William Harryman

William Harryman

When I see a new book coming out from someone involved with the integral movement (Stamper co-founded and led the Seattle Integral salon), and especially the Ken Wilber version of integral theory, I steel myself for the seemingly obligatory two to three chapters that attempt to explain the integral model for those who are not familiar with it. Much to his credit, Gary Stamper, in his new book, Awakening the New Masculine: The Path of the Integral Warrior, has not done that. He has written a book about the work he does with men in his Integral Warrior trainings, work that happens to be deeply influenced by Wilberian integral theory and Spiral Dynamics, both of which require some explication. There is, to be clear, a lot of integralese in this book, but it doesn’t have the heavy-handed feel with which other books based in integral theory are often burdened.

Essentially, Stamper has written a how-to spirituality book for men. There have been a few of these in recent years, coming mostly from the Jungian world or from a previously scattered group that has coalesced into “muscular Christianity,” a masculinist spiritual Christian movement. The only other books that include integral theory are Martin Ucik’s Integral Relationships: A Manual for Men (2010), David Deida’s The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire (1997), Joseph Gelfer’s The Masculinity Conspiracy (2011, online e-book) and Numen, Old Men: Contemporary Masculine Spiritualties and the Problem of Patriarchy (2009). Both of Gelfer’s books are in-depth academic treatises rather than spiritual how-to books.

Before continuing, a brief overview of the last 40 or so years of the men’s movement might help to contextualize what Stamper’s Awakening the New Masculine is attempting.

With the sexual liberation of the 1960s, resulting in large part from the new technologies in birth control (“the pill”), women began to enjoy some of the same freedoms men had long taken for granted. At the same time, women’s studies, feminist studies, and gender studies classes were becoming common features at many colleges and universities, with a few of these classes also seeking to understand men in some small way. In the early years, during the 1970s, many liberal leaning men began to identify as feminists, most notably Warren Farrell, who at one time was the president of the New York chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW), and John Stoltenberg, who was partnered with and eventually married to Andrea Dworkin before her death in 2005. By the early 1980s, men’s studies courses were also being taught, although these classes were still offered within the women’s studies departments, not in their own departments (this hasn’t changed).

In the middle of the 1980s, Farrell rejected what he experienced as the radical agenda of the feminist movement and became the leader of the men’s liberation movement, which has since become the men’s rights movement. Also around the mid-1980s, the mythopoetic men’s movement, organized around Robert Bly, Michael Meade, Sam Keen, and Robert Moore, among others, began to gain public awareness, especially with the publication of Bly’s Iron John (1990). A related group, The Mankind Project (MKP), also began around that time and remains the most organized and financially successful men’s work system.

In the 1990s, the preservation of traditional forms of masculinity—what many women experience as patriarchy—became an issue in some fundamentalist Christian circles, with The Promise Keepers being the most publicly visible group from that time. Most recently, father’s rights activists and “daddy blogs,” especially those by stay-at-home dads, have been increasingly visible. Conversely, the media has been obsessed with the purported “masculinity crisis” (Rosin, 2010) that mostly reflects the shift currently underway from traditional masculine roles to more open and fluid roles where there is no longer one right way to be a man (more on this later).

It is into this cultural and historical context that Stamper’s book arrives, as an expansion and evolution of the mythopoetic men’s movement.

Stamper has been involved with the Mankind Project, having at least completed their “New Warrior Training Adventure” weekend. It’s worth noting that over the last two or three years the MKP has tried to incorporate the fundamentals of Spiral Dynamics into their programs, although they have been exploring ways to do that since at least 2005. That two systems related to the mythopoetic men’s movement have embraced the Spiral Dynamics model, although in differing ways, at about the same time, might suggest that some strands of men’s work are ready for the next stage—a more integrated (if not fully integral) way to conceptualize masculinity.

Stamper’s interest in the Wilberian integral movement includes the controversial work of David Deida, the original “integral masculinity” guru associated with the Integral Institute. His books—Blue Truth: A Spiritual Guide to Life & Death and Love & Sex (2006) and especially The Way of the Superior Man—were very popular in integral circles for a while. Speaking of The Way of the Superior Man, Stamper proclaims that had he “not found that book, I might not be doing this work with the masculine today” (from the Introduction).

Deida offers a three-stage model for masculine development:

• Stage 1: This is the “macho jerk” of traditional, insensitive masculinity, which is often identified with patriarchy
• Stage 2: The sensitive New Age guy rises from that traditional role to defend women and show that men, too, can be sensitive and caring, but he does so at the cost of his masculinity
• Stage 3: With this stage, “heart and spine must be united in a single man, and then gone beyond in the fullest expression of love and consciousness possible, which requires a deep relaxation into the infinite openness of this present moment” (Deida, 1997, p. 10).

Deida’s stages correspond fairly evenly with the pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional stages of moral development outlined originally by Lawrence Kohlberg (1973, 1976, 1987) and redefined for women by Carol Gilligan (1977, 1982).

These stages are also useful for understanding the development of men’s work and where Stamper’s book fits into the greater arc of progress. Another way of looking at these three stages (a possible reframe) is egocentric, gender-centric, and world-centric.

• The earliest part of the movement (egocentric) was devoted to trying to recognize and break the patterns of the “macho jerk” associated with traditional masculinity and the patriarchy.[1] While this was certainly a necessary move, it was also one motivated in part (not for all men) by self-interest—to be a male who supported women’s rights in the 1970s was very desirable among educated, liberal women. These were the early years of the “ME generation.”
• When the men’s movement actually began to look for what it is that makes men masculine and gives them a sense of purpose in the larger sense, and for the place of men within the psychological and spiritual history of humanity, men’s work entered its second stage (gender-centric). The mythopoetic men’s movement—and its Christian aspect, The Promise Keepers—sought to use Jungian psychology, mythology, folktales, and other avenues to re-contextualize masculinity.
• Finally, with books like Deida’s and Gelfer’s, and now Stamper’s, men’s work is approaching a more inner-directed sense of service to community, culture, and humanity (world-centric). This is only the beginning of this work, so its development at this point is still underway.

There is likely to be more and better books from this third stage in the future—as more people shift into the rational/expressive stages of development, gender roles will become less rigid, sexual preference will be recognized as a spectrum and not a binary, and masculinity will adopt its own distinct forms of care and communalism without losing its identity.

Integral Shamanism: The Meta-shaman

One element that sets Stamper’s book apart from the others is his reliance on Spiral Dynamics (1996) to inform and transform what he terms “integral shamanism” or “meta-shamanism” (p. 76). Stamper replaces the mountain, world tree, or ladder (three traditional images for the axis mundi, or world center, that connects the underworld, the Earth, and the heavens) with the spiral from Spiral Dynamics. According to Stamper,

a meta-shaman moves vertically along the whole Spiral, accessing the necessary energies, values, or traits of any given meme as needed to solve the current situation. Within the meme accessed, the meta-shaman is also able to move within the horizontal or vertical orientation of that meme as needed. (p. 76)

I toyed with this idea for a while a few years back (Harryman, 2006), so I understand his choice in metaphor, and “integral shaman” or “meta-shaman” feel like better terms than Beck and Cowan’s “Spiral Wizards.” More importantly, the shaman image/metaphor fits with the initiation and ritual elements of Stamper’s Integral Warrior training program.

However, teaching “meta-shamanism,” with its state-change techniques, to a group of men whose previous spiritual work is likely questionable opens some serious issues in ethics, of which Stamper seems to be aware:

People can get a taste (a state, or temporary experience) of higher stages of consciousness through ecstatic, or altered, state experiences like Shamanic Breathwork and “spiritually bypass” their present stage. They think they’ve moved to a higher level of consciousness when all they’re really doing is having a “peak” experience and interpreting that glimpse of higher stages from their present level of consciousness.

What’s worse is that if they haven’t completed the personal work that needs to be done translatively—that is, horizontal development, the widest and healthiest perspective possible at a particular stage—they tend to disassociate from what they haven’t completed, leaving unhealthy aspects of that stage in their psyches that will come back and kick their asses later. It’s unavoidable, and it becomes shadow. (p. 85-86)

There is a very real risk of opening these men up to some serious spiritual bypass, which tends to be accompanied by a degree of ego inflation. I don’t believe there is enough consideration of the possible negative outcomes of giving powerful state-changing tools to those whose development may not be prepared for those tools.

As an additional aside, there is also the issue of holding up Carlos Castaneda as a trail-blazer in making shamanism accessible to the wider public (p. 92)—to state it as clearly as possible—Castaneda was a fraud (Burton, 1973; Marshall, 2007). But, really, this is mostly a personal irritation on the part of the reviewer.

Archetypes and Popular Culture

Where the book does come up short, however, is in the usage of the Moore and Gillette archetypes of King, Warrior, Lover, and Magician (1991). These archetypes are held up to be transpersonal, but that really assumes only a variation of each of them. To his credit, Stamper includes the shadow elements of these archetypes, but what is missing is the developmental aspect. Jungian psychology is not based on a developmental model, so this issue would not occur to its writers, but with integral theory (contra Wilber), archetypes are multifaceted. For example, an archetype is at the core of every complex (a kind of part or subpersonality; Harryman, 2007), archetypes can inform our vocation (Everson, 1982), and most importantly, archetypes manifest and are experienced differently at each stage of development.

Using one of the four archetypes Stamper works with as another example, the Warrior archetype looks differently to and in a five-year-old boy playing army in the backyard than it does in an 18-year-old boy being shipped to a war zone, and it looks and acts differently still in a 50-year-old man going through the Integral Warrior training. Then one must also consider trauma history, neurological factors, character traits, interpersonal development, peer community, moral development, and so on. Even then this does not take into account how the Warrior archetype might manifest differently in a man from Mississippi than it does in a man from San Francisco or in a man from Somalia versus a man from Sweden. Moore and Gillette wrote interesting, popular books that helped a lot of men to think differently about who they can be as men, but they did not treat archetypes with an integral understanding.

Whenever complex ideas get simplified for popular consumption, much is lost, for example in an accurate understanding of Jung’s anima and animus. While Stamper claims, presumably following Moore and Gillette, that archetypes can be either “feminine—the Anima—or masculine—the Animus—and we each carry both” (p. 94), Jung (1959) did not believe we each carry both an anima and and an animus.  He believed that the male self needed a feminine aspect, the anima, while the female self needed a masculine aspect, the animus (p. 14).  In Jung’s model, we carry only the contra-sexual archetype.  Accordingly, the unconscious in the man has the flavor of the feminine, the anima, which is often its first and most powerful projective aspect.

The projection-making factor is the anima, or rather the unconscious as represented by the anima. Whenever she appears, in dreams, visions, and fantasies, she takes on personified form, thus demonstrating that the factor she embodies possesses all the outstanding characteristics of a feminine being. She is not an invention of the conscious, but a spontaneous product of the unconscious. (p. 13-14)

It’s likewise for the animus in women (“woman is compensated by a masculine element and therefore her unconscious has, so to speak, a masculine imprint,” p. 14). We need not possess both archetypes, according to Jung, because the man is already possessed of a masculine Self, to which the anima acts as both introject (a psychoanalytic object-relations term [1] suggesting the internalization process) and projective force (which is archetypal, stemming from the collective unconscious), while the woman has a feminine Self that operates in the same way, with the animus serving a similar role to the anima in men.

It’s likewise for the animus in women (“woman is compensated by a masculine element and therefore her unconscious has, so to speak, a masculine imprint,” p. 14). We need not possess both archetypes, according to Jung, because the man is already possessed of a masculine Self, to which the anima acts as introject (a psychoanalytic object-relations term[2]) and projective force, while the woman has a feminine Self that operates in the same way for her.

A related problem with using Jungian psychology as a foundation for men’s work is that the model breaks down at the higher levels of consciousness. For Jung, the highest level of development is represented by the hieros gamos, the “alchemical wedding” of male and female, the union of opposites that produces divine androgyne, leading to the lapis philosophorum that signifies totality and completeness (p. 39-40). This is an early integral stage achievement, roughly equivalent to Wilber’s Centaur stage. During Jung’s lifetime, however, integral may have been the highest developmental stage conceivable, but this is no longer the case. At higher stages of development, it becomes possible to take the illusory self as an object of awareness, allowing a man to see both his masculine self and his feminine anima as objects of awareness and not be embedded in either (Harryman, 2010). This stage is sometimes referred to as gender fluidity.

Finally, there are some New Age elements that do not sit well. Shamanic astrology is one of them; talk of the “divine masculine” or the “divine feminine” is another—if this model is truly shamanic (and integral) in its origin and execution, it’s all divine, and saying so again is redundant. It’s challenging to say anything useful about the inclusion of astrology, a pre-rational personality assessment tool, so it’s best to leave it alone.

Conclusion

I am very appreciative of the contribution to men’s work Stamper has made with Awakening the New Masculine. While I am not the target reader of his book, or for his workshops, there are many men out there, especially those who have tried and rejected the MKP, who are hungry for a sense of meaning and purpose, and they would certainly be drawn to and benefit from this book. Fortunately, this is not a case of giving empty calories to the hungry—there is sound nutrition for mind and soul to be found in these pages.

Awakening the New Masculine offers a unique framework to explore male energy and take personal responsibility for being a good man and for raising good sons—as well as assisting other men in the journey. As more people will read the book than can possibly attend Stamper’s Integral Warrior training courses, there is the possibility of bringing many more people into awareness of integral ideas. Most importantly, however, if only one in ten men who buy the book make it to the final chapter to come upon this quote and then integrate it into every fiber of their being, Stamper will have the world a better place.

To discover the heart is the greatest initiation. —Inayat Khan

References

Beck, D. & Cowan, C. (1996). Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Berne, E. (1957). Ego states in Psychotherapy. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 11, 293 -309. Transactional analysis in psychotherapy: A systematic individual and social psychiatry. New York: Grove Press.

Bly, R. (1990). Iron John: A Book about Men. NY: Perseus Books.

Burton, S., et al. (1973, Mar 5) Don Juan and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Time, 101 (10). Retrieved March 4, 2012.

Deida, D. (1997). The Way of the Superior Man, 1^st Edition. London: Plexus Books.

Deida, D. (2006). Blue Truth: A Spiritual Guide to Life & Death and Love & Sex. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, Inc.

Everson, W. (1982). Birth of a Poet. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press.

Gelfer, J. (2009). Numen, Old Men: Contemporary Masculine Spiritualties and the Problem of Patriarchy. Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publishing.

Gelfer, J. (2011). The Masculinity Conspiracy. Online e-book: http://masculinityconspiracy.wordpress.com/.

Gilligan, C. (1977). In a Different Voice: Women’s Conceptions of Self and Morality. Harvard Educational Review, 47 (4).

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice. Boston: Harvard University Press.

Harryman, W. (2006, May 20). Creative Spirituality: The Meta-Shaman. Integral Options Café: http://integral-options.blogspot.com/2006/05/creative-spirituality-meta-shaman.html

Harryman, W. (2007, Aug 14). Jungian Complexes as Subpersonalities. Integral Options Café: http://integral-options.blogspot.com/2007/08/jungian-complexes-as-subpersonalities.html

Harryman, W. (2010, May 28). Thoughts Toward a Developmental Model of Masculine Identity, Part Eight: The Multiplicity Model of Masculine Identity. The Masculine Heart, http://masculineheart.blogspot.com/2010/05/thoughts-toward-developmental-model-of_28.html

Jung. C.G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Collected Works, V. 9 Pt. 2. Princeton, NJ: Bollingen Series XX.

Kohlberg, L. (1973). The Claim to Moral Adequacy of a Highest Stage of Moral Judgment. Journal of Philosophy, 70 (18): 630–646. doi:10.2307/2025030

Kohlberg, L. & Lickona, T, Eds. (1976). “Moral stages and moralization: The cognitive-developmental approach,” In Moral Development and Behavior: Theory, Research and Social Issues. Holt, NY: Rinehart and Winston.

Kohlberg, L. & Colby, A. (1987). The Measurement of Moral Judgment, Vol. 2: Standard Issue Scoring Manual. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Marshall, R. (2007, Apr 12). The Dark Legacy of Carlos Castaneda. Salon.com. Retrieved March 4, 2012.

Moore, R. & Gillette, D. (1991). King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine. San Francisco: HarperCollins.

Rosin, H. (2010, Jul/Aug). The end of men. The Atlantic. Retrieved March 2, 2012.

Ucik, M. (2010). Integral Relationships: A Manual for Men. Santa Rosa, CA: singles2couples.org Publishing.

Watkins, J.G. & Watkins, H.H. (1997). Ego states: Theory and therapy. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Weiss, E. (1950). Principles of psychodynamics. New York: Grune & Stratton.

Notes

Abstract

Marie Legault

This article focuses on the development of conscious and world-centric leaders and businesses and, ultimately, conscious capitalism. In order for leaders to transform society and organizational cultures, they must first develop their own capabilities. The global context of business now requires leaders to think, feel, and act at world-centric stages of development in order to deal with the complexity of the global economic environment and create opportunities for a sustainable future. Research suggests that only a minority of our organizational leaders has evolved to a world-centric perspective. This raises a critical question: How can leaders develop themselves and their organizations toward a world-centric perspective? This article seeks to address this question and provides recommendations.

Corporations are probably the most influential institutions in the world today, yet people do not believe that they can be trusted, seeing them as only interested in maximizing profits. The recent protests on Wall Street and in cities around the world attest to this. In fact, investors are losing confidence in the ethics and values of executives, CEOs, and boards of directors. Study results from the Gallup Organization suggest that only 15% of the American public believe that business executives are honest and ethical (Gallup Organization). It is reported that organizations lose an estimated 5% of annual revenues to fraud, which translates into a potential global fraud loss of more than $2.9 trillion per year (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners “2010 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse”). In addition, occupational frauds, the most costly form of fraud, are most often committed by executives and upper management. Regulations, guidelines, and corporate governance practices have been put in place to restore corporate credibility and public confidence in capital markets (Brooks and Selley). Yet corporate misconduct has often occurred within the system implemented to prevent such misconduct (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners “2008 Report to the Nation on Occupational Fraud & Abuse”; Waldman and Siegel). Ethical behavior is now recognized as indispensable for long-term corporate success and effectiveness and a sustainable global economy. In fact, global CEOs identify integrity as the second most important leadership quality in the new economic environment (IBM).

New Kind of Leadership

The leadership literature offers several definitions of leadership (Rost), although Ciulla argues that leadership definitions are often “theories about how people lead (or how people should lead) and the relationship of leaders and those who are led” (Ciulla 11). A search for the answer to the question “What is leadership?” led Hunt to conclude that one’s perspective on leadership depends on one’s ontological assumptions (how one chooses to define the phenomenon) and epistemological assumptions (how one forms knowledge about the phenomenon) about the definition and purpose of leadership (J. Hunt, G.).

Most leadership theories provide an outer perspective or focus on a leader’s visible actions and behaviors. A limited number of theories feature an inner perspective or focus on a leader’s development. Few theories make the link between the inner and outer perspectives, and fewer still consider the impact of a leader’s environment on his or her development and behaviors. The development and focus of leadership theory and research has reached the point where it needs to integrate all of the elements that constitute leadership, including “the relevant actors, context (immediate, direct, indirect, etc.), time, history, and how all these interact with each other to create what is eventually labeled leadership” (Avolio 25).

