1.1 Negative capability
The purpose of pausing amidst the action of leadership is to create ‘negative capability’, a concept coined by Simpson et al. (2002). Negative capability is ‘the ability to “not do” and especially to “not do” in a reactive way’ (Ladkin, 2015, p. 105). There is a lot of pressure on people to always be busy, to be active in the world and impactful on it. Its opposite, inaction, is often described in derogatory terms, as wasting time and squandering opportunity. Yet very often you hear people remarking that a decision was taken ‘rashly’ or ‘in haste’ and that more time was needed to make a good, considered decision.
The word ‘capability’ is interesting here, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the power or ability to do something’. Capability doesn’t mean the actual doing of something. In the case of negative capability, what you are doing is generating the power or ability not to do something. The word ‘power’ is important, because in order to develop negative capability you need to overcome pressure to look and be busy, not only from colleagues but also from within yourself – your own ego will be pressuring you to act and to ‘have the answer’.
Negative capability should be cultivated for situations where the ethical solution isn’t obvious. In such situations you need to pause until more information presents itself. The specific practices of negative capability are ‘waiting, observing and listening’ (Ladkin, 2015, p. 107; Simpson et al., 2002). ‘Waiting’ here means, in Ladkin’s words, ‘concentrated attention’, which means being attentive to what you see occurring around you, and spending time carefully looking for hidden details or dimensions.
Observing is a difficult task because our predilection is usually to get stuck into the action around us. Being involved in action has its advantages – you can appreciate first-hand the lived experiences of action, the stresses and joys, some of the interpersonal connection at play. However, doing so means you are only experiencing part of a system and that you are failing to see the bigger patterns at play.
As a means of explaining the difference between action and observation, Heifetz and Linsky (2017) use the metaphor of dancing in a club. Being in action is like dancing on the dancefloor as part of the crowd, feeding off and contributing to the energy and movement being created. Observing means standing on the balcony, looking down at how everyone moves together. For Heifetz and Linsky, a leader needs to move between the dancefloor and the balcony, feeling the energy but then looking at the bigger picture. In this metaphor, negative capability involves waiting on the balcony to observe and notice patterns that you can act upon.