Fundamentals of Level Three Leadership

31. Connecting Feel and Performance: Flow

Concept

As a young teenager, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi survived/avoided the Nazi concentration camps. In them, he was surprised at how quickly so many died—but that there were a few, who despite the horrible conditions, not only survived but thrived. Beneath the overbearing formal systems, they had a hierarchy of command, rules and regulations, a black market, and processes for trying and punishing violators. He later came to the United States, studied psychology, became a department chair at the University of Chicago, and spent his career investigating this phenomenon of the few.

Over time, he named it flow. Flow he said was a collection of phenomenon:²

1. Time warped, either speeding up or slowing down ...