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Questo articolo parla dell’importanza del poter vivere con pienezza il nostro viaggio della vita restituendo un significato più profondo al nostro agire quotidiano.

Articolo estratto dal testo “Il potenziale umano – Metodi e tecniche di coaching e training per lo sviluppo delle performance” Copyright FrancoAngeli e dott. Daniele Trevisani.

Perché facciamo le cose?

Un gruppo di ricercatori che operano nella sfera della Psicologia Umanistica ha condotto uno studio per confrontare i diversi punti di vista sul senso della vita, analizzando sia persone comuni che personaggi eminenti (cultura, scienza, politica)[1a].Il senso fondamentale che emerge da questa ricerca è che l’essere umano ha bisogno di significati. Ha bisogno di ancorare la propria esistenza a qualcosa, ha la necessità di trovare una spiegazione. Il contrario è una “crisi di senso”: non sapere più cosa facciamo, non credere più a niente.

La spiegazione per il nostro agire può essere assurda, logica, razionale, mistica, scientifica, morale. La mancanza di una motivazione del fare, dell’essere, e dell’esistere, porta ad un profondo disagio esistenziale. Come evidenziano gli stessi autori:

Albert Camus (1955),Viktor Frankl (1992), e Lev Tolstoj (1980),  tutti credevano che, se la vita avesse o meno un significato in sè, fosse la domanda più importante della vita stessa. Per loro, tutti gli sforzi e imprese umane si confrontano con la questione del significato – senza significati, niente ha più importanza. Frankl (1978) vedeva la  mancanza di senso (meaninglessness) come la neurosi primaria dei nostri tempi (p. 2), e Carl Jung (1933) sosteneva che tutti i suoi clienti, visti in oltre 35 anni di terapia, avevano problemi che si collegavano alla questione dei significati (meaning). Negli studi empirici, l’esperienza soggettiva della meaninglessness (mancanza di senso) è stata collegata alla depressione (Beck, 1967; Seligman, 1990) all’abuso di sostanze e al suicidio (Harlow, Newcomb, & Bentler, 1986), così come ad altre psicopatologie (Yalom, 1980)[1b].

In sintesi, se non percepiamo un significato nelle cose, andiamo in crisi. 


La mancanza di significato porta a disturbi, o neurosi, e disagio esistenziale. Ogni azione connessa al potenziale umano deve quindi andare alla ricerca di significati profondi cui ancorarsi, siano essi in azienda, nello sport, nella vita, o in campo sociale e personale.

La psicoenergetica, nel metodo HPM, è una disciplina che deve analizzare, attaccare e aggredire la meaninglessness (mancanza di senso o caduta di significati del­la vita), e affrontare il senso di una prospettiva umana. I fronti per cui applicarsi e le cause per cui impegnarsi possono veramente essere molte, dalla fame, alla protezione dei deboli, dei bambini, degli anziani, ma anche credere in un progetto aziendale importante, o impegnarsi in un percorso spirituale. 

Il venire meno dei significati della vita o senso della vita generale distrugge qualsiasi volontà di affrontare un progetto o di impegnarsi in un’azione. 

Il nostro fine profondo è recuperare il senso, in ogni brano della vita: senso della giornata, senso di una settimana, senso di un trimestre, senso dell’anno in corso, o senso della vita, ma anche senso di un incontro (perché questo incontro?), senso di una relazione (perché questa relazione?), senso di un progetto (perché questo progetto?), senso di una sfida (perché questa sfida? Chi o cosa sto sfidando veramente?).

Lo scopo penetrante è di accrescere l’ancoraggio delle persone a obiettivi significativi, costruendoli e rinforzandoli (da un lato) e rimuovendo i blocchi (dall’altro) che impediscono a queste energie di manifestarsi.

[1a] Kinnier, Richard T., Kernes, Jerry L., Tridente, Nancy, Van Puymbroeck, Christina M. (2003), What Eminent People Have Said About The Meaning Of Life, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 43, No. 1, Winter 2003.

[1b] Camus, A. (1955), The myth of Sisyphus, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.Frankl, V. (1978), The unheard cry for meaning, Simon & Schuster, New York.Frankl, V. (1992), Man’s search for meaning (4th ed.), Beacon Press, Boston.Tolstoy, L. (1980), My confession, in S. Sanders & D. R. Cheney (Eds.), The meaning of life, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.Jung, C. G. (1933), Modern man in search of a soul (W. S. Dell & C. F. Baynes, Trans.), Harcourt, Brace & World, New York.Seligman, M. E. P. (1990), Why is there so much depression today?, in R. E. Ingram (Ed.), Contemporary psychoanalytical approaches to depression (pp. 1-9), Plenum, New York.Harlow, L. L., Newcomb, M. D., Bentler, P. M. (1986), Depression, self derogation, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation: Lack of purpose in life as a mediational factor, Journal of Clinical Psychology, 42, 5-21. Yalom, Y. D. (1980), Existential psychotherapy, Basic Books, New York. Tolstoy, L. (1980), My confession, in S. Sanders & D. R. Cheney (Eds.), The meaning of life, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Jung, C. G. (1933), Modern man in search of a soul (W. S. Dell & C. F. Baynes, Trans.), Harcourt, Brace & World, New York.

