What does it mean to be HUMAN?

Since our new vision in 2019 of humanising the world of work, we’ve been exploring this question and threading it into everything we do, both in creation and delivery. 

Over those years significant events have only amplified and accelerated the need for it to be answered well. 

Our research into human leadership and management has centred on extending the emotional intelligence model to be more of a human intelligence model – EQ to HQ. And delivering this to leaders in 154 countries has confirmed the people challenges leaders face in this new world are universal (authenticity, inclusion, role modelling, and meaningful connection). 

Now we need to extend this further to drive our understanding and awareness of humanity as a species and our place on this planet – our human planet. 

The climate emergency is ever-increasing, so understanding our key differentiators and opportunities to save our world and livelihood for future generations is paramount. 

Martin Seligman is a researcher I’ve respected my whole career. For someone who spent his early 40-year career studying depression and learned helplessness, to be able to flip his entire understanding on its head, embrace a new lens, and lead the new paradigm of positive psychology is extraordinary. 

I’ve had the honour and courage to pioneer the application of his early theories in human strengths and the PERMA model of flourishing and thriving on a global scale. So when I first read his book ‘Homo Prospectus’ when it was published in 2016, I had no idea what it would mean for me at this critical juncture of searching for the most core aspects of humanity in a world facing AI. 

Rereading it eight years later, it has a more profound position than any other scientific basis for what people and organisations need right now. 

What do I mean? 

Seligman and his collaborators in this book, identified that humans look ahead more than behind. Humans explore future possibilities and scenarios to adjust their behaviour more so than past experiences. 

This is a fundamental point for us to consider, as the world ponders the human species' place and position as guardians, caretakers, and stewards of an incredible planet in crisis. 

What is even more vital is that, in the book the authors propose this is done through four modes in which prospection operates: the implicit mind, deliberate thought, mind-wandering, and collective (social) imagination. 

And that focuses me on the last one: collective/social imagination. Something AI doesn’t do… it cannot make intuitive leaps or think outside the box. 

To solve the planet's challenges we can search our implicit mind, and our deliberate thoughts, allowing our minds to wander to find new possible futures, but without others, without the whole species in this together we won’t progress. And our species will eventually become threatened. 

Do we leave it to AI to solve? Is it too unthinkable that this common thread connecting us across polarising global standpoints could be the pathway forward for the future of our species and those we unconsciously affect by our living presence? 

What it means to be human, to prospect, to future anticipate, to focus forward with an ability to let go of the past and adapt ourselves, our minds, our resilience, our creativity, and our actions to the future we can therefore shape and build. 

Seligman has done it yet again! His work is before its time and perfectly placed. 

So here I go again… 

Courage to pioneer this forward, into organisations where large swarms of humans gather together and move in one direction, aware of their own space, yet aligned with the group, and well connected to those closest to them......