On Living, Leading, (Re)designing, and Coaching

What is Effective Activism?

What makes for effective activism?

Lately, I've been having a conversation with my girlfriend Donna about the topic of activism. We've both observed that as activists protest and "fight" for what they think is right they are 1) either preaching to the choice - namely, the other activists with them or 2) alienating passers-by with their outrage. Not very effective, eh?

A comment made by noted spiritual teacher David Hawkins at the outset of the second war in Iraq comes to mind: "Pacifism is not peace." He was criticizing the pacifists who were protesting and pointing to the performative contradiction that they are waging war on war.  This isn't, as Einstein famously said, addressing our problems at a higher level of consciousness that the level that created them. Instead, this is addressing them at the same level and also not very effective.

Of course, there is a lot in the world today that is "protest worthy." Domination of business by mega-corporations, practices generating climate change, social injustices, pollution, human rights abuses, war, occupations, corrupt politicians, political special interest groups, and on and on.

Then there are "awareness raising" groups. These groups aren't protesting or fighting but instead are pointing to what's really going on. Pachamama Alliance (who I am a big fan of) comes to mind. But I have to say it - awareness (insight) is not behavior. New awareness can lead to new behaviors but often those new behaviors aren't sustained. Why? Because the structures that reinforce the old behaviors over the new ones are still there reinforcing old behaviors.  So we may buy a reusable grocery bag and use it once or twice but then the convenience of paper and plastic bags usurps the function of the reusable bag soon after.

I'm currently working in Ireland on a large culture change project for a major bank. Certainly there are parallels between that kind of change - spotting provocations to change, introducing new interpretations and new practices, shifting assessments, and generating new results - and the kind of change that activists wish to bring about.  Of course, very different scales from several hundreds of people in my culture change case to millions if not billions of people in the changes activists are trying to bring about.  But I wonder what activists might be able to appropriate from the practices we know to be effective in changing corporate cultures.

Here are some (early) ideas:

1. People have to clearly see and own their current way of being (as a reaction from the past to get things to turn out a certain way, for example, so they can be safe, be happy, be satisfied, be recognized, etc.).
2. People have to feel that their current way of being isn't being attacked by others. Instead, it is being appreciated and understood as an expression of people's good intentions and as reasonable and rational ways that people have adjusted to and dealt with past difficulties and traumas. If they feel their way of being is under attack, then they will entrench and defend and some may even go on the offensive (as the U.S. did after 9/11).
3. People have to see the pay-offs they are trying to get in their current way of being (to "be" something or someone) and the tremendous costs they are suffering to get them.  And, of course, how out of balance those things are and how unnecessary the costs are when being isn't somewhere to get to but instead somewhere to come from.
4. The difficulties and traumas have to be "completed." Those difficulties must be owned.  Yes, that's what happened in the past. Pay homage to it. But stop reliving it. Stop acting from it (really, reacting to it). This is where working with the strong emotions that are fueling the current way of being comes in.
5. A new way of being must be declared by the people (who step forward as leaders in the moment). Think of the Declaration of Independence as a good example of this. A group of influential people mutually declared their independence from King George and a new way of being and living together was created.
6. Then people have to be shown and demonstrate to themselves that there are ways to live in the present and respond to what is actually occurring from this new way of being that address the concerns they already have better than the old ways (instead of reacting out of the past to get things to turn out in such a way that past difficulties and traumas aren't re-experienced).
7. Then all the structures that were born of the old way of being and put in place as controls to get things to turn out must be undone. People will feel nervous about doing this. They will feel unprotected. People need lots of support from each other at this juncture. Life isn't safe. You can't always feel protected. But you can always respond to what's happening in the moment. And often, with time, we come to see that in the past we wanted to feel protected but the limitations and costs of protection were actually more painful, more damaging, more traumatizing than the threats they were supposed to protect us from.
8. New structures are born of and reinforce the new way of being.
9. New behaviors and new results are generated and sustained.

