🔥Welcome to Volume #00095!🔥
I’m Christian Champ. This is ☯️The Middle Way Newsletter ☯️. It is a place where I write, explore, share, and invite you along for the journey.
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🎮How Do We Play the Right Status Games? 🎮
A perfectly pressed smile framed my lips.
My mouth hung in that pose as my head nodded vigorously.
I wrecked of Yes, Yes, Yes.
I blew out the air of pressed laughter.
The laugh and smile didn't feel fake or forced, but I didn't find anything funny or entertaining.
Then a lightning bolt of recognition hit me. I recently re-read Keith Johnstone's book Impro, where he reminds us that status games are life.
Our new CEO sat in the center of the conference room. I flanked him on his left, and my colleagues filled the room.
We all mirrored each other in our responses and reactions.
We were primed for these responses, as we all dressed in suits on a random Tuesday because we heard the CEO didn't like golf shirts.
He sat in the middle in his golf shirt (we got bad intel), and laughter emanated from all sides as he told some not-very-funny or entertaining story.
We genuflected to his position of power and attempted to win sway with the emperor. We all flapped around, complimenting him with our body language and reactions.
The status game played out in the windowed conference room.
Status games aren't necessarily good or bad.
We showed that we were on the team and on board, ready to be led. We showed that we cared and were ready and willing to help.
Once you start noticing status games, it is hard not to see them. When the realization stuck, I struggled to force laughs and enjoy the game.
I switched to the head nodding and leaning forward into the conversation. I felt my body shifting and hovering on the table.
At that moment, all I thought about was how goofy we all were, playing for prestige and power.
We Have to Play Status Games
Again, status games aren't necessarily good or bad.
We play them constantly in our culture, team, and tribes. At times it's consciously, and at other times we are entirely unaware.
We play high status and low. It depends on the context and the situation.
The question for us is, what status games are we playing? What status games do we want to play?
Like infinite and finite games, we want to play status games that help create the world we want.
Clamoring for a CEO's attention and good graces with smiles and head nodes is not the game I want to play. Supporting the CEO in our mission, bringing good energy to people, empowering people, and creating success are the status games I want to play.
Using Status to Serve
How do we take our status to empower others? How do we use status to create the right success? How do we use the status that people afford us to help unlock their best?
We get to sit in the seat of the CEO all the time. As parents, leaders, co-workers, and advisors, we can pick the proper status games to play.
The status we celebrate is the status that drives us. We need to use it wisely.
📓Things to Think About📓
Irinia Flionova on Career Shock
Change is the constant, and when volatility picks up, the odds of career shock (positive or negative) increase.
In research literature, Jos Akkermans and his colleagues define a career shock as “a disruptive and extraordinary event that is, at least to some degree, caused by factors outside the focal individual’s control and that triggers a deliberate thought process concerning one’s career.” In a nutshell, something happens outside your control zone, ranging from natural disasters to a substantial conflict with institutional culture. Next, this unplanned event forces you into deep reflection followed by a change of behavior (learning new skills) or taking action (searching for a new job).
Irinia offers her REAL approach to dealing with it. REAL stands for recognizing, exploring, accepting, and learning.
We start with noticing the change. Then we explore our inner world (coaches make great partners for this part) as we deal with the change. We then accept where things stand and reflect on what we learned from the process.
Outside magazine looks at the stone-skipping champion of the world, Kurt Steiner. Becoming the best meant an obsessive perfection mind state that included many life challenges. It’s an interesting story of existence and a driving desire to do one thing and do it extremely well.
Kurt Steiner is the world’s greatest stone skipper. Over the past 22 years, he has won 17 tournaments in the United States and Europe, generating ESPN coverage and a documentary film. In September 2013, he threw a rock that skipped so many times it defied science. This year he hopes to smash records on both sides of the Atlantic, giving him a platform for sermonizing about a sport he believes is nothing short of a means for the redemption of mankind—“a legitimate path to an essential inner balance,” he says.
Being the stone-skipping champion means living a weird existence.
Kurt has only sourced rocks from Lake Erie, whose 13,000-year-old basin is crammed full of the kinds of wafer-thin, Devonian-shale chunks that cause skippers to swoon.
To find rocks, Kurt combs the lake for about an hour, appraising the stones like a diamond merchant. One in three he picks up makes it into his five-gallon bucket. Ideally, it weighs between four and seven ounces, has a smooth, flat bottom, and measures between a quarter-inch and five-sixteenths of an inch thick. Once he’s gathered 60 pounds’ worth—around 200 rocks—he sits on a crate and sorts the rocks into four rows of descending weight, arranged left to right.