Growing global competitive pressures, uncertain economic times, a questionable ethical climate, and growing environmental issues are challenging leaders at all levels and in all types of organizations. The problems facing organizations today call for a new kind of leadership. Recent leadership literature proposes new leadership approaches to better meet today’s global challenges. Here follows a discussion of five of the emergent leadership approaches: advanced leadership, leadership agility, integral leadership, conscious leadership, and ethicful leadership.

Advanced leadership suggests that advanced leaders work in complex systems and are aware of and recognize the multiple stakeholders and their divergent interests and needs. Advanced leaders break mental boundaries and challenge established patterns to effect real change (Moss-Kanter). Leadership agility focuses on a leader’s ability to lead effectively under conditions of rapid change, higher levels of complexity, and growing interdependence. Agile leaders are skilled in four mutually reinforcing leadership agility competencies – context-setting agility, stakeholder agility, creative agility, and self-leadership agility (Joiner and Josephs). Integral leadership is an approach that offers a comprehensive framework for taking into account recognized dimensions of the individual and the organization. Integral leaders have the ability to look at complex situations through the various “AQAL lenses” in order to better view and effectively deal with the situation and its challenges (Thomas and Volckmann; Thomas). Conscious leadership is essential to creating conscious businesses. Conscious leaders are driven primarily by a desire to serve the organization’s purpose while simultaneously delivering value to all stakeholders. They view their organizations as part of a complex, interdependent, and evolving system with multiple stakeholders (Sisodia, Wolfe and Seth; Strong). Ethicful leadership suggests that a leader’s ethical life is an expression of his or her overall development as a human being, and attaining the full ethical potential of one’s life involves living in harmony with the universe as a whole. Ethicful leaders are individuals who have raised their consciousness and integrate inner and outer worlds in all that they do– including establishing ethical cultures – to contribute to the better good of others or all living things (Legault).

Although these theories and approaches explore leadership in its various dimensions, what they have in common is leaders with the capacity to take on different and expanded perspectives. We need leaders who have expanded their perspectives to a world-centric view and who purposefully create value in order to face the uncertainty of our changing world and address global challenges.

Conscious Capitalism

Conscious capitalism is an emerging philosophy based on the belief that businesses can enhance corporate performance while simultaneously improving the quality of life for all stakeholders. Conscious capitalism goes beyond corporate social responsibility by placing societal needs and their challenges at the core of the company’s existence (Porter and Kramer). Efforts are driven naturally and internally rather than being reactive, externally prompted attempts to be socially responsible, which may have little to do with the core functions and culture of the organization. Table 1 compares corporate social responsibility principles to conscious business principles.Conscious capitalism transforms the existing notion about capitalism by changing the either/or paradigm to a both/and mentality by simultaneously creating financial and societal wealth. A study found that investments in companies that adhere to conscious business principles outperformed the market by a 9-to-1 ratio over a ten-year period. These companies also outperformed the companies described in the book Good to Great (Collins) by a 3-to-1 ratio over a ten-year period. Beyond financial wealth, these companies also create many other kinds of societal wealth, such as more fulfilled employees, happy and loyal customers, innovative and profitable suppliers, and thriving and environmentally healthy communities (Sisodia, Wolfe and Seth). Conscious capitalism results when conscious leaders create conscious businesses. Let us explore these two determinants of conscious capitalism.

Conscious Business

Conscious business is driven by the company’s “raison d’être” or higher purpose. Higher purpose, one of the four characteristics of conscious business, transcends profit maximization and engages all stakeholders – customers, employees, investors, suppliers, and the larger communities – in which the business participates. Whole Foods Market’s higher purpose is described as “whole foods, whole people, whole planet.” The term “whole foods” guides the company to offer the highest quality, least processed, most flavorful, and natural foods; “whole people” represents employees who are passionate about healthy foods and a healthy planet; and “whole planet” is the company’s commitment to helping take care of the communities and the planet.

Conscious business is also driven to create value, in various and often different ways, for all stakeholders. A stakeholder orientation, another characteristic of conscious business, suggests that businesses are part of a complex, interdependent, and evolving system. Efforts are focused on generating synergistic win-win situations that advance the whole system. Desso, a Netherlands-based manufacturer of commercial and domestic carpets and artificial grass for sports, is a good example of an organization that embraces the stakeholder orientation. Desso has moved away from the cradle-to-grave practices and adopted the cradle-to-cradle approach. The cradle-to-cradle approach goes beyond sustainability because it focuses on full-circle processes that seek to enrich the earth and benefit all stakeholders. These creative and cost-effective ecologically innovative business efforts create profitable and ethical manufacturing processes and corporate practices (McDonough and Braungart).

Another characteristic of a conscious business is its culture, which can be felt yet is difficult to describe. The Conscious Capitalism organization suggests that the acronym TACTILE best captures a conscious culture (Conscious Capitalism). TACTILE integrates elements of trust, authenticity, caring, transparency, integrity, learning, and empowerment. Southwest Airline and The Container Store are examples of organizations that incorporate the elements of a conscious culture.

Figure 1: Conscious Business

Conscious Leadership

Conscious leadership is also a characteristic of conscious business and foundational to conscious capitalism. Because the public neither believes nor trusts organizations and their leaders, one can wonder – who are these conscious leaders who work from a place of higher purpose, take on an expanded view to deliver value for all stakeholders, and create conscious cultures? To answer this question, we turn to adult and leader development theories.

There are two dimensional aspects to development: horizontal and vertical growth (Cook-Greuter “Making the Case for a Developmental Perspective”). Horizontal growth occurs through exposure to life and its many learning processes, such as schooling, training, and self-directed and life-long learning. Horizontal development is the most common dimension since most of the learning, training, and development practices in organizations and society are focused on expanding, deepening, and enriching one’s current way of making sense of the world. Vertical growth, on the other hand, does not occur as often, and is more powerful than horizontal growth because it transforms a person’s way of making sense toward taking a broader perspective and, as such, develops new ways for adults to think, feel, and act.

There is evidence that the developmental process that transforms one’s sense-making toward taking a broader perspective occurs in successive stages or levels, each of which integrates learning from the prior stages into a more complex structure (Richards and Commons; Cook-Greuter “Making the Case for a Developmental Perspective”; Rooke and Torbert; Kegan; Fisher, Kenny and Pipp; Cook-Greuter “Postautonomous Ego Development: A Study of Its Nature and Measurement”). The stages form a tiered system. At the first tier, leaders at the pre-conventional level are guided by their needs, which results in ego-centric behavior. At the second tier, conventional leaders take on a socio-centric or ethno-centric view, where concern for others is limited to their immediate circle – their work group, family, company, or nation. At the last tier, post-conventional leaders take a world-centric view that encompasses the entire planet.

Figure 2: Horizontal Development

Leaders who have reached a world-centric perspective create value for all stakeholders because they recognize that the needs of society and corporate performance intersect. They believe that doing well and doing good are linked (Strong; Sisodia, Wolfe and Seth; Mackey; Swartz). In fact, organizations led by leaders who simultaneously align the interests of all stakeholders – society, partners, investors, customers, employees, and the environment – outperform well-known organizations recognized for their financial success (Mackey; Sisodia, Wolfe and Seth).

Figure 3: Vertical Development

Findings from a recent study suggest that leaders with a world-centric view are ethicful and conscious about the way they think, feel, and act. The study highlights how world-centric leaders have a desire to be of service and experience ethics as heartfelt. Such individuals have a heightened self-awareness and a broader perspective, an innate desire for and commitment to continuous development, and a spiritual core. In addition, world-centric leaders look for organizations that are congruent with their guiding values and seek formal and informal support and trusting relationships to enhance their development (Legault).

A supportive ethical, conscious organizational culture influences the development of ethical, conscious leaders and helps broaden its leaders’ perspectives to a world-centric view (Legault). Much like the process in individuals, the ethical development of organizations appears to take place from a corporate-centric perspective (the ego-centric level or pre-conventional tier), to a community-centric perspective (the ethno-centric level or conventional tier), to a world-centric perspective (the post-conventional tier) (Wilber and Walsh). However, the successful creation of a culture that develops and sustains ethical, conscious leaders and leaders with a world-centric view depends on the integrity and moral character of its leaders and organizational members (McGuire and Rhodes).

Our socio-cultural context requires leaders to think, feel, and act with a world-centric view in order to address the complexity of the global economic environment and create opportunities for a sustainable future. According to the developmental psychologists Robert Kegan and Susanne Cook-Greuter, there is a genuine concern that leaders are in over their heads or up to their chin when coping with the narrow rationalistic Western mindset. Research indicates that approximately 20% of adults in developed countries reach the capacity to think, feel, and act with a world-centric view (Cook-Greuter “Postautonomous Ego Development: A Study of Its Nature and Measurement”; Kegan; Rooke and Torbert). Given this statistic, a minority of our organizational leaders has evolved to a world-centric perspective. This raises a critical question and challenge: What can be done to accelerate the development of ethical, conscious leaders and conscious businesses in order to create a sustainable future for the next generations? To help meet this challenge here follows a few recommendations that emerged from interviews conducted with leaders who have reached world-centric perspectives (Legault).

Recommendations

Since leader development is mostly experientially driven (Day, Harrison and Halpin), organizations can accelerate the development of ethical, conscious leaders by designing experiential learning activities and action learning programs. Action learning and action inquiry are processes and programs that have the capacity to effect individual and organizational changes simultaneously (Marquardt; Torbert et al.). Leaders that expand their levels of consciousness and develop greater psychological complexity through differentiation and integration create ethical, conscious cultures (Logsdon and Young; McGuire and Rhodes). In order to expand leaders’ perspectives and transform organizational cultures, action learning and action inquiry initiatives need to incorporate: horizontal and vertical development; the four elements of conscious business – higher purpose, stakeholder orientation, conscious leadership, and conscious culture –; and learning at the personal leadership level, organizational leadership level, and systems leadership level.

There is growing evidence that narratives are at the heart of leadership. Telling a story is a leadership behavior that provides leaders with a self-concept from which they can lead (Shamir, Dayan-Horesh and Adler). Story-telling or the construction of a life story is a major element in the development of authentic leaders (Shamir and Eilam). In addition, authenticity in leadership is emergent from a narrative process in which others play a constructive role in the self (Sparrowe). Dialogue initiatives can accelerate the development of ethical, conscious leaders by   providing leaders with an opportunity to narrate their experiences and learn from each other. The process engages leaders to broaden their perspectives by offering a path for understanding and effectiveness that goes to the heart of what it is to be human – the meaning-making, thinking, and feeling that underlies actions (Isaacs). Dialogue initiatives create learning environments that can empower employees and encourage integrity, authenticity, and transparency within the organization (Senge; Senge et al.). Dialogue can also establish trusting and caring relationships among employees and, in turn, improve the organizational culture.

Having the support of a professional leadership coach is another way to accelerate the development of ethical, conscious leaders. Research suggests that ethical, conscious leaders seek support from leadership coaches for their professional development (Legault). Leadership coaching – a just-in-time, one-on-one development process – can help leaders develop on both the horizontal and vertical growth  and, as such, help leaders expand their capacity to incorporate broader perspectives (J. Hunt). Team coaching can increase the team effectiveness and, in turn, effect the organizational culture (Anderson, Anderson and Mayo).

Conclusion

The need for developing ethical, conscious leaders has never been greater if organizations are to deal with the complexity of the global economic environment and create opportunities for a sustainable future. Developing leaders with a world-centric perspective is essential in order to create and sustain conscious businesses – businesses that are guided by a higher purpose, that seek to deliver value for all stakeholders simultaneously, and that build conscious cultures. Conscious leaders that lead conscious businesses are conscious capitalists. They can advance the development of a conscious society. The starting point is the development of leaders with a world-centric view.

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 About the Author

Marie Legault, Ph.D., is President of Legault & Associates Leadership Development Inc. She believes that in today’s complex environment of rapid growth and change, ethical leadership is key in order to find solutions to organizational challenges and achieve sustainability. As a Leadership Development Consultant, Facilitator, and Coach, Marie offers integrated solutions that foster ethical leadership. She assists in the creation of ethical organizational cultures and guides leaders and organizations to develop to their full potential. Marie has a Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Systems, a Master of Arts in Leadership and Training, a Bachelor of Commerce, an Executive Coaching Graduate Certificate, and a Professional Training & Development Certificate. Marie is affiliated with Royal Roads University. She is a dynamic speaker and has written articles for various publications. As a leadership practitioner and scholar, her interests include the development of ethical, conscious leaders and organizational cultures and transformative change. Marie can be contacted through www.legaultassociates.com or at info@legaultassociates.com.

Dorothy Danaher White

This article focuses on the issues faced by leaders in the past and how they relate to issues here in the present. The concentration will be leadership, administration, and governance. Through an examination of leadership transitions, initiatives, and issues, the learner hopes to develop a greater appreciation of the complexity of various situations involving authority and the limits thereof and the range of knowledge, skills, and expertise needed by effective leaders.

The leadership provided by the Earl of Warwick during the turbulent War of Roses between the House of Lancaster and the House of York in fifteenth-century England is instructive, as put forth in Warwick the Kingmaker (Kendall), and King Edward IV (Ross). Rather than focusing on the Kings involved, this discussion attends to another example of national leadership.  The Earl of Warwick never became King himself, but he did serve as the de facto ruler of England as advisor to a very youthful King Edward IV for a period of three years. The Earl is called the Kingmaker because he used both the power of negotiation and persuasion, as well as force of arms, to place King Edward IV on the throne.

The Earl of Warwick is an historical figure who embodied the “knight in shining armor” image so often referred to even in today’s modern parlance. He was born in, in the year 1428 (Kendall,). At that time, there was almost no distinction between the leader and the armed force that backed him or her up. In many cases, if not most, the leader led the armed force directly. In modern times, in the United States, the European Union, and other well-established and organized societies such as China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, the leader relies on a specialized military force led by generals to enforce the power structure that maintains the hierarchy that the leader rests upon. In the England of the middle ages, however, it was often necessary for the leader to wield the sword him or herself.

This lesson from history will be discussed from two perspectives. The first will be an analysis based on leadership theories from French and Raven, Fisher, Wheatley, and Pate . The second will be an analysis based on human development theories from Bowman and Commons (Commons, et al). Although it is not possible to present all the historical detail so beautifully presented by Kendall in his book Warwick the Kingmaker, an attempt was made to present enough information to illustrate the Earl of Warwick’s amazing use of advanced reasoning to create new military equipment and strategy, and to then combine this military advantage with a new level of advanced statesmanship.

The Earl of Warwick and the Bases of Social Power

French and Raven presented a potent description of the structure of how leaders gain and maintain power:  Expert, referent, legitimate, charismatic, reward, and coercion.

Expert power is based on the knowledge and expertise of a leader. A follower is more likely to accept leadership from a person whom he or she believes has special knowledge or expertise about a particular issue. According to Kendall, the Earl of Warwick had a great deal of expertise in the arts of war and diplomacy – skills he started developing at a young age.

Richard Neville, later to become the Earl of Warwick, grew up in a society that was becoming more and more difficult to govern. Kendall describes the government of the King as lacking in “both moral authority and force.” Feudal ties were no longer able to hold the realm together, and each lord was obliged to raise and maintain armed forces loyal to them. Richard’s father, the Earl of Salisbury, used this system of ‘livery and maintenance’ to protect his estates. According to Kendall, Richard was helping his father command the garrisons of Carlisle and smaller outposts before his 18^th birthday. He also helped his father lead raids to punish sheep-stealing and village-burning. In addition, young Richard helped his father negotiate breaches of the truce with Scots envoys. In 1446 he was appointed joint warden with his father and had already earned the spurs of knighthood (Kendall, pp. 20-21)

French and Raven define referent power as the admiration the follower has for the leader. This base of power can be developed and nurtured through personal relationships with others. Referent power can also be enhanced by raising the status of the leader. Someone who has achieved a measure of fame and glory can achieve a high level of referent power. Although Richard Neville had attained a certain amount of admiration as a young man while under his father’s tutelage, he had to go on to earn admiration in his own right.

Legitimate power is the power inherent in a leader’s official title. It is derived from the follower’s belief that the leader has the legitimate right or authority to assume a particular position of leadership. Much of the strength of this power is based on the follower’s values regarding the rights of the leaders as defined by a particular code. If the follower fails to acknowledge the leader’s authority based on a particular code that has meaning for that follower, there will be no power behind the official title.

The Earl of Warwick derived his legitimate authority from both wealth and the large amount of territory he commanded. In July of 1449, Richard Neville was named Earl of Warwick, through his marriage. He then became the master of the Beauchamp estates, baron of Elmley and Hanslape, lord of Glamorgan and Morgannoc. All of his land was located between South Wales through Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, and Worcestershire, including almost a hundred manors and twenty castles. Over fifty estates were scattered in the counties of Warwick, Oxford, Hertford, Northampton, Nottingham, Stafford, Rutland, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Devon, and Cornwall, and in the far North he owned Barnard Castle, a stronghold perched high above the Tees.

In addition to possessing legitimacy in his own right, Warwick chose to back a person of great legitimate authority – Richard, Duke of York, as King of England. York was descended from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, Edward III’s second son, as well as from Edward’s fifth son, Edmund of Langley. Thus, h was considered by many to have a better title to the crown than Henry VI himself, who descended from Edward’s fourth son, John of Gauntlet. York’s legitimacy was also enhanced by his holding of the largest estate in England. In addition, the Duke of York had a connection by marriage with the Nevilles, who were the most powerful family group in England at the time (Kendall, pp. 22-23).

French and Raven define reward power as the ability of the leader to bestow upon his or her followers either material rewards or rewards of social status and or actual authority. The Earl of Warwick had a very dramatic style. He led his men bravely and with honor, which provided the rewards of status, given that battles of that day were fought wearing shining armor, trumpeted by heralds and decorated with banners. The following is an account of one of Warwick’s first major battles, a War of the Roses battle between the Yorkists (Red rose) and the Lancastrians (White rose), in St. Albans, in the year 1455. “Shouts of triumph sounded in the lanes. York and Salisbury had smashed across the barriers and were driving Somerset’s men before them. St. Peter’s Street was a hell of swords and glaives and whining arrows. Warwick was clearing a path so that his archers could fire toward the market place. There stood a ring of mailed nobles surrounding the King’s banner and the slight figure of Henry himself. Spare the commons! Warwick was shouting. Aim for the lords!’” (Kendall, p. 28).

In addition to being rewarded by the status of fighting a royal battle in which they were able to capture King Henry, Warwick’s men also were encouraged by his emphasis on attacking the leadership rather than the followers. Although he himself was a member of the aristocracy, the Earl of Warwick was able to arouse public sympathy by such tactics. The Lancastrians had made themselves vulnerable by misusing their authority to loot towns and villages. The Lancastrians also used other nefarious and illegal ways to appropriate property. Warwick, on the other hand, not only paid his men well but allowed them to loot the goods of his enemy lords rather than take from the commoners. In fact, after King Henry was captured, “While Warwick, York, and Salisbury were escorting the King to the abbey, their men happily pillaged the baggage and appropriated the horses of the Lancastrian Lords” (Kendall, p. 30).

