A leader explains how to unlock people's hidden motivation for change by identifying their "potential energy," then releasing it through conversation. He describes the "middle edge" where moderate voices get attacked from both sides, and shares how his community uses dialogue to shift culture. Three words from members ranged from "serene" to "dark," revealing how much people actually want transformation.
Chapters
Second requirement, and you know I'm a geek, so here comes— ready? Um, you have to have potential energy. There has to be potential energy. And, and in your notes, right, right next to it, a coiled spring. Okay, potential energy is a coiled spring. Okay, so, so you've got to identify— there's this, there's a spring and it's like, and it's compressed. Okay, um, we can come up with all sorts of interesting things to sell to people, but unless we're reaching a coiled spring inside of me that feels like there's this tension in here, and you're going to give them something that goes like, you get to release that tension. That's potential energy that you just need to— it's like one of those things that's like, um, oh, another great one is a mousetrap, right? You touch— oh yeah, yeah, just touch the thing and it goes snap, you know, because there's a lot of potential energy because you pulled that spring back. So what you're looking for is, you know, how simply can you touch somebody and have them go like, yes, that's exactly what I was Yes, they've got— yes, yes. What do you want me to do next? Right? That's the, that's the potential energy when you know you've tapped it. And so, you know, thinking about this, um, I love the term for what you're working with is, you know, hippie life. And people aren't waiting for that. So, so that alone is not the coiled spring. No. Yeah, it's the stuff we talked about earlier is the coiled spring. So, you know, that's the, that's the edgy part. So, so, you know, what, what, what is the edge that you're— that, that you're reaching people to go like, oh yeah, I'm living on the edge with this thing, you know? Um, and you touch the spring and it goes. So I wrote a, a post a blog post, must have been 4 years ago now, and the title of it was Living on the Middle Edge. It really feels like in our world today that if I came out with a very, like, a very articulate middle-of-the-road perspective on face— on, on, on social media, I get crucified on both sides.
Oh yeah, why aren't you this? Why aren't you this? Why aren't you this? How can you just tolerate the, you know, this middle path, right?
And so, so with that, we have abdicated our airtime to the 10% tails of the normal curve. Yeah, yeah. And so living in the middle is living on the middle edge. It's living on the middle edge. And so what I look at is that I don't have a great solve for that, for wisdom for humanity, except I have lots of conversations. And that's what I can do today. I can have lots of conversations. And that changes the pulse of the world. Whenever I ask people the pulse of the world, I also ask people, what are 3 words to describe where you are? People in this community, in my, in my Wisdom Council, in my Significant Impact communities, when I say, how you, you know, what are 3 words to describe, you know, where you're at, they're like, serene, calm, energized, I'm excited. What's the pulse of the world? Dark, edgy, blah blah. This is why you need to do your work, folks, because you're living on a middle edge. Okay, so take 30 seconds, and this is a key question. What evidence do you have that your community wants to change? Your target customers, your community, that they want to change? What are— what's the evidence that you have that your community wants to change? Take 30 seconds. Good. Mm-hmm. All right. What are some of the pieces of evidence that you have? Quiet quitting. I like the corporate edicts. Risk— people are risking being fired to fight for them. And that's— people voting with their feet is very capitalistic. Yeah, right. That's— yeah, that's what capitalism is. It's like, you know, people go, no, no, that's not capitalism. It's like, well, now wait a minute. If you can't find the workers because your work sucks, um, we're showing the power of humanity. Yeah, so good. All right, this is great.
