7.1. The Célia Granger case

The kinesthetic MO.O.N. finds great contiguity with the interpersonal MO.O.N. in terms of its interactive, dynamic, spatial and temporal aspects. Whether it is dancing with the other, playing as a team, performing “alone on stage” and “captivating his/her audience”, influencing his/her audience or leading a crowd, the “movement” is present, but only the intention changes.

In 2005, we were starting work with a young engineer specialized in urban planning. At that time, Célia Granger was wondering about her future at the firm where she worked. Despite a flawless journey from high school to her master’s degree at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts & Chaussées, she expressed the feeling of “boredom” and lack of fulfillment. There were indications that led her to believe that she would not become an “associate” or hold any positions of responsibility. She also knew that the market was “thin” in supply and that external conditions would not be better than the current ones. To put it in our terminology, there was neither potential nor utility for her. Her C.U.P. was negative, that is, the trend was away from what would animate her. Although in her day, Célia was an “H.P.” (high potential), like the classic definitions that can be read: “to detect potential, in the context of daily work, the assessor generally considers respect for values, mobility, and for the French, the diploma, preferably prestigious” [FES 07, p. 12], she felt that she was not “useful” and underused. She said: “my work is more a matter of common sense than the skills I acquired during my studies”. Célia also wondered about her salary and the fact that she studied so much for such a “low” salary. The situation seemed “mundane” and “commonplace”, as the clichés amount. However, on that day, during our second meeting, a harmless gesture made by her would offer us a crucial clue that would (and did) completely change her life. In fact, if Célia deploys a logical-mathematical and interpersonal MO.O.N., she deploys another in a “remarkable” way: a kinesthetic MO.O.N.

At the time, we had a small Zen garden on our desk. With a surface area of about 25 cm², three small pebbles and a rake; a furrow that we had made a few months before could also be observed. We paid no attention to this “garden” until we asked Célia a question. The question was of little importance, but we accurately remember what she did at that precise moment, while gazing into space and undoubtedly using her mind’s eye (oma tês psukhê), she explored the meanders of her memory and the thousand emulated realities before answering us.

In that fleeting moment, Célia took the rake placed on the Zen garden and then followed the furrow with incredible precision (which the mind did not apprehend); the word used is not too strong, for her “perfect” precision had followed the furrow without any grain of sand moving. We were surprised at such a movement. At the time, we were writing our first research [RIC 06] and were fully into Gardner (forms of intelligence) and Berthoz’s (decision and sense of movement) work. Without waiting for her answer, which now seemed “unimportant” to us, we asked Célia to do the gesture again. She gave us a surprised look, and then she said, “what gesture?” We remember having fallen back in our chairs, pushed by a “revelation”: an operating mode could be naturally “perfect” without the person deploying it being aware of it, that is, without the mind (nous) of the one discerning the operating process. This “revelation” was very useful to us during the 10 years that followed, because, besides repeating itself many times, this observation led us to elaborate the concept of the MO.O.N. and then the modalities of emulation aiming to attract a natural operating skill. An operating mode can be active on one side, while the mind is occupied on the other, believing that what it “does” is reality, whereas, in fact, what it deploys is “something else” that it names with a semantic-cultural frame of reference.

Célia had not “seen” her gesture. She had not observed it either. There was movement, on the one side, and her thought, on the other side. One of the key lessons for the following years was that the observation of a person must focus on the correlation not only between the gesture and the object, but also between the (more abstract) skill and the “attractive” situation. Indeed, if we had been content to listen to Célia while letting her “think” without worrying about this “harmless” gesture, then we would have missed a predominant clue. It is also thanks to this situation that we have developed the principle that you should never “believe” a person when he or she speaks to you outside of an activity that is consistent with the said purpose. But let us continue.