To me one of the interesting aspects to this approach is that it doesn't fight to change the current way of being but instead builds a new way of being simultaneous and co-located with current way of being and simply invites people to make the jump.

This is what I have learned about culture change in corporations.  It isn't an easy journey. It isn't a safe journey. But it is the journey of life - fully of vigor and vitality, full of drama, heroes and heroines, successes and failures, grand elations and deep disappointments. Making the journey takes leadership but not the kind of leadership only offered by a figurehead. It takes leadership by those who are willing to create the new way of being and those willing to make the jump in the context of their own lives. These people are the true leaders.

How this plays out on a larger scale is still a mystery to me. Maybe you all can help me make the connections. I'd love to hear from some of you ... what makes for effective activism?

Take care,

-Steve

Being a leader in our life, our relationships, and our work

This article is written by Steve March and Julie Manga, Ph.D. and is being simultaneously published in New Ventures West's newsletter Distinctions and this blog.

This is the first in a series of articles in which we explore the practice of leadership. The publication of each article will be followed by a FREE teleseminar to discuss the topics raised. To register for the teleseminar refer to the instructions at the end of the article.

What kind of leader are you called to be in your life? Surely, there isn’t just one answer to this question. And, there is no way to answer the question once and for all. Instead, we offer this question as a way to stay present with what’s occurring in your life, as an opening for creatively and effectively responding moment-by-moment to the opportunities and challenges you face.

In addition to the many challenges we face globally – ethical and sustainable development, clean water for everyone without conflict, bringing population growth into balance with resources, meeting growing energy demands safely, improving the status of women worldwide, etc. – each of us is also challenged locally in our work and home life. The certainty of work and livelihood is eroded for many. We face an overload of information, without a sense of how to discern what is useful.  Our lives are tightly scheduled with many competing commitments. Families and communities are increasingly fragmented. And the pace of life in our society continues to accelerate.

Leadership is called for in order to face and address these challenges at all levels, but what kind of leadership? We suggest that it isn’t useful to think about leadership as a particular role or position, such as CEO, President, or Prime Minister, or as set of personal qualities like charisma or steadfastness. And leadership doesn’t require followers. The kinds of challenges we collectively and individually face and the accelerating velocity and unpredictability of our circumstances call for new leadership ways of being from us all. More of the same won’t work.

Each of us is called to lead. We are each called to respond fully to our situation moment-by-moment with everything that we are in order to bring about something that is bigger than ourselves. Each moment is an invitation to lead. Repeatedly accepting the invitation to lead requires developing ourselves – for example, our self-awareness, capacity and resilience, and professional and personal relationships – so that we have the compassion, wisdom, and courage to move things forward in the face of difficulties.

Each of us has already answered the question “How am I going to respond to the situation of the world?” This is a fundamental choice that everyone has made consciously or not.  Do we step in, sometimes quietly, sometimes audaciously, risking who we take ourselves to be, or do we step back and take care of our own world as if it were separate from everyone and everything else?

Many of us step back because we look at famous leaders – Mohandas Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Margaret Mead, Martin Luther King, Jr., Colin Powell – and say to ourselves, “I’m not like them, I can’t lead.” True, we aren’t like them. We are like us. Comparing ourselves to famous leaders is a self-defeating path that ends in resignation. We have a tendency to idealize famous leaders and to forget that they are human too. Let’s not let our imperfections stop us from courageous acts of leadership and instead bring all of ourselves into those acts.

Leading is an action that we can all take and that we are called to take. Many of us may have the experience of a junior team member stepping up and overcoming difficulties to move things forward. In this moment our colleague is leading, stepping into leadership, stepping into being a leader.

Maybe it’s time to stop waiting for someone else to declare you a leader and to declare yourself one.

We invite you to attend a FREE 60-minute teleseminar on February 26 at 9 am
Pacific time (Noon Eastern) on the topic of stepping in to your life, your relationships, and your work as a leader. In this teleseminar we will lead you through a personal inquiry about your own capacity to step into life as a leader—how you experience the call to lead, obstacles you encounter and ways of relating differently to those obstacles. Space is limited. To register, please call Julie Manga at 617-869-9638.

