You Are Living Inside Language — Rich Watkins on philosophy, achievement and keeping our lenses clean

I know very little about philosophy but I like it when a random dad in a kids playground starts talking about Wittgenstein and the reality-shaping assumptions of language. Rich Watkins definitely passes the bar of being an over-achiever. He entered the world of business at 16, became the youngest innovation consultant at pioneering agency What If, travelled the world advising organisations, and eventually built his own practice around helping people work together better.But more excitingly (for me), Rich has DIY-assembled a coherent philosophical outlook on life and work that, by comparison, makes my thinking feel fuzzy and unexamined.In this conversation we explore what happened when the scaffolding of Rich's over-achieving began to fall away — and how he gradually moved from orientating himself around what the world rewards towards a more embodied sense of what he actually cares about.Drawing on thinkers including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Virginia Satir and Donna Haraway, Rich describes ideas not as maps telling us where to go, but as lenses or compasses that help us see our situations differently.We talk about why so many of our models of leadership and teamwork are already out of date; why human beings live inside language rather than simply using it; and why the ability to notice our own defensiveness, assumptions and inherited ways of seeing may matter more than finding the “right” model.Topics include:Moving from external validation towards embodiment and desireWittgenstein, language games and the “city” of languageIdeas as lenses rather than mapsWhy old models of teams and leadership stop fitting realityVirginia Satir, defensiveness and how we relateIntensity, hyperfocus and learning to make space for softnessDonna Haraway and “staying with the trouble”Optimism, uncertainty and doing the next right thingDialogue as a practice for seeing more clearlyExplore further:Rich Watkins — websiteRich on Wittgenstein and languageLudwig Wittgenstein — Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyMartin Heidegger — Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyVirginia Satir Global NetworkDonna Haraway — Staying with the TroubleDavid Bohm — On Dialogue