Integral Leadership Review
Volume IV, No. 1 - March 2004

• HomeAbout ILR
• Complimentary Subscription
• Join Friends of ILR
• Integral Leadership Council
• Archives
• Leadership Resources
• Submission Guidelines

In Memoriam: Robert Tannenbaum 

Robert Tannenbaum died this month in Carmel, California. In addition to being a pioneer in organization and leadership development, he was a leader in recognizing the importance of the development of the consultant, as well. I believe it was at the 1984 Organization Development Network Conference that he spoke to almost a thousand assembled consultants. At a time when the focus of the field seemed to be so much on tools and methods, he reminded us all, "You are the most important tool you have." We are all grateful for his many contributions, but mostly for his loving and generous heart.

^— ———-——— —^

Look for the April Issue of Integral Leadership Review that includes an excerpt from an interview withJim Kouzes, co-author of The Leadership Challenge and numerous other books on leadership and former President of The Tom Peters Group.

Mission

I am grateful to the more than 593 subscribers to Integral Leadership Review. Your support means that we can move closer to a way of viewing and being in the world that is integrative, generative and supportive of our evolving integrity - learning to align our theory and our action, our values and assumptions with achieving what is important to us. Also, I am grateful to the many kindnesses, suggestions and offers of support we have received.

The mission of this e-publication is to be a practical guide to the application of an integral perspective to the challenges of leadership in business and life and to the effective relationship between executive/business coaches and their clients. My vision includes that this will be a place where others, as well as myself, can continue to develop and share ideas about integral leadership and integral coaching.

> Russ Volckmann

The Integral Model of Leadership: Integral Leadership - Part 23 

Making Integral Leadership Actionable

Chris Argyris continues to gift us with his insights in his bookFlawed Advice and the Management Trap. He states, "Practitioners and scholars agree: twenty-first-century companies will be managed differently than twentieth century firms—especially in their approach to leadership, learning and commitment. Getting there from here, or so the consensus runs, will require change that is transformational, discontinuous, non-routine, step-function and creative. I agree. But with the advice commonly given on how to get there, I do not and cannot agree."

Integral development is very much about the kind of change that Argyris indicates here. But what of our approaches to getting there. When we work from an integral perspective, what do we need to do to make it actionable?

Argyris continues, "In my judgment, most of that advice is - most of the time - simply not actionable. And even if it is implemented correctly, it will lead to consequences that run counter to the intentions of those providing it." And it is no surprise that Argyris’s model of espoused theory and theory in use and the discrepancies between them plays a central role in his discussion.

In a series of articles, beginning with this one, I hope to address some of the issues of making the idea of integral leadership actionable. There has already been attention paid to this challenge in this journal. In addition to the integral leadership model that has been offered through these articles, interviews with people like Bill Torbert and Leo Burke have suggested particular methodologies. Torbert’s action inquiry and Burke’s Integral Leadership program at Notre Dame represent two approaches to making it real. Fred Kofman has an approach that combines consulting, coaching and education. But how are these methodologies truly different from those that have, according to Argyris, failed to be actionable?

In no way do I mean to impugn the wonderful work of these or any of the other leading thinkers on the integral path. Rather, I wish to point out how the approach I have been suggesting in these articles takes a step toward addressing the question of our work with clients being actionable.

Whether the pace of change is experienced by business leaders as the gentle waves of a lake lapping on its shore or like the staccato beat of heavy rain on a tin roof, business is about using awareness to create change. One way we do that is by getting clarity about what we want to create. We use planning, visioning, core value exercises, and the like to generate some sense of strategic direction. This is totally scaleable. It matters not whether we are talking about an independent professional practice or a global organization, these functions are served in some fashion.

If we are to start where clients are at, then we need to have approaches to help them make their visions, plans, etc. explicit and actionable. And we need to start with their own self-awareness and how to use that to leverage individual and collective change. The role of integral leadership in this is to assure that this happens in a way that supports the company in navigating the turbulent waters that Peter Vaill has written so elegantly about. Thus, any developmental process may begin with the idea that we need to know where we want to go. If we are to make integral leadership and our work with leaders actionable, I believe that is where we need to begin.