Integral Leadership LLC provides powerful methods for people to uncover and express leadership in their life and work. Being a leader doesn’t call for abandoning parts of ourselves. Each of us, as a leader, is called to bring all that we are, all that we have learned, and all of our skills and creativity and focus them on bringing something into existence, making something happen, and generating results. Investing ourselves in life and work this way is challenging and fulfilling. In our programs you will directly experience your ability to be a lead authentically and develop your capacity to respond in an integral fashion to situations that call for your leadership.

Unsettling Our Common Sense

The world is a mess.

Mechanisms can't cope with messes. But people can.

Here is a pair of important questions for anyone who wants to address the world's messes:

1. What so special about people that we can cope with messes? Find that! Conserve that! Expand that! Apply that!
2. How can we unsettle our common sense that supports and promotes mechanisms (e.g., technologies in the outer world, and fixed reactions/conditioned tendencies in the inner world).

Here is a hint ... work with the fears that support and reinforce the mechanisms until you discover that who you truly are is really more than big enough to cope with the messes.  Oh ... and the messes ... they are mostly if not wholly created by our fixed reactions to our fears.

Take care,

-Steve

Richard Strozzi-Heckler in Strategy+Business

Recently, Strategy+Business magazine published an article on the work and contribution of Richard Strozzi-Heckler, founder of Strozzi Institute (which I am a graduate of) to the development of embodied leadership.

I thought you all might enjoy the online "reprint" of the article called "The Dance of Power."

Richard's notion is that leadership is neither an art or a science but, instead, is a practice.

I hope that you take some time to learn from Richard's experience, compassion, and wisdom.

Take care,

-Steve

Different Ways of Leading and Organizing Generate Developmental Mismatches

Just as individuals develop so do organizations. More to the point, we could say that the ways individuals organize develops. We've all experiencing the difference between a team leader that organizes projects well and those that don't.  A big part of the difference, I suggest, is in the way of organizing taken by each leader.

Around 1999-2000, I developed a model for several different styles or ways of leading and organizing that follows the well-understood trajectory of adult development (from developmental psychology). My premise is that the way individuals organize expresses the level of development of their observer.

Here is a high-level summary of the model starting with the least developed way of organizing.

1. Assessment responds to the need to ground organizing in our concerns about what's happening
2. Vision responds to the need to establish a direction, identities, and offers
3. Opportunity responds to the need to make immediate progress
4. Task responds to the need for being effective
5. Process responds to the need for improving efficiency
6. Knowledge responds to the need for diversifying offers and renewing (revisioning) identities
7. Compassion responds to the need for placing people (that develop) at the center of organizing
   
8. Wisdom responds to the need for timely action and conservation of energy when acting
   
9. Love responds from the inherent interdependent relationships in which we exist to the organizing challenges
   
10. Presence response from the inherent temporal and spatial co-presence in which everything occurs
    

Together these ways create and respond to the challenging situations every leader faces daily. To achieve effectiveness, efficiency, and the fulfillment of customers and employees in the short and long-term, all ten ways need to be alive and healthy.

Each of these ways displays different self-reinforcing patterns of awareness and action, of concern and response, of language and practice. Each is way is a different observer of the organization and the challenges it faces. And each way has a different way of responding to the challenges.  What is crucial is to match the demands of the challenges that the organization faces with the appropriate response.


Leaders and organizations often struggle because they have mastered one or a few of these ways of leading and organizing but the challenges they face demand a different way of leading and organizing. However, instead of learning new ways of leading and organizing they simply do what they've mastered over and over, harder and harder, with the same unfortunate results. In short, they are stuck and not learning or developing.