It is important to note that Warwick, York, and Salisbury held onto their legitimate power even while attacking the King, because they drafted a document justifying their actions and even enclosed a manifesto as evidence that they were appropriately asserting their authority: “Warwick, York, and Salisbury drew up an appeal to their sovereign, declaring that for their own safety and the Kings they were coming to him, armed in order to dispel the lies of their enemies . . . . On the evening of May 21 they sent a second appeal to the King, enclosing a copy of the Royston manifesto. They may as well have saved ink and parchment, for Somerset pocketed both communications” (Kendall, p. 27).

The above example of the War of the Roses battle at St. Albans is illustrative of the use of coercive power as well as reward power. French and Raven define coercive power as the ability of the supervisor to punish subordinates with disciplinary actions, fines, firing, or salary reductions. Organizations differ in the extent to which supervisors can give out punishments and rewards. In private companies it is not unusual for a supervisor to be able to give raises and promotions to a subordinate. In government organizations, an individual supervisor might not be able to do so because these rewards are determined by legislative action.

Government was structured differently back in the Middle Ages, but in England there was a still a sensibility in the populace that the actions of their nobles should derive from divine authority. One of the Earl of Warwick’s great strengths was that his military strikes were well-planned in terms of battlefield logistics and using the most up-to-date technology available in his day. Another one of his strengths is that he relied upon negotiation in the beginning of disputes, documented this negotiation, and turned to military action as a last resort. The Earl of Warwick inspired his men to go into battle with his vision of a better England. Leaders today could take advantage of this lesson from the distant past – followers do better when they feel inspired and uplifted by their mission.

One modern leadership theorist that advises modern leaders to avoid depending on authority is James Fisher. Fisher’s theory emphasizes over and over again in his book, Positive Power: Your Path to a Higher Leadership Profile, the importance of relating well to others with vision and inspiration, with persuasion, rather than the strong arm of authoritarianism. “Power is the ability of A to persuade B to do something B might otherwise not do (p. 15).” Organizations, especially modern nation states, are very diverse, with citizens at different educational levels, in different occupations, in different ethnic groups, in different religious groups, and different locations, even living outside their country of origin and/or citizenship. Trying to impose authority under such circumstances is often going to be counterproductive.

Although it is tempting to characterize the societies of the past as being homogeneous, England in the Middle Ages was actually quite diverse. The Earl of Warwick was a successful leader in large part because he embraced this diversity, and, in fact, made it work to his advantage. Across the English Channel, on the coast of what is today modern France, England actually had control over the province of Calais. This control was precarious when the Earl of Warwick became Captain in 1456. Calais was important commercially, in particular because of the wool trade, as well as being perceived as an English foothold in French territory. However, the English court had been weakened by corruption and there were not enough funds to keep the military force on land or on the seas strong enough to defend the territory (Kendall, p.37).

The Yorkist Earl of Warwick negotiated with Parliament to secure funds to pay the wages of the soldiers by threatening not to assume the post of Captain of Calais at all. The Lancastrian Queen, enraged by this maneuvering, hastily created a special court to remove him, but then lost credibility when a member of this same court imprisoned a justice. The Queen’s misuse of her political power in a coercive manner, as well as the unjust coercion practiced by a member of her court, resulted in her failure to oust the Earl. The Earl of Warwick went on to transcend the boundaries of custom and tradition to forge an alliance with the Duke of Burgundy, who had an intense rivalry with the French King. Warwick was thus able to insulate himself from the Lancastrians in Calais, allowing the Yorkist cause to strengthen across the channel in England.

Fisher carefully defines the difference between management and leadership. He states that while “good management is important, it is not leadership… We do not need dictatorial ‘expert –Rocky type jungle fighters, or completely conforming creative organization types…” (p. 55-56). In Fisher’s terms, the Lancastrian Queen behaved like a “jungle fighter” while the Earl of Warwick used “vision and inspiration” to win the day.

Robert H. Pate is also quite clear on the difference between authority and leadership. He is actually more critical of authority than Fisher, which is clear from the tone of his definition of authority. “Based upon my direct observations, authority grants the legitimate right of a leader to entice, even force, others to do what is considered important to achieve” (p. 2). He contrasts the system of authority with the ideal system of leadership based on inspiration, and gives a thorough description of each one of these different systems. In fact, Pate contrasts and compares these two systems to inspire the reader to try methods of leadership based on the ideal system.

Pate, as does Fisher, goes on to offer an alternative way for leaders to achieve their goals for an organization. The alternative way for Pate is to be rewarded with obedience and loyalty by one’s followers through inspiration. He gives Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. as examples of these kinds of leaders. Pate points out that their followers invest in a leader because they believe the leader will guide them towards successful achievement of their goals. These goals don’t have to involve direct material reward. The hoped for reward for the followers of Ghandi was freedom from the tyranny of the British Crown (p. 2).  India did achieve independence from Britain after the movement inspired by Ghandi.

The Earl of Warwick certainly was not non-violent, but he did pave the way for the more just and non-violent societies that were to evolve in the future. By using his skills and negotiation to build alliances across cultural boundaries, the Earl of Warwick was not only able to pay the soldiers of Calais but increase their number and inspire their loyalty. Unlike other nobles of his day, the Earl of Warwick did not look down upon merchants. This openness and creativity helped to consolidate his position in Calais, and ultimately, the Yorkist position. “The merchants, impressed by his zeal to ensure the safety of their trade, were not long in opening their purses to him, nor did he hesitate to deplete his own funds to eke out the slender supply provided by the government. Quickly perceiving the importance of the Kentish ports to his position, he set about making friends in Dover and Sandwich and Lydd and Romney.”

The Earl of Warwick was also flexible and creative in learning new skills from those with less status and authority: “He enlisted shipmasters to teach him the arts of navigation and marine warfare. In those days, naval tactics were simple and direct: A fierce game of ram, board, and overpower. He was soon as much at home on ships as at the head of an armed cavalcade. He had quickly grasped that the offensive strength of Calais lay in its command of the sea…” (Kendally, pp. 40-41).

The modern leadership theorist Margaret Wheatley would have applauded the Yorkist Earl’s creativity and original approach to both politics and warfare. Wheatley’s assertion that imposing an old-fashioned, rigid model from outside is not healthy for an organization is in accordance with Fisher’s theory distinguishing management from persuasion. Wheatley cites definitions of intelligence related to the ability to process information effectively. Wheatley challenges organizations to avoid rigid hierarchies of command that stifle honest feedback and discussion. She states that employees need to be able to interpret more complex information and to be more skilled in order for organizations to succeed in the modern world. Wheatley states that we should be reassured that the notion of “permeable boundaries” in our organizations is less frightening if we remember that we have “deep support” from natural processes (p. 112).

The Earl of Warwick was quite adept at recognizing changing trends and was able to adapt with remarkable speed. Early in his career, when he was Captain of Calais, his rapid but well-informed transformation from foot soldier to sailor was soon tested, and his new little fleet of only five ships performed remarkably well. He first assumed command in the fall of 1456 and in the spring of 1458 the Calais flotilla was attacked by Spain: “The Earl of Warwick had never fought at sea. He was woefully overmatched. He immediately gave the order to attack. At a signal from the flagship, his little squadron, marshaled in tight formation, changed course. Headed by the five men-of-war, it sailed directly for the heart of the enemy line” (Kendall, p. 42).

Although this course of action might seem rash, upon closer examination the Earl of Warwick was well prepared for this encounter: “The Earl stood beneath his banner on the forecastle, men-at-arms and master mariners gathered about him. Gunners waited by the scattering of cannon mounted on the decks. Archers and pikemen braced themselves against the shock of ramming” (Kendall, p. 42). At the end of the six hour battle, the Spanish were forced to retreat. They had lost a total of eight ships, two of which had sunk and the other two now in the possession of the Earl of Warwick. The Spanish had also lost 200 hundred men to the Earl’s eighty, and the Earl had managed to keep all of his ships (Kendall, p. 43).

Wheatley uses the example of computer programs that plot chaotic relationships that ultimately turn into patterns. Wheatley encourages us to think in terms of shapes, not facts. Wheatley draws on personal experience with organizations in which she can detect corporate culture by interacting with any employee in the hierarchy. The above example illustrates how the Earl of Warwick effectively met the needs of all the parties concerned with his goal of successfully defending Calais, from Kings to soldiers to merchants to ship masters.

Wheatley describes how organizations become shaped over time and that organizations must not only make mission statements, but also be true to them. It can be humbling to admit that old ideas are ineffective. Wheatley relies an a charming writing style using illustrations of beautiful patterns drawn from the study of the natural world to engage the reader.  These charming illustrations are obviously intended to persuade readers that the virtues of the ideal system she is proposing are more attractive than whatever false security the old system offers.  Wheatley’s illustrations are reminiscent of the banners and ceremonial uniforms used by the Earl of Warwick to charm Kings as well as inspire loyalty from his men.

Developmental Theory and the Earl of Warwick

The venerable Earl of Warwick’s leadership skills certainly met good leadership criteria laid out by modern leadership theorists Fisher, Pate, and Wheatley. However, how does the Earl measure up in terms of the advanced stages of adult development as measured by the Model of Hierarchical Complexity (see Table I)? Ardith Bowman ( explored the relationship between organizational change and the developmental stages of employees and shed light on the relationship between leadership and the employee’s developmental stage, albeit indirectly. Bowman asked, “What kind of change in behavior is generally expected of employees in restructured organizational cultures?” (Bowman, p.1) According to theorists cited by Bowman, Kanter, Lawler, Mohrman, and Ledford and Weisbord, an ideal employee is multiskilled, adaptable to change, independent thinking, risk-taking, willing to participate in decision-making and problem-solving, and able to reflect and act upon processes that affect the quality of an organization’s products and/or services.

The Earl of Warwick certainly participated and in fact paved the way for organizational change in 15^th century England and France. According to Kendall, it is important to study the Earl of Warwick because he was “a Western European man, and in him lies concentrated the reason why that small corner of the earth, in the four centuries after his death, came to dominate all the rest. The waning Middle Ages, flushed with the germinating forces of the Renaissance, produced a blaze of princes. Warwick stands at the center of a great political duel-the first fire of nationalism-waged by Edward IV of England, Charles, Duke of Burgundy, and Louis XI of France (Kendall, pp. 12-13).

Bowman turned to the field of adult developmental theory and discovered these same qualities are desirable in employees in an organization committed to change. Certainly part of the Earl of Warwick’s skill set – i.e., multiskilled, adaptable to change, independent thinking, risk-taking, committed to decision-making and problem-solving, and able to reflect and act upon processes that affect the quality of an organization’s products and/or services – also are reflected in the higher stages of adult development (then known as the General Stage Model, Commons, et al,). Bowman cites Rulon, a developmental theorist who asserted that the quality and quantity of perspective-taking, complexity of conflicts, level of responsibility, and participation define the socio-moral complexity of a job (p. 24). Bowman also cites two other developmental theorists (Demick and Miller,) who edited a volume devoted to developmental psychology and the work environment.

Bowman was seeking to contribute to the body of knowledge regarding employee performance and how it is “shaped by organizational work practices” (p. 10). Bowman cites Warr and Conner on a relationship between the cognitive demands of a work project and the thought processes of the employee. Bowman noted that as work demands in contemporary organizations become more complex and challenging, it would follow that employee reasoning in the workplace must also become more complex. Bowman went on to cite theorists who had found a relationship between cognitive functioning in the workplace and cognitive development (Streufert & Swezey; Vogt & Murrell; Demick & Miller).

Table 1: Advanced Stages of Hierarchical Complexity – Metasystematic to Cross-Paradigmatic. Dorothy Danaher White, Ed.D. and Michael Commons, Ph.D. (2007).

The evolution of English and French society from medieval to renaissance certainly fits the criteria for organizational change. Trying to impose a reliance on authority was already becoming counterproductive by the 15^th century.  Those with a higher level of reasoning, such as the Earl of Warwick, were able to assert themselves through an evolving form of adult reasoning that needed to be at the metasystematic stage or above. Advanced stages of reasoning were needed to create the new social structures that evolved at the time, including new military technology.

As the War of Roses became more heated in the early 1460’s, in an attempt to ambush the Lancastrian Queen, the Earl of Warwick spent four days constructing elaborate defense works that had never been used before. The archers were given large mobile shields with swinging “doors” through which the arrows could be shot and then closed for protection. These “pavisses” were studded with threepenny nails so when they were rushed by the enemy, the archers could throw them down as mantraps. Accessible points of attack were guarded by thick-corded nets, festooned with nails, and to protect the soldiers from cavalry, wooden lattices, also studded with nails, were placed strategically. Caltrops, or iron hedgehogs with points damaging to man and horse were also placed at possible avenues of attack. The Earl of Warwick also had artillery along with handguns of the Burgundian contingent, which shot lead pellets or iron-tipped arrows –very advanced for that day (Kendall, pp. 92-93).

The above innovations relied on the Earl’s ability to coordinate information and ideas from a variety of sources. At the metasystematic stage of the Model of Hierarchical Complexity, at least two systems of formal propositions from the systematic stage (the previous stage), are compared on the basis of system properties and hierarchically ordered. One system is the target–in this case, traditional military strategy and apparatus, and the other is the system to be transformed–advanced, novel military strategy and equipment. The subject is able to identify transformational rules for changing the system to be transformed into the target system–the Earl of Warwick consulted with masters of the appropriate trades as well as studying the art of war in order to combine the various systems to create a novel and formidable system of defense.

The Earl of Warwick’s statesmanship also continued to evolve, aided by his military genius. In 1462, the Lancastrians again organized to attack the Yorkists. The Earl helped build and cement alliances with Lords Ogle, Strange, Say, Grey of Wilton, Lumley to field a host of knights attacked Bamburgh castle. The Earl of Kent and Lord Scales lay siege to Alnwick Castle and the Earl of Worcester led armies to fight Dustanburgh. Although the Earl of Warwick had to defeat castles that were on high cliffs and virtually impregnable by the traditional technology available at that time, he employed a very modern system of daily accountability to ensure that each of these three siege armies were supplied with food, munitions, and reinforcements.

The Lancastrians were not able to equal this complex system of alliances and military technology. They continued to rely on old methods and eventually their resources were exhausted. However, rather than use his military might to crush them, the Earl of Warwick offered them peace on generous terms. (Kendall, p 118-119). The Lancastrians did rally again, find more allies, such as the Scots, and strike a few more times, but the Earl of Warwick gained stronger allies. He was able to attract these stronger allies and legitimize his authority by pointing out the failings of the current King. King Henry was then suffering from mental illness, which perhaps explains why he allowed the excesses and illegal activity of the Queen. The Earl of Warwick was thus able to garner the support of commoners, including merchants. Warwick was also able to attract the more modern members of the aristocracy to his cause, and continued to press his advantage until King Edward IV took the throne.

King Edward was a powerful warrior. However, this young king was only 18 years of age when he became ruler of England, and he relied heavily of the Earl of Warwick. At the time King Edward ascended to the throne, the Earl of Warwick was considered the defacto ruler of England. This arrangement lasted for the next three years. During that time, documents were sent to both the Earl of Warwick and the King Edward, and the King deferred to the Earl in almost all matters. Eventually the Earl of Warwick fell out of favor with the King and then out of power. However, the Yorkist military and administrative achievement laid the groundwork for a much stronger England. This stronger England eventually evolved into the British Empire and produced the American Colonies. France and other European societies were also pushed into modernization by forces within and without her borders, but the English system was intricately intertwined with these systems.

The conflict between the old, authoritarian systems and more modern systems of government eventually produced two World Wars. Popular culture tends to focus only on those more spectacular and much more fatal events and ignore the conflicts that preceded them, but there is much to be learned from the earlier time periods as well.

Lessons for Modern Leadership

Although it is tempting to romanticize the past and to assume that knights were involved in simplistic exercises such as defending their own castles or laying siege to others, an in depth analysis of history reveals that the knights of old had to modernize and develop systems of both military strategy and equipment, as well as legal systems in order to succeed. The leaders and their knights who did not modernize, the Lancastrians, lost to those who did, the Yorkists. Overall, the pace of change in the Middle Ages and later the Renaissance might seem quiet compared to our recent history, but the basic principles of leadership are the same.

To briefly revisit the modern leadership theorists mentioned above, though Pate does not refer to developmental theory, the leadership style he advocates in accordance with the more advanced stages of the Model of Hierarchical Complexity–metasystematic reasoning and above (See Table I). Wheatley’s leadership style also reflects these advanced stages. Wheatley’s theory is also in accordance with Bowman’s assertion that the effective functioning of complex organizations requires advanced levels of reasoning.

Even in the distant past, in the Age of Chivalry, under the leadership of the Earl of Warwick and later King Edward the IV, the Yorkists formed a new and more complex form of government that employed a superior military, appealed to popular sentiment and created a more evolved legal system. The Yorkists ensured that all of their actions were supported by legal reasoning and written decrees. The Lancastrians tried to answer these legal assertions and military advances by relying on out-moded tradition, but their efforts were clumsy by comparison. Eventually support for the Lancastrians and their old-fashioned ways eroded.

By combining advanced military strategy with the ability to cross cultural barriers such as social status, language and geography, the Earl of Warwick was able to combine various systems to produce a new and improved system that has continued to evolve to create the powerful, if flawed, European Union and the United States of America. Rather tthan consign the lessons learned during such turbulent times to dusty books studied only by historians, modern leadership theorists would do well to take note in order to prepare for the next set of challenges, whatever they may be.

References

Bowman, A. (1996). The relationship between organizational work practices and employee performance: Through the lens of adult development. (Doctoral dissertation: The Fielding Institute, Alameda, CA). DAI-B 57/04, p. 2901, Oct 1996. Retrieved May 22, 2007 from http://www.tui.edu/library/loginRedirect.asp?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=742631421&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=68174&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Commons,M. el. al (2007). Applications for the Hierarchical Complexity Scoring System. (HCSS). Available from Dare Institute, Commons@tiac.net, or Http://dareassociation.org/.

Fisher, J. (2002). Positive Power: Your Path to a Higher Leadership Profile. Provo, Utah: Executive Excellence Publishing

French, J. and Raven, B. (1959). The bases of social power In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social power (pp. 150-167). Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research.

Kendall, P. (1957). Warwick: The Kingmaker. London: Phoenix Press.

Pate, R. (1995). Some observations of successful leaders and their use of power and authority. Journal of Counseling & Development, Nov/Dec95, Vol. 74 Issue 2.

Ross, C.. (1974). Edward the IV. St. Great Britain. Edmundsbury Press, Ltd.

Wheatley, M. (1999). Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world. San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler Publishers.

 About the Author

Dorothy Danaher White, Ed.D., graduated from Harvard University and works as a psychologist for various rehabilitation centers located in Miami. Dr. White currently serves as Editor of Adult Development, the journal for the Society for Research in Adult Development, which publishes papers about adult and adolescent cognitive development. She is a main contributor to the scoring system known as the Model of Hierarchical Complexity, originally developed by Michael Commons, Ph.D. at the DARE Institute. Her article in Developmental Psychology on cognitive differences with regard to gender in children has been well cited and earned her an entry in Who’s Who. Dr. White also contributed to the development of a new instrument to measure adult cognitive development which was featured in Discover Magazine.