We told her: “when I asked you the question, you took the rake and followed the furrow without moving the grains of sand. Could you do that again, please?” Our question had a precise intention, that of assessing the gap between a “perfect” gesture performed in an “unconscious” situation and a gesture subject to possible pressure, on the one hand, because of our frontal presence (and therefore looking at the gesture itself), and on the other hand, subject to possible error, pushed by the desire to “do it again”. However, the improbable happened again; Célia, with a similar calm and concentration rarely observed in our experience, repeated the same gesture identically. The movement, once again, followed the furrow in a “perfect” manner. She put down the rake and looked at us, waiting for our “reaction”. Célia was able to operate according to a specific natural operating mode. She did so without any hesitation, and although, at first glance, this young woman might have seemed “shy”, her gesture was not. The gesture was made without her. We had just observed the two core components of the kinesthetic MO.O.N.: corporal-material, in other words, the control of body movements, and the control of small/large objects with accuracy and precision. Beyond that, we had just seen an extraordinary sequence (ordinarius, organized by order) of the modus operandi, whose rare process was available before our eyes: 1) control of the force used when necessary for its purpose; 2) only mobilizes the muscle or body part necessary for the action; 3) varies its speed, as well as the intensity of the gesture according to the objective to reach; 4) occupies the space just necessary for each movement; 5) a mastery of mobility and immobility. We cannot help thinking of the fleeting image that crossed our minds at that moment, that of the young Hardy Greaves, in Robert Redford’s The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), when a young caddy realizes the hole in one that Junuh, the hero of the film, has just hit. At that moment, he says, “I see a miracle!”; it seems to us that it was this same “impression” that crossed our minds then; we had just seen a sequence of “rarities” that were sufficiently explicit to be underlined as such.

From a very young age, Célia had been making objects with her hands, making clothes and upholstering furniture. Above all, she developed a passion nourished by years of observation and “touching”: leather. We point out that Célia got excited when she talks about “it”: leather. During a session, she presented us with a precise description of photos that were proof of her achievements. She told us an anecdote about when she was on holiday in Florence a few years ago, where she discovered one of the great Italian leather goods schools in front of her hotel. She spent her whole afternoon there, collecting a lot of information in case she did not follow up. To the question “why?”, Célia answered: “when you have a bachelor’s degree + 6 in urban planning and you pay a student loan for five years, it’s as to not change direction”. After our third meeting, Célia no longer talked about her job or job opportunities, but about her hands. Her hands are central in her discourse, she says: “My hands need to live!” Such a statement could not be made up. Later, we asked her a question: “What job would give life to your hands?”, to which she answered without hesitation, “upholstery-leather worker!” After training at one of the rare French specialized upholstery and leather goods schools, she told us a few months later, “things are obvious, natural”.

Célia Granger is now a saddler-leather worker in Paris. She created the Après Bastille¹ brand; considered one of the last rare French independent “talents”, she creates her own bags and design templates for designers and brands from all over the world.

7.2. A sum of specific abilities

“If the neurons of the colliculus allow a cat to catch a mouse in anticipation of its future position, it is because they are sensitive to the speed of movement: they do not calculate a speed” [BER 97, p. 30].

“Tiger, when I grow up, I would like to have a swing as beautiful as yours” Jacques Nicklaus [STR 98, p. 51].

Using Gardner’s terminology, kinesthetic intelligence is organized through a “family of procedures designed to translate its intention into action” [BER 97, p. 223]; however, we have observed, the kinesthetic MO.O.N. – not to be confused with the “kinesthetic” of neurolinguistics programming – can operate outside a person’s conscious intention of their action. Kinesthesia, meaning the “sense of movement”, allows the body to position itself in space (and time) with accuracy (adapted to the situation) and precision (without deviation from the intention or implications of the situation), that is, to master “the sense of position and speed” [BER 97, p. 32].

This is what we can observe in the caracal (the desert lynx), in its ability to move in silence (the pads of its legs absorb the sound caused by the movement), and then to accelerate, in a dazzling way, by its ability to anticipate the position of the bird in space (and not to calculate it). This ability also integrates the process speed of an object external to oneself and adjusting to it, by way of an example, not only touching a moving “target”, but also apprehending the dynamic tendency of a group and adjusting to it. Here, the concept of “agility” can be translated, in other words, the ability (competency) to reorient a movement in a movement, because the expected result changes or because a phenomenon modifies the initial movement and target.