Many leaders don't even know that other ways of leading and organizing exist and are possible. And those that see that other ways are possible often don't step into the action learning that is requires to develop those new ways.  For sure this is a hard road to walk. Developing a new way of leading and organizing can take years. And in today's business climate, it is rare for leaders to willingly step into a multi-year deconstruction/reconstruction of how they lead and work.  However, on the flip side of the argument, the acceleration of change we experience in today's world demands that companies reinvent themselves approximately every 3-5 years. In fact what is needed is to take on the practice of development (of transformation) as an ongoing and continuous endeavor. Indeed, it has always been so whether we've known it or not. Better to take it on consciously that to be dragged kicking and screaming unconsciously into the morass that so often accompanies transformation and deep learning.

One early step to taking on this endeavor is to have a map of the territory and a reading on where you are within it. The 10 ways of leading and organizing provide one good map. More than one map is required. And when using such maps one must always keep in the forefront that "the map is not the territory."

With a map of the basic developmental contour of the territory of leading and organizing, you can make an assessment of which ways have been learned and mastered by which leaders, which teams, which functions.  The dynamics are complex between levels of organizing and within the interactions between organizations. As one simple example, teams that are attempting to organizing using a higher ordered way - say Process - will struggle if there management or their collaborators are using a lower ordered way - say Task or, worse, Opportunity. Being able to observe and diagnose such developmental mismatches opens up new ways to respond to organizational problems effectively that didn't exist before.

For sure the description of the map above is insufficient to perform an assessment. If you want to explore performing such an assessment in your organization, contact me.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear what y'all make of this. What new possibilities open up by seeing that there can be developmental mismatches between the styles or ways of leading and organizing used by people.

Take care,

-Steve

But is it integral? Who cares!

I haven't been reading much in the way of integral writings for the last several years.  Today, I dipped back into a few of them.

I keep finding people in the integral community asking the question "Is it integral?" about all kinds of things - leadership, psychology, medicine, law, coaching, etc. as if being integral was the goal.

Whatever happened to pragmatism - does it work?

I'm sure someone will say "But being integral means it works better and in more cases."  This is probably true - we'd need to look case by case - but what I find is that in promoting the question "Is it integral?" we are taking our eye off the ball. Many people who are new to the integral community (and many who are "old" too) are developing a really funky critical theory where being integral is "it" and not being integral is passé. How very non-integral!

Is it integral? Who cares. Picking up the banner of pragmatism, I suggest that a better question is "Does it work?" This question opens are more useful space of possibilities by putting us in more direct contact with the nature of whatever we're questioning and how well it responds to present circumstances.

Take care,

-Steve

Searching for a Collective Ontology

Last week I took a 7 mile hike with my friend Ken Homer.  Among other things we discussed the observation our most powerful "technologies" for transformation focus on transformation of the individual because they are founded on individual ontologies - answers to the question "What is a human being?"

For example, one approach to answering the question "what is a human being?" that comes from hermeneutic phenomenology follows.

A human being is interpretive (and self-interpretive). That is our experience is shaped by our interpretations and, as individuals, the interpretations we make can and do differ. And this applies to our experience of ourselves as well as our experience of others and our environment.

A human being is product of the interaction of biology, biography, and culture (especially language). That is that how we interpret the everything is shaped our bodies, our personal histories, and the family and cultures we grow up in.

A human being has concerns and takes action to care for them. That is, as individuals, our experience is grounded in "care" and we have agency.

This leads to "transformational technologies" for individuals that amount to shifting how we interpret the world and how we act to take care of our concerns. This is the heart of coaching.

But the significant environmental, social, and spiritual crises of our present day also seem to call for transformation on a collective level. However, we don't seem to have good collective ontologies - answers to the question "What are human beings?" or, said more colloquially, "What are people?"  Of course, here we are asking about human beings as a collective phenomenon.  And, of course, we aren't proposing abandoning individual ontologies only augmenting them.

Ken has a neat idea - that we could look to indigenous peoples who seem to exist more as a "people" than as modern "individuals." I think this is a great idea.  To me it makes perfect sense.

Perhaps the best individual ontology we have is from the work of Heidegger. The above picture is of an Achuar man. The Achuar people are indigenous to the forests of Ecuador and Peru. What we need is the "Heidegger of the Achuar."  Any suggestions?