Everything is ultimately an art and when done well is poetry.
“There is so much poetry,” Ohmer said as the three of us sat the bar. “Because you find that stone, then you’ve thrown it in the river and it’s gone. You’ve pursued this endeavor until you have it all figured out. And then you hand it over to the world and see what comes of it.”
Kurt needed a rival to push him, who he also pushed. Doing things ourselves is hard; finding a challenger takes us to places we never imagined. He reminds us of the power of others.
A few weeks later, Russ died. It “hurt Kurt a lot,” Paul Fero, Kurt’s friend, told me. “Kurt has told me flat out that he would have never done what he did, throwing the 88, without Russell. Russell was a counterbalance, something to shoot for. They kept each other going. They both kept each other striving for more.”
📕Books to Read📕
The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It by Will Storr
This book reminded me of reading Impro and insipred the piece about status games. Will offers many antidotes and powerful ideas.
My favorite story was about the power of rivalry. Steve Jobs hearing from a senior executive, who he clashed with, at Microsoft about how they solved tablet computing and were doing it with pens. By pushing it in Jobs’ face, Steve turned around and wanted to design a tablet useing fingers, just to prove this guy wrong. That is how we got the Ipad.
Key Ideas:
Life is a game, and we can’t help but play. At the same time, there is no finish line or promised land. We never win the game, and it only continues.
We care about connection and rank. Always remember that as a member of a group or when leading
We live in a world of rules, both cultural and tribal, that include rewards and punishments for both adults and children (these get encoded in rituals, myths, and culture)
Three Games of Status
Dominance - mafias and armies
Virtue - religion and institutions
Success - corporations and sporting events (competence games)
We want to play games of success that is based on competence and creating things
When we change the rules, we change the players… why design and the status games we decide to play are so important
The most successful leaders have the least compliant followers —> they give people agency, allow them to disagree, and to push things where they need to go
Successful leaders tell followers they deserve more status, and I’ll help us all get there
Will’s 7 Rules of the Playing Status Games
Practice, Warmth, Sincerity, and Competence
Make Small Moments of Prestige
Play of Hierarchy of Games
Reduce Your Moral Sphere
Foster a Trade-Off Mindset
Be Different
Never Forget Your Dreaming
🎧Things to Listen, See, and Watch 🎧
Friend of the Middle Way, Aaron Fallon, offers up some Limited Photos
Aaron’s photos adorn the walls in my home, including The Slide. I highly recommend folks check them out as something for your home space or as a gift.
Reminder to play the internal games, not the external games.
💣Words of Wisdom💣
"The simple act of refusing to live a lie has the power to transform who we are and what we are capable of, both as individuals and as a society. In other words, trying our best to live a congruent life is one of the most important things we can do for ourselves and each other." (Todd Rose, Collective Illusions)
"But vindication has no power over guilt. No amount of anger or rage directed at others can subdue it, because guilt is never about them. Guilt is the fear of one’s own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with other people." (Tara Westover, Educated)
"Make sure you know what makes you happy, and don’t forget it." (Derek Sivers, Anything You Want)
"Here are some words I love, words that describe presence rather than means towards an end: nourishing, edifying, redemptive; courageous, generous, winsome; adventurous, curious, tender." (Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise)
"This girl has the spark of life. This is my primary filter for new friends (girl- and otherwise) and the highest compliment I can pay." (Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore)
"We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought. - ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
"Make your life the spiritual practice don't make it about sitting on a cushion. Although that's important. Our dharma, our practice is in the world, life is our yoga." (THIRD EYE DROPS, Life as an Art With Dr. Miles Neale)
"What’s indisputable is that when we assess our experiences, we don’t average our minute-by-minute sensations. Rather, we tend to remember flagship moments: the peaks, the pits, and the transitions." (Chip Heath and Dan Heath, The Power of Moments)
"In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct." (Robert B. Cialdini PhD, Influence)
"When we talk about settling the world’s problems, we’re barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives." (Joseph Campbell)
"To paraphrase Marcel Proust, the only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." (Nathanael Johnson, Unseen City)
"Maddon knew it would take much more than optimism. He knew the first step toward flipping a culture, and it would be the theme of his first-day speech. It was his golden rule of managing: connect, trust, and lead—in that order." (Tom Verducci, The Cubs Way)
🙏Thanks for Reading🙏
What status games are you playing? Do they all serve you?
If you are interested in my coaching practice to get unstuck, find more flow and fullfillemnt or to level up, please reach out.
Any thoughts or comments, please share!
Namaste,
Christian
We are working on some new moves…
🎮How Do We Play the Right Status Games? 🎮