Integral Leadership Review

Richard A. Couto James MacGregor Burns, Jim to everyone who knew whom outside of the pages of his prodigious scholarship, passed away in his sleep on July 15th, three weeks short of his 96th birthday. He had been in declining health for several years but maintained his scholarly engagement publishing four new books in the […]

Russ Volckmann I met Warren Bennis on Muir Beach in Northern California. It was soon after he had a heart attack. He was trotting in the sand as part of his rehabilitation. Must have been about 1980. I was participating in Will Shutz’s first Human Element training with about 20 other people. We were on […]

Mark McCaslin Welcome to the final release of the Integral Leadership Review for 2014. In reviewing the year I am totally astounded by the depth and breadth of the contributions made in our quest to discuss and learn about and around this thing we call leadership. If you are a regular reader I would recommend […]

Welcome to the mid-release of the August – November 2014 Volume of the Integral Leadership Review. We would also wish to welcome Benyamin Lichtenstein, PhD, University of Massachusetts, as our Associate Editor for Complexity. Expect to learn more about Ben in upcoming releases. New in this release you will find: Fresh Perspective Nancy Southern and […]

For students of leadership and even more urgent question arises. Supposing we could find species wide commonalities among hierarchies of wants and needs, could we also find common stages and levels of moral development and reasoning emerging out of those wants and needs? If so, we could assume, and foundations for leadership. If we define […]

An unconscious conspiracy in contemporary society prevents leaders — no matter what their original vision — from taking charge within any organization, an entrenched bureaucracy with a commitment to the status quo undermines the unwary leader. To make matters worse, certain social forces — increasing tension between individual rights and the common good, for example — discourage […]

Bonnie Ellis More than 2000 years ago, Plutarch records that when Demosthenes, the most famous orator of ancient Greece, first addressed the people that he was afflicted by “weakness in his voice, a perplexed and indistinct utterance and a shortness of breath . . .so that in the end, being quite disheartened, he forsook the […]

Russ:  When I first heard about you, it was in relation to your work with Spiral Dynamics Integral and Don Beck. Then, you were doing some work in Houston, Texas. You were also working in Omaha, Nebraska. As I look at the work you’ve done – I don’t see anything in Latin America or Antarctica […]

  Russ:    Nancy Southern, I want to welcome you to Integral Leadership Review. Nancy:  Thank you. Good to be here. Russ:   This is not your first appearance. You were lead author of “Shifting from Knowledge Power to Generative Inquiry: Creating the Field for Transformative Learning in Healthcare and Business” with Jorge Taborga, and Mara Zabari […]

Russ Volckmann Bill Drath and Charles Palus wrote a paper in 1994 for the Center for Creative Leadership: “Making Common Sense: Leadership as Meaning-making in a Community of Practice.” Subsequently, Drath extended his thinking in his 2001 book, The Deep Blue Sea: Rethinking the Source of Leadership (Jossey-Bass). He participated in writing and publishing other […]

“Shut up,” he explained. Reflections on generative and not-so-generative communication in academia. Alfonso Montuori When I first came to the US to go to graduate school, I spent hours and hours in heated, coffee fueled discussions in the patio of the university cafeteria with just about anybody I could find and often continue late into […]

Lisa Norton  “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” Herbert A. Simon  Every human being is always-already a designer but the affordability of 3-D computer prototyping makes that fact more obvious. Over 5 million guns are manufactured each year in the US alone. What’s new is the intersection […]

Ginger Grant Summary Whether they admit it or not, our organizations are in trouble and face an uncertain future. The world in which they operate is changing rapidly and fundamentally yet the majority of our current organizational leaders continue to be command-control driven and to operate in much the same way as they have done […]

Cheryl Whitelaw Abstract: This article describes a project at the NorQuest College Center for Intercultural Education to develop an inclusion model for a post-secondary, two-year college. Inclusion = Diversity + Engagement is a model for action based on the integration of Integral theory, particularly the all quadrants component of the AQAL model by Ken Wilber […]

Tom Atlee Polarization is rooted in dichotomous thinking – binary, oppositional, polarized perspectives that have been with us for thousands of years.  The problems and insights presented by dichotomous thinking have been long recognized, along with transpolarizing perspectives that provide us with positive ways to appreciate dichotomy and deal with it and the false choices it […]

Don Edward Beck Dr. Don Beck In the Beginning…  Still fresh in my mind is a story from my youth, one often told by both teachers and clerics to dramatize the importance of people in whatever kind of world we were able to imagine. A youngster was given a puzzle that had a picture of […]

Bruce Schuman One way to understand integral politics involves seeing the world through just a few deeply intuitive principles. These ideas, grounded in wholeness and an instinct for inclusion, are widely understood by leading-edge thinkers and spiritual/ecological communitarians all over the world. Sometimes these ideas are seen as the expression of a universal archetype that […]

Maureen Metcalf Abstract How can leaders be authentic and encourage others to do the same while concurrently meeting the needs of the overall team and organization? This chapter explores the process of becoming a more authentic leader by applying the Innovative Leadership model. It walks through the five elements of the innovative leadership model then […]

Otto Laske In this text, I focus on the central relevance of interviewing skills in being able to lead a dialog in the structured way made possible by the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF), whether it be social-emotional or cognitive. I do so in the context of showing that the certification as a Master Developmental Consultant/Coach […]

