# 65: BOOK OF THE WEEK — “Playing Big”
By: Silke Schmidt
Tags: Books, Coaching, Women In Business, Playing Big, Leadership

Story behind the Book Choice

This upcoming Tuesday I am going to run a workshop on “Gender Diversity” at a graduate school. In preparation for this, I thought it would be nice to finally read Playing Big. The book has been sitting on my “Read this” shelf for at least two years already. Again, as with any book that I finally touch, it was a great decision to read it. I have no idea how I came to order it, however. I am pretty sure it was recommended somewhere in another book.

I have “waves” when it comes to book topics that I get into — or not at all for a while. Well, I experience “waves” with everything. Business, emotions, conversations — sometimes there is nothing going on, sometimes there is so much going on that I am running at full capacity. With my book reading challenge it is the same thing as I have come to notice. This is the third “Book of the Week” post now and the way I do this is how I do everything. I do not read at all during the entire week. And then, on Sunday, since I know I am going to write about a new book, I read the book within three to four hours.

That is actually how I have achieved everything that can be called an achievement. I focus on it for a few days, weeks, or months, depending on the task — and then I am done more quickly than anybody else. That, of course, is necessary because there usually is a deadline. And since I simply cannot make myself start earlier, I just do it in bulk, so to speak. No, I do not want to change this. People who want to change this are people who usually miss deadlines. I hardly ever miss deadlines and if there is no deadline, I set the deadline. Otherwise, I would not do it at all.

That is me.

This discussion about self-management tools already gets us into the discussion of the book. I had no idea who Mohr was before opening the book. As I found out, she is a coach, like myself. From a critical perspective, you might simply say that books like these are written as self-marketing tools. Partly, they are. But from my experience of writing books with entrepreneurs, there is always an inner longing to tell one’s story, to pass on one’s experience and tools. This is what Mohr does and even to me, someone who has mostly been coaching women, there are very striking insights that she shares.

1. Emotion and Intellect

Mohr xix

Again, today I could have chosen so many passages that this post would easily end up in half a book itself. I will restrain myself. Not because I have to. Because I want to. After all, I am discussing some thoughts about the books that I choose, not the entire story. This first passage from the Introduction of the book directly jumped at me and I knew that this would be a helpful read that I could relate to.

What Mohr writes about the disconnect between thinking and feeling, between intellect and emotion, is something that almost broke my neck before I found out about the magnitude. It is a huge issue that holds women and men back who combine huge brains and a big heart. If these people work in an environment that is almost 100% in cognitive mode, they start falling apart, literally, they get sick. The atmosphere sucks all livelihood out of them and at a certain point, they lose all the positive energy unless they rescue themselves.

I did so.

It is funny how Mohr explicitly mentions in this passage and in a later one that the academic skill of “critical thinking” is particularly troublesome in this respect. I totally agree. I mean, when coaching academics, the major trick for helping them is to teach them techniques of how to shift their attention from brain to heart — so they can FEEL again what FEELS right to them. And then, decision making is a piece of cake. But this is not that easy.

And believe me, I know what I am talking about. Not because of coaching scholars. Because I am talking about myself here as a lifelong coachee as well.

What I can definitely say is that this obstacle of critical thinking can clearly be seen to affect students and scholars from the humanities more than students in other fields, especially business. And, yes, I know that critical thinking is a wonderful and necessary skill when doing scholarship in the humanities. But no, it is not helpful for women and men who really want to succeed. If you want to actually get stuff done and move on, try new things, really realize your potential, always being in the mode of listening to your inner critic will not get you too far. I am not saying that women in other fields outside the humanities do not have this problem, ofcourse. Neither am I saying that they are no critical thinkers, just to clarify this.

The most important thing I want to mention about this passage, however, is that the disconnect between thinking and feeling is not just a humanities or a women’s problem, it is a ‘Western’ problem. I have written about this repeatedly already because I increasingly notice the devastating effect it has on our entire society and the economy. And with “our,” I especially mean the German one, the U.S. culture does not have this problem. Our image as the №1 engineers in the world has brought us much economic success but we have lost our connection to creativity and spontaneity. Especially those who bring a lot of this to the table, as well as an excellent education, suffer in our corporate world — not even talking about academia.

2. Empowerment

Mohr 46–47

This part is linked to the previous one when it comes to the creativity aspect. But I want to underline something regarding the empowerment aspect. Mohr here describes a conversation with a senior mentor of hers, a former teacher. And she is quite overwhelmed by the depth of wisdom that the lady shares with her in such an unpretentious manner. What the latter, in fact, explains here in her own words is something that coaching is really effective at: You envision something bigger in the future and this boosts your energy in the present for breaking down big goals into smaller, more manageable ones. That already accounts for a large part of coaching effectiveness.

The reason why this passage resonated so much with me today is because I have neglected coaching for at least a year now. I got myself into some other projects, partly because I was listening to some advice that was coming from a well-informed mentor of mine with a lot of experience. But it made me take some turns that were more or less unnecessary. Well, nothing in life is unnecessary. But now that I have realized this, I am going to accommodate more time for coaching again. And the reason why this detour happened is because I moved away from my heart again and only my brain took over. And then it is a spiral. The less heart there is incolved, the more the brain takes over and there is no control mechanism. You just notice — quite late — that something is wrong. It takes practice to always come back to the spiritual and somatic level. If you do so, then “imagination” flows naturally again and you have little trouble “PLAYING BIG.”

3. Telling Your Story

Mohr 145–55

Not telling your story might be a minor issue — but it is not. In fact, since I am quite deeply into the theory and practice of storytelling and narration, every great story starts with some personal information that hooks up the audience because it ensures the credibility of the narrator (ethos — pathos — logos). Now, one might say, fine, if you miss out on this, you can still give a reasonable talk or write a well-informed article. Yes, of course, but there is a culture built around this “neutral” style of speaking and writing. And in academia, this enforced objectivity that seems to prohibit any personal storytelling, can become quite ineffective or even toxic.

For me, personally, this has always been a huge problem because I am an auditive learner and listening to boring stuff without any stories makes learning less efficient. But the bigger problem is: I joined the crowd. I did not tell many stories in my academic talks. Only in my writing did I later start to include some personal storytelling, e.g., in the prologues of my books. But that did not suffice. I should have started earlier with telling my real stories behind the arguments. People would have taken away more. But maybe this is just my retrospective evaluation. And behind this, again, is an implicit assumption that I “played small.” Maybe that was not even the case.

What I know is that blogging gives me an opportunity to not repeat this practice of “masking” behind some scientific bullshit lingo (which I always kept to a bare minimum, I really did). That is something that I very much enjoyed in Mohr’s tale. I mean, not just the storytelling and the clear writing but her passion about writing. It is always funny to see that all writers seem to go through very similar struggles before they actually start sharing their texts — raising their voice in the public. This is also a general conclusion I took away from the book and one that I pass on to you with all my heart:

Writing allows you to PLAY BIGGER .

Reflection Questions

1) Would you ever do a coaching training? Why/not?

2) In which situations do you “play small”? Think of one practical step that can change this.

3) Do your share stories in meetings or when giving talks? When is the next occasion that allows you to practice?