The hologram is a three-dimensional photograph made on a flat surface with laser beams.

The three-dimensionality of such an image is not the only remarkable characteristic of a hologram. If a hologram of your face is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still contain the entire image of your face.

Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image of your face. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes.

To some scientific researchers, the hologram is the basis for a striking view of reality -- that the entire universe is a superhologram. Everything from the grains of sand beneath our feet to the farthest star in the outermost regions of deep space, everything is interconnected as one.

This view has come to be called the holographic paradigm, and though it is supported by findings of quantum physics and corroborates the insights of the ancient Rabbis of the Kabbala, the Buddha, Lao Tsu, Plato, the Veda mystics, and many more prophets and spiritual traditions, many scientists have greeted it with skepticism.

Still, a small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at thus far.

If the holographic paradigm is true, then each of us — including your best friend and your worst enemy — are all connected on a deeper level of reality. Consequently, our individual actions affect others, everywhere. The state of the world, the state of the universe for that matter, is merely the sum total of the interactions of humanity.

Let's bring the holographic paradigm into our ordinary lives, our ordinary day-to-day jobs. Because if it doesn't work in our daily lives, it's nothing more than an interesting idea. In fact, it's in the very ordinariness of our moment-to-moment experiences that the holographic paradigm finds its true manifestation.

That manifestation creates an entirely new way of understanding leadership and organizational success; for a key leadership tool that I've been teaching for many years is indeed a hologram. Not the static photo-image hologram but a living hologram of great complexity and energy.

That tool is the Leadership Talk.

There is a hierarchy of verbal persuasion, the lowest levels of which are speeches and presentations, the highest and most effective level is the Leadership Talk. Speeches and presentations communication information, but Leadership Talks do something much more, they help the leader establish deep, human emotional interactions with the audience -- so vital in motivating people to get results.

According to the holographic paradigm, we are really receivers participating in a kaleidoscopic flow of wondrous frequency, and what we extract from this and translate into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram of the universe.

Like a hologram, The Leadership Talk is a totality -- the totality of right leadership interactions. And like a holographic totality, each part of a Leadership Talk is the whole. Whatever Leadership Talk process you choose, you'll find that it not only permeates all other processes of the Talk, it permeates time and space.

(By the way, I say right interactions. Wrong leadership interactions are countless and have mainly to do with order-leadership. The right interactions are triggered by the Leadership Talk processes I've taught for 21 years. Those processes have one end in mind: helping leaders achieve not just average results but more results faster continually. Such superresults can only be achieved in penetrating human relationships.)

Ralph Waldo Emerson saw this permeation of space/time when he wrote, There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same.... I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain and the Islands -- the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras in my own mind.

This idea is not arcane philosophy but most importantly, a practical leadership tool for achieving superresults.

Look at it this way: Leaders do nothing more important than get results. Yet working with thousands of leaders worldwide for the past 21 years, I've found that very few are getting the results they are capable of.

These leaders look at superficial facets of results, such as information technology, productivity loops, quality programs, human resource activities, speed, productivity, operations efficiencies, sales closes, sales leads, sales to new customers, failure prevention, health and safety advancements, quality, training, quality control, logistics efficiencies, marketing targets, new revenue streams, sales erosion, price calibrations, cost reductions, demand flow activities and technologies, inventory turns, cycle time reductions, materials and parts management, etc. -- the stuff taught in business schools.

Sure, these facets are important, and they must be developed and put to use, but without taking into account the human-interactions that animate each of the facets, the leaders stumble. And that's not taught in business schools.

All organizational challenges are ultimately challenges of human relationships. The Leadership Talk enables leaders to get those relationships right; and when they do, right results will follow. The proof may well be found in the holographic paradigm.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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