A chill ran up his spine. He knew now not to ignore this signal just as he knew how unwise it was to make quick assumptions about what caused it. Given recent events it would be easy to assume that the alert was an unconscious shudder in essence summarizing the status and the peril it implied.
But on deeper analysis, several thoughts popped into his head. Certain environments and the players in them had associations with ... deep fear or downright terror. The players roles in this process ranged from complicit exploiters to naive pacifists. And when fear was the response it was hard to tell just where each player lay on that continuum.
Calm in the face of the storm, it is a pattern that applied here. By leveraging the rapport with adjacent friends, calm was the overwhelming consensus. It is perhaps better to enter this domain from there rather than the emergency entrance, Panic Not. That is, of course, if there is time. There was time and just enough.
The summit just hours away he checked messages and went through the preparation routines. The break in the dark clouds outside with leafless winter trees silhouetted against them seemed an intriguing background for what was about to happen.
Summits, when not just for show, are best when not everything is scripted. The nuance of non-verbal communication can catalyze consensus building on or near the trust horizon.
ReplyDeleteSo the choice of when to hold the summit was based on its potential to bridge the trust barrier. Executive action, carefully controlled was the order of the day.