My best lead so far on this inquiry is to read "The Walking People" by Paula Underwood.

Take care,

-Steve

Authenticity as the Ultimate Calling

I hold that an authentic stance in the world is fundamental to the practice of Integral Leadership (and Integral Coaching too).  Authenticity is a rich topic of inquiry. Today I'd like to explore authenticity as a calling - the ultimate calling.

I've been reading Michael Gelven's commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time. In commenting on Heidegger's analysis of authenticity, Gelven notes that there are four aspects that are true of any calling. There must be:

1. Someone who does the calling
2. Someone who is called
3. Something that is called about
4. That to which someone is called

In Heidegger's analysis, all four aspects of the calling to authenticity involve the self.

1. It is the self that does the calling
2. It is the self that is called
3. It is the self that is called about
4. It is the self to which the self is called

However, each of these reflects a different aspect of the self.

1. The self that does the calling is the self who is "not at home" (anxious) and dreading life - the inauthentic self.
2. The self that is called is the self who is lost in social game-playing and whose identity is socially constructed - again, the inauthentic self.
3. The calling is about awakening to the two possible modes of existence of the self - that the self is either inauthentic or authentic. In other words, the calling lets us know we are not trapped in a life of dread and anxiety because there is an alternative mode - authenticity.
4. The call is an appeal to the self to be authentic.

This analysis reveals the path from inauthenticity to authenticity. And the surprise, at least to me, is that the inauthentic self initiates the call to authenticity out of its own sense of anxiety, dread, and discomfort at not feeling at home in the world. This is the good news because it means that we can never be permanently trapped in inauthenticity because inauthenticity holds within it the call to authenticity.

The other observation here is that we can get lost in the "outer" world of social game-playing, this is inauthentic, and leads to dread and not feeling at home. And the resolution of inauthenticity as authenticity is an inward turning towards what is unique, authentic, and true of ourselves.

Lastly, what does it take to hear this call? Being silent. We must be silent enough to hear the call and not be wrapped up in the loudness of our social game-playing.

The appropriate response to feelings of anxiety and dread is to be silent, to sit with them, and to feel them. For within such feelings, the inauthentic self will call for authenticity.

And even if we aren't feeling anxiety and dread, when we become silent as we do in meditation, we will start to feel the anxiety that is always already there lurking at the edges of our experience. For the beginning meditator, this is the first major challenges to continued meditation.

What supports this silence, and therefore our calling to authenticity, is meditation, body work (e.g., massage) and body practices (e.g., yoga), being in nature, and participating in a community that recognizes and calls for authenticity (e.g., a sangha) which is not the norm in society.

I hope this has been thought provoking. I'd love to hear what you make of this.

Take care,

-Steve

Exclusive Leadership vs. Integral Leadership

In the past I have characterized the taken-for-granted definitions of leadership as follows:

1. leadership requires a certain position (e.g., CEO, president, mayor, manager, etc.)
2. leadership requires certain physical or personality traits, qualities, character and competencies
3. leadership requires followers

Note how exclusive these definitions are. From the start, they rule out nearly everyone from being a leader. Also note that form the perspective of these definitions, becoming a leader is a long road to march. You have to prove yourself to rise through the ranks, you have to develop the traits, qualities, and competencies if you don't have them, and you have to build your following. So you have to already be a leader before you can become a leader. This is how most people I know think about leadership - as exclusive.

Of course our culture also reinforces this exclusivity. We have special perks for leaders - exclusive clubs, private jets, limousines, fancy condos with postcard perfect views, and skyrocketing salaries.

And yet, to face the tough realities, we need many leaders - millions and millions of leaders.

I'd like to suggest that leading is something that anyone can do.  I'm not saying that everyone is leading but that everyone has the possibility of leading.