There are at least two paths in our work on integral leadership unfolding. One is to define what integral leadership is. We are working on that. Susan Cook-Greuter, Steve March and others are working on a book on this topic. The preliminary approach I offer is to see it as an AQAL function. That means that leadership is a function that is performed in a system by individuals with individual and collective dimensions that are interior and exterior and shows up in different ways at different levels of complexity. Further, these different ways transcend and include those found at lower levels of complexity.

Still further, we are using developmental models, (Kegan, SD, etc.) to help us clarify the nature of development in varying levels of complexity. This is a theory and research path that will support education and consulting. In each case we are learning from the application of the models. Kegan’s work in How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work is one example. The work of Don Beck and others using Spiral Dynamics in the realms of nation building and international politics is another.

This second path is about making the theory and research results useful and actionable. The approach offered in this series of articles falls more within this category, as does some of the work of Fred Kofman, John Forman and his associates, Sara Ross, Mike Jay, James Flaherty and others. It is a path that requires that we start with where the client is and build from there.

An actionable path is about working with individuals and the systems in a developmental process. The idea of a leadership system in organizations has gained currency among consultants and theorists. Now the challenge is to make it real.

Leadership Coaching Tip 

Leverage for Learning

When coaching leaders from an integral perspective our ability to discern where the client is at is critical. What we need to look for are beliefs, assumptions and mental models held by the leader. Second we need to look at the behaviors that are launched from this internal platform. Next we need to examine the relationships between the individual leader’s models and behaviors in relation to the organizational culture and systems in which they are active. None of this is a surprise. But what may be is that when coaching them, our challenge is to help them clarify these variables based on their own recognition (with coaching support) of how their current perspectives can be leveraged for learning.

^— ———-——— —^

1 Phoenix Rising by Russ Volckmann is now available,

We have all faced failures in our lives. And sometimes our response to them is debilitating.
Here is an innovative approach to confronting and transcending failure.

A new book with an integrated method for confronting issues that keep us stuck and moving toward what is truly important to us.

An effective tool for coaches and for clients whether coaching leaders in business or in life.

"I always thought of myself as a winner, not a failure... I've always been afraid of taking a risk...and failing!1 Phoenix Rising gave me the opportunity to face my fears in an absolutely safe environment and to admit my fragility...To my surprise, what I found was a renewed sense of force and creative drive that is now overriding the fear!"

- - Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D., Therapist Coach Institute

"The material in 1 Phoenix Rising is genuine and helpful. I've known Russ for sometime and not only can he help you with issues around failure, but if you work through this material, it will help you become more aware of a life worth living big!"

- - Mike Jay, B\Coach Systems

A Fresh Perspective: A Conversation with Fred Kofman 

Originally from Argentina, Fred Kofman spent several years as a faculty member at MIT and worked closely with Peter Senge. Now in Colorado, his consulting and coaching practice has led to the creation of a new business and a close relationship with Ken Wilber. He is the author of Metamanagement, published in Spanish and soon to be available in English.

Q: There has been in recent years more and more literature about the importance of spirit in business, and one of the things aboutConscious Business that really impressed me was your ability to take these elements of spirit, these elements of a more holistic perspective on work and on business and express them in terms that were really grounded in the experience of people in business. One of the most beautiful examples of that is when you talk about awareness and state that it is the single most important business skill. Please comment on that.

A: The first question when you are doing anything in life is, "What’s the point?" That is a very spiritual question. What are you doing with your one and precious life? You’ve been given a gift of consciousness and wisdom and now you have this resource for a fairly limited time. What are you going to do with it?

In business you start from the same place. We ask, "What are you doing? What is the point of what you are doing? What are you trying to accomplish? Why is that important to you?" At the same time, to accomplish something in business, unless you want to be a criminal, you have to also value what would further the purpose of other people’s lives. That’s how you are going to get them to buy your product or service: by giving them something that they find valuable. The source of value is that it is congruent with their life’s purpose.

