Alice was assessed as requiring a long development process for her leadership skills when she was chosen for the NASA Systems Engineering Training Program.  An engineer in her mid-30s she was perceived as indecisive, not focused, not solid yet she definitely had the technical strengths necessary to be a NASA systems engineer.

I noticed in one of the first sessions that she was doodling while speaking.  Since this was a recurring behavior I decided to use it as an opportunity for learning.  

Note:  the non-verbal dimension includes much more than the “physical.”  It extends to the cognitive arena.  Visual thinking like movement thinking is non-verbal.  Remember the college SAT exam, it had two sections:  verbal and math -- a non-verbal mode of cognition.

Her doodle began as a square and rapidly became an expanding field of squares partially overlaying squares.
 

The study of symbols has a long history.  Squares correspond to concreteness, containment, details, and/or analytical logic.  

Beginning with a single detail, Alice saw more and more details and ways to examine them, which is an excellent perspective for a systems engineer.  However, the details and choices kept expanding.  We approached her doodle as an analogue of what appeared behaviorally as “indecisiveness.”

Her first practice was to draw one square on top of another, thereby containing her expansive thinking to a single focus.  She used this during meetings and began to report greater control over her indecisive – too many choices – tendency. 

Another project was how to balance her personal relational orientation with what it takes to be a decisive thinker.  She was taught a pair of simple muscle-based meditations that shifted her center of gravity in two distinct ways. 

One encouraged her natural relational style.  The other brought forth her less used decisiveness, necessary for meeting head-to-head in an “it’s just business attitude.” 

After purposefully shifting back and forth between the practices, she was able to recognize the muscular signature of her normal state.  Now, she could more clearly ascertain when it was appropriate to shift to a less emotional orientation.  She applied this in large group meetings, one-on-one conversations, and in preparation for meetings.

The next project was how to purposefully yet authentically project an authoritative, no nonsense, and powerfully solid presence.   The goal was to walk into a meeting and without saying a word become the gravitational center of the groups attention. 

She was given a practice based on the intrinsic connection between stance, attitudinal readiness, strategic options, and perceived presence.  Using the language of strategy offered by Miyamoto Musashi in A Book of Five Rings, she wanted to access the Ring of Ground. 

Anyone who holds this state with their muscles as well as their “minds” shows up as decisive, independent, authoritative, and powerfully effective.  This is especially true in the United States.  In some parts of the world, a very different set of qualities demonstrates power.

The proof ...  she applied for a senior systems engineering position; one that she “knew” she was not ready for yet, both from the perspective of experience and technical know-how. 

As an important and intriguing aside, 95% of the questions she was asked by the interviewing panel were about her leadership skills, not her technical understanding. 

She was awarded the position, based primarily on how she presented herself during the interview and how she handled the difficult leadership questions posed by the panel.  A technical tutor was chosen to help her catch up on the “much easier to acquire” engineering knowledge. 

In a follow up conversation, one of the panel members spoke of how impressed he was at her calm and solid presence, especially given his memory of her just a year ago. 

Alice reported that under the verbal surface, she was paying attention to keeping her feet on the ground, her hands solid and strong, her breath in her belly, and sitting slightly forward in the chair.  When her focus wavered she visualized drawing a square. 

Since these kinds of awareness and internal effort were non-verbal, they did not distract her ability to listen clearly to the words. 

In addition, because she had practiced these subtle actions in less charged situations, she came across as naturally and authentically solid, dependable, and able to handle the conflicts and stresses of the new position.