Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM JULY 2015 44 Libby Wagner Culture Coach Libby Wagner, author of The Influencing Option: The Art of Building a Profit Culture in Business, works with clients to help them create and sustain Profit Cultures. www.libbywagner.com T he landscape of leadership is constantly shifting and changing, and a leader's ability to navigate ambiguity will be the seat of his or her success, as well as whole- heartedness in connection with work. When we let go of the tired, old conversations of our workplace, we create a space for something new to emerge, and yet, before it becomes quickly filled with some easy sort of answer, challenging the notion that 'nature abhors a vacuum,' there is another edge we might court in inviting and asking beautiful questions. These questions may not have easy answers, or sometimes they might surprise us in their simplicity. These questions can be exciting, or they can be terrifying, and they are energizing and electric on some level. A beautiful question is not old, though it may be ancient and soulful. A beautiful question invites us to wonder, to amazement, to quiet or to unsettling. No matter what, a beautiful question is not neutral; it is not mundane. Our work and businesses contain beautiful questions to help us navigate the unknown horizon, but often we are too busy, too consumed by moving quickly, that we miss these questions as they arise, and the risk of this is that we will miss something entirely essential: a way out or through a big problem we face; a new way to improve or grow our businesses; a creative idea or concept from a talented team member. Engaging with poetry helps us sit with beautiful questions and ambiguity. (If this sounds a bit crazy, go here www.youtube.com/ watch?v = x1Tsv3sT0dA&feature = youtu.be to check out my recent talk on Why You Need Poetry Now as a Business Professional!) Good poetry may have one or more beautiful questions at its center. Questions that will not go away, no matter if we turn our faces from them. Questions about all of the big, beautiful elements of this life: love, faith, god, worth, family, grief, loss, joy, mystery. And, because of the sparse and specific use of language, the mystery of the question lingers on, the ambiguity of the beautiful question is never really solved. There is always some element to the unknown even in the knowing that a good poem creates. We may have a sense, after experiencing such a poem, of "ah, yes, that's it . . ." However, there is also part of us that is not quite sure, that there is still room for the unfolding of the wisdom contained there. Stafford's Traveling Through The Dark with its central decision of the poem's speaker—what to do about the live fawn in the dead deer's belly— "I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; around our group I could hear the wilderness listen. I thought hard for us all—my only swerving— then pushed her over the edge into the river." This question lingers; in fact we are invited again and again to its terrible beauty. It's still counterintuitive in a postmodern world to cultivate and trust the unknown, to develop an intimacy with the un-seeable, to stand firmly in a faith that we can trust that which we cannot prove by scientific methods or means. Even with the rise of interest in metaphysics or conversations peppered with "new thought" ideas, the primary culture, especially in businesses and organiz- ations, is skeptical, cautious and dismissive of the powerful "unknown." And, if we talk about it at all, it is to try to conquer it, win it, capture it, or torture out its secrets. The primary masculine psyche, still prevalent in organizations, is extremely uncomfortable with the feminine, intuitive principle of the Unknown. We try to solve problems by coming up with six steps, four keys or ten tips—a linear, strategic method—nice and neat. But, the organization of the future, the way we go about our work and commerce in the world, invites us to enter into a new sort of imagining, and that is with the unknown horizon and frontier. When we invite and engage in the beautiful questions of our organizations, we are asked to slow down (another unlikely choice) and to consider something we have not yet explored together. THE UNKNOWN HORIZON: AN INVITATION FOR BEAUTIFUL QUESTIONS RO

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