My inclusive definition of leadership, which forms the foundation of what I call Integral Leadership, is as follows:

1. leading is an authentic stance in the world
2. leading is a responsive way of being
3. leading is an offer of service to others
4. leading is marshaling resources (across all quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types) to face tough realities that call for development and evolution

(I have written posts on some of these and you can follow the links to find out more.)

Note that Integral Leadership is defined by a set of practices not descriptions. With these practices, you can generate Integral Leadership. And fulfilling any or all of the exclusive definitions of leadership is no guarantee that you can or are truly leading in an integral way as I define it here.

My aim here is to put forth a definition of leadership that anyone can use to make a significant difference in their own and other people's lives by leading. Becoming an Integral Leader is not a long road to march. I'm not saying that you already know how to do masterfully. I am saying that there is nothing keeping you from starting to practice Integral Leadership right now - in your current position, with your current traits, qualities, and competencies, and within your current communities, be they followers or not.

With practice comes mastery. No doubt you will find that these practices are challenging. They will take you to your learning edge over and over again. As a leader, you are never done learning. There will always be tough realities to face. This is the path of a leader. Walking this path is its own reward. This path leads to a deeper sense of yourself, of your calling, of your place and purpose, of more complete self-expression, meaning, and belonging.

Take this moment to declare your leadership, start practicing, and start walking the path.

Take care,

-Steve

Beyond "Knowledge Management"

Years ago (in 2001) I developed a model of how leading and organizing develops through fundamental stages of development. Each stage has a different way of observing and organizing. The simple version of this model goes like this: First we must learn to make assessments, then setting visions, then looking for and initiating action to capitalize on opportunities to realize the vision, then structuring the tasks, then optimizing the processes, then enabling the generation and sharing of knowledge, and so on (yes, there are other stages).

Within each of these stages there are observers, discourses, and methods for organizing work. For example, the observer of the task stage structures work hierarchically and takes divide and conquer approaches to completing work. The practices of traditional project management (e.g., PMI) were born from this observer. In addition, the observer of the process stage conceptualizes work as transformations of inputs to outputs within workflows that are optimized by feedback and feedforward loops. The practices of process management were born from this observer.

And so it is with the knowledge stage - the observer here has given birth to the practices of "knowledge management." I put this in quotes because I do not literally mean managing knowledge in the traditional sense of managing as a form of control. While there are leadership and management practices born from each stage's observer, the practices of leading and managing (and organizing) are fundamentally different because they are assessing and responding to fundamentally different worlds. In fact, my savvy writers in this field prefer to use terms like enabling knowledge creation and sharing or enabling innovation rather than knowledge management. And I must say, I like these linguistic reframes as well.

And so it is today that the most developed approach to leading and organizing that is commonly talked about in academia, leadership and business books, and in the popular press is this so-called "knowledge management."

Since my model was derived from research in developmental psychology I was able to speculate that the stages of development that were deeper/higher than the "knowledge stage" would generate a way of leading and organizing that was beyond knowledge management. I called this "compassionate management" (again the term management needs some reframing).

The major shift in perspective from "knowledge management" to "compassionate management" is that the purpose of business is not just to make money. The purpose of business (as explored in previous posts) is to support personal development and cultural (and societal) evolution. This is not in opposition of profit-making. Indeed, profit-making is an imperative. However, when we shift the raison d'etre of business from profit to people, to say it in a snappy way, we shift the organizing principle at the heart of the business. And this new organizing principle is compassion.

I'm working with a client right now (a >$1B pharmaceutical company) that is the largest example I've come across of compassionate management. Prior to taking on this client, I only saw examples of this in small teams, never on such a large scale.  Earlier this week, one of their Senior Business Partners captured the spirit of the shift to compassionate management by saying, "We usually see that you can get work done through people. However, we also see that you get people 'done' through work."

Compassionate management does not oppose knowledge management (or any prior form of management). Instead, it includes them all but what it adds is that these forms of management (including profit-making) are in the service of "getting people 'done' through work" as the central organizing principle.

More on compassionate management in another post ... for now, I hope that this has been food for thought.

Take care,

-Steve