Mark McCaslin

Mark McCaslin

Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace

I began my teaching career in 1985 as a shop teacher. To this day I remain grateful for the everyday usefulness of the lessons I was taught by so many fine artists and artisans.  The value of these early lessons came into play once again when a current student of mine held up a very interesting question: How do we inspire accountability in groups and organizations? As I purposively probed into the deeper layers of that question I realized the value of an appreciative consideration (inspiring) of an often negative or devaluing process (accountability).  Issues of accountability are too often approached from an evaluative and prescriptive lens creating environments laced with suspicion and thick with conflict. From the perspective of Integral Leadership I opened myself up to a richer orientation and sought to learn more about this relational space. From that standpoint, being open to learning, it felt important to not center myself, and therefore my response, into that stream of potential conflict and blame, but to raise the question up for a higher and more thoughtful consideration.

A master plumber I once knew during my time as a shop teacher shared some practical wisdom with me that might just hold some value and a possible integral solution in addressing the question of inspiring accountability.  His wisdom began with “pick the right tools for the job” and once selected take good care of them, “keep them clean and sharp”, remember to  “never use force” as you will only end up with broken parts, bent tools and scrapped knuckles and finally, and perhaps most importantly, he simply said; “Look, nobody knows everything. If you need help, ask”. These simple pragmatic notions have proved themselves valuable to me as I have engaged in many and wide ranging leadership issues and dilemmas. They seem certain to hold value for inspiring accountability in the workplace.

Contained within this plumber’s advice were so many rich and fertile integral notions like the necessity of lifelong learning held by “pick the right tools for the job”. In addition it reveals the reality of multiple approaches to solving any problem. Yet the lesser skilled or inexperienced leader, the one who’s reach into the leadership tool bag is limited, may become satisfied with tired and scripted responses that often yield the illusion of effectiveness without producing meaningful and sustained change. Leaders who choose not to open themselves up to learn more about this relational space will likely become content with brandishing a single institutionalized approach as if it alone were the only way to approach people or problems. As Maslow lamented: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail”.

The integral leader would do well to learn of the assets of the organization in the form of the gifts of potential held by all that could be used by all in order to assemble a fuller tool box with more “right” tools at their reach.  A side benefit of human resource asset mapping (the mapping of human potential) is that this activity alone will inspire accountability. This is largely a result of this activity engendering in others the feeling of belonging to something important. If we feel that we are contributing to overall health of the organization, that we are valuable, we are much more likely to put ourselves forward and be accountable for it. We do not inspire accountability by cultivating a feeling of being cutoff or cut down. Inspiring accountability begins with engendering a sense of trust that is inspired when I feel my voice matters—that I have something to contribute without encountering insult, humiliation or feeling diminished.

The next lesson from this master plumber spoke to the essence of self-renewal and good stewardship. You have to keep your tools “clean and sharp”. The greatest asset of any organization is its people. As leaders we must tend to the overall quality of our working environments. We must make sure that our environment is not becoming polluted with corruption, unfair practices, favoritism, gamesmanship or any other form of organizational poisoning. Make certain that as we are inspiring accountability that we are doing so with transparency. The lack of this clarity often leads to fear and misconception concerning accountability. The heavier propositions of manipulation, deception, intimidation, and coercion seem to find their way into the process as fear grows.

The heavy propositions are familiar to each of us differently and they account for almost all organizational dysfunctions. In some way they are all elements of force and as our plumber teaches; “never use force”. These heavy propositions are the part breakers, the tool benders, and the knuckle smashers. I do not believe we can inspire accountability in the workplace by way of employing the heavy propositions.

When we employ these tactics we may well see immediate results and as such take away a sense of effectiveness yet we pay an enormous price for their utility. Relationships built through this process are often fraught with positional tactics, gamesmanship, entrenchment, misinformation, defensiveness, and other behaviors and actions counter to productive and healthy leadership let alone to the notion of inspiring meaningful accountability.

Finally, we are left with the reality that we do not know everything. That is our plumber’s final and perhaps most important lesson—“if you need help, ask.” As we look to inspire accountability perhaps the central lesson we can take for his pragmatics is simply being open to learn, to being flexible in our approach and to constantly resist the urge to use force over thoughtfulness as we seek to inspire. To use deep listening, awareness, persuasion, insight, empathy, and respect in order to cultivate appreciative communication as way to “ask” others for help and in that way gain a greater sense of a community of practice and gain a sense of valued and inspired accountability.

About the Author

Mark L. McCaslin, Ph.D.  is a professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. As a career educator, he has a rich history of teaching, educational programming, and administration. His personal and professional interests flow around the development of philosophies, principles, and practices dedicated to the full actualization of human potential. The focus of his research has centered upon organizational leadership and educational approaches that foster a more holistic approach towards the fulfillment of that potential. At the apex of his current teaching, writing, and research is the emergence of Potentiating Leadership and The Potentiating Arts™.   potentiatingarts@gmail.com   mmccaslin@itp.edu

Renee Snow

Renee Snow

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Eco Leadership, refers to the marriage of ecology and economy within leadership science. As it is applied here, ecology means the interrelationship among beings in a community and economy is the management of resources within a community. For a leadership model to be sustainable and while building capacity it must address both ecology and economy.

Coinciding with the development of Eco Leadership and the five practices of deep understanding, critical self-reflection, maturity, integrity and eco unity I have had the pleasure of teaching at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP) as well at the University of Santa Cruz – extension (UCSC). These classes have offered case studies in the principals of Eco Leadership. At ITP I teach Quantitative Research and Leadership to doctoral students in Transpersonal Psychology. In general, these students are well-versed in the ecology and find it easy to acknowledge and connect with other beings. Tragically, many of these students are overwhelmed by student loan debt and have not planned a way to financial security never mind prosperity.  At UCSC I teach the final class in the Certified Financial Planning (CFP) series called Practicum. Practicum students have spent the past two years delving into financial principals and learning resource management. These students tend to be economically minded yet often lack the skills necessary to maintain strong interrelationships with others. It is with these UCSC students that the practice of deep understanding holds the most impact as many of them have never been witnessed or honored through this appreciation.

It is the first night of class and I arrive early to rearrange the long desks in a square. In my briefcase I have a Tibetan gong and a meditation script I have written especially for these students. I situate myself on one side of the square away from the front of the room, the teacher’s station, and wait for the students to enter. Most who arrive believe I am an unfamiliar student in the Program rather than their instructor. Five minutes after the start time I shut the door, return to my seat, and chime the gong. I ask the students to become present in themselves and with respect to others in the room. I ask them to notice their thoughts and to realize they have the power and skills necessary to pass the CFP exam, and then we fall into silence. The energy in the room feels uncomfortable and slightly awkward. Still, I allow myself to sit in silence for three minutes before ringing the gong.

After the meditation is complete I introduce myself as their instructor. I explain the reason for mindfulness meditation and to appeal to the empiricists in the room, cite a study that shows that after $70,000 of income per year mindfulness and physical exercise are larger contributors to happiness than additional income (Smith, 2011). Despite this down-to-earth explanation, I have the sense the students find me a bit odd and do not trust my ability to lead them successfully to the CFP exam. The practice of deep understanding asks, “Am I ready to learn?” In this situation I intuit that the students are ready to learn but doubt my ability to deliver. To assuage their fears I instruct them to open their case study books to a problem involving 1031 tax-free exchanges and ask them to solve the case. After five minutes of struggle I go up to the board and provide the solution. I notice the room take a collective sigh of relief. Having proven myself, the students, my co-leaders, are ready to learn.

I sit back down at the side of the square and ask each person to introduce themselves and answer the following questions: “Why do you want to become a Certified Financial Planner?” and “What does money mean to you?” In response to the first question, the answers range from the need to earn more money to being good at math to being attracted to the autonomy the career offers. The answers to the second question are, “money indicates success and worthiness” and “money is freedom”. These answers are confirmation that most students give precedence to the economy over the ecology. I counterbalance the weight when my turn to answer the question arrives. I truthfully answer, “I became a CFP to help people manage their resources and energy” and “Money is a store of energy and indicates our level of consciousness through our interaction with it.” With this exercise, the practice of deep understanding, of looking beyond superficial appearances has begun. This night sets the tone for the ten week class.

At the risk of sounding cliché, this class was diverse and multi-cultural. Out of 12 co-learners, I was the sole white woman. Somehow, at least on the surface, most students bought into the American myth that capitalism with its manufactured desires would fulfill their hearts’ longings. This is where I became the student and investigated how the preference for capitalism arose in a classroom of people from nations that chose socialism, or in one case, communism, over capitalism. It took nine weeks of learning, laughing, and problem solving, to form a tight enough bonds with each other where we could engage Buber’s I/Thou. The I/Thou moment occurred in the ninth week when somehow we stumbled on the topic of how our perceptions of money arose from our family and cultural conditioning. This was a night when everyone shared and gave reverence to one another and the hardships of experience that drove their families to the United States—the land of opportunity. This was the night when the class sparkled free from the shell of ego and spoke authentically of their true values; belonging, the freedom to exercise their potentials, and unconditional love. The class typically ended at 9:30 PM amid yawns, but that night no one wanted to leave and we stayed in the connection an extra 45 minutes.

I would like to provide a set of practices that are guaranteed to elicit deep understanding. However, this exceptional human experience would not have been possible without the willingness of my co-learners to trust and become vulnerable. I imagine my actions with another group of students and fail to match that night’s experience. Herein lies the clue to potentiators; they must be willing to adapt and accommodate according to the ecology. Other than certain set practices such as mindfulness meditation and participatory learning I had no fixed plan to reach these students. Instead, I became what I hoped they would become, heart-felt and open. The third class session fell on Halloween and alone, I made a fool of myself by dressing up as Big Bird. I followed my intuition which guided me to prove myself in the economy, to illustrate I had a firm handle of time value of money problems and technical aspects of the course, while committing to my own desire to reach the students in the ecology. As an exercise, the next time you are in a group, pay attention to overall strength and notice whether it lies in the ecology or in the economy. Using your own wisdom, determine ways to bring balance and harmony in service to potential.

Smith, A. (2011, Spring). A new kind of personal wealth: It turns out money can buy happiness, after all—when consumers create a market for mindful consumption. Ode Magazine.

Retrieved June 13, 2011 from http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/74/new-kind-of-personal-wealth/

Christian Arnsperger

Christian Arnsperger

The discipline of economics has fallen into a deep crisis, just as humanity is scrambling for a new – and, for the first time perhaps, completely global – worldview that will allow it to address the immense challenges of economic poverty, ecological and human sustainability, and geopolitical peace that the 21st century is sending its way. A crisis of economics at a moment of economic chaallenge may not sound like good timing. However, since crises are also opportunities, this may in fact be an auspicious moment. At a time when global issues such as poverty and trade, climate change and industry, or religious-spiritual diversity and planet-wide economic integration are forcing the world’s citizens and decision makers to broaden their outlook and to search for new resources for thought and action, a new brand of “world economics” is what we need.

In this context, Ronnie Lessem’s and Alexander Schieffer’s Integral Economics: Releasing the Economic Genius of Your Society is a truly fascinating piece of work. It would have greatly benefited from more careful copy-editing as well as grammatical and stylistic upgrading. Alas, the writing – apparently in part due to passages having been translated too literally from the German – more than occasionally gets in the way of the reader’s enjoyment. There is also, by and large, a tendency towards terminological overkill. I am not convinced the many acronyms and categorizations introduced by the authors are all absolutely necessary. But let’s not dwell on this. As a whole, this book is an extraordinary achievement offering what I would call an integral model of cross-cultural economic fertilization.

TOWARDS A “WORLD ECONOMICS”

Be forewarned, however, that Lessem’s and Schieffer’s use of the term “integral” has nothing immediately in common with Ken Wilber’s AQAL model. There are four main economic “paths” investigated in this book, but this largely formal analogy with Wilber’s four “quadrants” should not mislead us. While the AQAL map analytically decomposes reality into the exterior and interior dimensions of the individual and the collective, Lessem’s and Schieffer’s “four worlds” map operates with a geographical-and-cultural matrix: they analytically distinguish between the Northern path of rationalism, the Western path of pragmatism, the Eastern path of holism, and the Southern path of humanism.

I suppose one could find commonalities between this and Wilber’s method. For one, both approaches share a basic presumption, which motivates the use of the word “integral.” Today, in an era where the contents of all cultural, philosophical, and spiritual traditions can and do circulate worldwide, each formerly separate tradition can only ever occupy the world stage as one ideal type among others – equally valid, but equally partial. As Ken Wilber is fond of saying, no one can be 100 percent wrong, which obviously entails that no one can be 100 percent right until they have deeply investigated what is right in all traditions. This is the grounding axiom of any integral approach. Lessem and Schieffer honor it by spreading out before the reader an impressive landscape of economic wisdom traditions from East and West, past and present, destined to gradually evolve into a new discipline of “world economics,” just like the 1980s saw the advent of “world music” out of a creative fusion of colorfully diverse musical traditions previously scattered all over the planet.

The authors’ basic presumption is, indeed, that once the barriers of mutual ignorance have been brought down between traditions, an irrepressible process is unleashed whereby – notwithstanding the development of pathologies along the way – they are called forth to fertilize each other in unforeseen ways. Is this process developmental? Is it evolutionary? I would prefer to call it a process of synergistic emergence: the traditions don’t simply merge, they come into contact and, each from its own specific core, start contributing to something new that can’t be reduced to, or deduced from, any of those traditions. This something new is what the authors call the “integral economy.” The key feature of this new economy is that it will “give each of the different worlds a distinctive voice of their [sic] own” (p. 11).

The four worlds or paths that make up the landscape of economic wisdom, according to Lessem and Schieffer, are: (1) the pragmatic Western path of realization and “doing,” which emphasizes finance, management, and enterprise, and potentially opens into a “living economy” centered around the private sector; (2) the rationalistic Northern path of reason and “knowing,” which emphasizes science and technology, and potentially opens into a “social economy” centered around the public sector; (3) the holistic Eastern path of renewal and “becoming,” which emphasizes culture, spirituality, and consciousness, and potentially opens into a “developmental economy” centered around the civic sector; and (4) the humanistic Southern path of relationality and “being,” which emphasizes nature and community, and potentially opens into a self-sufficiency economy centered around the environmental sector.

These are, of course, ideal types, since in many Southern or Eastern areas there has already been an invasion of Western traits, while in all Northern and Western regions there are, even today, remnants and revivals of Southern and Eastern characteristics. Ideal types, or what Wilber calls guiding generalizations, are notoriously unpopular among self-proclaimed realists and empiricists, who always want to go immediately into the infinite details of each situation. I believe in the usefulness of broad pictures and I want to commend Lessem and Schieffer for having attempted to hold together so many elements of reality without getting lost in the fine grain. No map can claim to be a perfect replication of the territory, but what the authors have offered here is very useful.

BATTLING “TINA”

What is eminently integral about their method is that they careful stay away from ideological stalemates. None of these four paths or worlds is taken to be in any way superior, in all dimensions, to any of the others. What is problematic is that one of the paths – namely, the Western path of private enterprise and finance – has effectively silenced the others and deprived them of a distinctive voice on the global scene. Consequently, the overwhelming majority of official and academic discourse is skewed towards a small subset of the Western tradition of economic thought that, very interestingly, the authors show to be itself much richer and more varied than what orthodox economists are teaching today. The widespread claim that “There Is No Alternative” (TINA) to private-capital driven trade and finance globalization, infamously put forward by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, is based on a stark form of cultural and spiritual reductionism. Viewed from Lessem’s and Schieffer’s integral perspectives, this becomes simply laughable – and extremely preoccupying. In Wilber’s AQAL model, none of the four quadrants can be legitimately used to reduce or silence any of the others. If this is done, our perception of ongoing reality is simply mutilated, since in actual fact all four quadrants are by definition active all the time, whether we “like” it or not. In exactly the same way, in Lessem’s and Schieffer’s integral economic model, none of the four paths of economic wisdom can be legitimately used to reduce any of the others.

What the authors are calling for is a plurality of cultures of economic wisdom, leading to an integrated plurality of “economic worlds” instead of a one-size-fits-all set of economic institutions and behaviors being imposed intellectually and politically on all populations. This is an incredibly important question, since it also leads us to inquire about the lack of variety and plurality within our own, North-Western “developed” economies. Why are we, both in our teaching of economics and in our day-to-day practices (hence also in our legal frameworks), marginalizing or even diabolizing non-capitalist, non-patriarchal, commons-oriented ways of working, producing, consuming, and investing? Why are we relinquishing the wisdom inherent in Southern and Eastern cultures and severing the link between money and femininity, between consumption and serenity, between property and solidarity, between economic growth and spiritual depth? All such questions have been rendered nonsensical by two or three centuries of both intellectual and geopolitical imperialism. What is wrong with the Western culture of material progress and quantitative expansion is not its rationality or its materialism – these are perfectly legitimate components of an integral economic worldview, and they are badly needed in many regions of the planet where poverty and destitution destroy lives and make spirituality into a mockery. What is wrong is the focus on economic growth and efficiency as the sole and exclusive components of economic wisdom.

Lessem and Schieffer very interestingly trace this imperialistic worldview to a powerful process of intellectual and spiritual repression within Euro-American economic thought itself. The seeds of a more “Southern” self-sufficiency economy were present in ancient traditions (for instance, ancient Greek or medieval) whose remnants still linger on but have ceased to be used as living resources. Significant traces of a more “Eastern” developmental economy exist in medieval and Renaissance sources as well as in the German historicist school of economics; none of these resources are taught in mainstream economics departments. There are “inhibited and diverted forms” (p. 40) of a more “Northern” social economy to be found in the routinely overlooked corners of the work of such powerhouses as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, or David Ricardo, as well as in the neglected and rejected teachings of Karl Marx or Thorstein Veblen. And – perhaps most regrettably – even the “Western” living economy itself, characterized by organic dynamism and the flourishing of personal initiative, has been distorted beyond recognition by mainstream economics’ focus on a very narrow set of assumptions (isolated agents, instrumental rationality, static equilibrium, etc.), agency principles (cognitive minimalism, insatiable wants, inability of agents to criticize the economy they live in, no existential or spiritual self-perception, etc.), and institutional settings (capitalist markets, statist “top down” public sector, a single all-purpose currency, etc.). So when a Western economist looks at her own intellectual tradition and realizes its impoverishment, she shouldn’t be to surprised by the fact that, having been spread over most of the planet in the form of policies and regulations, this impoverished tradition also causes poverty and inequality worldwide due to capitalism’s inability to distribute incomes well and to the market’s incapacity at taking everyone’s interests into account. To offer us a perspective from which to come to this realization is a very important contribution of this book.