Tiger Woods’ golf teacher Rudy Duran talks about how quickly the young Tiger understood the nuances of a golf swing, as well as his ability to grasp the “infinity of different strokes” to then achieve them. He could also identify a tilting movement and make the necessary adjustments, that is, repositioning the direction as much as the speed with respect to the expected result (here, the destination). It is the same when one day, at the age of six, Tiger found himself in an area of water. Duran said: “Looking at him, I understood that he was thinking if he could get past the water. […] He then decided what extent of the lake he could safely hit over and played accordingly. I rarely saw him try shots he didn’t know how to execute” (opus cit., p. 26). What is possible to translate from this comment, after detaching ourselves from the possible admiration for the young “prodigy”, and without entering into a complex analysis organized by neurosciences? Tiger Woods perceives both the distance and, consequently, the space in order to adjust the movement and the adequate force, in other words, whose direction and intensity lead to the desired result. Controlling the force when inherent to movement involves translating the path options into movements. The gaze memorizes space and allows Tiger to place his weight where movement requires it. This is what he did on the Chalk Mountain Course, where a river crosses the fairway (at 12). He succeeded in bouncing the ball on the passage to make it through to the other side. Duran told Tiger that this was a stroke of luck, to which the six-year-old retorted, “it was not luck, that was where I was aiming” [STR 98, p. 26].

Whether it is the caracal operating a movement in space to catch a bird, a golf player, a saddler, a martial artist or a juggler, the modalities are similar: “the capture of an object in motion is also a magnificent example of anticipation due, once again, to the superior colliculus. The anticipation of the trajectory of the object is essential for its capture. Indeed, if the frog or the lizard that wants to catch a fly projected their tongue in the direction where the fly is now, they would never catch it. They must therefore project their tongues in advance and therefore predict the subsequent trajectory” [STR 98, p. 21].

Mastery of objects, such as pencils, promotes the ability to draw, that is, to reproduce an observed and imaged form. This is the case, for example, of Célia Granger, who uses drawing to define lines and curves to make her bags. This ability can be observed in the strategist Winston Churchill, whose kinesthetic skills in fencing, horseback riding and swimming enabled him not only to save a comrade on Lake Geneva and reach their boat carried away by the wind, but also to win, despite his height of 1.66 m, “at the age of 17, the inter-colleges fencing championships by beating all his opponents – most of whom were taller and more experienced than him” [KER 09, p. 39]. Let us also highlight his team victory in the swimming championship in 1889 [KER 09, p. 39]. In the same kinesthetic dynamic, Churchill produced paintings such as A Room at Breccles, Norfolk (1920), or Mimizan Place, Landes (1920). We know that the latter had skills in this field, but also that he would not do anything to develop them. This skill would be used for other purposes, for which we need not recall.

NOTE.– We observed that a person deploying a kinesthetic MO.O.N. without influence from the spatial MO.O.N. was not able to draw by integrating a depth effect (realism), as well as a spatiality effect (3D type).

7.3. Movement and aesthetics: a coherence of forms

Christophe is a regional director of several profit centers. We assessed him and then accompanied him for 6 months as much in his daily life as in an individual interview. The problem is a “classical” one: a feeling of “too great a demand and perfection”, irritation when “things do not progress” or “when a store is not organized in a coherent way” and so on. Like all the people assessed, and as has been stated since the beginning of the work, we “de-psychologize” the given problems and specify the semantics and the movements of the persons. Thus, we focus on the semantics and indications observed in him. We recurrently hear, in his words, terms referring to the idea of slowing down, obstruction and incoherence of organization. We asked him what was the first thing he did when he arrived at a sales point. He explained that he would take a few moments to look at the store. “Look at what and where?” we asked, “traffic flows” he replied, “what do you mean when you say traffic flows, what do you observe in particular?” Christophe described to me, in detail, the way in which he “felt” the different paths of the store, their fluidity and their organization. Regarding organization, it was not “structural”, but aesthetic, not in terms of “beautifully perfect mathematics”, but in terms of coherence of forms. An incoherent gondola is a gondola whose overall shape has a movement that displeases the eye. He did not understand that his collaborators did not “see” “that”. His astonishment was as sincere as it was tinged with annoyance. A natural operating mode confers skills of perception, observation, analysis, correlation and so on, which may be completely “unknown” to others. He “discovered” it.

