007: Introduction To Levels- How perception is the true source of social power

Welcome to the APEX Level To Power podcast, the podcast completely dedicated to your self empowerment. The name of this episode is Levels, levels everywhere and not a thought to think. The point of this episode is every event, every moment that we experience is filtered through our own rose colored glasses, our own perspective lens. This episode is about understanding the frames and paradigms that exist for us, and the benefits of seeing the world in new and different ways, and deciding which paradigms are most useful for leadership in achieving our objectives. I think there’s a lot of value here. We hope you enjoy. Welcome to APEX Level To Power.

Escape the herd, rise above the pack. This is the APEX Level To Power podcast, the only place on the web that teaches you to identify and control the invisible strings that dominate all human interaction. We teach cubs to become bears, a challenge to be sure, but one that we answer and answer with vigor. I am your faithful host, Mark Gleason, and I welcome you to the program. I invite you to visit our corner of the web, leveltopower.com, for more information and to support the broadcast.

The title of this episode is Levels, levels everywhere and not a thought to think. I’d like to start our conversation about the meaning of perspective. If you’ve listened to the previous podcasts, and if you haven’t I invite you to, we’ve talked about how the key to human power is not found in intelligence, and it’s not found in money, and it’s not found in even charisma. It’s found in the power of perspective. This podcast is about what it means to have perspective and what a mighty weapon that is in your arsenal when you are engaged in human power dynamics.

Your perspective, or your way of looking at the world, can be temporary, or it can be more concrete and longer lasting. A temporary perspective, a way of looking at the world in a given context in a given moment and then later you discard it, we’re going to call this a frame. A frame is a temporary frame of context used in a given situation and then discarded. If you have a collection of frames or contexts, lenses of looking at reality, the mental model that you carry, yourself, of all these different ways of looking at reality, this overall picture in your mind of what reality truly is when looking through all these different lenses, we are going to call that your paradigm. Your paradigm is your way of looking at the world. If a frame is a frivolous context that comes in your head and is out as soon as the conversation is over, a paradigm is longer lasting. A paradigm is a place you live and inhabit in your head, and it is a constant way of looking at the world until of course you change your paradigm.

If you have two friends, Alice and Bob, both live in a 10-story building, and Alice is on the first floor balcony and Bob is on the 10th floor roof, Alice is closer to the street. She’s on the first floor balcony. She can hear what the hot dog vendor is saying. She can smell the doughnut shop down the street. She is much more in the moment as to what is happening on the street. Bob on the 10th floor roof can see in all directions. He is not barred by being on only one side of the building. He can go to all sides of the building. He can see quite far because of his higher perspective. However, some of the details of the immediate locale, the immediate street, are lost to him. Because he has this great perspective to see far and abstractly, he loses some of the detail of his immediate environment.

Our mind is like this 10-story building. Sometimes we are Alice on the first floor, in the moment, seeing the detail, living the reality we’re experiencing, and sometimes we’re Bob, inhabiting one of the other floors, able to be objective, able to see far, able to plan long term, and not necessarily tied down to the immediacy of our current environment. Between Alice and Bob, there’s many other floors. In this case there’s 10, 10 different ways of looking at the world, 10 different paradigms that we can inhabit in our mind to help us look at the world.

Let’s say Bob and Alice lived across the street from another building, and on that first floor was Dan. Carol could see Dan, and Dan could see Carol, but neither of them are able to look up. When you’re on the first floor you can see everything around you, but you’re unable to look up. Bob on the other hand on the 10th floor can look down and see Carol, see Dan, and whenever he wants to he can come down to the first floor and live and experience the detail with them and then return back to the 10th floor when that is a more helpful perspective to look from.

Let’s say across the street from Alice and Bob there is Dan, and Dan lives in a five-story building. He can inhabit any of those five stories just as Bob can go up and down from the first floor and the 10th floor. Who has an advantage here? Well, Bob has 10 different ways of seeing the world, 10 different balconies he can stand on, whereas Dan only has five. The moment that Bob is on the sixth floor, he is able to look down into all balconies and see which one Dan is on. He can gain information about where Dan is, whereas Dan’s going to have a very hard time looking up and figuring out where Bob is and what Bob is doing. This is where having more paradigms to access becomes extremely helpful. The more ways we have of viewing the world, the more flexible and responsive our mind can be when encountering new events, particularly events that require a rapid adjustment and rapid response.

Let’s say you have two women who are twins, and they both graduate college and they’re walking down the street. They’ve lived together their entire lives, same parents, same house, same college, they were roommates in college. The only difference between them is that one studied law and the other studied medicine. They’re walking down the street and a child falls down and slices their leg open on a piece of metal, and there’s blood everywhere. In this case, the twin who has experience in the medical profession, may have experience with blood, has already wrapped their mind around the idea of a human being hurt and in trauma and all the necessary factors that go into that. They have a way of looking at the world that allows them to treat sick, hurt people. They’ve built that for themselves. She springs into action while the lawyer remains stuck, and afraid, and panicked, does not know what to do.