Becoming aware of what is meaningful to you and what is meaningful to those around you is the beginning of every successful enterprise. The moment you lose touch with that you are going to go down in flames. Maybe the words are too spiritual, but this is like basic Business 101. What’s your value proposition? Why would anybody want to buy your product or service?

You have to think about that in a fairly specific way, because it is not that you think that your product is great. That’s not going to make your business successful. Your customers have to think it’s great. So you have to empathize with your customers; you have to become aware not only of what’s meaningful to you but what’s meaningful to them.

To experience them as conscious beings that have a purpose in life and define values that further that purpose in life is really a trans-personal exercise. It sounds mystical when I say it this way. I don’t use this language in companies. I just say, "Let’s look at your value proposition and what you think your customers would find valuable in it Do you know your customers? Why do you feel good about offering this to your customers? How does this align with your life and your concerns? How does it align with theirs?"

By engaging in that discussion people develop a passion for what they do. Once the passion is there then you have a question about skillful means. But the technical question, the question of skillful means, (how do you communicate, how do you resolve conflicts, how do you coordinate these actions, how do you do all these things?) becomes relevant only when it’s prompted by your passionate commitment to a larger purpose. You don’t start teaching people tools without the previous investigation that takes you out of yourself and recontextualizes yourself as serving something that is bigger than just yourself.

Without that recontextualization, technique is really boring. It’s like saying, buy a sex manual and sit down to study technique. If there’s no love, no technique in the world is going to create an intimate relationship. I think that business is really an act of love. It’s different than the intimacy of a couple, but it’s a kind of love that supports the opening of other people to find themselves as conscious beings in the world.

Q: Agape rather than Eros?

A: Well, it’s both. It’s Eros in the reaching for the ultimate purpose. And it is Agape, bringing down that consciousness, that fire that you have achieved by connecting with that ultimate purpose, and using it to embrace the world and to manifest that energy for freedom in the fullness of manifestation. Those are the two paths that Ken talks about: the ascending path, which tends to be the more masculine desire to be free, to exit the constraints of the world and the more feminine part, which is the descending path into fullness, into the radiance of being. I think the joining of those two parts and the stretching to reach for the fire and for the energy above and embodying that energy in the fullness of the world is really what every fully conscious human being is about
Everybody is "in business." You cannot live without being in business. You may be an employee, a small business owner, a corporate executive, a massage therapist, a nurse, or you may be cleaning houses. Whatever you’re doing, part of your being in this world, is being in the domain of work. You have intimacy in the private sphere and work in the public one. Your intimate transactions are related to sex, and occur in a rather small community, well it depends on what kind of love life you have, but they are usually in a couple or with a small number of partners. But then you have these other transactions, the public ones. They involve the money aspect of your life, giving value to others and receiving value in exchange, as a way to sustain yourself materially, energetically and spiritually.
Sex and money, or intimacy and power, or union and creativity, or communion and agency, are essential aspects of life, as are yin and yang, masculine and feminine, love and freedom. Thanks to Ken, I’ve met David Deida this year. David is the wisest person I’ve met in the area of sexuality as a manifestation of spirituality. My conversations with him have made me aware of the beautiful symmetries that exist between sexual value, (sexual attraction, sexiness) and market value (market attractiveness, marketability).

Q: This has bearing on the notion of leadership in business. Do you have a definition of the role of leadership in business?

A: I’m sure I have many…

Q: Do you have a favorite definition?

A: Yes. It changes with the situation. I can tell you the one that may feel appealing to me right now, but I don’t have one that I would use all the time. Although there’s a core and it’s always there, the way the core is expressed depends on what I feel the situation is calling for in me. At this moment, I feel like saying that a leader is somebody that can help people align their transcendent individual purposes into a transcendent collective purpose.

Q: What is integral leadership?

A: Building on the previous definition, an integral leader is one that would do that in, as Ken would say, an AQAL form, meaning in all the quadrants, at all levels of development, engaging all the different lines of personal consciousness, and considering the two tendencies of holons -- agency and communion or the masculine and the feminine, and also involving the multiple of the three states, the gross, the subtle and the causal. So an integral leader is a person that can resonate very powerfully with all the individuals around and has the skill to touch everybody wherever they are and then with that touch awaken in them the passion for creating something that transcends each one of them but involves the community.

