Could you walk past an elephant without seeing it? 🤔
Well, yes! Quite easily in fact! 🐘
At the zoo, where it’s in a small barren space, it’s easy to see. When`going on a safari, you realise that an elephant can be quite difficult to spot in its natural environment.
- Sometimes you can only make it out in part, or because trees and bushes are shaking and you look for the cause.
- If you’ve never seen an elephant in its environment, your brain and eyes don’t know what to look for, and it takes them a while to learn to distinguish it’s various silhouettes in the bush.
- In the beginning, it’s even useful to use a guide to refine our perceptions, otherwise we miss out completely!
All in all, it takes time to adapt our sensory systems to seeing the elephant, and a certain amount of learned expertise! Of course, it’s only once we’ve seen the elephant that it really becomes obvious to us and we can’t unsee it. Before that, it could have been right next to us and we wouldn’t have noticed.
What’s that got to do with my job? If you know me, you’ll know that I love drawing parallels between life experiences and business 😉 The elephants in the room can be found in most workplaces and yet can be difficult to see clearly.
An elephant spends 22 hours a day feeding! In the workplace, it feeds on the unspoken, all things taboo around it. It’s not always in the room: the elephant in the room roams free, it appears where it wants, when it wants. It’s easy to miss, especially as it’s a very quiet animal!
If you’d like to identify the elephants in the room and treat them, I’d be delighted to take you on a safari in their natural habitat: your company. You’ll find it fascinating and I bet we’ll accomplish a lot towards making your workplace more serene!