No doubt, Lessem and Schieffer would concur that the same is true for any of the ideal types. That is, if out of revolt at the Western traditions having been spread by the point of the sword over the past centuries, we were to hope for the “alternative” spread of a Southern or Eastern or Northern economic worldview, corresponding processes of impoverishment would ensue: too much self-sufficiency and too little trade would lead to localist isolation; too much developmental holism and too little material efficiency would lead to resigned poverty within an inefficient economy; and too much socialization along with too little private initiative would lead to a sclerosis of economic exchanges and a lack of collective creativity in solving crucial social and environmental problems. We know of examples from the former Soviet block, as well as from contemporary South America, Africa, and Asia, where such pathologies of Northern, Southern, or Eastern reductionism are manifest. Any tradition implemented outside of the dynamics of integral cross-fertilization will tend to develop an impoverished and impoverishing orthodoxy. An integral economy would be one in which the “genius” of each path of economic wisdom is equally honored – not in the sense that they all get fused within one single, indistinct whole, but in the sense that each of the four centers of gravity is opened up to be jarred loose and shaken back and forth by the three other centers it is, itself, contributing to jar loose and shake back and forth…

FOUR ECONOMIC REALITIES, NOT JUST ONE

As the whole book evidences, the four paths or worlds of economic thought and practice are not going to become a unified six-lane highway anytime soon. Each tradition has its specificities, and in each case they need to be purified from repressed denials, deeply understood, and integrated into a full-blown path of economic wisdom: a Southern path, a Western one, an Eastern and a Northern one. Only then – once we have built a “maximal-potential” archetype for each of the different paths – can we envisage their integration and their mutual cross-fertilization. We will never have one single world economy, but rather separate economic worlds connected with each other through a synergistic process:

each society has to draw on the world as a whole, to become economically integral, albeit that it will give special emphasis to its own world. To that extent, each society has its center, as well as its South, East, North and West, albeit that, for example in Africa, the “South” and “grounding” will be pre-eminent. (p. 15)

So it is hardly surprising that Lessem and Schieffer spend the largest portion of the volume’s 380 pages submitting the somewhat dizzy reader to a festive, erudite firework of references, names, and ideas coming from all parts of the globe and from various points in history. To understand the structure of the central 16 chapters (numbered 5 to 20) we need to grasp the – somewhat convoluted, perhaps needlessly complicated but certainly stimulating – model the authors offer for the honoring of the “genius” of each path.

Each path or world of economic wisdom, they suggest, possesses its own specific “genius.” Etymologically, this Latin word designates the guardian and guiding deity that watches over a person from birth; by extension, it means that specific internal driving force which inhabits those who are single-mindedly driven towards a goal to which they seem predisposed.  In a play on words and letters that I personally find somewhat contrived and artificial, but with which I’m prepared to go along since it appears to be rooted in their earlier work on innovation, transformation, and change,[1] Lessem and Schieffer propose the acronym GENE-IUS. Each of the letters has its meaning. Here is how they formulate it:

All worlds are needed for a full cycle of transformation to occur. The GENE is a fourfold cyclical process starting from grounding (G), to emerging (E), onto navigation (N) and finally effecting (E). As the GENE implies, different worlds co-creatively engage with each other. Transformation, for us moreover, also—and paradoxically—links the inner ‘I’ (moral Inspiration) and the outer ‘U’ (Universal truth), through a Synergetic process (S), hence GENE-IUS. The ultimate outcome would be a transformed economic approach in action:

a)     by drawing inspiration (I) from your moral core;

b)     by aligning this core with your own individual and collective grounding, emergence, navigation, effecting (GENE); and

c)     by releasing your full GENE-IUS by synergizing (S) the moral inspiration (I) with a universal (U) truth. (pp. 14-15)

Got it? No? I’m relieved, because at first I didn’t either. This goes to show that one should probably never let a German build a systematic account of anything. Alexander Schieffer is German. Ken Wilber thinks the German philosophers Hegel and Habermas are great theorists of everything – and just look where that’s led him. I’m German, too. That should warn you about my own work on Integral Economics…

Seriously now, I believe the authors are on to something important here. Their aim, remember, is emphatically not merely to explain the state of diversity currently prevailing in the world of economic ideas and practices. That diversity is indeed being stifled and their work fulfills an important function in bringing this to our awareness. However, their ultimate goal is to offer us a model of integrally informed economic innovation. In other words, how can I – if I’m a Western economist or, say, Minister of economic affairs – be firmly grounded in my own context (G), gain a deep understanding of what my own Western path throws up in terms of emerging problems to be solved (E), navigate the whole spectrum of the world’s economic paths to create a synthesis among Western knowledge and other traditions of economic wisdom (N), and develop a new way of solving Western economic problems based on this broader synthesis, rather than on a partial and narrow use of merely Western ideas and practices (E)?[2] In a sense, the whole spectrum of planetary cultural resources is (as far as that’s possible) made available such that the path of Western economic wisdom can become more authentically Western. But that also means you can’t innovate in the West without letting the other traditions – South, North, East – develop their own authenticity. If you forcibly Westernize all the paths, effectively reducing them to what you as a Westerner already know (in a still largely inauthentic version of your own path, though), you’re going to lose a huge amount of information resources that would have enabled you to better formulate and solve your own economic problems.

Imperialism impoverishes the imperialist, one could say – and one lesson that is to be drawn from Lessem and Schieffer’s model is that China and India (to take the Eastern archetype) have probably learned much more from the West’s influence than the West has learned from them, and have been able to build models that now threaten the West on its own terrain. Nevertheless, neither China nor India seems to have safeguarded sufficient portions of its own wisdom path in order to offer the West new resources. All America and Europe are doing now is trying to stem the tide of these Asian giants’ Westernized strength as they use our own path in a way that is going to be problematic for us as well as for them, ultimately. Both the Western and the Eastern path have been rendered inauthentic by the deleterious manner in which we, in the West, have imposed our values and narrow self-understanding on the planet through globalized mechanisms and institutions. It would have been better to develop an authentic Eastern path as well as an authentic Western one, each of them contributing to the authenticity of the other.

THE MORAL CORE AND THE PROCESS OF SYNERGISTIC CROSS-FERTILIZATION

Ergo, we need to study each archetypal path or world of economic wisdom for itself – study its “Path GENE,” as the authors call it – so that it may be fruitful for us all in authentic cross-fertilization rather than rivalry-motivated imitation. But what initially offers an anchor to judge authenticity? According to Lessem and Schieffer, each path or world of economic wisdom is rooted in what they call a central “moral core”:

It is in this inner core, so our argument goes, where we seek initial inspiration . . . In other words, an economy, in order to flourish over the long term, needs to be aligned with the innermost belief systems of a society or community. . . . Hence, for a society to build its economy into an integral one, it is crucial to reconnect to its inner moral source, or sources, to be found in its center. (p. 47)

The moral economic core of a path is what allows it to be both coherent and rooted (in tradition), and open-ended and forward-looking. There are essential moral roots specific to each path, inherited from a time when the traditions were scattered and separate – Protestantism, including Quakerism and the New Reformation, as a root for Western liberalism and capitalism; indigenous worldviews and spiritualities, as a root for Southern “creation economics;” Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian metaphysics and ethics, as well as Islamic morality, as a root for Eastern cooperative and holistic economics; and Catholicism as well as personalism, as a root for Northern distributivism and social democracy. The subtle and stimulating idea defended by the authors is that, from an integral perspective, each inherited moral core can be “revitalized” through synergy with all the others, without thereby losing its specificity: “The archetypical West, so our argument posits, becomes only truly effective if it builds on the other worlds. In other words, you need to uncover the South, East, North and West, metaphorically, not geographically, of your society, while also, and in the process, drawing from these worlds.”[3] So each “Path GENE” – the proper unfolding of a given path’s authenticity – originates in what Lessem and Schieffer call a “Four World GENE,” which is the ongoing process of uncovering of each path’s authentic moral core. This Four World GENE, as its very name indicates, can only occur as a process of mutual revitalization of all moral cores together.

So actually, none of the four paths or worlds of economic wisdom are ever completely disjointed from each other. They interpenetrate each other both at the root – at the level of their respective moral cores – and at the branch ending – when they become part of an integral “world economics,” yet to be specified (the “IUS” in the authors’ convoluted terminology).

Emerging out their respective revitalized moral cores, the four paths undergo a GENE process that’s different for each one. In that way, each path releases its own specific economic genius, its contribution to an integral landscape of economic wisdom. I can’t possibly recap all of it here, since that discussion occupies all 16 chapters of Part 3, covering about two-thirds of the whole book. Each chapter corresponds to one path (Southern for chapters 5 to 8, Eastern for chapters 9 to 12, Northern for chapters 13 to 16, and Western for chapters 17 to 20) and to one stage (Grounding for chapters 5, 9, 13, and 17; Emergence for chapters 6, 10, 14, and 18; Navigation for chapters 7, 11, 15, and 19; and Effect for chapters 8, 12, 16, and 20).

The journey through this vast landscape is both dizzying and exhilarating. The reader is hit with the realization of how wealthy humanity’s heritage actually is when it comes to resources for economic thought and action. We are initiated into such diverse currents as Mfuniselwa Bhengu’s African economic humanism, Vandana Shiva’s eco-feminist “Earth democracy movement,” Veronika Bennholt-Thomsen’s and Maria Mies’s “subsistence economics,” Muhamad Yunus’s “social business” current, Richard Norgaard’s “co-evolutionary economics” and the whole approach of ecological economics, E. F. Schumacher’s Buddhist economics rooted in the “Small Is Beautiful” principle, the school of associative economics influenced by such diverse minds as Rudolf Steiner and Christopher Houghton Budd, the Japanese Kyosei philosophy of sound business management, Mark Lutz’s and Kenneth Lux’s “humanistic economics,” the newly arising stream of network and complexity economics championed by thinkers such as Manuel Castells and Eric Beinhocker, the “open society” economics inherited from Karl Popper and put forth by Amartya Sen in academia and George Soros in the financial world, the Mondragon philosophy of cooperative economics rooted in Catholic personalism, the “new economics” emerging today from such diverse minds as Hazel Henderson, Manfred Max-Neef, Herman Daly, James Robertson, or Susan George, and which stresses sustainability and stationarity, the economics of new wealth and money developed by Riane Eisler, David Korten and Bernard Lietaer, who stress the importance of Jungian archetypes and also of the Chinese yin-yang process, and the “sustainable enterprise” movement promoted by people such as Ray Anderson and Paul Hawken.

In chapter 21, each of the four paths is shown by the authors to unfold into a series of questions that can be asked to any economist, entrepreneur, decision maker, or citizen who wants to make one of the four paths more “integral.” For instance, if you are a Western economist contemplating how to make capitalist markets and finance less unjust and more sustainable, here are a few questions that the other paths could help you address. The Southern path would, at the IUS level of the moral economic core, ask: “To what extent are you economically driven by a Southern source of moral inspiration (for example, Ubuntu), which is at the same time enriched by a compelling universal truth (for example, Martin Buber’s ‘I and Thou’)?” (p. 328). The Eastern path would, at the GENE stage of Grounding, ask: “To what extent is your society economically grounded in its particular culture and how do culture and economy co-evolve within your society?” (p. 330). The Northern path would, at the stage of Emerging, ask: “To what extent is your society open for learning, responding to the economic opportunities but also to the social challenges posed by a network society?” (p. 333). Your own Western path, revitalized by its authentic moral resources, would, at the stage of Navigating, ask: “To what extent is your society oriented towards generating and measuring real wealth, and is it institutionally configured, and educationally oriented, accordingly?” (p. 335). And so on.

HOW INTEGRATION HAPPENS

What is crucial to understand in the authors’ methodology – at least that’s how I’ve understood it – is how contextual, problem-based, and open-ended it is. A person walking an authentically Eastern path of economic wisdom will not answer questions coming from the Western path in the same way a person on the Southern or Northern path would. What matters is not so much that all answers converge – in fact, in a healthy globalized world they shouldn’t – but that all questions are heard and accepted as authentic. In an analogous way to what happens when you start taking Ken Wilber’s four quadrants fully into consideration, Lessem’s and Schieffer’s methodology opens up an unheard-of horizon of plural answers to economic problems.

Not that this horizon is totally eclectic. Let’s suppose you’re on a Western path – say, you want to understand how to balance capitalist, mutualistic and cooperative firms in North America.[4] You can’t naïvely pretend to simply step over and start treading a purely Eastern or Southern path, believing you need “only” transform globalization into self-sufficiency or transform atomized selfishness into communal mutuality. This is what non-integral (in the sense of Lessem and Schieffer) approaches to “alternative” economics tend to do; they often neglect the twin fact that (a) our own Western moral core already contains elements that, if renewed, could ground an ethic of cooperative labor and solidaristic, sustainable production and consumption, but (b) the Western version of Southern and Eastern properties will have to spring from individuals who have been raised in a culture of self-interest, mutual isolation, and competition, but are rediscovering these lost cultural sources inside themselves – rediscovering their “inner South” and their “inner East” as Westerners.[5]

Some similar endogenous assimilation process is required if, say, an Indian economist or an African entrepreneur wants to address poverty and inequality. This may indeed require her to rediscover an “inner West” within her own tradition, such that aspects of efficiency, competition, or financial profitability come into play as she builds an Indian or African path towards poverty reduction. I want to emphasize very strongly that this process of synergistic cross-fertilization suggested by Lessem and Schieffer is completely distinct from the standard, overtly or covertly colonialist way of purporting to solve India’s or Africa’s economic problems by “importing” Western recipes.[6] This book, once digested (and that’s not a small task given its bulk and its sometimes convoluted formulations and concepts), may offer a powerful antidote both against those who favor the so-called Washington consensus and against those who want to criticize it from a purely Western angle. Here it’s worth quoting in full the authors’ rebuttal of Stiglitz’s critique of the Washington consensus (with apologies for the poor style and grammar which mar this book all too much):

In their recent book on The Washington Consensus Reconsidered: Towards a New Global Governance, economists Narcis Serra and Joseph Stiglitz, commented that a successful development strategy will firstly have to involve those in the developing world in an important and meaningful way. Secondly, one-size-fits-all are bound to fail. Thirdly, there are areas where economic science has neither enough evidence nor a strong enough theory—there is no evidence that rapid liberalization, especially in a country with high unemployment, will lead to faster economic growth. Fourthly, successful development requires a balanced role between market and state. Finally, success needs to be measured not only in terms of GNP, but also include environmental and social measures.

That is as far as the conventional wisdom on the limitations of the Washington Consensus goes. While what Nobel Laureate Stiglitz and Serra have to say has merit, and resonates to some degree with our own position, you can see the limits of their reach. Not only do such mainstream critics of the conventional economic wisdom remain committed to “development,” rather the developmental, the social or the self-sufficient, not to mention a moral economic core, but also they have nothing to offer that clearly differentiates them from the classical “Western” economic way. In fact, they don’t even draw on anything near the fullness of that conventional offering (p. 326)

Lessem’s and Schieffer’s interesting idea is that, were we as Western economists to draw on the “fullness” of what our own economic wisdom tradition has to offer, we would almost automatically set off the Four World GENE process for the construction of our own solutions – and this would, in fact, lead us to encourage Southern or Eastern economists to revitalize their own paths and come up with original solutions of their own, combining the Eastern, Western, Southern, and Northern archetypes that are specific to their respective paths.

Sure enough, this book doesn’t offer a reassuring, ready-made recipe for how such a multilateral cross-fertilization process would play itself out. As the authors claim at the end of chapter 20, in a statement that’s sure to disappoint many a staunchly Western reader, “to sustain a fully Integral Economy, all its elements need to be in continuous dynamic interaction, making the entire system an ever-changing, ever-evolving one. Such a process, of course, can only partially be mapped and planned” (p. 341). Actually, however, this open-endedness is part and parcel of the approach. Lessem and Schieffer offer several concrete examples throughout the book of how the Path GENE and the Four World GENE processes, combined with the IUS process, can make organizations more integral. These examples are the Sekem community enterprise in Egypt (chapter 4), the Grameen banking group in Bangladesh (chapter 8), the Canon corporation in Japan (chapter 12), the Mondragon cooperative group in Spain (chapter 16), the U.S. modular carpet manufacturer Interface (chapter 20), and the Sarvodaya grassroots organization in Sri Lanka (epilogue). Each of these cases is, obviously, completely different in the sense that Mondragon remains archetypically Northern despite Western, Eastern, and Southern elements, while Sarvodaya remains archetypically Eastern despite involving Northern, Southern, and Western traits. The originality of each initiative is that it both remains contextually rooted and takes crucial elements from other moral economic cores and other economic wisdom paths. Each is integral in its own specific, culturally rooted, and problem-driven way.

Chapter 22 and the epilogue offer pointers – which also connect, in part, with the subject matter of the other book, Integral Research and Innovation – as to how a given project can be conducted so as to “release its economic GENE-IUS.” The content is rather unwieldy and somewhat hard to integrate because, frankly, by the time the reader gets to page 343 he or she is nearing indigestion in terms of lists, tables, acronyms, concepts, algorithms, graphs, and processes. But going back to the five examples helps very much to gain clarity and to get a sense of the authors’ well-deserved enthusiasm about the broad horizon they have uncovered.

TOWARDS A TRULY INTEGRAL ECONOMIC SCIENCE

I came to Integral Economics through Ken Wilber’s four-quadrants AQAL model and developed an approach I call “Full-Spectrum Economics.”[7] Compared to Lessem’s and Schieffer’s “Integral” model, mine smacks of Wilberian orthodoxy,[8] since it sticks closely to the arithmetic of quadrants, lines, and levels, embracing the controversial notion of “growth hierarchy” and thinking of economic progress in terms of an upward-moving integral field on which cultural (lower-left), systemic (lower-right), organic-biological (upper-right), and psycho-spiritual (upper-left) factors interact in multifarious ways. At first glance, such an orthodox take on Integral Economics might have led me to disparage Lessem’s and Schieffer’s approach as being exclusively “lower-quadrants,” with a bias towards the lower-left quadrant. I confess that when I received their book a while ago, this was my initial reaction. Now, having read it and come to the end of this long – but, I hope, useful – review essay, I am inclined to think otherwise.

What these two thinkers have done is offer us what may well be a pluralistic, multicultural meta-grounding of Wilber’s post-metaphysical quadrants. (Wow. That sounds pretty cool. Should I make that phrase into a registered trademark, I wonder?) What I mean is this: Perhaps the four AQAL quadrants will have different contents, and will play out their upward-moving dynamic differently, depending on which of the Four Worlds one is in. Lessem and Schieffer haven’t been nearly thorough enough in actually showing us how, along the GENE-IUS process, each of the four archetypal paths or worlds of economic wisdom accommodate AQAL development – i.e., how the quadrants interact horizontally and how that interaction creates a vertical development process. What they have done, however, is to open up the possibility that each integral (in their sense) economic project, whether at the micro- or the macro-economic level, be modeled and understood in its fine grain through Wilber’s AQAL approach.[9]

So while I have no instinctual inclination towards being too ecumenical, I do believe that since, to repeat Wilber’s motto yet again, no one can be 100 percent wrong  – my “Full-Spectrum Economics” and Lessem’s and Schieffer’s “Integral Economics” are deeply complementary. The next stage in developing a truly Integral economic science may well consist in engineering the coupling of our two approaches. Both of them are bound to come out modified in the process, but the prospect is one I find truly exhilarating.

 Notes

John Rayment and Jonathan Smith: Misleadership: Prevalence, Causes & Consequences.  Farnham, Surrey, UK: Gower, 2011.

Paul Roscorla

This book has an intriguing title and therefore considerable potential to be thought provoking.  There is a good idea here that the authors, who are business academics and business consultants, have been commissioned to explore.  Whether or not they have succeeded in translating a great idea into a great book is less certain, but the concept of “Misleadership”, its origins and impact has been given a thorough treatment. The author’s central thesis is that leaders can mislead their followers in four different ways. Whether it is down to incompetence or deceipt, such misleadership is highly damaging once exposed since followers have to believe that – overall – their leader will do the right things.