Arul Dev and Manoj Pavitran Introduction Telos, is a model of consciousness based on the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Developed by Manoj Pavitran and Arul Dev, the first version of the model looked upon consciousness as having seven notes. While a detailed write up is available in the ILR article that was published in […]

Kazuma Matoba 1.  Communication: The Issue At the beginning of this third millennium AD, the world has achieved remarkable developments in global and instantaneous communication. Yet, in spite of these achievements, terrible human issues still persist due in large part to the darker side of cultural and individual diversity. In some way, these issues are […]

Third in a Three Part Series Edward J Kelly Abstract This is the third in a series of articles for the Integral Leadership Review in which I have attempted to explain my research on adult development. As readers of the previous two articles will note, I have explored this topic in depth by looking at […]

Jim Best Background Purpose In this paper I provide a description of complexity leadership theory and its antecedents in complexity science, and then use integral theory as a meta-theory to evaluate complexity leadership theory.  I will use Wilber’s AQAL model as interpreted by Forman and Ross, focusing on quadrants, lines, stages, and meaning-making systems.  Complexity […]

Jorge Taborga Abstract This essay examines conscious evolution through an integral lens. It presents a perspective on the dilemma of our times focusing on evolutionary responsibility. Evolution is examined from the dimensions of depth and complexity, or subjectivity and objectivity. Frameworks are explored encapsulating human evolution from both of these dimensions. The integral framework is […]

Taoism: a gift to the world: Key takeaways from the 3rd International Taoist Forum Jean-Claude Pierre On November 25/26 2014, the 3rd international Taoist Forum, held in Longhu mountains, Jiangxi province, China, gathered some 600 participants from 27 countries. After a bit of history about this forum, its aim and a few words about the […]

A first person account of creating the 1st Integral European Conference, May 8-11, 2014 in Budapest Dennis Wittrock So it’s over now. We did it. What a blast, what a joy, what an amazing conference experience this has been! What a ride! Let’s rewind the tape right back to the beginning. Where is the beginning […]

A Personal Review Donald Clark Over the weekend of September 12th to 14th, I attended an Alethic Living retreat run by Gary Hawke. This is the third year I have attend a weekend retreat run by Gary, each year he offers a deeper exploration of how a metatheory that links Wilber, Bhaskar, Laske, and Levinas […]

Benyamin Lichtenstein Each year, scholars from business schools around the world gather to share our research and explore new ideas and approaches in management, leadership, entrepreneurship, strategy, ethics, organizational change, and more. This year the conference hosted over 10,000 academics who attended over 2000 different sessions, representing up to 100 different presentation sessions at each […]

In October we have the privilege of hosting Bence Ganti for an evening introduction to his Integral Flow Therapy process. Bence is something of a rising star in the integral community. He was the main organizer of the first Integral Europe conference in May, which drew over 500 people, and has for some years been […]

Brian van der Horst The world does not sing the praises of Paris in the springtime for naught. For the sphere of integral leadership, it was certainly is the season for international conferences to be jolly at in France– generally listed as the world’s top vacation destination, with more that 32 million people visiting the […]

Huntington’s Disease Survivor Millis Mershon and Caregiver Robert Wayne Johnston By Way of Introduction This sketch is intended as an introduction to the new therapy my wife Millis and I developed to treat her gene-driven Huntington’s Disease (HD). It is based mainly on Bruce Lipton’s pioneering epigenetic research; we call it Integral Epigenetic Love Therapy 24/7. After two […]

Lynne Devnew  I had the opportunity to spend two days in Phoenix, Arizona at an exciting event introducing the first nine University of Phoenix Research Centers. I thought I’d share what I thought were the most relevant highlights with you. My focus will be on the intended contributions the research centers will make to the growth of scholarship […]

In a recent online posting –(http://www.salon.com/2014/10/26/the_dangerous_american_myth_of_corporate_spirituality/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow) – Shawn Van Valkenburgh offers “The dangerous American myth of corporate spirituality: How invocations of “karma” and Zen are being used to justify deeply unequal systems of power,” (accessed 10/27/14). There he wonders about the spiritual materialism of adoptions of Buddhist meditation and philosophy (note The Secret). He sites […]

Barbara Kellerman. Hard Times: Leadership in America (Uncorrected page proofs). Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2014. Russ Volckmann In June 2012 we published an interview with Barbara Kellerman, an interview that was prompted by the publication of her important critique of the “leadership industry,” The End of Leadership. (Fresh Perspective: Barbara Kellerman and the Leadership […]

Gangadeep Singh and Raghu Ananthanarayanan. Organizational Development and Alignment: The Tensegity Mandala Framework. New Delhi: Sage, 2013. Russ Volckmann About fifteen years ago, Prasad Kaipa, Chris Newham and I managed to get a highly innovative article published by the Society for Organizational Learning. A copy of this article can be found at: http://selfcorp.prasadkaipa.com/selfcorpnew/pyramidbuildingapplication.htm. We spent […]

Elza S. Maalouf. Emerge! The Rise of Functional Democracy and the Future of the Middle East. New York: Select Books, 2014. (NOTE: This book has not been released as yet.) Russ Volckmann One of the challenges with Spiral Dynamics integral has not been the clarity of the Gravesian framework, but the fragmentation of information on […]

Placing Announcements Not for profit organizations may send announcements to, and get additional information from, Mark@integralleadershipreview.com for posting in Integral Leadership Review. We have three issues with a total of about eight releases a year. Posting announcements is free for not for profit organizations. For profit announcements can be placed as ads on the Welcome […]