Sitting in a Parisian hotel, we asked Christophe to draw the chair in front of us. The intention was to assess his ability to reproduce the observed chair in order to validate, refine and adjust our initial hypotheses. He drew us the seat in 2D. There was no spatial perspective or apprehension of the chair, just a “flat” coherence of it (which was, strictly speaking, faithful, if one can accept a “crushed” drawing). We then asked him where he would place himself if he had to think about the organization of the place. Without hesitation, he got up and moved to our right by positioning himself about 8 m from us (the place was about 600 m²). We joined him and asked him “why here?”, to which he replied without hesitation “from here, I perceive all the flows (lines of force), where people naturally go, where they will not go, I also feel how to organize this place so that the whole dynamic is at its most functional”. He felt where people would sit and where they would slow down. He noted the shapes to be modified in order to make them aesthetic. Then, he explained that movement in his home is key; if the latter is “blocked”, it puts him in a state of irritation or stress. The key problem was in fact a problem regarding the “movement” of others that were not “adjusted” with his own. The issue of organization was neither technical nor related to planning, but inherent to the “flow movements” that a store offers, as well as to the way in which his glance was well received or not. Two other “tests” allowed us to consolidate the hypothesis of this MO.O.N. in this top manager: the perception of time, as well as the memorization of the movements of others. In the case of the first, we asked if he could “feel” time without systematically using his watch. The answer was yes. In other words, he “knew” what time it was (more or less), without having to look at the clock. For the memorization of the movements of others, we made him carry out an exercise of observing gestural sequences and then apprehending the destination as well as the meaning of the latter; he developed a skill of imitation and rapid reproduction, allowing him to make his management evolve in a positive way.

Although our culture most often associates the kinesthetic MO.O.N. with physical and artistic activities, our observation of many people in companies shows how this natural operating mode can be used, observed, detected, assessed and developed for other uses, such as marketing or the “management” of flows in a warehouse.

We could not conclude without mentioning Gabrielle Chanel again, inhabited by a simple intention: “to ease women from head to toe”. But what does such an intention to “ease” imply, if not rethink the very movement of women and their constant interaction with garments? As we know, Mademoiselle Chanel observes the “unduly with surgical precision”: “ornament is crime”, she says. It is not insignificant, if Gabrielle Chanel is apprehended by natural operating methods (extra-personal and kinesthetic), to understand the way in which, on the one hand, she will alter and create a gap with the major fashion trends, and on the other hand, as she surprises “with an elegance whose discretion and effects thwart analysis” [MEY 13, p. 151]. She wants to get women out of their “cages”, that is, to move from a static structure to a dynamic principle. The fashion designer Gabrielle Chanel became a seamstress. However, sewing requires an ability of the hand and objects used, a glance of certainty and an ability to adjust her gesture in real time and so on. Whether it is the sweater of a polo player that she readjusts, that is, the movement and line that she organizes with regard to her own, or the transformation she gives to a jersey, or shapeless knitwear, she makes an abstemious, reduced garment, whose line confers an “indisputable strength”. The one that will mark the 20th Century with her sense of elegance focuses her attention on a key aspect: “feeling at ease”. Although it is said that she is rational, which is an error of interpretation, Gabrielle Chanel deploys, in contrast, a sense of efficiency and effectiveness that reflects, above all, a “functional” principle. Gabrielle Chanel says: “I do not believe in copying, I believe in imitation”². In an interview where she was talking about fashion, Gabrielle Chanel said: “I take off, I take off everything I put on that I find useless”, then says “fashion is forward, it’s not backwards, you don’t go back”. To the question “What is the most difficult part of your job?”, Miss Chanel replies:

“Ha! To allow women to move easily, not to feel disguised, not to change attitudes, so as to be according to the dress in which they have been ‘stuffed’ ... It is very difficult...; but that, you understand, is the gift I possess, if it is a gift at all, I believe I have it, to know what moves in the human body and what does not move”, says the commentator, “and the human body moves all the time!”.

