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Uncertainties, mysteries and how to nurture your negative capability
Chart a course with me through the murky waters of uncertainty and doubt.
First, we lose sight of land with provocations and some readings to explore. Then set a course to a friendly harbour, with a few strategies to nurture our negative capability.
I hope the voyage helps you appreciate uncertainty a little better and its role in leadership and learning.
Provocation #1: Your Negative Capability
A sense of calm assurance and innovatory endeavour
You will have experienced those meetings or workshops where there is more doubt and uncertainty in the room than you were all expecting — it is how we all respond in those scenarios that signal a level of negative capability.
It is a mental model that I regularly reflect on and observe throughout my development work with leaders and teachers.
The quote from John Keats is from a letter he wrote to his brothers George and Tom in December 1817. He was commenting about the ideal literary state of mind, one in which someone exhibits “negative capability”.
A sense of calm assurance and innovatory endeavour in the inevitable “uncertainties…