Q: Do you have a specific model of leadership that you work from?

A: I use Ken’s model, I use the four quadrants and the idea of the exterior and interior dimensions. The exterior of leadership is behaviors. Also, a leader is like the builder or the architect of the ship in developing the social and business systems of the company. In the interior dimension the leader works in a transformational way, touching people’s personality and their interiority. As a cultural icon the leader influences the stories and the shared values and the community.

That is the basic model of leadership that I operate with. However I don’t really talk about it too much because I consider that the words are like a hiding place. When people talk a lot about leadership it becomes a subject out there. It becomes a theoretical subject to be discussed as opposed to an experience to be lived. So I focus my work much more in the nitty gritty practices of leadership, for example, how to be a manifestation of unconditional responsibility, an exemplar of authenticity and integrity.

If you are in the masculine, more agentic mode of Eros, leadership represents the search for freedom or the desire to manifest freedom and power in the world. In this case, being unconditionally responsible is not something you talk about or you give lectures on. It is something you do in your life moment by moment. You are expressing moment by moment that ultimate freedom regardless of the constraints that the circumstances might impose. Freedom doesn’t mean lack of constraint. Freedom means that you are so committed to your purpose that you are free even if you die. That nothing is going to make you diverge from your purpose.

That’s the ultimate freedom. That is the ultimate love. You are leading your life and nobody else has the power to stop you from living your life as it is to be lived. That’s an example. That’s something that you as a leader do and then other people around just get influenced by it. Your presence is like a strong gravitational field that organizes the Kosmos with "K," as Ken uses it to describe the universe of meanings around you.

If you are in the feminine, more communion mode of Agape, leadership represents the loving blessing of radiance and connection. If you’re in the feminine fullness, your unconditional responsibility is that you’re going to hold the consciousness of the unity. You will maintain an openhearted relationship regardless of what the other person does. You are going to be fully in that awareness of connection even when someone is killing you. You are unconditionally present. Nobody can stop you. So that’s again a more feminine unconditional response of a leader who can stand there and feel the connection to the other people and to the world and to what’s occurring in the situation and she or he would not be swayed. Love does not mean lack of blocks to relationship. Love means that you are one with your beloved; you ARE the Beloved, always and forever.

When you can embody these two notions of unconditional responsibility as unconditional freedom and unconditional love, and make them manifest through your being, that’s much more leadership than talking about what does it mean to be a leader. And this is not something you only do in business. You must do it in your whole life.

I don’t make such a big deal about leadership because people who don’t have formal authority feel excluded: "This isn’t about me," they think, "I am not a leader". I think there’s a role for the distinction of leadership as the exercise of formal authority though. It involves leadership consultants, helping executives, people who have authority, to use that authority wisely. I respect and value that. I read their books and learn from them. But for me, leadership is a personal commitment to life. People with formal authority need to do that, but so does anybody who wants to be fully human.

Q: As I listened to you talk about leadership I was equating leadership with formal position authority. For me, in increasingly complex systems the notion of leadership can’t be tied to a single role anymore. Leadership is a phenomenon that is shared more widely in the system, so when we’re talking about leadership we’re talking about both individuals and a system.

A: I agree with your that thinking of leaders as only people with authority is dangerous, shortsighted and disempowering. That’s why I don’t like to talk too much about leadership. That word has been hijacked so to speak by the traditional notion that has appropriated the meaning of the word, and I don’t share it.

Q: Like heroic leadership?

A: Yes, exactly -- heroic leadership, functional power or position power, things like that. Now when you start thinking about leadership with other connotations or with other meanings, you have to tell people I am talking about a different kind of leadership, a distinction between heroic leadership and more integral leadership. There is an attraction in that. Now talking about a system, I’m not sure what that means because for me leadership is inherently a human or an attribute of consciousness, a conscious empathy. And I don’t see a system as the subject with localized consciousness.