Well, the twin who became the doctor had built an additional floor in her building which let her deal with this situation effectively. It was available to her. She was able to see it. In that moment of panic the lawyer twin collapsed to a level one no matter where she was. She had nowhere else to go. Now level one is immediate, it sees the environment. She can’t even think about what to do or make a plan. She forgets where here phone is to even call 911 because she’s panicked. All she can be in is in the moment. She’s having trouble thinking.

Now let’s take this twin away. She’s disappointed with her action. She says, “Boy, I really wish that I also could’ve sprung into action like my sister. I need some medical training.” She gets the medical training, she gets some experience. She also experiences seeing trauma and treating people, and boom, next thing you know she also has another floor in her building which makes her a bit more well rounded, and therefore she has the ability to handle those kind of situations. There is now a floor available to her in her building where when trauma happens she can inhabit that floor, look at the world that way, and handle it in an empowered way.

Well, when we’re trying to get somebody to adopt a new paradigm, what we try to do is invite them into our way of seeing the world. In this case, the doctor twin, way before this accident occurred, could’ve been telling her lawyer twin, “This is something that you probably should know. Let me show you the advantages of seeing the world in this new way as I see advantages I’m reaping from this.” Even after it happens and the twin says, “Why did I panic?” the doctor twin would say, “Well, you need to view the world through my eyes, look at the world the way I do. When these things happen I look at this as a machine that needs to be fixed because that is how I can maintain my cool, and not get emotionally invested, and make sure I do the right thing for the child.” The doctor twin is inviting the lawyer twin into her reality. She’s trying to build her a floor in her building so she can inhabit it. This is what expansion of paradigm is.

Certainly I think we can all agree that for most people, having medical training in general is a very good idea. What if the paradigm we’re building is a lot less clear? What if the twins went to college, and one twin converted to a religion, and she said to the other twin, “I have a new way of looking at the world. I feel empowered. I’ve built a floor in my building that’s given me all insight into the nature of reality. I think you need to build this floor in your building as well.” Depending upon the nature of this religion, it may or may not be a good thing for the second twin to adopt it.

Simply getting somebody to build this new floor in their building so they have this new paradigm accessible is not necessarily good. The degree to which this is bad will be the degree to which a person tends to get stuck in any one of these floors. Somebody who can freely move from floor to floor to floor and can learn what this religion is like, keep their identity, keep themselves anchored, but truly build this floor, see that perception of the world, and then move on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. Somebody who has a 100-story building or a 1,000-story building, so they have great insight and they have the ability to take any point of view they want. They can live through anybody’s eyes, through any experience at a moment’s notice, and I would argue sometimes live through many simultaneously in order to be able to arrive at the proper way forward, and the proper strategy, and the proper strategy for leadership. This is a very empowering thing.

The goal of the APEX framework is to help decide which paradigms, which floors in your building, are extraordinarily useful. Which ones have you not built because of your life circumstances to this point? The lack of those floors, those views of reality, those paradigms is holding you back in life. How do we add those? How do we move through the floors as needed to choose the ideal floor for a given set of circumstances that we encounter? Also, how do we look across the street into other people’s buildings, into their floors? How do we put ourselves in a position where we can look into their floors but they can’t look into ours because of course this would proffer a fantastic advantage?

There’s many ways to look at how these power dynamics start to interact as people who live in different levels of paradigm start to invite each other, and induce each other, influence each other to adopt their own way of thinking. A good framework that can be used as a shorthand to understand these power concepts is articulated by an author where he offers a framework of a level one, two and three. A level one is aware of their own subjective reality, but as far as they’re concerned, it is the only possible reality. In other words, in our example Bob is across the street from Dan. Dan is on the first floor balcony, he’s looking down at the street, he never looks up. As far as he’s concerned, the street is all there is. Dan would be a level one. A level one experiences subjective reality as if it is the only possible reality.

Bob, who can float from the first floor of his building through every single floor up to the 10th, has at least 10 different ways of looking at the world. He understands that the first floor reality that you see is not the only one. There’s other ways to look at the world. If their friend Carol calls with a moving truck and Dan says, “No, you’re not close to the building,” Bob on top of the building can say, “Yes, Carol, I see you. You are close. You’re just on the other side of the building, or you’re down the street.” A level one only sees their reality. A level two sees their own reality and also can see what Dan sees. They can look over and see, “Oh, I know why Dan made that mistake. He’s on the first floor looking down. That’s why Dan can’t see what I see.” This is a huge advantage. A level two has a huge advantage over a level one. A level one is experiencing one reality in the moment subjectively, and a level two is able to see their own and somebody else’s.

Now, we are all level one and level two in life. We move from floors. Whenever we are emotionally triggered or emotionally involved we tend to collapse levels. We tend to go down to level one where we remain until we become more empowered. Sometimes being level one is extremely useful, as we will discuss. In the long run, strategically, it is critical that we be at least level two because level two sees their reality and somebody else’s. They can see the paradigm somebody currently has, the one that we want them to have, and perhaps the target frames to get them to that new floor where they can adopt the reality that we know. Even better sometimes is to rebuild their current floor in our own image and make them move into it, make them move into their remodeled apartment that is our way of looking at the world.