What makes the book so timely (from the perspective of the UK) is perhaps best illustrated by quoting from a piece in the Daily Telegraph written by the chief political commentator on January 25^th 2012.  This article says that during the time of the Blair government ‘it became normal for the prime minister’s official spokesperson to lie on the record and Tony Blair repeatedly deceived Parliament’.  The rot then spread to MPs and the writer describes the 2005-10 parliament as ‘probably the most corrupt since the 18^th century – its members lied, cheated and falsified documents in order to obtain expenses fraudulently’.  So widespread was the practice that it became pretty well impossible for a new government to be formed that did not include people in the Cameron Cabinet who were to some degree tainted.  Irrespective of how the Blair years are now viewed by politicians, at the time the Prime Minister was hugely successful and admired by many people including some of the current political leadership.  Andy Coulson’s[i] appointment as Cameron’s Director of Communications carries an echo of the role that Alistair Campbell performed so successfully for Blair.  Things do not seem to be changing to the degree required.

On one of the opening pages there is a glossary of abbreviations, which encapsulates a tendency within the book to veer between the complex and what can seem self-evident.  The authors use acronyms frequently with GFL (Globally Fit Leadership) and UGI (Urgent Global Issue) being examples.  At least they are explained in the glossary.  However, the authors also explain that UK means United Kingdom, UN stands for United Nations and so on.

Essentially the book explores Missing Leadership (or failure to make needed decisions), Misguided Leadership, Misinformed Leadership and Machiavellian Leadership.  The introduction asks readers to reflect when they were last misled, when they last misled someone else, and suggests that it is the global scale of the challenges that face mankind which are leading to a leadership crisis.  The authors make the telling point that one of the biggest difficulties with tackling Misleadership is that its perpetrators are often tremendously successful and seen as role models.  Most of us observe that we live in an age where leaders who fail spectacularly need lorries to carry off the compensation they receive under legal contracts.  The shareholders of RBS[ii] have done very badly indeed, but Fred Goodwin (its ousted Chief Executive) should be able to survive on his pension even if he has to do so without a knighthood.  Points for reflection end each chapter of the book.  For example, at the end of the Introduction the reader is asked ‘what has been your initial reaction as you have read this first chapter?’

The second chapter devoted to Missing Leadership uses the case of the sinking of the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic as an illustration.  This example is well described and used to develop the theme of the chapter.  It shows that many things went wrong from ship design to the fact that radio operators earned money sending messages for passengers rather than passed two specific iceberg warnings to the bridge.  What is striking about this historic event is the role of bad luck – the Captain steered south into warmer waters in response to general warnings, the iceberg was spotted, and immediate evasive action taken which almost succeeded.  Rayment’s “ASK SIR L” problem solving model[iii] is then used to evaluate what happened and to learn the lessons.  In a way the writers become rather like a Public Enquiry and, with the benefit of hindsight and modern knowledge, discuss what might have been done to avoid the tragedy.  It would have been more apposite to ask how a leader might have acted differently in the situation that they found themselves in at the time.  Various errors in decision-making are identified.  An example being that steel and rivets were used in the construction that became brittle in the cold conditions known to exist on the route.  Rayment and Smith make a good point that contemporary ship design was pushing new limits and that the captain was probably unaware of the limitations or likely performance of his new ship, but this says little about his intrinsic capabilities as a leader.  The authors finally suggest the need to identify, specify and manage all risks faced.  No one would argue with the benefit of such risk assessments but the issue is one of a context where many risks are not yet known and risk is therefore unpredictable.

The second chapter goes on to cover global warming and resource depletion.  The impact of global population growth and the sheer complexity of the issue are well covered.  Missing world leadership to address climate change and sustainability is identified, but the authors – like the politicians – are silent on addressing the core problem of population growth.  It is perhaps too difficult.  Finally there is a section on ‘Toxic Childhood’ where the breakdown of family life and the abuse of children in homes and schools are covered.  Other than identifying Missing Leadership (for example, where were senior leaders in the church in Ireland when priests were know to be abusers?), problems are laid out rather than solutions offered.  In fairness, the authors do say in the Introduction that they do not have all the answers.

In the third chapter the authors address Misguided Leadership.  The definition of what this means could have been crisper and it might have been preferable if the examples had come first to make matters clearer.  Having said that it is the pursuit of desirable objectives through invalid means, the next sentence describes the issue as one of hitting intended but inappropriate targets.  This is illustrated by the example of a business maximising returns to shareholders while losing sight of humanity’s overall objectives.  The authors then get into the important issues of short-termism, whether profit is all that is important, whether everything should be left to the operation of markets, and globalisation.   The conclusion drawn is that leaders are often prisoners of the situation in which they find themselves – for example, shareholder’ demands for returns.  The authors coin the term Institutional Misleadership for settings where leaders push themselves to make an unworkable system work.  A lengthy section on the Global Fitness Framework (GFF) follows which is focused on the interconnectedness and interdependencies of a global society and the need for a holistic approach.

The illustrative examples for the third chapter commence with ‘A’ level[iv] grade inflation, then move on to Henry V and end with Christopher Columbus.  In the case of Henry V, we are told that he led his men into a very perilous situation and without proper preparation.  Luckily the French played into his hands and essentially lost the war due to their own incompetence and disunity.  This example has the feel of being force-fitted into the requirements of the Misguided Leadership concept and the authors concede the story also has elements of Missing or Machiavellian Leadership.

Misinformed Leadership is where the leader is unaware of important information or misunderstands it and this is the subject of chapter four.  The chapter starts with a review of the 2008 banking and financial collapse, and this is the major case study in the book.  It is also quite technical.  In the lead up, scandals such as BCCI and Nick Leeson and Barings are explored[v].  In the latter case, Missing Leadership is identified (lack of controls), Misinformed Leadership (leaders did not know what was going on), Machiavellian Leadership (Leeson’s bonuses were twice his salary and encouraged risk taking) and Institutionalised Misleadership (it was long-term and endemic).   Elements of the 2008 crash are described such as the securitisation of mortgages, ‘NINJA’ loans (no income, no job or assets), and ‘Liar Loans’ where borrowers self-certified their earnings without proof.  What the authors do not mention is that the most interesting aspect of the latter is that ‘Liar Loans’ were issued in the latter part of 1980s and probably contributed to the housing crash of the 1990s.  In other words we had been there before and the results were entirely predictable, with the question being why go there again?  The authors neatly explain how the banks got into a situation where a 2-3% fall in asset values would wipe out all their shareholders funds (or reserves).  This, as they say, is an example of Misleadership in the extreme.  Even Gordon Brown, when faced with reality, admitted he was wrong to claim he had ended ‘boom and bust’.

The culmination of the Misinformed Leadership section is a call for a new paradigm.  The authors credit the current economic model to such people as Adam Smith (the 18^th century economist and philosopher) who set out the mechanics of the system in a context where trade levels were lower, resource consumption far lower and the influence of individual organisations much less significant in a pre-globalisation age.  Powerfully, attention is drawn to the ever widening gap between power and responsibility.  In the days of Adam Smith if a business failed its entrepreneurial owner lost everything.  Today, business leaders who take decisions with immense implications are insulated from the true scale of the consequences by a combination of legal protection and practicality.  Clearly the losses incurred by RBS could not be recovered from Fred Goodwin even though the acquisition of ABN Amro is largely attributed to him.

Rayment and Smith outline a new paradigm with three levels: leaders and decision-makers, organisations, and nations and societies.  Numbers of attributes are set out at each level for example: at the leader level there is an expectation that leaders will act ethically, honesty and with integrity, and be aware of global issues; at the organisation level, cooperation with customers, suppliers and other businesses, and societal contribution, is specified; at the level of nations, the new paradigm includes sharing resources fairly and acting together to tackle issues.  On the other hand, greed is said to be a manifestation of “negative spirituality”.  It is hard not to see much of the new paradigm as utopian and difficult to see how it will be brought about.  The book misses a consideration of human nature.  While greed is perhaps a manifestation of negative spirituality as the authors contend, some people are greedy and this has to be dealt with.  As Bob Dylan sang, ‘the King won’t be satisfied until he owns everything’.  Many writers have concluded that altruism is merely enlightened self-interest.  Human beings compare themselves with each other and therefore they are inherently competitive.  There is good competition related to striving and bad competition related to destruction.  Indeed, one wonders whether another new paradigm is needed as a new paradigm (i.e. funding consumption with debt) got us to where we are.  Perhaps a return to old principles closer to those that applied when a man ate what he sowed would be preferable.  Putting aside whether that is even possible in a world of 6bn people, perhaps the authors assume that their readers are change junkies and therefore new paradigms attract advocates and old principles do not sell books.

The final category is Machiavellian Leadership.  This is deliberate and disguised exploitation to achieve personal objectives.  The chapter leads with a description of the dairy product industry and the actions of some companies to promote the use of baby milk.  The charity, Save the Children, is quoted as claiming that the use of infant formula causes thousands of unnecessary infant deaths every day.  The engrained nature of deception in business is outlined and marketing and advertising are obvious examples where guilt, doubt and dubious statistics are used.  If we live in a world of spin, why are we not inured to it?  Probably the most damaging consequence of such a lack of authenticity is widespread, energy sapping scepticism and cynicism.  We expect our leaders to lie so we don’t mind too much if they do, politicians can’t be trusted so we ridicule them and so on.  If there isn’t a good book by an MP or ex-MP entitled ‘Teach yourself to fiddle your expenses’, there ought to be.  The authors identify the consequences of unchecked Machiavellian Leadership as poor morale, motivation and dedication, and unwillingness to cooperate, collaborate and share knowledge openly.

Interestingly the authors believe that the media in the UK is a major cause of Machiavellian behaviour.  Misleading advertising is placed, a hostile and negative approach is adopted, and stars are created and knocked down.  Advocates of the Leveson Inquiry[vi] into phone hacking would no doubt agree about the depths to which the press can sink.  However often, although not always, there is another story to tell.  A socialist friend informed me that the Daily Telegraph exposure of dubious MP expense claims was a form of right wing plot and simply scurrilous. There is an irony here.  Those that accuse others of Misinformation and Machiavellianism may well find the same charge being levelled back at them.

The authors propose using eEducation as a way of tackling Machiavellian Leadership.  This involves re-educating leaders to recognise their true role as global leaders and encouraging them to move towards Globally Fit Leadership.  There is an assumption here that people who crave leadership but lack empathy or morals, can be successfully “re-educated”.  More promisingly the authors go onto discuss the influence that followers can have on a leader’s behaviour.  Good leaders, like good people, sometimes do bad things but other people can cause them to reflect on what they propose to do.  Finally the creation of a contemporary mission is suggested.  The Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI), is a partnership between the European Foundation for Management Development and the UN Global Compact, that promotes the purpose of the globally responsible business by formulating it in the following terms: ‘Create economic and societal progress in a globally responsible and sustainable way’.  The authors’ proposal for a mission statement for all organic levels of humanity worldwide is:

Developing a Sustainable, Just and Fulfilling Human Presence on the Planet

Chapter 6 brings together all of the authors’ previous themes and explorations.  It returns to the concept of the Leadership Fitness Continuum (LFC) where Globally Fit Leadership (GFL) is defined as the best possible human leadership and Diabolical Leadership is the worst possible.  In the extreme these poles are ‘Heaven on Earth’ and ‘Hell on Earth’.  The LFC and GFL ideas are discussed in depth and integrated with the 4 types of Misleadership.  Lewin’s Force Field Analysis is used to create a Leadership Fitness Force Field.  Questions such as ‘Does all of humanity experience a similar level of well-being?’ and ‘Are we in equilibrium?’ are used to make points.  Occasionally such questions posed by the authors seem akin to asking ‘is the Pope Catholic?’  Fear of change and attachment to familiar ways of doing things are explained as psychological factors getting in the way of implementing ideas that might reduce or eliminate Misleadership.  A model proposed by Carnall for motivation to change is given and then there is a section on the different types of power.  The chapter ends – like all the previous ones – with points for reflection expressed as questions.  One of these asks ‘if you were having a conversation with Henry VIII, what would you like to ask him in relation to the issues we have discussed so far in this book?’ What indeed?

Chapter 7 is a series of case studies and the final chapter addresses ‘Implementation Strategies’.

This book will appeal to people interested in models and concepts designed to address the global leadership challenge, which without doubt exists.  The question for the reviewer is whether many people are interested in this – regardless of whether the authors believe is that people should be.  In his book ‘the Naked Ape’ Desmond Morris drew attention to the fact that we are tribal beings.  Most of us know about 100 people and we are most concerned about what happens locally and around us.  The authors use the Police as an example in one section, and one of them has worked with the Police.  They will therefore know that the problems that most concern the public are dog mess and anti-social behaviour.  Global organised crime hardly figures.  Managers and leaders are concerned about getting ahead in order to give their families security and a good standard of living.  Whether or not people should be parochial, they are.  There is a major unresolved problem here.

Better leadership is clearly desirable, but is this possible to the degree required in western democracies?  Our leaders are in a terrible bind.  Everywhere we look governments have made promises that look increasingly unaffordable.  However, publics all across the West expect these promises to be met and votes depend on this.  Essentially our leaders are forced into Misleadership.  As the authors point out, it took a virtual financial collapse before Gordon Brown could publically admit that some public spending cuts were likely to be needed.  It is difficult not to feel that facing our problems is simply politically too hard for our leaders.  It may be too difficult for us too.  This is alarming as we all – leaders and followers – appear to be colluding in sleep walking to disaster.

Some writers suggest that a consequence of the promises that have been made by governments is the infantilisation of swathes of the population who have been educated to believe that they have rights and entitlements unconnected to their own behaviour.  This is just the same as leaders in the banking industry expecting multi-million pound bonuses irrespective of the catastrophic state of some of the banks they are leading. They refer to their contracts, much as and members of the wider public refer to contracts they believe they have with the state, for example, that it will provide them with certain benefits such as free healthcare.

It is unfair to expect the authors of Misleadership to cover every issue affecting the consequences of population growth and globalisation, and they make a creditable stab at this huge task.  On page 153 the authors say that, while some of their proposals have been articulated before, ‘the specifics provided and combination of elements that work with and support each other is what makes our proposals new, exciting and significant steps forward’.  Certainly they propose an integrated, cohesive approach.  However, how exciting it is, and how much traction it will therefore get, are things readers will need to judge for themselves.

 About the Author

Paul Roscorla FCA MSc C.Psychol, is a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Occupational Psychologist who switched careers in 1988 and has worked in management and leadership assessment and development ever since. He has a Masters degree with distinction in Psychological Assessment in Organisations from Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. Having been a management development manager with Abbey Life for 4 years, he worked with private sector clients as a partner in a consultancy before moving to a position with the UK Government Home Office as Deputy Head of the Assessment and Consultancy unit. In this role he assessed candidates for senior civil service posts and designed and delivered leadership assessment and development processes at national level for UK organisations such as the Police and Prisons services. Since November 2006 he has worked as an independent consultant providing leadership assessment and development services to private and public sector organisations.

Mark Walsh

Introduction

A discussion of leadership must include the body to be integral – we are embodied creatures and this is a core part of our being. Traditional theories of leadership have, however, ignored embodiment, coming from what is a hyper-rational cognitively biased world-view this is not, perhaps, surprising. Encouragingly though, the topic of embodiment has been finding its way back into both organisations and leadership colleges in the UK, as well as becoming the subject of academic research in areas such as “embodied cognition”. On a personal note, I’ve been running a business working with embodied and integral perspectives on leadership, stress management, and communication training for the last four years, and working with embodiment in areas of conflict to promote peace and resilience. This paper is a practical introduction to the relationship between the body and leadership, how this relates to AQAL, and includes case studies from two organisations.

Some Basics of How Leadership is Embodied

Rather than wade into the swamps of theory that are notorious in the world of integral discourse, I would like to offer a brief overview of the body in relation to leadership and point people to resources. It’s worth saying upfront that when I talk about leadership, I mean this in the widest possible sense of leading one’s life and making choices, not just in a grand “heroic” model or just within a corporate context.

An embodied line of development?

When discussing the body and leadership, I am primarily interested in embodiment or somatics – the subjective experience of the body, not the body just as an “it” but as experienced through and as an aspect of “I”, and as an element of “we”. States and embodiment will be mentioned shortly and I also note that levels of development and types are embodied. Embodiment is relevant to all aspects of an integral model of leadership: whatever we do, we do it with a body!

We can understand embodiment in terms of a line of intelligence akin to emotional or spiritual intelligence, and it should not just be limited to athletic intelligence. Howard Gardner refers to “bodily-kinesthetic intelligence” as one of eight intelligences. The simple framework below, is adapted from Daniel Goleman of EI (Emotional Intelligence) fame, and shows the range of areas within an embodied or somatic intelligence and is fleshed out in the second 2×2 diagram (neither model to be confused with Wilber’s classic quadrants). An example from each area is then given along with a mention of “shadow” to complete our whirlwind embodied AQAL leadership tour.

Figure: Embodiment

Awareness and Disposition

I view self-awareness as the basis of effective leadership and working through the body is an excellent way to build such self-awareness. A simple way of doing this is to lead a group though a range of embodied distinctions (say four archetypes) and give participants the opportunity to feel those that are familiar and those that are not. One particularly important question is: what is the physical disposition that a leader possesses? Embodied dispositions are usually “invisible” to people as we habituate to our bodies, but they determine how we think, what actions we take, and what relationships we can build. Not small things! The ability to recognise these dispositions in other people is also useful for leaders as a means of reading “character”. I recently had fun guessing the personalities of strangers walking on Brighton’s seafront using these “somatic assessments” and providing such feedback forms; a sometimes intense but always useful part of many leadership courses.

There are various models of disposition such as this four elements model. This video says more on the subject.

Centering

People’s physical states can easily undermine what their level of development on any given line would otherwise enable them to do. This is an easily missed but important point, especially in the stress-filled, economic-meltdown modern workplace. In my experience, almost no one at work is operating regularly from his or her “best self”. Because of this, the ability to manage one’s state is a vital leadership skill and often more useful to people than trying to shift stages (in my experience this is only possible on long-term development courses if already emerging). Managing state though simple bodily interventions involving posture, attention, and breathing has been loosely labelled “centering”. I have been exploring centering techniques with some rigour and with a wide variety of groups. Learning to centre is a quick “win” that regularly gets assessed as the most useful skill on brief embodied courses.

There’s a video on centering here and Paul Linden’s e-books on the subject are well worth a look.

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

Much of emotional intelligence, another essential leadership skill, is also based on body awareness, as this is where emotions are experienced and displayed. Empathy, too, is more of a felt resonance than a cognitive understanding. I have come to regard empathy as perhaps a leader’s single most important attribute.

Dan Siegel’s TED talks and the book A General Theory of Love speak eloquently about empathy, limbic alignment, and attachment.

Impact and Influence

If a leader wants to have an impact on people, what they say is not the only thing to consider. When it comes to what Goleman calls “resonant leadership”, the body matters. Leadership is an influencing and trust building activity and this requires what is sometimes called “presence” or “charisma”. In the past, this concept was not well understood and considered an almost magic quality. Models of leadership embodiment are dispelling this myth. While charismatic leadership has been shown to have its dangers, it also has its uses; it is certainly useful for a leader to be able to communicate effectively with their whole being.

Models such as Dr. Richard Strozzi Heckler’s length, width, and depth model map “presence” and take it from magic to operational “hows”.