Q: Let me see if I can offer a way of looking at that and get your response. What I was trying to suggest earlier is that with increasingly complex organizational systems, business systems, whether we’re talking just in terms of size or geography or other measures of complexity, that it’s increasingly difficult for one person to exercise leadership, that it is something that is shared, that there are leaders throughout the system.

A: Oh, yes, absolutely.

Q: If that’s the case and we think about the phenomenon of leadership within a business system, within a business organization, then there is some kind of system of leadership, that there’s some kind of relationship among those that are performing leadership roles that could be characterized as having a culture and a system.

A: Okay, I understand now. That makes a lot more sense. It’s not that the system is leader, but this sense of interrelationships amongst the leaders that you call a system of leadership. That makes a lot more sense. In fact, I will agree with you 100% that as the level of complexity grows, it’s impossible for any one person to hold that complexity and to manage it. In fact, that’s why Leading Learning Communities, my old company, where I was a single leader, lost its appeal to me, and Axialent, where I share the leadership with Andy and all our general managers and principal consultants, became my new enterprise.

I do think that there’s a role for a person to be a leader of a system. He or she won’t be able to micro-lead everything. He or she will have to take a much broader approach, and say, "Okay, on these large strategic lines we’re going to have an alignment and we’re going to have a common vision, a purpose and a way of operating together." But then there will be a hierarchical system or a holarchical system to use more of Ken’s lexicon. In this system there would be a higher level of perspective of the whole.

The different parts of the subsystem will also have lower levels of leadership that are managing their own sub-system at the same time coordinating the functioning of that subsystem with the other subsystems that compose the system. So I think the areas of communication, conflict resolution and coordination of functions that I focus on, are very, very important because that’s where the rubber meets the road. That’s where people are able to come together and create something that’s bigger than any one of them.

To read the complete interviewclick here.

Significant Journal:Spirituality & Reality, New Perspectives on Global Issues 

Nancy B. Roof is the editor of this journal, published Friends for a New Civilization. Their mission is "Contributing to the enhancement of the quality of life and to the humanization of global relations through the promotion of spiritual values."

Volume II, Number 2, March 2003 features two articles by Don Beck and a colored insert of Spiral Dynamics Integral.

This issue is being distributed to all representatives to the United Nations in New York. It is available for the amazingly low price of $5.00 ($7.50 overseas).

Nancy Roof, Editor
Spirituality & Reality
PO Box 2102, Lenox, MA 01240
Nancy Roof

Summary

Daryl S. Paulson, Ph.D., Competitive Business, Caring Busining. New York: Paraview Press, 2002. (with a Forward by Ken Wilber)

Let’s address the Forward first: Ken Wilber points out that this is one of the first integrated approaches to business to be published. "It is fresh, provocative, and daring. Although I do not necessarily agree with all the details--who does? - it is based on sound theory and research that anyone can test in the laboratory of his or her own business world."

As Ken says, Paulson is "offering one of the very first integrated business models." This model uses the familiar holon and holarchy. The holarchy includes four levels: team, company, industry and world environment. In his presentation there is an interesting integration of models and theories familiar to organization theorists from Mayo to Argyris to Senge.

Much of his perspective is on management and the management requirements for each level of the holarchy. For example, at the team level he applies the Hersey-Blanchard situational leadership model to address development within the quadrants of the team holon. Parallel to the telling, selling, participating and delegating stages of management behavior at the team level are the following stages of development of the team in the lower right quadrant:

• training for effective teamwork
• training on a systems perspective
• participation in systems change
• self-governance

The lower left (culture) equivalencies are:

• anxiety reducing through team-building, encouragement
• social belong and self-esteem within a unified team
• establishing values
• congruence with organizational goals.

