Leading from the Middle

Caption: If you can see the bear you have an IQ over 200*.

A new word-of-the-day (in title) took me back to my fable, "The Bear in the Tree".
If the word is new to you, as it was to me, (pronounced pair-eye-DOH-lee-uh) what is it?
Simply, it's the not uncommon ability for a human to see things that are not there, like dragons and dolphins in the cloudscape. Or, more scientifically, the ability to "perceive a specific and often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern".

Since I write about workplaces, is there any correlation between the ability to connect the dots pareidolialy and creative problem solving in the workplace?
In other words does one's ability to perceive images in the clouds transfer to identifying unseen patterns in the workplace?
Is there a test that measures this skill? Assessing individuals' capacity to recognize such patterns (pareidolia) has even been proposed as a way to measure relative levels of creativity?
Imagine the job interview.
I take the applicant out to a field and ask him or her, "What do you see in that cloud"?
The candidate might rightly think, "What is this guy smoking"?
While we can see end products - someone's previous work - as creative or not, actually measuring someone's ability or inclination to produce a creative solution is very different and difficult.
Still, it may be worthwhile to see how a candidate reacts when challenged to brainstorm about some abstract concept, like "Name a dozen uses for a brick other than in construction."
If we value workers who can tolerate and make use of ambiguity perhaps taking the candidate into the cow pasture is not all that crazy.
At the least is would measure the candidate's sense of humor.
I recall halting a group of executives trudging along on a forest trail as part of a training exercise.
We stopped alongside a burbling creek with the wind gently soughing through the trees, birds chirping, bees buzzing, crickets sawing away.
I asked them, "What do you hear"?
No pareidolia for these guys, one piped up that he could hear his name being called for his tee-time at the nearby golf course!
I should have persisted, telling them that I could hear rustling in the undergrowth and that in previous visits had come across a colony of water moccasins.
That would have tested their ability to tolerate and make use of ambiguity!
Flash! Here's a relevant quote from Alexander Pope (1688-1744):
"Lo! the poor Indian!
Whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds,
or hears Him in the wind."

*I came across the bear face tree one early New Year?s Day (2016) while off-trail.

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ONLY a click away, my fables for the workplace will test you pareidolialy:

And, my book on democratic workplaces shows how leadership that copes well with ambiguity encourages productivity Leading from the Middle, is available at Amazon.

© Copyright photo and text by John Lubans 2023

 

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