Category Archives: Feature Articles

05/31 – Complexity: Identifying and Releasing Unnecessary Complexity in Next Generation Infrastructure Development

Feature Articles / May 2018

Bonnitta Roy

The ability to understand how complexity creeps into infrastructure development processes, enables leaders to identify, anticipate and avoid “solutions” that escalate systemic complexity and thereby increase systemic risk. Systemic risk in infrastructure development has local, regional and global impact that shows up as lack of accountability, skyrocketing costs, political instability, operational fragility, and developmental overshoot. Escalating systemic complexity severely limits our ability to achieve key targets of next generation infrastructure such as sensitivity to regional context and environmental …

05/31 – Toward a Creative Criticality: Revisiting Critical Thinking

Feature Articles / May 2018

Tracy Cooper

“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. Obviously those two modes of thought are in some tension. But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes, whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble” –Carl Sagan

The notion of how …

05/31 – Dynamic Collaboration: Strengthening Self-Organization and Collaborative Intelligence in Teams

Feature Articles / May 2018

Otto Laske & Jan De Visch

Introduction

Dynamic collaboration between members of a team is impossible without self-management. Self-management plays an increasingly important role also in society. Civic Movements are good examples of efficient groups without proclaimed leadership. Companies, too, increasingly tend to strive towards self-organization which, ultimately, is based on self-management. For them, decisions have to fall faster and faster, and the classic hierarchy makes that difficult. Flanders Business School teacher Jan De Visch and Interdevelopmentals Institute Director Otto …

05/31 – Authenticity and Integrity in Evolutionary Leadership: A Mexican Woman’s View from the Field

Feature Articles / May 2018

Kathia Castro Laszlo

For the last 20 years, my work has been focused on developing individual and collective capacities for social change. Systems and complexity thinking have been the theoretical foundation for my work on evolutionary learning communities (Laszlo, 2000) and evolutionary leadership (Laszlo, 2012). In my practice, I began to notice that the ability of a group to actualize their vision was co-related to their level of self-awareness and their commitment to personal and professional development. A humanistic orientation …

11/30 – The Pragmatic Impact on Leaders & Organizations Of Interventions Based in the Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry Approach

Feature Articles / August-November 2017

William R. Torbert*

*With deep thanks for the improvements suggested by Aliki Nicolaides, Mary Stacey, Richard Izard, Nancy Wallis, and Elaine Herdman-Barker.

As shown in this review, fifty years of research on real-world practice, guided by the Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry (CDAI) paradigm of social science and social action, have documented more powerful impacts than any other research and practice approach on leaders’ and organizations’ transformation (Fisher & Torbert, 1995; Taylor, 2017; Torbert, 1976, 1987, 1991; Torbert & Associates, 2004).  …

 11/30 – Examining Empathy in Team Leader Practices: A Qualitative Case Study

Feature Articles / August-November 2017

Rick Fenwick Jr. 

Abstract

In many organizational settings, companies use the team concept in order to accomplish organizational goals in a timely and efficient manner. In manufacturing settings, organizations use the team concept to complete tasks such as building products in bulk quantities, as well as provide safety to employees. In this type of setting, every team has a team leader who is responsible for providing support to the team members (coworkers) and ensuring that the team accomplishes organizational goals. …

11/30 – Juvenile Leadership: Toward A Theoretical Understanding

Feature Articles / August-November 2017

Mark Bell

Abstract

Movement toward a new theory is framed on distinctions between toxic leadership and juvenile leadership in that toxic leadership cannot fully explain certain aspects, behaviors, and actions of certain negative, dysfunctional, destructive, or otherwise ‘bad’ leadership realities. Juvenile leadership involves four distinct elements including pettiness, emotionalism, connivingness, and dramaturgical activity. Juvenile leadership is proposed as being motivated by certain unmet safety needs including insecurity, feeling threatened, and self-protection coupled with lapses in experiential leadership learning such as …

8/31 – Learning to embrace the paradox of leadership

Feature Articles / August-November 2017

Jaap Geerlof 

Abstract

The complexifying world places contemporary leaders for major challenges in leading organizations. The progressive complexity of the organizational and social context often surfaces as paradox. Surprisingly, paradoxes are hardly addressed in leadership epistemology, or in leadership development models. Contrarily, management and organizational science scholars have embraced the necessity to engage paradox in the workplace. The negation of paradoxes in most leadership theories stems from the axiology of positivism in which most traditional leadership theories are grounded. The …

8/31 – Leadership, Mindflow and the Integral Point of It All: The role of Integral Leadership in bringing mindfulness and flow to the workplace

Feature Articles / August-November 2017

Ron Cacioppe

Summary

This article reviews the definitions, characteristics and research dealing with mindfulness, meditation and flow and their positive effects on individual health, interpersonal relations, workplace engagement and performance improvement. This article explores the role of integral leadership to provide conditions for mindfulness in flow (mindflow) using an integral framework.

There is growing interest in both mindfulness and flow in the workplace, but the role of leadership in developing mindfulness in flow is seldom considered. This article suggests that …

8/31 – Sentence completion assessments for ego development, meaning-making, and wisdom maturity, including STAGES

Feature Articles / August-November 2017

Tom Murray

Overview

This article began as a series of short white papers providing various types of background information about STAGES and its predecessors. Its sections are relatively independent and readers with prior knowledge should be able to skip to and read each independently, or in any order.  For those new to the field, it provides an overview of theories of meaning-making development (also called ego development or leadership maturity—and which we call “wisdom skills”) as measured by the sentence …