacle of representing what they are all about.
If you want to know what a culture is all
about, you have to ask the culture ‘who are your great philosophers’. If
you wanted to know what the West thinks, you’ve got Plato and Immanuel
Kant. If you want to know what this culture thinks about itself, look
and read Immanuel Kant. By studying the history of philosophy, you study
the most important thoughts that mankind has come up with in order to
struggle with the problem of existing in this world.
So my style is not to deal with individual
disconnected themes, nor to say that one theme explains all themes, but
to have eight themes and deliver it to someone who wants to use the
yield of philosophy either as a coach, consultant, psychotherapist,
lawyer, physician, executive, or as a leader. I try to find a place for
anxiety in that picture.
I would say the fulcrum of it all is free
will. The structure of free will is a great mystery, a great miracle. We
all have it. It’s what makes us in the image of God, and ultimately
experiencing and claiming my free will makes me anxious. Anxiety is the
experience that leads me to understand the power of my freedom. And by
eliminating anxiety with tranquilizers, we also eliminate philosophy.
Your anxiety does not have to be corrected which distorts the way you
look at life, quite the opposite it rectifies the way you look at life.
 B:
These values of being authentic and stating “I am” resonate with me, but
what if I lack the courage to do that because my fear is others will
come back even more strongly saying “No you are not, and, in fact, you
don’t have a job here any more.”
P: That’s why you need to know more than one
theme. If all you know is integrity - that is not sufficient to be a
leader. You have to also pay attention to what you just said - that
there are risks and dangers in life, and it is just poor judgment and
foolish to ignore them. Yes, if you speak out in the wrong place there
will be consequences. There always are consequences. But the
consequences in the wrong place can be very nefarious and very
troublesome and you need to know that.
And you can make another decision – how am I
going to manage my integrity in an evil world? Evil is part of the way I
have to understand the world. You cannot simply say I will ignore evil,
which is plainly pulling the wool over your eyes. But I will pay
attention to evil and make some decisions about how to use my integrity
in this world and survive.
That is what the world economic forum’s
primary economic instrument is all about, and it is the best and most
important document of its kind that we have today. The basic theme is
the following: If a nation wishes to support its value system, which is
an ethical issue, it must first be globally competitive, otherwise it
cannot pay for it. That is the reality factor. If all you say is ‘we
need to have a value system’ without factoring the reality dimension as
well, then you don’t have an ethics factor at all. And so that’s how my
leadership diamond is constructed. You have several things to consider
that are all equally important and ethics is one, but they’re all
interconnected.
B: I’m struck by the global competitiveness,
you know, in organizations there is always the capitalistic demand and
we need to be able to predict a future three months out or six months
out….
P: But see, you never can. Here we talk
about vision, which is the third characteristic of the diamond. It’s not
a question of predicting the future. It’s a question of making the
motions of making it look good in the process of trying to do it.
Perhaps cynical, but I think it’s realistic. I think people who are just
bottom line oriented are short lived, because they aren’t keeping up
with the proper business.
That’s how they talk. They think this ‘kick
ass’ kind of talk, is the way to be a cowboy leader and in some
instances it works. But also some of the best people will just walk out
of the room. In other words, if a leader is that simplistic and thinks
that by being a cowboy he’s going to run the world, then I’m not
interested in having this person around and I don’t care if I lose my
job. I’ve got better things to do and better things to say, then to be
run by John Wayne.
I talk about the four-fold bottom line. In
Europe they talk about the triple bottom line, in the US they talk about
only one bottom line. Bottom line in Europe means ecological
sustainability, it means social responsibility, and it means profit. I
add a fourth, which is peace. Because when you see the mess the world is
in today where every news is bad news. When Baker and others come out
and say that Iraq is beyond fixing - that is not very hopeful, to put
it mildly. When Iran is stepping in and saying I want to try to get all
the Arab countries to form an alliance against the United States and we
have some atomic weapons –that is not very hopeful.
So that if you’re going
to say that ‘all I care about is the profit’, I will say then when the
world is gone, you might be up in smoke…what will profits do for you?
There are other things you have to consider in doing business whether
you like it or not. One has to be in an atmosphere of enough stability
and peace for there to be such a thing as a market. If you single out
profits, it’s a very, very, very limited success that you can have.
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