Street Smart

Street Smart defintion: shrewdly able to thrive in any difficult environment, such as a ghetto neighbourhood.

"Being Street Smart means showing compassion and vulnerability while at the same time being practical, realistic and responsible. It means being genuine. It means clearly asking for timely and appropriate help, without falling into the trap of being a victim of one’s own situation.  Street Smart people take personal responsibility and seek to act in ways that cultivate a better world—both now and in the future. Street Smartness is a form of intelligence. It is a combination of several types of intelligence existing in balance: intellectual, cultural, emotional, interpersonal (people-smart), intra-personal (self-smart), transformational, intuitive, body-conscious-smart and environmental. Leaders who cultivate Street Smart capabilities tap into greater awareness, becoming highly attuned to their own inner and outer worlds and the surroundings they move through; they use that awareness and power to function effectively and in timely ways with consideration and respect.

Street Smart Awareness leads to decisions and behaviours that take into account many variables at once: it is an agile awareness of oneself, others and the long-term consequences of immediate actions. In today’s world these qualities are needed more than ever—and they are also, happily, beginning to be publicly acknowledged...

“Inquiry” sounds as if it might be all about asking questions. And in a way it is—except that questions generally imply specific answers. Inquiry is rather a process of open questioning which can elicit an entire range of possible responses and reveal the possibility of new kinds of thinking and perceiving.  This in turn opens us up to feedback, and thereby to fresh thoughts and perspectives. It is a step into greater expansiveness in thinking, sensing, seeing, knowing and moving. Inquiry is a quality of noticing characterized by listening, observing and sensing what is going on both in the outside world and within ourselves.

“In-action” means that the inquiry process joins up the internal and the external. The internal inquiry is triggered by external events and the way we see the external events is triggered by what is going on inside us. Without inquiry, what we see is very often only what we expect to see, and this meeting of our expectation further reinforces our confidence that we know what is going on. Our world-view is confirmed because we look through the lens of our world-view. Inquiry-in-Action instead challenges precisely what we are expecting to see…

We aim to perfect the art of inquiring in the here-and-now, not in the aftermath of events but in their midst. This often leads us to startling new insights that translate immediately into timely actions. The third involves evaluating and appreciating the impact of our actions. We must ask: Was this the impact we intended? Is our action having any unintended consequences? What does this mean about both our past action and our future possibilities? Such evaluation goes well beyond asking what was right or wrong—rather, it loops back into our inquiry, alerting us to unwarranted assumptions we might have made and to new information we might not yet have considered…

Many of us may have experienced these awkward moments, when we realize that we desperately need to head in a new direction. Sometimes we don’t have the courage to recast our plans on the spot, while at other times we step out of our comfort zone and just do it. This is sometimes called double-loop feedback, and can be very effective. There is an even more sophisticated level of feedback (triple-loop feedback) possible in the moment. This is when we are able to tap into another level of consciousness; when we stop right where we are, let go of our assumptions, our pre-formed judgments, and our ego-driven intentions, and instead tap into ourselves in a deep, humane and compassionate way, becoming completely aware of ourselves and our surroundings and acting directly out of that awareness.

These moments are rare, and yet most of us have probably experienced them—moments in which a speaker alters her or his consciousness right in front of us, causing the whole room to hold its breath in awe at the authenticity of the moment. Such experiences can have a lasting, transformational impact on everyone present. Another aspect of timeliness is the amazing convergence of past and future in the present. This can lead to a very powerful Inquiry-in-Action…

I may not hope for the best in a difficult relationship simply because I have never experienced it as any good—and this renders me incapable of imagining that it might be better in the future. This thought in turn might lead me to accept it as it is, to do nothing about it because I don’t think it can change. But who says it can’t? My past experience and future expectations may be saying, “nothing will change”, while right now in this moment there may be clues suggesting different possibilities, if only I allow myself to notice them…

“Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don’t have to do anything else. We don’t have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen.” —Margaret J. Wheatley

This rich seam of groundbreaking ideas is finding increasing acceptance in the academic world and in the world of business consulting. It is referred to and applied in many different forms in a large number of organizations and communities. Its continuing development is reaching out to an ever-expanding audience. It is especially useful in complex environments, and is valued by enlightened leaders who have experienced the limited effectiveness of conventional approaches. The spread of these ideas has been a gradual and gratifying process.”

~ Jane Allen, Street Smart Awareness and Inquiry-in-Action

Photo ~ Detroit ghetto. Once a thriving manufacturing powerhouse, the Rust Belt is now a vast area of urban decay and economic depression stretching across eight states in the northeastern United States.