Integral Leadership Review
Volume IV, No. 3 - May 2004

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Mission

I am grateful to the more than 820 subscribers to Integral Leadership Review. Your continuing 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 epublication 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 Tsunami of Integral Leadership Development

Have you ever had a Tsunami? No, I don't mean:

"A tsunami (pronounced tsoo-nah-mee) is a wave train, or series of waves, generated in a body of water by an impulsive disturbance that vertically displaces the water column. Earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, explosions, and even the impact of cosmic bodies, such as meteorites, can generate tsunamis. Tsunamis can savagely attack coastlines, causing devastating property damage and loss of life."

- -http://www.geophys.washington.edu/tsunami/general/physics/physics.html

I mean the alcoholic beverage sometimes called a tsunami. Come to think of it, if you aren't careful it could have the same kind of impact as the other tsunami. I will tell you more about this drink in a moment.

I believe that our discussions of development in the world of integral leadership have tsunami-like qualities. A book is published, a thought-leader speaks (as Warren Bennis did at the 1999 International Leadership Association Conference and decried the "heroic" notion of leadership as being inadequate), the dynamics of the business world shift due to changes in the economy or the greed and gluttony of "leaders." These impulsive disturbances displace our complacent or even our ambitious "orange" notions of leadership and cause destruction to our surface beliefs, assumptions and - once in a while – our behaviors.

One reason for the disturbance we are creating is the very notion of development, itself. Historically, leadership development has been thought of as developing individual skills, knowledge, competencies and/or capacities. Learn to communicate, learn to listen. Learn about financial management, even if you are a non-financial executive, because it is essential for your career. Build your ability to develop and sustain a team. Develop the capacities to deal with the unexpected – chaos, uncertainty, permanent white water.

Attention to the context can be seen in the phenomenon of identification of leadership competencies in so many different companies. The fact that they are not just borrowing a list from somewhere, but developing one of their own suggests that they are aware of the unique needs of their companies. This is in no way a guarantee that the product of these processes is useful or that it is even used.

As ideas of integral leadership development are gaining a little more currency, our historic ways are seen as valuable, but insufficient. Leadership development is no longer just about individuals and their efficacy in formal roles in the business. Leadership development is about levels and stages of development, lines of development, behavior and biology, cultural development and development of systems. This perspective starts the tsunami that threatens any complacency about our models and methods of leadership development.

Nowhere is this more perfectly symbolized than Fred Kofman's key point that awareness is the most important business skill -Conscious Business, Sounds True.

Think about it. I don't know about you, but this is the first time that I have heard this capacity elevated to this lofty height related to leadership development. Intuitively, it is just true. It "sounds true." Diminished awareness of self and of context leads to diminished quality of decisions and problem solving.

And that which stimulates awareness thereby becomes essential for leadership development. I would suggest that awareness is an individual concept: the only ways of developing awareness of self and systems involve working at the individual level. Generating awareness at the system level is done through individual development – and more. The more will be the subject of a subsequent discussion. For now, let's get back to the tsunami.

A key question then for the integral perspective is how can we understand development in terms of lines and levels, individuals and systems, etc. Initially, both in the notion of the holarchy and in Spiral Dynamics we have used a hierarchical model. There is nothing inherently "wrong" with a hierarchical model, despite "green" bridling at the idea (my own green is well lit).

No amount of reframing is likely to eliminate some hierarchical aspects of development. It is a useful structure that provides a lens for viewing snapshots within a development process. As such, it facilitates our communicating about development, its aspects and potentials. The dilemma is when only the hierarchy is used to consider the dynamics of development – even when they involve levels. When we view the movie we discover the swirl of elements from all of the levels of development.

And this brings me back to the tsunami. I don't know that there is only one recipe for this drink that I have seen served at tropical-theme restaurants. But here is one.

Imagine a drink that contains pineapple juice, orange juice, rum and a coconut liqueur. These ingredients are put in a very large bowl-like glass with some ice cubes and a chunk of dry ice. Very quickly, the dry ice starts putting out a fog-like gas that rises and cascades over the side of the glass. Inside the glass, all of the various liquids appear to be as one, but in reality, they are swirling and churning on microscopic levels.

That is the way I think of integral development as a process with the spiral as development and the interactions of "levels." It is organic. It is messy. It is chaotic. It is complex. Consequently, it operates by a few simple rules that lead us to an understanding of its dynamics, but totally incapable of predicting performance in any given moment or context.

Mark Edwards has done some interesting work on the "integral cycle of knowledge" and other expansions and extensions of Ken Wilber's work that may help us to further develop the dynamics of development through an integral lens. His work can be found at Frank Visser's website, http://www.worldofkenwilber.com I may be exploring some of this work in subsequent articles.

The implication of this exploration of the tsunami is not to cease all leadership development and give up. The implication is to engage in leadership development that develops the capacity of leaders at all levels and in all contexts to be able to use a snapshot to form the understanding that leads them to discover the few simple rules that drive their organic leadership processes.

