Living leadership

Submitted by Brent Sheridan on Fri, 17 Feb 2012, 12:32pm

Embracing Uncertainty

Eckhart describes why the collapse of ego-based institutions is absolutely necessary for the planet and for humanity to survive.

The following is an excerpt from an article written by John D. Schmidt for Kosmos in 2007. Rather than adapt his words we are quoting him directly; he writes eloquently and succinctly and Accelerated Evolution's approach to leadership and strategic development of organisations and people is essentially the same.

We thought the brief talk by Eckhart Tolle was a nice adjunct.

Enjoy.

The purpose of life is...to know oneself. We cannot do so unless we
learn to identify ourselves with all that lives.
Mohandas K. Gandhi

At the heart of a new global civilization is the movement toward wholeness and forms that support global emergence. 'Integral leadership' is an important component powering this move. Integral leadership reflects a sphere ofleadership where interior development and exterior structures are aligned to support and sustain organisms-people, businesses, the environment, and one another. Yet growing evidence suggests that despite gains being made at the margins, the level of development and realization of consciousness among leaders at large is not adequate to support the radical shifts required to achieve the kind of 'living leadership' where potential radiates from the core to the edges and back, where global wholeness takes form, and where stillness holds its echo.

With increasing demands for exterior shifts in frameworks, structures, and large-scale systems, it is becoming increasingly clear that interiority of leadership lies at the center of coming world change. Expansion of consciousness-not activity-is at the center. Activity flows from mindsets and worldviews outward to fuel change.

...

Growing evidence suggests that broad cross-walks are being established between stages of leadership development and stages of corporate sustainability. It is no wonder that we are not yet reaching the highest ambitions of corporate sustainability; we do not have enough leaders with later-stage capacities (more expanded consciousness) to see, formulate, and harmonize the integrated sets of actions needed for large-scale shifts forward. Levels of interior development have not advanced enough to match the needs of society at large. The good news is that we are beginning to understand the interplay of exteriors and interiors, and to recognize that development of interiors is a critical factor regarding large-scale and whole-systems change.

Let's add a bit more of a macro perspective: that of futurists and economists looking toward the horizon of change and shocks potentially coming our way. J. Petersen of the Arlington Institute points toward a perfect storm rising-a collision of climate change impact, energy (peak oil) volatility, and financial instability (US bank and mortgage/reserves perturbations) that will lead to large-scale system shocks and potential breakdowns.

Economists J. Quilligan and B. Lietaer also point to similar magnitudes of shock resulting from a variety of large global financial/ monetary disturbances. These disruptions, shocks, and ensuing calls for change will require interior resilience and capacities at the most advanced levels in order to respond appropriately. Without later stage development of interiors, we will likely live and contend with the same conventional workarounds that stem from conventional leadership worldviews.

Interiors and Vertical Development

Practically speaking, horizontal development alone - additional knowledge, skills, and abilities added to current mindsets and models - is not enough to support the future and global emergence. The magnitude of change at all levels calls for radical shifts in vertical development -shifts involving how we learn to see through a new lens, how we change our interpretation of what is experienced, how we transform the fundamental nature of our view of reality. Development in this regard focuses on
transformations of consciousness. And when considering these transformations, we are referring to our expanded realization of wholeness-the recognition of the underlying unity of reality.

Wholeness, then, is a reference point for integral leadership and for the interior work of leadership. The primary barrier to wholeness is identification with the ego. Our separate-ness, bounded-ness, and reified, rigidified patterns comprise the ego. Until leaders become free from these limitations, obscurations, and projections of the ego - which are superimposed directly on the work of leadership in understanding and action-they are constrained in capacity and potential to effectively envision and orchestrate movements and action on the global stage. They are rendered unable to respond artfully to the emerging context of greater challenge.

... it is only amid wholeness - in contact with essence, pure consciousness experienced as presence - that we find the fundamental common ground of integral leadership and interior development.

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