Shadow Work and Values

Leadership effectiveness can be undermined by the aspects of a leader’s personality that he or she represses, denies, and hides. The body is the repository for the unconscious and there are various embodied techniques to access and work with this material. Other shadow technologies can also be used; however, in my experience, working with the body gets to the heart of things quickly, which organisations value, and changes tend to “stick”. This is true of all embodied work due to its highly experiential personal nature. Teaching one to fish is one thing, helping them transform into a dolphin is quite another! Similarly, working with values and what people and teams really care about, as felt through the body, is meaningful at a level of depth that an inauthentic mission statement displayed in a frame on the office wall cannot match.

Those interested in embodied shadow work may be interested in Focusing or some of the body orientated psychotherapy schools such as Chiron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiron).

Leadership Training Case Studies

Here are two personal accounts of working with two different clients. Other clients that I have had the pleasure of doing embodied work with include: small local charities and international NGOs, global banks and financial services companies, airlines, PR firms, property agents, partygoers at Buddhist festivals, and the military of Sierra Leone.

1. Telecoms Bright-Stars

I’m in my second year of leading a management development program for the “best and brightest” future leaders of a multi-national telecoms company. The participants are in their early twenties and on a fast-track management development program. They are keen, cognitively very able (a pass on an IQ test, fluency in several languages, and significant academic achievement is required to join the program), and highly motivated, displaying some classic “Orange meme” values and an “achievist” mindset (to use two developmental models). The reason I’m given this group to work with is that the organisation’s HR leadership (which has what could be called “emergent Green” tendencies in the Spiral Dynamics model) has found that selecting high potential managers on the basis of the cognitive line of development alone does not ensure workplace success. This is a classic opening for integral and embodied work in organisations and I explicitly use the integral model with this group. I work with emotional and embodied intelligence over a six-month period (eight to nine days of contact and teleconferences, readings, and practices as homework), working on a transformational level. Participants report the course as “useful, challenging, different, and intense.” In most cases, participants receive feedback from peers and managers that they change significantly over the duration of the course.

As in many of the business environments in which I teach, participants are often at first estranged from their bodies and view them simply as “brain-taxis”, to use a colleague’s phrase. Fear around emotions and the body is also common due to negative or limited associations – e.g. emotions as weak, body as only sexual. When working with the body in this and other business leadership contexts, it is essential to achieve the buy-in of participants and to use language appropriate to their type and level if one is to allay concerns. In all but the most staunch traditionalist businesses, I have found people are happy to engage in experiential embodied exercises as long as they can see that it connects to what they care about – career achievement in this example. The beauty of experiential embodied learning is that no belief is required and participants can “prove it” for themselves, which tends to fit the values found in their business. In terms of the language I use, I start with things people already know – e.g. “yes, like body language, but deeper and longer-term; it’s about who you are – body being, if you will” – and use analogies people can relate to – “think of the body as your operating system”.

I find my work with the telecoms bright stars a real pleasure and have a sense of contributing to both the long-term success of the company and the development of values within it. On a wider note, given the growing power of global companies, and the embodied-emotional dissociation usually found within them – often leading to the kind of concerns currently being demonstrated against by the Occupy movement – I believe embodiment and values-led work within corporations is essential. If companies don’t pay attention to feelings and emotions, they not only damage their productivity by burning out staff, but also damage us all.

2. University Challenge

I have also worked extensively with the academics and support staff of a left-leaning University for the past three years, delivering many half-day open trainings, facilitating events, and providing longer-term management development courses. In terms of value-sets, work culture, and organisational procedures, they are quite different from many of my business clients. In such organisations, embodied training is sometimes very easily received because of the postmodern/pluralist values that are present. At other times, these business clients resisted more strongly due to the academic emphasis on theories and cognition. This client highlights a key difference between embodied learning and the majority of education as it is generally carried out – the importance of practice. I stress recurrent practice to develop and embed a way of being a leader rather than one-shot “learning about” cognitive acquisition. This is at the heart of embodied approaches to leadership.

What has been successful with the university is the use of embodied techniques to explore values-led approaches and first-person knowing. With the higher level of development, in terms of values present within this organisation, the acceptance of the concept and practices associated with embodiment come more easily in many cases than in some business contexts. Perhaps ironically, however, my experience of holding developmental conversations has been more challenging than in other environments. Within this highly complex, culturally diverse, and rapidly changing organisation, the importance of embodied practices for developing sensitivity and resilience has also been shown. I use a different vocabulary to explain the concepts and practices I teach in business, and discuss spiritually as well as meaning and purpose.

Conclusions

So what are some conclusions I’ve drawn from exploring both the literature and practice of embodiment and leadership? Here are a few bullet-points:

• The body matters
• Leadership is greatly enhanced by embodiment
• Embodied approaches to leadership development go deep quickly and stick
• Core leadership skills such as self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and intuition are embodied, and cannot be addressed purely cognitively
• It is both possible and desirable to work in an embodied manner with mainstream organisational leaders
• Practice counts

About the Author

Mark Walsh leads integral business training providers Integration Training – based in Brighton, London, and Birmingham UK. Specialising in working with emotions, the body, and spirituality at work, they help organisations get more done without going insane (time and stress management), coordinate action more effectively (team building and communication training), and help leaders embody impact, influence and presence (leadership training). In his spare time Mark dances, meditates, practices MMA, and plays with his niece. His life ambition is to make it normal to be a human being at work.

Practicing the Potentiating Art of Deep Understanding

Mark McCaslin and Renee Snow

Mark McCaslin

Renee Snow

Opening Interlude

It is difficult to fully speak about the gifts of human potential lying dormant in the eco – the sacred habitat where individually held potentials and energetic resources fuse. Etymologically, eco means house and is the root of both ecology and economics science. Ecology originally meant interrelationships among household members and their environment while economics represented energy flows or work effort among household members. For purposes of this paper, eco is the vessel, be it a home, a school, or organization, where creative and spiritual potential is empowered into reality. The challenge to the eco as a whole has always been one of actualizing unrealized potential. Conversations concerning this unexpressed human potential within the eco always seem to end at a vanishing point – that place where our perception and faith meet. Here is the crux of the problem:

It was the opening day of school and my new class was sitting anxiously waiting upon my arrival. I smiled as I walked in and quickly greeted the class. My first task was to call roll. “Susan B. Anthony, Alex Bell, Rachel Carson, Dorothy Day, Amelia Earhart, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Barbara Jordon, Georgia O’Keeffe, John Kennedy, Martin King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Margaret Mead, Pablo Picasso, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Steinbeck …

The potentiator, a leader who practices the Potentiating Arts™, holds the elegant assumption that every class we face, every child we parent, and every associate we work with or lead represents just such a collection of potentials. Again, it simply does not matter what form the eco takes – the home, school, university, or business – the gifts of potential are believed to be present. What the potentiator deeply understands is that while the above historical figures have clearly impacted the world, none of their future influence was known to the world prior to the actualization of their potential. Previous to its actualization, their potential existed only as a myth lingering just out of sight, beyond our perception, on the other side of the vanishing point. Nestled there, just outside the range of our perception, are the hopes and dreams of the individual. To the potentiator such seeds of potential were and are only a question of faith.

Holding this faith is the challenge we face as potentiators. No matter the nature of the eco or where we stand within it, sitting in front of us is always a collection of human potentials, including our own. As potentiators, if we do not come to believe this, to hold the faith, then we will always retard growth of potential, if only in a small way. As a gardener might say, “We will not know how beautiful the rose will become until it blooms”. The gardener nourishes the seed, cultivates its possibility, and anticipates the bloom. Potentiators anticipate beauty; they anticipate potential.

The Will to Believe

Potentiators are not blinded by the vanishing point. They are actually enlivened by the notion that when little or nothing is certain concerning the potential held by their associates, students, and children, all things remain possible. They hold the will to believe in the possible person. With this act of faith they become agents holding a eudaimonistic intention, believers in the good seed of possibility, constantly seeking ways they might catalyze potentials awaiting their full expression. If there is something magic concerning this revelation, it is held by an engaging and pragmatic faith. This act of faith ultimately taps into the relational (ecologic) and sustaining (economic) energies of the essential goodness perennially at play in the eco. It is there waiting for anyone holding the will to believe.

A Socratic dialogue concerning the nature of this vanishing point illustrates the necessity of faith. Meno begins the conversation:

But how will you look for something when you don’t in the least know what it is? How on earth are you going to set up something you don’t know as the object of your search? To put it another way, even if you come right up against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing you didn’t know? (Plato, 80d)

These questions are not unfamiliar to us. If we cannot perceive a thing, is it real? What does something invisible look like? Following that, what of hope and faith? Furthermore, how do we recognize these qualities? Empirically, faith would appear an illogical fantasy. Certainly the concepts of hope and faith are real enough, but the elements of that hope and faith are nebulous and hazy. Meno’s lament belongs to us all. If we are able to perceive something we can move toward it, hold it – we can actualize it. This infers movement towards something. It represents a trajectory and a vector. Yet if faith were non-existent there would be no need for movement, for the phenomenal world would be the only world that exists. Socrates responds:

I know what you mean. Do you realize that what you are bringing up is the trick argument that a man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know? He would neither not seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for. (Plato, 80e)

Surely we know what we know; however, hidden in this dialog is the grand question: how did we learn what we know? Furthermore, why do we leverage our knowing in such a way as to push into unchartered territory? What drives our curiosity and creativity? Each of us recognizes that at the heart of this argument is non-sense; it is non-perception or a belief in the noumenal. To the actualizing soul hope and faith appear to be omnipresent and omniscient in terms of what is possible and may be becoming possible. We know by simply looking back that we learn, grow, and develop. This we can easily perceive and measure in a retrospective fashion. Yet the source of what we can perceive today was as of yesterday merely held by faith and hope.

As to our dialog, Socrates sums it up quite well. After Meno asks if this perception is the only approach was a good argument, Socrates simply says, “No.” We believe the message is deeper still. We believe what he was really saying was “yes” to all things possible. Yes to learning, yes to curiosity, yes to human potential and yes to the possible person. Socrates was saying first and foremost that the will to believe is the first act of seeing and an act of potentiating. Socrates asks us to see the grandeur of the bloom while it remains hidden in the bud.

Like the process of blooming, the full actualization of human potential is an action. Potentiators do not look on a life of potential from the snapshots gained by passively looking backwards. They understand the drama and trauma they would engender by creating judgments or truths concerning the nature of potential from past perspectives. They know how easy it is to convert these truths into personal prejudices that would depress future actualizations. Potentiators do not look upon us reactively. They are always positively potentiating by looking for how we are moving and if we are not moving how we might move, or, why we have stopped moving. They look for the vectors and velocities of potential. As a consequence of their faith they are able to see beyond the vanishing point into the hopes and dreams of those they potentiate. They know they will uncover potentials currently lying dormant in the eco, this field of potential, because this has been their history; and given their will to believe in such possibilities this will be their future.

Eco Leadership

Leadership is an ever evolving phenomenon as it is directly related to the current condition and needs of the eco. Historically, there have been three great ages of leadership. Namely, there was the great man age, the behavioral age, and the transformative age. The commonality they hold is that they all evolved as a direct result of societal needs. Collectively, they represent a reactive approach to leadership ever lagging in its approaches and procedures. The next great age of leadership, what we are calling eco Leadership, will be  proactive and present. It will require a set of ongoing practices for the leaders, the potentiators, in order to actualize their own potential and the potentials of those whom they lead. It is not a leadership of the reactive push. It is a leadership of the proactive pull. Eco leadership will be such that it will in all actuality lead.

Figure 1: The Potentiating Arts

The potentiating practices that inform eco leadership present the best conditions under the best of intentions for the fullest expression of human potential. To this requirement we offer five basic practices that form the centerpiece of the Potentiating Arts™ (McCaslin & Snow). The five practices, as shown in Figure 1, build on one another and begin with the practice of deep understanding followed by critical reflection, maturity, integrity, and unity. Through these practices the potentiator creates a space within the eco, the community of potential, for intentional living, leading, and learning. Here, flows between economy and ecology naturally balance. Given the idealistic goals of eco leadership it is necessary to explore each of the five basic practices in depth to provide structure for this ambitious undertaking. The purpose of this article is to explore the primary and grounding practice of deep understanding.

Too often the potentials seeking their fullest expression are kept waiting due to a simple lack of understanding. This lack of understanding is often threefold: first we do not understand the depths of our own potential; second we do not understand the depths of the potentials held by others; and, finally, even when we do see such gifts in others and ourselves we remain uncertain about how we might approach these awaiting potentials. Consequently, we leave all hope, the very way of seeking and actualizing the greatest potentials of those placed in our stewardship, to fate. What separates  potentiators from their lesser counterpart is their unwillingness to leave the cultivation of potential to chance. They engage and actively seek potential by opening their awareness through the lens of creativity and learning.

As we unveil the practice of deep understanding we will necessarily address the whole notion of truth. We are going to make a distinction between a manufactured truth and a transforming truth. The practice of deep understanding, as it is with all the practices held by the Potentiating Arts™, follows the flow of forming, communing, purposing, and transforming as the path towards revealing and actualizing potentials currently dormant in the eco. Borrowing Wilber’s Integral AQAL approach, it is a flow that first engages the qualitative individuality of potential, the “I”, by way of inviting it to commune within the “we” before seeking a common purpose within the ”its” creating a transforming and dynamic truth within the “It” (Wilber). This flow is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: The Potentiating Flow

 The practice of deep understanding necessarily addresses the whole notion of human potential. The practice begins with the self and demonstrates how deep understanding ultimately recognizes the personal worth of another. A sacred space for dialogues and potentiating relationships is generated through this communion. Such presence and openness creates an opportunity for putting wisdom to work in the world. This action has a synergistic effect on the eco as possibilities, relationships, processes, and products become an active potentiating dynamic. While the practice of deep understanding creates an integrative flow among beauty, goodness, works (the practical output of goodness), and truth, it is a practice that is largely centered in the first quadrant of forming called the valuing lens in Figure 2. It is a practice that is focused upon gaining a sense of openness to the potentials being presented. In this regard the potentiator positions himself not only as a leader/teacher but as a learner in the eco. As a learner the potentiator naturally embraces a conscious movement away from prejudgment towards a truer understanding of the gifts of potential held by another and by the self. This stance is deeply rooted in empathy.

The practice of deep understanding is not a directive or controlling position but a purposeful probe into the meaning of the experience shared with another leading to deeper considerations of potential. It is about forming the relational elements needed to move freely and purposefully into the “we” quadrant of communing. It supports the full actualization of human potential without a need for defining or confining and without the need for violence. It is foundational for empowering creativity, curiosity, and wonder. The practice of deep understanding cultivates harmony and stability through building potentiating relationships. Again, deep understanding as a potentiating practice is largely centered in the forming quadrant (Figure 3) and therefore begins the potentiating flow in the eco by building relationships.

Ideally, the eco model (see Figure 3) harmoniously balances the energies of the ecology and the economy or relationships and management. Unfortunately, the current Western representation is out of balance and heavily weighted on the economics side. Those who attempt to balance the eco by adding weight to the ecology side often do so by first trying to manage the energies of relationships or forcing the ecology into economy. The practice of deep understanding corrects this imbalance by entering the eco through quadrant 1, or “I,” of the model where subjective self-awareness is the primary focus. It is the beginning point of the potentiating flow that provides the foundation on which the practices of critical reflection, maturity, integrity and eco unity build.

Philosophical Framework of Deep Understanding

The notion of entering the eco model in quadrant 1 is a concept best explained by philosopher Martin Buber. Buber differentiated relationships into two types; I-You (Thou) and I-It. I-You encounters occur when beings exchange holistic reverence for one another. In contrast, I-It meetings entail partial assessments between beings. Through the practice of deep understanding the potential leader readies him/herself to engage an I-Thou relationship by developing an attitude of openness to self that imparts unconditional acceptance to all potentiating relationships. Existing leadership paradigms usually attempt to maximize a particular quality, either in the leader or follower, for the benefit of the organization. Even the gentle Servant Leadership model asks the leader to forgo his or her welfare, if required, in favor of those being led (Greenleaf). Buber believed this objectification of another or the self, while necessary to live in the world, should never exist on its own.

You must become an It in our world. However exclusively present it may have been in the direct relationship, as soon as the relationship has run its course or is permeated by means, the You becomes an object among objects, possibly the noblest one and yet one of them, assigned its measure and boundary. (Buber, p. 68)

Figure 3: The Energy Balances of eco Leadership

The I-You establishes the world of relation that forms the eco cradle of actual life. From this cradle of unconditional regard beings confront a form of eternal art that begs for expression. Buber’s philosophical framework informs eco leadership. His framework establishes a proactive paradigm that honors all beings and elicits their potential before quantifying their energy flows. Energy flows represent needs, products, and efficiencies of work effort. This rising form of leadership harvests and renews potential instead of employing the destructive techniques of the heavy propositions such as manipulation, intimidation, coercion, and deception found to be common in reactive forms of leadership. Therefore, it attempts to span the subjective/objective (I/It) through an ontological centering (the reality of the I-You centering) in the intersubjective “we.” Again, this “we” space forms the container for creative expression where “Nothing else is present but this one, but this one cosmically. Measure and comparison have fled. It is up to you how much of the immeasurable becomes reality for you.” (Buber, p.83)

In forming the practice of deep understanding we begin with the valuing question, “Am I ready to learn?” This is more than a simple question; rather it is about achieving an attitude of openness that allows the potentiator to approach and penetrate the vanishing point. To see not only what is but to gaze into what could become from others as well as from us. It is this attitude of openness that forms and establishes deep understanding as a potentiating practice. As a potentiating leader we must allow our students and associates to educate us about the nature of their potential seeking its full expression. Through this education we uncover aspects of our own potential that lead us collectively towards a synergistic expression within the sacred habitat of the eco. As Buber knew, “we live in the currents of universal reciprocity” (Buber, p. 67).

Buber’s universal reciprocity shares the affiliation we hold for a eudaimonistic philosophy of potentiation that instructs humankind to commit its entire being to soul inspired deeds. Although this entails sacrifice and risk where “experiences of encounter were scarcely a matter of tame delight; but even violence against a being one really confronts is better than ghostly solicitude for faceless digits!” (Buber, p. 75). Buber’s belief evidences that it is better to live fully and bravely than to rest in what we call “desperate neutrality.”           

Desperate Neutrality

We believe there remains little doubt within any of us who choose the Potentiating Arts™ as a way of living that if we were able to actualize our fullest potential and the potential of those we love, lead, and teach that there would be little need for self-created suffering in this world, even when suffering would seem warranted. We recognize the boldness of such a statement for it places the onus of potentiation squarely upon our shoulders and simultaneously declares the majority of suffering as avoidable. Perhaps you are now asking, what is the foundation of a statement so bold? Lacking surprise, you may have moved straight to the point – how do we begin building a world without unnecessary suffering?

On the boldness of this declaration we would reply that a daimon fully actualizing its potential would suffer little, for life itself would be viewed from a deep and powerful center of purpose. The very best analogy we can evoke is that of play. A daimon fully actualizing its potential is at play. As you hold that thought, take note of the emotions induced: joy, happiness, delight, and bliss. Suffering begins at the moment of play ends when the daimon is denied its purpose—its possibility.