Estratto dal volume “Il Potenziale Umano”. Franco Angeli editore, Milano.
Autore: Daniele Trevisani www.studiotrevisani.it
Materiale divulgativo messo a disposizione dall’autore. 

Per approfondimenti:

Cristina Turconi
Executive & Business Coach ICF | Formatrice Aziendale | Facilitatrice Lavoro di Gruppo | Master Trainer in HPM™ Human Potential Modeling | Consulente e Innovation Manager MISE 

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Semiotics for Leadership book cover thumb© Article by Daniele Trevisani, from the book “Semiotics for Leaders” (see in Amazon more details about the book)

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A new light for observing what Performances really are

Getting rid of anxiety, depression, sick moods, is important and is a strong achievement for a good work on Human Potential. But it is not enough. After “cleaning” your machine from any unwanted burden, after fixing it and removing the dust, you might want to race with it, or use it for a wonderful trip to any destination.

The race of life or the trips of life as an opportunity are so many, and the time so little, that it is really worth trying to get rid of any unnecessary dust and burden that are cluttering our energies.

A human potential model aims at reaching positive conditions, as feeling good and full of energy, and considers this condition as a sacred destination for all Human Beings.

The following semiotic map shows that performance can have two very different set of meanings

  1. A demonstration, a sort of “presentation” or show
  2. A form of expression, a contribution.

Our approach is solidly grounding into the second area: performance and leadership as a field of self-expression rather than a mere “packaging”, nice to see but deeply unuseful and empty of values.

performance 2

Leadership has to do with the ability to unveil full Human Potential in the people that work towards a goal and in an organization.

Full Human Potential is a goal to achieve for mankind and for every free soul.

This dimension is not only practical, it becomes spiritual, it goes beyond the individual and reaches families, teams and organizations, or even entire nations and areas. When positive leadership unveils, we see a huge wave of positive energies coming out, projects, advancements, energy that busts the fog that blocks the sight of the positive destiny that every soul was born for.

Every Human Being derives power and performances from the ability to generate the right level of energy for the task – not more (it would be a waste of energy), not less (the task would not be accomplished).
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Semiotics for Leadership book cover thumb© Article by Daniele Trevisani, from the book “Semiotics for Leaders” (see in Amazon more details about the book)

Semiotics for Leadership book cover thumb© Article by Daniele Trevisani, from the book “Semiotics for Leaders” (see in Amazon more details about the book)

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The conceptual network of Human Power

Power is the capacity of reaching a goal or get something done.

Reaching a goal, heading towards a vision or fulfilling a task requires energy. One of the highest skills of leaders is that of activating people’s power and energies towards a goal. To activate means to put those energies into a flow, a flow that can build or destroy almost anything.

Power to act and to generate changes makes the difference between life and death. Think of how important leadership can be in managing a fire brigade team, or coordinate a rescue team, and you will find easily how leaders need not only external signs of leadership (e.g. uniforms) but really internal set of tools and values that make them special people.

Several “semantic maps” (a Semiotic tools) will be used to show the meaning connections among hot topics of leadership.

As this first semantic map shows, ability and power are closely connected to skills acquirement, to mental faculties, to knowledge, and leadership.

map 01

This map shows connections among concept from WordNet® an official database from Princeton University[1].

Given this complexity a working model that deals with the ambition of helping humans in reaching their full potential in leadership should really be holistic and pragmatic.

  • Holistic (in this approach) has the sense of encompassing the large variety of disciplines that enter the field of real leadership, such as management science, biology, psychology, linguistics, communication, neuroscience, and several others.
  • Pragmatic” in our view, means “practical”, focused on “what works”, what can be useful, centered on the real-life possibilities of applications and the will of finding really working paths of improvement.

A holistic/pragmatic approach to Human Potential does not make a clear line between pathological conditions and “normal” condition, sick or fit, white or black, but considers instead any human as a “system” whose energies can vary along a continuum, a system whose possibilities can unfold given proper stimuli, starting from any condition and state.

The holistic/pragmatic approach therefore becomes useful both for counseling interventions and for coaching, for research purpose and for management of HR interventions, for sports athletes and for high performance teams in any field.

There is no limitations to what can be achieved by a good work on Human Factor, since wherever we have a Human Being, any form of improvement will be possible given the right will and the right knowledge.

Knowing how humans function enables almost everything.

Ipsa scientia potestas est

Knowledge itself is power.

The clinical area is not marginal. It also concern the psychosomatic improvement, the mental condition, or the advanced frontiers of human understanding.

A solid work on Human Potential, Performance and Leadership must comprise the Mental State in which humans work, as well as that mental state is the right one for the goal, and how to improve it. It must also include a strong foundation, teaching values and forcing them to be appliedby leaders into everyday behaviors and everyday decisions.

[1] George A. Miller (1995). WordNet: A Lexical Database for English. Communications of the ACM Vol. 38, No. 11: 39-41. Christiane Fellbaum (1998, ed.) WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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Semiotics for Leadership book cover thumb© Article by Daniele Trevisani, from the book “Semiotics for Leaders” (see in Amazon more details about the book)