Beyond the team there is an interesting examination of the management challenges in relation to the company, the industry and the environment. Overall, the individual levels of development (upper left quadrant) are:

• formal operations at the team level
• meta-systematic systems thinking at the company level
• Paradigmatic systems of systems thinking at the industry level
• Cross-Paradigmatic System of Systems of Systems Thinking at the environment level

Paulson’s conclusion summarizes the approach he has taken:
"…the concept of integral business is merely an integration of the best visions and practices of business, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, politics, systems-thinking, economics, and human science, and the synthesis of this knowledge into a growth bloom of possibilities for all humanity in the twenty-first century."

CODA › Russ Volckmann

Sara Ross , "A Developmental ApproaA: Integral Public Practice For Complex Public Issues"

Sara Ross has been concerned with community development for a number of years. She has brought her integral perspective to this challenge in her work independently and with the Kettering Foundation. She states, "Public processes are integral when they aim public attention at the real breadth and depth of issues. They do this by working with people’s different motivations, worldviews, and behaviors, with cultural influences, and with related social, political, and economic systems. Integral processes help people examine the root causes of issues with attention to the history, the present, and the futures of individuals, entities, and other influences."

Based in part on her experience with dialogue and working with communities Sara has designed a process community groups can use to bring about synergy despite differences and action, not just talk. In this article she lays out a five step methodology for doing this.

Sara also provides a theoretical explanation of the methodology. She writes, "In addition to my research done under contract with the Kettering Foundation, I have drawn from the fields of deliberative democracy, integral theory, human development, transformation theory, timely action inquiry, and consciousness studies. The core dynamics these fields inform are: 1) identifying the issue’s diverse causative factors; 2) framing the issue; 3) public deliberation; 4) critically reflective learning; and, 5) engaging diverse motivations and approaches for action."

Her work is premised on "integral theory’s assertion that for any endeavor to be effective it must consider individual intentions and collective cultural norms along with the external behaviors of both individuals and social systems relevant to the matter." Her work is also built on insights from Maslow, Spiral Dynamics, Kegan and other.

She has developed a taxonomy of public issues: "The issue types I have identified are: 1) social (and socio-economic) system issues, such as care of children and elderly, poverty, welfare; 2) human behavior issues, such as crime, violence, terrorism, substance abuse, teen pregnancy; 3) issues around imbalanced practices such as racial profiling, affirmative action, and inter-group tensions; and, 4) general decision-making for non-systemic issues and certain system-change questions around the environment, politics, and economics."

Sara closes with: "My vision is that by the next century integral public practices will span from local to global levels, freeing and motivating individuals and collectives with the consciousness to engage the necessary solutions to arising and enduring issues alike. I envision new habits of proactive visioning and implementation for the well being of all life as humans further develop and take ownership of their unique capacities in communion with others, and begin to enfold this planet with their gentle breath of collective healing delivered by wiser, informed, situation-appropriate, and compassionate action."

A Request

If you are finding the Integral Leadership Review to be bringing useful, fresh perspectives to the subject of leadership, please think of the leaders in business and life that might be able to benefit from subscribing to this epublication. Please send them a copy or a link to the web site, www.integralleadershipreview.com so that they may explore it. In this time of intense internet communication, we all need to manage our time and read those things which are most relevant for our work, our thinking and our values. It is my hope that many people will find the evolving Integral Leadership Review does just that. Your help is deeply appreciated.

Dedication

Dedicated to Chris Newham with deep appreciation.

Feedback

Got any? E-mail Russ Volckmann - russ@integralleadershipreview.com.

Thanks  

Thanks for taking the time to consider this e-publication in a world of data overload. For leaders, collaborators, consultants, academics and coaches alike; I welcome you to some ideas and a dialogue that may benefit us all. I hope you will contact me soon with your idea, reference or article. Suggestions on improvement are welcome.

Russ Volckmann, PhD
Coaching Leaders in Business and Life
Email: russ@integralleadershipreview.com
Tel: 831.333-9200, FAX: 831.656-0110

Disclaimer:

This material is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Financial, Legal and Professional information is not Financial, Legal and Professional advice. You should see a Financial, Legal or Professional in the area in which you live if you need advice.

You are welcome to share the contents of this e-publication. Please provide source information, including www.integralleadershipreview.com.

Thank you.

© 2001 Russ Volckmann. All Rights Reserved