Overvaluing any function leads to over-reliance on that function. Same as when the value of any asset is over-relied on, it becomes a liability.
In these times, many company leaders are called to exercise the function of subtraction. Eliminate waste. Slice costs. Cut manufacturing. Purge inventory. Remove people. Spend less. Do more. Multiply profits. Divide and silo teams and functionality.
Overvaluing subtraction and undervaluing creative additions leave in place old ways of ideating, problem-solving, decision-making, communicating, and doing things. This decreases innovation and multiplies status quo thinking.
When legacy mindsets, systems and procedures are double-downed on and multiplied, reactions to stale ways of working can cause division. Acts of dividing can subtract and take away from work/life quality and well-being.
In too much subtracting, sooner or later, we come to feel subtracted. We feel meaning and value are lacking in our lives. We sense something in ourselves is silently, slowly, surely, slipping and sliding further away from fulfillment.
We sense, without even being able to articulate it, that those precious parts of us are becoming deleted through all the subtracting we are called on to do in our roles at work and home. We’re called to delete expenses to pay our mounting bills, to make sacrifices and compromises to hold ourselves back to keep up relationships — that may also be vanishing in importance, right in front of us.
How we show up in life increasingly depends on how we step up, stand out or step back, fade out and disappear.
Look at your actions, behaviors, and your motivators. What kind of contributor are you? Are you an adder, a multiplier, a divider or a subtractor? How do you bring value to others in your life?
In all your subtracting and taking away, what might be taken away and subtracted in you, by you?
How is your “doing” impacting your becoming? Are you adding and multiplying value and self-worth? Are you growing and becoming more whole? Or is life subtracting vital parts of you, causing you to become more divided, separated and disassociated from yourself and others?
Signs of our subtracting also show up in how we speak. Our vocabulary reveals a lot about how we experience what we experience. How we speak and express ourselves represents our perception of our value in our world.
Micro listen to patterns of speaking. Pay attention not just to what’s being said but also to how it’s being said. Most people, even those who consider themselves to be good listeners, rarely, if ever, listen for content structure. They listen rather for self-serving opportunities. These are transactional listeners. They listen for getting, not for understanding.
When engaging with others, try sharpening your focus on their language structure, their word choices and the word strings they express. This level of attention reveals rich information about who you’re engaging with.
When speaking with others, assess if there is active listening for discovery taking place. Or is there just an impatient person waiting to intrude, muscle in, divide and subtract from whatever’s being said by whoever, to increase their sense of self-importance?
Try also attuning your listening to what’s not being said. Often, we sense vagueness in the words used. We suspect something is being generalized, deleted and/or distorted. We frequently hear responses that are less than complete and well-formed. Ambiguous, unspecified and elusive non-contextual language is one way we choose not to show up.
Language is a way to hold our true experience back from others and ourselves. It’s the same for seeing. We choose to become less visible so as to not reveal ourselves or challenge others.
Vague communication is how relationships become empty and hollow.
We appear present but we’re not fully represented. When we hear language that is generalizing, deleting and distorting in nature, we sense it but rarely mention it.
Often the listener doesn’t ask for clarification. They just fill in the blanks of vagueness with their own additions. There is a mutual subtracting, adding and lying going on. Consensual deleting is taking place.
Fuzzy speak, repetitive generalizing and deleting language over time becomes ghosting. Ghosting over time brings invisibility. Invisibility over time brings numbness.
Numbness over time brings fragmentation, disassociation and disconnection. We fade. Our identity dissolves. We become devitalized. Demagnetized. Our power to attract what we want weakens. We become unrecognizable to others and to ourselves. Ghost creep is how ghost teams, families, and phantom cultures are created.
Here are common examples of deletions in language.
Yeah, it’s a real thing and it bugs me! (What’s real and what bugs you?)Don’t worry, I am on it and will take care of it soon! (On, what? Take care of it when?)I know I’m not very good at it, but I’ll have to improve. (Not good at what? Improve what?)It’s a problem I’ve got to change. (What kind of problem? Got to change what?)
Here are common examples of generalization in language.
It happens all the time and it’s so frustrating! (All the time?)The problem is in the project; it needs fixing. (What project and part of the project?)They have no understanding of what we need and never have. (None? Never? Ever?)No one understands me. (No one? Ever?)
Are you and those you speak with value adders, multipliers, dividers or subtractors?
Are all the roles in your life adding up to multiply fulfillment or dividing and subtracting from it?
How we communicate offers clues to how we operate.
Watch what you’re subtracting. It can lessen you. Watch what you may be deleting. It may be deleting you!
