I’ve Been Reading…
An Immense World: Ed Young (2022: p. 281-282) Penguin Random House, UK
Put In
Ever been caught out reacting to something that you feel you could have been proactive about? Missing key information or feedback because you are “out of touch” with everyone? Failed to provide in time because you were too “distant” from the action?
Work Through
Where bats use echolocation (see R2L – Talent Is Not Enough), Knifefish use electrolocation. Just as impressive as those sound-seekers, these fish explore, examine, and experience their environments with electricity.
Using sensory cells called electroreceptors, knifefish sense and detect their surroundings by emitting electric currents. Young tells us that “the black ghost knifefish, has as many 14,000 of these scattered over its body, and it uses them to work out the position, size, shape, and distance of objects around it.”
As with bats and their sonar, electrolocation “involves effort”, Ed writes. “In other senses, activity is optional.” Hearing, seeing, smelling; all of these senses can be engaged by just sitting about and waiting for the stimuli to come to us, without “putting out” any effort at all. Both bats and knife fish, however, “must create the stimuli that they then will detect.” The only real difference between the bat’s echolocation and the fish’s electrolocation is that the “electric fields do not travel. Almost all other senses depend on stimuli that move. Odour currents, sound vibrations, light waves; all must journey from source to receiver. “Electrolocation is instantaneous” – the fish does not have to wait for the stimuli’s journey to be completed before it can interpret the signal. It is also “omnidirectional” “the fish’s field extends in every direction and is detectable in every direction – not just from every direction. There\ is a down side, though: “Electric fields rapidly weaken the farther they are from their source, so electrolocation only works at very short ranges.” Knifefish can put in extra effort to increase the range a little, but that is very tiring and it can only do that for limited periods. To counter the extra effort to extend electric fields, the knifefish is extremely agile.
“When it detects something edible, it might have already passed it and must back-track.” Explains Ed, “U-turning, however, would mean the target will have left the range of its electro-sense and it will have been lost. So it reverses, keeping its target within the range of its electro-sense constantly. This “wraparound” sense allows it to detect, locate, identify and track anything in a 360 degree bubble, and combined with its extreme agility, it can maintain “contact” throughout its entire exploratory endeavour. Electrolocation is, very much, a “tactile sense.”
Take Away
As a leader, we need a strong sense of awareness of where our team is, at any given moment, with task, transaction or temperament, and we need to be active and agile with our support.
A leader should not count on picking up on a team’s mood, feelings, and thoughts by expecting important information to just drift toward them. A leader’s senses need to be in tune with his team in and from every direction.
If we passively wait for the stimuli to come to us – like a smell wafting by or a sound floating over – the chances are that, by the time it does, it may be too late to do anything.
Effort is required to push our “aware-sense” out in order to explore the team’s needs, capabilities, and difficulties.
Agility is needed to adjust and remain in position to keep focus on, and respond to, the team’s temperament, thoughts and attitudes without losing touch, missing the point or the person.
Keeping in touch with our team can be a challenge during reduced times of direct contact, such as when “home-working”. Normally, it is only when we are with them, or see them, that we can read-faces, observe habits, monitor actions, feel moods. Nonetheless, this is still all reactive: waiting for their stimuli come to us. An effective leader needs to be proactive: pre-active even.
We can send out probes: creating stimuli to test and measure the team’s spirit, disposition and engagement. Thus, by creating a stimulus to explore pre-actively instead of waiting for a stimuli to return re-actively, we have a chance of being prepared so as to adapt rather than respond.
So, do not sit and wait for troubles to come to us in the hope that we will “pick it up as it passes”. By the time we turn around and respond, the problem may well have floated by with the damage done. Instead, be active in our awareness: pre-act by sending a stimuli to test the waters, and maintain agility with our contact so we can detect issues from all directions.
We cannot afford to be tacit with our awareness: we need to be tactile! Make the effort and be agile.
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