The semantics and the coherence of the “lines” observed in Gabrielle Chanel’s discourse and in her work make the idea, as one who has roamed the 20th Century of her look and her movement, deployed a kinesthetic MO.O.N. in her life and made others benefit from it, acceptable.

NOTE.– Elegance is not a “style”, but a way of moving, of using each muscle sparingly and of leading a line of movement where the body finds its place and its movement without effort, in coherence with the place where it moves. Perhaps it is also a movement that coordinates the breath to the gesture without an, even stealthy, apnea ever scratching the curve of a movement and, consequently, the curve of the body in the said movement.

7.4. At the heart of the company: useful skills

A kinesthetic MO.O.N. can be useful for a company, such as offering a particular sense of time that allows us to “feel” the lines of force of a project and the trends of a work group. In the management of a project, where the project manager is often subjected to untenable “plans”, because they have been elaborated in the world of ideas and ideals, the plan and the model, this MO.O.N. becomes an asset for those who know how to exploit it. Indeed, the person will have a sense of natural contact, not through “empathy” (in the interpersonal sense), but through the ability to apprehend interactions and movements with others. He/she will “feel” the sense of direction and consequently the ability to anticipate. This sense of anticipation confers what is called “intuition”, in other words, in this case, the ability to perceive observed and projected data (in the neuroscientific sense) by correlation, in order to deduce a reliable trend.

Skilled with her hands and body, she develops a sense of order, not excess, but driven by the natural sense of a coherent order or, in other words, of aesthetic forms. A social professional recently told us that she loves putting boxes away. She would give anything to get a job where she would put boxes away all day. She tells us with a smile that everyone thinks she is crazy, but, in fact, she likes things to be “harmonious”. She, skilled with her hands, “tinkers with funny things”. Her sense of movement and her dexterity in using objects make this “madness” coherent with this MO.O.N.; a “madness” observed in other people, for whom storage, we repeat, does not necessarily belong to a T.O.C. or a search for geometrical “perfection” that can be injected by another MO.O.N., but is as useful as it is necessary in order to position objects in coherence with the shape of a place, although this place is limited to a table or a shelf. These people generally do not tolerate the “static” and the norm, not that they cannot work with it, but if it “obstructs” the movement of reality (the course of things), then it causes stress related to the feeling of “slowing down” and “trampling”. It is the same in the places where they work; they immediately perceive what works and what does not, and although they are often unable to express “why”, they “naturally” know how to find or create the most coherent “paths” with the existing configuration to gain efficiency and effectiveness. This MO.O.N. is also useful for those who are called leaders, strategists and also mediators to perceive the movement of the other, the slightest expressions, the movement in space and also the way in which the body positions itself to translate – anticipate – the continuation of events with coherence. The kinesthetic MO.O.N. is predictive and certainly, with the extra-personal MO.O.N., the most effective natural operating mode in this regard. A management team, one of whose leaders is deploying this MO.O.N., has a dynamic advantage; one of not “wasting” time. Indeed, the natural skill of the person to apprehend the rhythms and the different dynamics of a team makes the way they lead and organize strategic and tactical decisions more flexible. This can also be an advantage for a video editor. Indeed, they will be able to realize the cuts and the associations of images adapted to the narration, as well as to the music, in addition to the various movements and angles of view requiring a certain speed or a coherent visual sequence; it is the same for integrating the slow motion or fast forward sequences in a manner that is coherent with the intention of the director. It takes a sense of rhythm to give a sense of movement to the story, because there is nothing worse than a badly edited film, a film without rhythm. A person who works in the world of security will be able to immediately perceive where a crowd may be trapped and where flows may become concentrated or relieved; they can anticipate whether a person or a group of people may “escalate” in behavior. Combined with a naturalistic MO.O.N.., they initiate, for example, skills useful for “profiling”, as well as for recruiting.

Table 7.1 presents some of the operating principles of this MO.O.N.