None of us really wish this. None of us like this and we never have. As we contemplate our agreement, we begin to wonder how this happens to us and to those we potentiate. Knowing the possibilities held by goodness it seems unlikely that we would ever fall from this grace, yet it happens. We must hold within our awareness the ability to recognize a slip, a loss of balance, a fall, and to catch ourselves with the awareness that forgiveness and compassion are ever reachable. When we lose our balance, it appears we have fallen into some horrific fiction of a life. Life becomes a predictable nightmare predicated upon the Darwinian notion of the survival of the fittest or the survival of the most dangerous. This fiction knocks us off from belief in possibility, even if for a moment, and in that moment we, the potentiator, become just as dangerous. Perhaps it is a snide comment to a student; maybe we engage in office gossip about another’s pain; or maybe we make a joke of someone’s suffering the butt of which is too often the weakest in the room; or maybe we yell, or attempt to arouse guilt within our children. We engage fault, shame, and humiliation all aimed at the weak, the frail, the feeble, and the pathetic.

Two vectors (see Figure 4) become immediately present in the act of potentiating that is generated through deep understanding. If we are being powerfully and positively potentiated, our vector is arcing upward and we are seen as actualizing our potential. On the other hand, if we are being negatively potentiated, our vector is arcing downward towards a personal corruption, or worse; we may begin actualizing the dark art of evil. We understand these vectors and project them upon one another. There is a third vector in which we find ourselves without momentum. In this vector, human potential has fallen quiet, static, and still. We have become stuck. As we observe the nature of human potential it is in this middle vector of desperate neutrality where we find most people existing. Desperate neutrality contains a cold paradox in that we seem to go around and around a big “something” without ever arriving anywhere or addressing anything. Desperate neutrality is that place where nothing is really wrong and nothing is really possible. There is an absence of potentiating flow.

There is an odd innocence to be found in desperate neutrality in that, as we slumber in the doldrums, we do so politely; we suffer quietly. It is not that we do not believe in our own potential – we do. But, as David Norton reveals, “this small conviction is wholly unequipped to withstand the drubbing it takes from the world, and from which it all too often never recovers” (Norton,  p. x). Being desperately neutral we may still dream of our own irreplaceable worth, yet may have lost our momentum. We may have lost our way and the vision we once held of our potential.

Figure 4: The Vectors of Human Potential

Failing to break the cycle we adapt ourselves to an unsustainable ecosystem and adopt survival strategies of predetermination and of prejudgment in the form of a bias based not in hope but in hurt. Instead of possibility, capacity, and potential we begin standing in judgment of possibility in another. We move away from the spiritual grace of empathy on which the practice of deep understanding is built. We begin a funneling process of sorting the haves from the have nots where standards, regulations, and rules replace compassion. Instead of potentiators we become gatekeepers allowing only those genetically correct few to pass without harm while others are barred entrance by pressures they don’t understand and count as unfair. Some give up, some get mad, and some become sick. Some fight back while others never really knew they were sorted out as not possible and live lives of desperate neutrality or worse – they become automatons of a systemic whim.

As a point of fact, most of us hold a greater possibility for ourselves than we would admit to another. We surround that hope with the internal flame of our potential. When we see others who are engaging their flame of potential brightly, we are often shaken by the reality of possibility. Yet slumber is difficult to resist. Our “if onlys” seemed to be slowly replaced by a “why bother.” In some ways we even conspire with each other’s desperately neutral occupations, because misery loves company. Work lives are too often dull, suffocating, and uninspiring. Family lives feature struggle, children who are acting out, or overweight, or depressed, or even suicidal. Marriages lack passion, hope, or any hint of a future beyond a partnership of pain, financial stress, and over indulgence in food, drugs, and/or alcohol. Our health suffers, our family suffers, our work suffers, and we suffer. We forget ourselves and our possibilities and we go to sleep. If it were not for that tiniest flame still flickering within, we would surely die. The real issue for the potentiator is that you never know when you will find yourself face-to-face with an anesthetized soul.

Potentiators hold a resolution for desperate neutrality. It is not that they are somehow immune to the pitfalls of desperate neutrality, for they will experience it in life just like everyone else. They will experience the loss of a parent or loved one, the difficulties and challenges of raising healthy and whole children, or the conflicts of the workplace. They experience all these very same moments, but they experience them differently. They have learned how to live and therefore how to grieve deeply and with compassion for others as well as for themselves. They connect to their children with purpose and fortitude, and they approach all conflict with opportunity and strength of character. They forgive the transgressions made by others and of those made by their own hand, and by doing so eliminate nearly all need to suffer through life; instead they live life. They have learned to love who they are, even in their most clumsy and difficult moments. All this begins with achieving the openness found through the practice of deep understanding. The question for each of us is, “Am I ready to learn?”

Becoming Wonder-full

If our perception, our ability to recognize real promise, is colored brilliantly by faith and hope – call it super-optimism or creative over-estimation or an elegant prejudice – then what emerges out of that vanishing point is a cornucopia of possibilities and potential. The eco radiates. Everything and every individual is elevated because everything and every individual has been made possible. “Wisdom begins with wonder” (Plato, 155d). Perhaps this declaration is the most intimate reflection of Socrates’ character and was his philosophy. Perhaps he understood that when nothing was certain all things remained possible. He kept his eye on the possible as he was full of wonder. To be full of wonder, to be wonder-full, is what it means to be a potentiator. When we are wonder-full nothing possible escapes our perception. When we are wonder-full we see as the gardener sees; we see bounty in a seed. When we are wonder-full human potential and therefore the Potentiating Arts™ become our purpose.

Yet, if we stand in that very same place with doubt, disillusionment, disparagement, and disinterest, then this very same vanishing point turns inward like a black hole consuming all, as nothing escapes its darkness. The problem and the opportunity are choices. We must understand right from the beginning, as potentiators, that we are not acting out of some benevolent, holier-than-thou, self-sacrificing attitude that wallows in a self-consumption martyred in the name of the potential of the “unnamed other.” All this will yield is a codependent “I’m doing this for your own good” attitude when there is nothing good about this strategy. When we potentiate we have hope and faith concerning the nature of human potential. We hold the will to believe in our own potential as well as the potentials of others. As we welcome these potentials, including our own, we are adapting ourselves and our potentials to the world. The eco, the house of human potential, responds to the accommodating and adaptive potentiator by evolving towards a synergistic society.

How do we perfect the world? We perfect the world by perfecting ourselves. How do we make the good person? We make the good person by way of the good society. How do we make the good society? The good society is made from the faith and hope of the perfecting soul. Potentiating is an action and an art. It is the will to believe in the possible person. The Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-arising, as an example of this phenomenon, affirms that the quality of a society is the result of the virtue of all its members. As individuals influence others, they reap the rewards of living in the society that manifests from all these influences. Thus, a seeker who rises in consciousness advances the consciousness of the community and moves it towards a synergistic society (Sizemore & Swearer). Applying this reasoning to the nature of eco Leadership, we see that by potentiating ourselves we assist others toward the actualization of their own innate potentials. Guiding this process is our transcendent life purpose.

Some would call such a notion naïve. To that we would agree, but only after declaring it, as did Maslow, a Second Naïveté. It is a grounded naïveté that is not at all innocent but purposeful. It is a naïveté that is infused with deep understanding. The gift we hold within is for the others we meet without. We each hold the capacity for embodying this force of potentiating, because each of us holds a special gift for the world. All it requires for its actualization is faith and hope. All it requires is the will to believe in the possible person and the courage to learn. We can all ask ourselves if we are ready to learn.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. (Thoreau, p. 4)

Significance to Leadership Studies

“Wisdom begins with wonder” (Plato, 155d). Wonder imparts an open curiosity with respect to the world around us. It is because of wonder that we have survived as a species, learned to evolve, and are still evolving today. Yet, within the simplicity of this statement there springs to life a complexity of human action and inaction; of hope and desperation; of peace and war; of religious fervor and spiritual enlightenment; of the connection with beauty found of a nature that is deep and personal. To the extent the community fails to recognize any value of these individualistic proclamations is to the extent the community fails to build a reality of potential. Oddly, all conflict comes home to this simple phrase, “wisdom begins with wonder”.

With conflict arrives our collective need to be right, that is, to make known like fact, like law, that which may indeed be unknown or uncertain. For it is the unknown we fear most of all. This outcome occurs when we take a shortcut through the eco model (see figure 3) and move directly from “I” to “it,” bypassing the “we” quadrant. In this state, our fear powers this masquerade of knowing and maintains this knowing faҫade of fact. What is most troubling in this is the outflow of these fictions; our prejudices become a necessity in order to support shallow and faulty reasoning and to prevent the “other” view from even being heard. For what we find in the shallows is that the need to be right is oftentimes of greater need to us than it is to breathe. Our very survival is jeopardized for the righteousness of what we hold true. What we value and now hold as truth was once simply what we found to be beautiful. Upon declaring this value “most beautiful” we set up the need to defend that declaration. How ironic that now, in the defense of beauty, we find no sharing, no relating, no understanding – no “other” view. This is what happens commonly when the ecology is forced into the economy.

Our individually held truths are but a reflection of what we find beautiful. There is nothing immediately foul concerning this reflection. Beauty is beauty; however, it is the way in which we too often greet beauty that becomes troubling. It starts innocently enough; it begins as it always has with an act of creative expression. Whether such an expression was a sculpture, a water color, a poem, the playing of music, the singing of song, the telling of a story or charcoal scratched upon the cave walls of our ancient homes – beauty is an expression of creativity. In addition to these the emotion of finding something beautiful is within itself an act of creative expression.

There is truly some goodness to be found at this point in the I-Thou. That goodness is found as we move towards qualitatively interpreting the meaning and significance of the very experience of creating, experiencing a creation, or how such experiences inform our species’ most central nature – creativity as a way of being. If we bent our purpose to understanding, appreciating, valuing, and experiencing our true nature, there would be only goodness built from the very nature of this sharing. We would come directly to this reality so wonderfully and multiply varied. We would come to expect it, search for it, imagine it – we would come to play with each other in this wild and magical place of our creations on the field of possibilities.

If, on the other hand, we immediately engage in the I-it the magic slips away. Truth is a problem. For if instead of goodness we turn to truth, then we approach one another from an entirely different perspective. We begin to ask about the truth of the creation. We say, artlessly, “I like this one better;” and in that moment we have ceased valuing and began evaluating. We begin quantifying creativity. In this way we begin to coalesce around the similarly held truths of others, which then collect into belief systems that will, unintentionally, in the end cast a value shadow on the whole of the ecology. Sadly, this is also the learned source of the phase, “I am not very creative,” and in direct terms of leadership, “I am not a leader.” Born from the fact that what we are, who we are, what we would grow to become is now hidden by what our daimon fears most of all—to be prejudged and found wanting by a truth too shallow to find the real nature of its tender beauty.

Practicing Deep Understanding

The practice of deep understanding, as with all practices, begins with the self. Having felt the pain of separation the small self seeks a connection to something greater, something eternal. Through this quest, the ego surrenders to providence and becomes a servant to the daimon. Recognizing and transcending our own struggle allows us to appreciate and value the same in others. We then become open and others have become possible.

Again, deep understanding begins in quadrant 1, the forming quadrant, and asks the question, “Am I ready to learn?” This question sets the stage for an I-thou encounter. This attitude allows the potentiator to embrace a conscious and open movement away from prejudgment towards a more true understanding of the gifts of potential held by another and oneself. It is an attitude that is deeply rooted in empathy by way of recognizing the beauty and value of another being. As such, it is not a directive or controlling stance but a purposeful probe into the meaning of the experience shared with another. In forming the relationship of potentials, deep understanding supports the full actualization of human potential without a need for defining or confining – without the need for violence. This attitude is foundational for empowering creativity, curiosity, and wonder in and about all beings.

The signs of our own potential are everywhere – we all know this is real. In the quiet of the day our possible self still speaks to us. Too often the voice of our potential sounds so farfetched. Waking from a daydream, the voice of our potential sounds like a distraction made of things we could do had we the luxury of endless time and money. Yet, every day in some way our potential presents itself and every day we come face to face with the evidence that is our own potential awaiting its full actualization. How shall we greet our potential today? How shall we come to greet the potential of others? How can we begin today to brighten our hopes and dreams of our possible selves? How shall we greet beauty? A single answer here is not possible; but a simple one might suffice for now. We simply submit that there is something unique and wonderful about every person when we simply look for it and believe in it. This would include everyone – no exceptions. There is a gift for the world held within every person making every person a possible being. There is something deeply sacred concerning human potential and the sacred is always simple.

Deep Understanding: A Learning Journey

At the root, deep understanding is a practice to engage, rather than an ideal read into reality. Like all spiritual practices, deep understanding must be learned experientially. In this article, we have attempted to impart the beauty of the practice, but its full effect will not be known until it is embraced through action. The action is a choice to accept a holistic paradigm for ourselves and those we encounter. The practice of deep understanding holds at its core a creative intention. This creative intention sets the practice in motion upon the field of learning. It establishes an attitude of openness along this upward way of a learning journey.

“If you think of the person, the creative person, as being the essence of the problem, then what you are confronted with is the whole problem of transformation of human nature, the transformation of the character, the full development of the whole person”. (Maslow, pp 70 -71) This “full development” in turn opens the opportunity to address the life philosophy of being open to learning about the nature of human potential, to embrace an innate stream of human goodness flowing through each of us differently. The dynamic nature of this learning journey includes all of the end values (as held sacred to society) as they interact with our own code of ethics (as held sacred by our own being) and the placement of our own value within society. The problem for this learning journey is in fact a consideration of a collective approach to creativity and individual autonomy. The learning journey concerns itself with how we arrive at the philosophical home of human potential grounded by relationship, autonomy, and  creativity that is always emerging from the goodness of a potentiating reality. The practice of deep understanding seeks to illuminate this potentiating reality.

“No issue is so relevant to our inner life and at the same time so elusive as beauty” (Ferrucci, p 187). As we experience the full measure of our own creativity and the creative endeavors of others, what crashes into our souls is the spontaneity and wonderfully unpredictable nature of creativity. It saturates our consciousness. The aesthetic experience, the creative experience, takes place in front of us – always just in front of us and with eyes open, senses connecting with feeling to the creative nature playing upon us. Learning is just such an event.

What we find most fascinating and also troubling is our current lack of understanding and ability to embrace the way of wonder held by the practice of deep understanding. We declare that creativity and its expression is the key to teaching and learning – to potentiating. By way of example consider children and adults at risk where the risk might be described as having their innate creativity discounted and devalued. In those groups we often find two populations, the depressed, weak, and fragile population that have, in fact, had their creative urges extinguished by some unforgiving creativity-killing monster, and the others who are full of fire, strength, and intensity holding an in-your-face attitude that screams, “you can’t have it and I will fight to my death to keep it.” The root source of their struggle is our struggle – they cannot live without creativity or creative outlets. We die by daily inches of a creativity taken or fight each day in an effort to keep it. The whole spiritual/emotional being is what is at stake. Perhaps what Natalie Rogers was referring to when she saw the therapeutic value of creative arts therapy was in fact a window to rescuing our very spiritual natures. In our learning journeys it holds true – what is creative is also spiritual. How will you value this? Let us help you the reader, and as a result help ourselves as well, for when all is said and done, “our true nature is our creativity (Fox, p. 28).” Deep understanding, being open to learning, is being available to the creative intentions of others and ourselves. Learning and creativity are spiritually bonded.

The Valuing Lens

The first quadrant approach to deep understanding, forming, holds a valuing lens. It is in essence a way of greeting the beauty of potentials held by ourselves and others. Without this intention of openness, this readiness to learn, we begin looking at the world and others from a very narrow aperture. The narrowness of this view too often leads us towards defining others and arresting our own development. We lay down judgments that convert to the quasi-truths of prejudices presenting approaches to life that objectify rather than building potentiating relationships. We begin to confuse security for creativity, order for freedom, classification for beauty, structure for imagination, conformity for elegance, and standards for potential.

If we only teach, parent, and lead from whom we are and how we now believe, then we have effectively done two things. First, we have constructed an artificially shallow perspective of the world and view our task from the narrow window of our entrenched experience, values, and beliefs. From that perspective all our approaches will force and deform the multiplied and varied excellences placed in our stewardship through that narrow window. Second, having closed off the “other” we will have closed ourselves off from learning – learning about the rich diversity of gifts of potential before us and learning about the full potentials of our own unique gifts.

Deep understanding concerns itself with deep penetrating awareness. While meditative practices in general would make the experience of deep understanding richer and more meaningful for the practitioner, the heart of the practice of deep understanding is at its core becoming creatively open to learning. Deep understanding blends an eagerness to learn with the joy of creativity. In that regard the potentiator is not only deeply valuing the potential held by another, as witnessed by that eagerness to learn, but also empowering action through encouraging creative expression.

Transitions: A Healing Awareness

Our orientation is wonder; our motivation is creativity; our purpose is to potentiate. Wonder promotes understanding and autonomy; creativity promotes healthy wholeness; deep understanding promotes the well-being.

It would appear that these Potentiating Arts™ concern themselves with the revelation of something hidden rather than a simple correspondence between thinking and seeing. What we are referring to, of course, is our ability to become more aware of our own presence and how we are impacting the environment coupled with willingness to engage another through understanding. In this light we need to address two critical questions:

• How will we value our experiences with human possibilities that lead to wisdom?
• How will we put these wisdoms once found to work in the world?

These questions are ultimately full of wonder in their making – they are reflective and seek a creative response. They have at their core a deep curiosity and a hope for discovering wisdom through a penetrating understanding. In this way perhaps wonder itself can serve as a healing awareness. Deep understanding is a practice. Deep understanding presents opportunities to become critically reflective on the nature of human potential, including our own potential. This much we know to be true: the nature of exploration and learning is no difficult journey. It is not carried well by compulsion nor inspired by fear, nor is it informed by pain. True wisdom, true creativity, true learning, and true teaching, are formed by an act of love. Potentiating is simply and completely an act of sharing—a sharing of the secrets, the sharing of wisdom, the joy of creativity, and the love of dreams great and small.

Searching for human potential within the family, school, community or organization is like searching for hope. What does that mean to those now serving as leaders – as potentiators? For us the search for human potential sets in motion the “why” and, following that, the “how” of the Potentiating Arts™. It introduces the highest purpose of leadership because at its very best leadership is a potentiating art. As leaders we are potentiators (the “why”) and we are learners (the “how”). The hope we hold for potential (ours and those we are in relationship with) firmly anchors deep understanding, the first practice of the potentiator, as a central approach to human potential and introduces the complementing practice of critical reflection as the second practice of the potentiator. The potentiating practice of critical reflection will be discussed in Part 3 of this series.

References

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Ferruci, P. (1982). What we may be: Techniques for psychological and spiritual growth through psychosynthesis. New York: Tarcher/Putman.

Fox, M. (2002). Creativity. New York: Tarcher/Putman.

Greenleaf, R. K. (1977). Servant leadership. New York: Paulist Press.

Maslow, A. H. (1971). The farther reaches of human nature. New York: Viking Press.

McCaslin, M. & Snow, R. (October, 2010). The human art of leading: A foreshadow to the potentiating movement of leadership studies. Integral Leadership Review, X (5).

Norton, D. L. (1976). Personal destinies: A philosophy of ethical individualism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Plato (1961). Meno (Guthrie, W. H. D., Trans.). New York: Random House.

Plato (1961). Theaetetus (Cornford, F. M., Trans.). New York: Random House.

Sizemore, J., & Swearer, D. (1990). Ethics, wealth, and salvation: A study in Buddhist social ethics. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

Thoreau, H. D, (1999). Walden. New York, NY. Signet Classic.

Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications.

 About the Authors