Living Dangerously - Issue 39

Futurists say that psychology is a driving force equal to technology and to economics. But when it comes to business, what we know about the mind doesn't represent a fraction of what we know about technology or about economics. Being surprised by changes in the market is nothing compared with being blindsided by the unconscious. Leaders are led by things that they don't see or don't pay attention to. Other people, for example, have a big impact on us, but we'd be hard-pressed to say why. With some people, we turn into creative stars; with others, we mutate into shutdown dorks. "Cocreation" was a term that vaguely addressed this, but it's a term that made me want to plug my ears and scream. That is, until I met don Juan and got a glimpse into how the unconscious can either rescue or torpedo business relationships.

You remember don Juan, the "man of knowledge" who taught author Carlos Castaneda (and, later, millions of leaders) how to see movement in motionless rock and to hear voices in silent trees -- and, oh yes, to chew peyote. Don Juan was an adult's Harry Potter, a true wizard, and, thanks to him, executives today think nothing of "crafting their own visions." Don Juan, I had been told, was a real person and not just a hallucination by Castaneda. I had my doubts about that until I met don Juan myself -- or so I'd like to imagine. He's come to urban America, to a small room in Manhattan, and he goes by the name Nathan Schwartz-Salant. The shingle on his door says that he is a Jungian analyst. But I didn't let that fool me for a minute -- no more than anyone would believe that Castaneda's original don Juan was a simple farmer.

Trust me on this. I'm not on peyote. I've seen leadership schools set out on the fringes, including one in an outpost of Jerusalem that teaches would-be messiahs to lead in the coming apocalypse. I trust myself to know the real thing. Schwartz-Salant, 62, has a finer sense for the mysteries of practical leadership than I've seen in a long time. And he knows how to craft that half-mystical "third space," as he calls it, where two people cocreate something more real than simple attention, dialogue, vision, or negotiation can create.

Most of us get our information, and our power, by watching and by listening. We stay alert -- on the lookout for information, for clues, and for ideas -- always expecting clarity, logic. Schwartz-Salant does something different. He uses alchemical notions to experience what he calls "a space that is animated and alive with meaning."

The alchemists tried to transform base metals into gold. They never quite got the formula right, but modern seers can turn psychological deficits into psychic triumphs. Schwartz-Salant goes beyond notions of "relationship" to initiate people into the mysteries of working in that third realm -- the space between people "that is alive with meaning and contains its own process."

"It's a space our culture has lost sight of," Schwartz-Salant says. "When we think of it at all, we think of Buber's I-Thou, but the third realm is much more real and less abstract." Here's how it works: You meet me. I fit certain expectations or fantasies of yours that have nothing to do with me but that have everything to do with your own psychological state -- your own needs, your own fears, your own history. I experience you the same way. Those fantasies meet in the third space that exists between us -- where cocreation can take place, where relationships can be shaped and molded whenever you apply a few counterintuitive tools. One of the most important tools involves listening less to what the other person is saying and paying attention instead to how you feel in the interaction.

Right away, Schwartz-Salant picked up on something that I wasn't aware of. "You aren't breathing," he said. How did he know? "I can feel it. I have to make a conscious effort to breathe around you. Not breathing is a way to defend yourself." He was right. I had been living out a role in Night of the Living Dead. So had all of the movers and the shakers that I know. All over the United States -- and all across the skies, riding in Gulfstream Vs -- were dead people. Nonbreathers. He looked at me so piercingly that I felt as if he was seeing my soul before he was seeing my body. I didn't know this, but I definitely felt it. That feeling made me trust him; it opened my heart to anything else he might say. I wasn't just listening with my ears, I was leaning into the conversation -- with all my heart.

In the third realm, people become cocreationists by learning to listen mentally, spiritually, and physically to one another. At the level of the body, for example, you can listen for signs of feeling controlled or of feeling constrained by those with whom you are interacting. Are you breathing right now?