To sum up, a level one deals with the world exactly as they perceive it to be. They’re unable even to imagine that somebody else’s perspectives may be true. A level two on the other hand understands their own reality, their own subjective view of it, but they also understand that other people have their own subjective view of reality. They’re able not only to see their own paradigm, they’re able to see other people’s paradigms. This unleashes a great power. A level two will have the ability to see a level one’s paradigm and move it.

Let me touch briefly on when it’s helpful to be level one and when it’s helpful to be level two or above. Let’s say that you were in charge of the army, and you had 100 soldiers, and you are standing across the field from 100 that you’re about to fight. One of these armies has level ones that have all been primed that we are good, the enemy is bad, we need to fight them and we need to defeat them, all level one. The only possible reality is the one that we’ve accepted to be true, which is that they are the enemy.

The other army has 100 people, and they are level two. They’ve also been taught that the opposing side is the enemy, but the level twos can’t help but see other perspectives. At least some of them are going to say, “Well, I know they’re supposed to be the enemy, but they kind of have a point here. Maybe how this war came about, some of their grievances are legitimate.” In order to get the same level of dedication from every single one of your troops, you need to talk them into it. You need to convince them that this is a battle worth fighting.

Tactically, because a battle is about to occur, it is important for the general to rapidly get everybody on the same page. Imagine we had eight weeks before this battle. That is what a military calls boot camp. Boot camp is taking people from different backgrounds, different perspectives, different paradigms, different viewpoints, and subjecting them to so much physical and mental stress that they all learn that their way of looking at the world will not help them survive in a military context. It will help them crash their paradigms so the military can rebuild those floors so that when you inhabit those floors, you’re doing it in line with how the military needs you to be. Let’s say that after that boot camp, you still have more than one way of looking at the world. You still have multiple paradigms. Then they promote you to an officer, or put you in the intelligence core, or make you a spy, because a grunt who can effectively question orders is only going to cause dissent.

I give this example all the time to people who ask me, “Why am I not improving in my career? Why am I not being promoted? What am I not doing properly so that my boss recognizes my ability and puts me at the next level or my organization?” The example that I give is this. You’re a general. You’re walking along your frontline getting ready for a battle, and there is your soldier cleaning his weapon rigorously, perfectly, boots shined, the perfect soldier ready to fight. He gives you a crisp salute. You go further down the line and there’s another soldier. He looks capable. He certainly looks neat and orderly, not the same level as the first one. He says, “General, while were out in maneuvers I happened to see that the enemy seem to have moved position from this point to that point. I don’t know if that’s important or not, but I saw it and I wanted to make sure you were aware of it in case that’s information that you needed to know.” Well, the general thanks the soldier and goes back to his tent where he’s informed that he’s lost an officer in combat and he has to promote someone.

Well, you’re the general. Will you promote the soldier who’s doing perfect in their current capacity but has given no indication that they have the extra floors of paradigm to be able to know what you want, what you are looking for, and make you successful? In other words, to manage upwards. The first soldier showed now indication of that. The second soldier however, in addition to carrying out his normal duties, showed a capacity to think in another paradigm, to think in a general’s paradigm of things a general may care about. The soldier could inhabit their own paradigm. They also could guess at perhaps what a general might be interested in. Clearly, if I were the general, I would promote the second soldier.

When people are struggling in their organization to get noticed, to become a leader, to move forward, adding paradigms is the way to do it. A level one who only sees one reality is at a significant disadvantage to a level two who can see their own reality, their peers’ realities, their boss’s reality, and adjust accordingly. If you’re not on the career track that you think you deserve, you need to ask yourself what is it that your management needs?

The question I probably get more than any other from executives is, “Why have I risen to this level and not beyond? I’ve worked diligently, I’ve been promoted several times, but I seem to have hit a ceiling and I don’t know why.” The true answer now that we have this context is that in the lower positions they were good soldiers, and good soldiering got them promoted once, and promoted twice, and promoted three times. There came a moment where their ability with their weapon, or cannon, or tank was not the skillset required to get to the next level up. The skillset required would be perspective, and language, and communication because one level up means understanding and anticipating the needs of their generals.

In a corporate context, the same is true that if you are inhabiting a level one paradigm, and you’re doing this because this has been successful for you to this point and this is the only reality you know, you are a software manager, you are a legal aide, you are a head of operations, you are a nurse practitioner, in all these case your way of looking at the world has made you successful to this point. Now it’s time for something new. Now it’s time for something additional. Add a floor to your building, look at the world differently, and achieve success. This is the APEX framework. You change your level, you change your life, and you can change the world.

This has been the APEX Level To Power podcast with your host, Mark Gleason, the podcast where your opinion changes, but you still get to feel right. The one ability we cannot give ourselves is credibility. You have to give that to us, so please like, subscribe or write a review. Change your level, change your life, and you can change the world. Welcome to APEX Level To Power.