How Leaders With Higher Knowledge Maturity Build Deeper Connections
One of my favorite Sufi tales is about four beggars—a Persian, an Arab, a Turk, and a Greek—who find a single gold coin lying by the side of the road. Immediately, they start bickering amongst themselves.
First, the Persian says: “You know what? We should go buy some angur.”
“No way!” says the Arab. “What we need is some inab.”
Next, the Turk speaks up: “That sounds terrible—how about we get some üzüm instead.”
“You’re all wrong,” declares the Greek. “We’ve only got one coin, and we’re spending it on some stafylia.”
Naturally, the four men dig in their heels. Voices are raised, there’s a bit of shoving, and they’re starting to get really angry with each other when a passerby chips in. “Stop fighting immediately!” he says. “I know a way to turn this one coin into four coins—and then you can all get what you want.”
The beggars agree to play along—so the passerby takes them to the nearest fruit cart and uses the coin to buy a bunch of grapes. “Angur, inab, üzüm, stafylia—these are all just different words for the same thing,” he explains. Delighted, the beggars grab the grapes and tuck in—just as happy as if they really had found four coins in the dust.
Lessons for Leaders
What’s the takeaway here for business leaders? Obviously, it’s important to make sure everyone on your team is on the same page and using the same language. It’s also important to defuse conflict and look for win-win opportunities that give everyone a chance to get what they want.
But at a deeper level, this tale tells us to look beyond superficial differences—of terminology, opinion, background, and perspective—and seek out the underlying interconnections that bring us together instead of driving us apart. It’s when we connect with one another on a deeper level that the magic happens and we’re able to unlock the deeper value inherent in the opportunities we encounter.
That’s a vital lesson for today’s leaders because we live in a chaotic and polarized world.
It’s always tempting to retreat into cliques or groups of similarly minded people—but for our teams, ourselves, and our organizations, it’s essential that we always strive to understand our differences, push through them, and create more diverse and valuable connections instead!
The Power of Knowledge Mindfulness
Crucially, this tale tells us one more big thing: how to build and develop the interconnections we desperately need today. It’s not enough simply to reach out to one another—that’s an expression of intent, but not a method for achieving results. Instead, we must find the knowledge maturity that opens the door to interconnectedness.
After all, when the four beggars gained a better understanding—in other words, the knowledge that the words they were using all meant the same thing—their disagreement melted away. It was knowledge that let them overcome their differences, connect with each other, and multiply the value they gained from their single coin.
As leaders, we might want to be like the story’s bypasser. We can look for ways to grow our own “knowledge maturity” to bring others together while also looking for ways to broaden people’s understandings and insights about us, elevating and enriching not only our own knowledge but also the other person’s knowledge about us. In this way, we can create opportunities for deeper connections that add deeper value for all of us.
In other words, it’s by working with Knowledge Mindfulness that we can truly open the door to deeper connections and drive exponentially more value for ourselves, our teams, our organization, and beyond.