One means to do this is the use of integral models of leadership. They provide the capacity to take a snapshot that makes it possible to focus on figure and ground. And when we are dealing with a specific individual in a specific context our focus might best be placed on enhancing the capacity of the individual leader to experience the tsunami and not be overwhelmed by it. Rather, a person leading can ride with the tsunami and use its power to provide effective leadership in concert with others. This requires an integral perspective.

This is our challenge. And thanks for the chance to play bartender!

Leadership Coaching Tip 

Being in the Tsunami 

The sources of business tsunamis are manifold. Just in the last few days I have had executive clients bring their tsunami's to our coaching conversations. One example is an individual who is purchasing an entertainment company that includes a radio station. The financing for this effort must be available within a two-business-day window following an FCC license approval. Just a week prior to this time, the bank said it would need an appraisal of the radio station, despite secured guarantees far in excess of the value of the loan. This threatened the whole deal.

And today, another client brought the death of the father of a close business associate with similar circumstances to the loss of her own father. This was a highly charged issue of tsunami proportions.

Each of these executives was perfectly capable of managing their way through these situations with integrity and clarity. But in both cases the coaching conversations supported them in being clear and confident about moving forward.

The tip? Be prepared for the tsunamis. You can't stop them. They are opportunities for learning to take place. If you are trying to fix the client's problems, then it is like trying to stop the tsunami.

^— ———-——— —^

hot off the presses! I haven't seen it yet (it is that new!) but I would guess that this is a must read for anyone interested in leadership. 

Russ

Bill Torbert and Associates (Susann Cook-Greuter, Dalmar Fisher, Erica Foldy, Alain Gauthier, Jackie Keeley, David Rooke, Sara Ross, Catherine Royce, Jenny Rudolph, Steve Taylor, Mariana Tran)

Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership

Offers a powerful method that leaders in organizations of all types can use to increase the timeliness and effectiveness of their actions.

Provides numerous real-world examples of action inquiry in action

Includes exercises individuals and organizations can use to begin practicing action inquiry

"A book for managers and students of management who are serious about exploring in depth how leaders and organizations can develop the capacity to continually learn and transform themselves."

Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline

This book introduces a fresh approach to helping individuals and organizations learn in the midst of the cut and thrust of daily action. "Action inquiry" is a highly accessible process whereby we can go beyond muddling through daily dilemmas to exercise transforming power at key moments, as well as timely action on a continual basis. This process not only allows for the correction of errors before they have negative consequences for business outcomes and trust, but can also be experienced as a pleasurable and energizing dance as a critical mass of colleagues join in, creating a positive climate for ongoing learning.

Bill Torbert and Associates illustrate how individuals and organizations can progress through more and more sophisticated "action-logics"-strategies for analyzing the world and reacting to it-until they will eventually be able to practice action inquiry continually. Offering action inquiry exercises at the end of the chapters, the book moves from junior managers beginning to practice action inquiry through CEOs transforming whole companies, to world leaders transforming whole countries, as exemplified by Czech president Vaclav Havel. Through short stories of leadership and organizational transformations, this groundbreaking book illustrates how action inquiry increases personal integrity, relational mutuality, company profitability, and long-term organizational and environmental sustainability.

Here is how to get the book:

www.bkconnection.com or call toll-free: 1-800-929-2929 Fax your order to: (802) 864-7626; Mail orders to: Berrett-Koehler Publishers PO Box 565, Williston, VT 05495; $29.95, paperback original; ISBN 1-57675-264-X

(I was asked to share the announcement with you and agreed to do so.
I am very much looking forward to reading this when it arrives. Russ)

A Fresh Perspective: Another Phoenix Rising, Excerpt from a Conversation with Sara Ross 

This interview with Sara Ross took place about a year ago. At the time she was engaged in an exchange with Dr. Don Beck on the subject of critical inquiry in the integral community. This is her abstract of a paper she offered to the integral leadership and organization development listserve.

"The purpose of this conversational 'letter' is to catalyze a transformation of the culture that characterizes much of the community networked by the work of Ken Wilber and his integral theory, and that of Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics (SD). The paper attempts to disrupt certain assumptions that sustain the largely un-integral culture. Asserting that certain confusions are at the root of troublesome beliefs and behaviors, it describes problematic aspects of the culture and why they must be transformed. Because the SD language and mindset permeate the culture's thinking, the author employs the objective "outsider" language and lens of cognitive science to supply new accuracy to understandings of key stages of development and their transitions. The paper is a well-argued effort to dislodge and confuse certain entrenched assumptions inherited from SD's presentation. Impelled by the basic moral intuition to foster wholeness in the midst of change, it sketches ways to love confusion while hating it, along with integral methodologies that can gradually transform individuals along with the culture and practice. It closes with the invitation, ways, and means for the community to launch itself into a new integral age."

I consider Sara's work important because it calls on us to get much clearer about what is involved in development, where it will take us and how do we accomplish it. I recommend the paper to anyone who is seriously interested in applications of integral theory, Spiral Dynamics and developmental psychology to individual learning and development.

Q: Some readers may not know you or your work, Sara. Can you provide a little background?

A: Well, in my past life I was a CPA. Once I started my own practice I got involved in public issues and community leadership work. I'd also done a lot of work at the parish level and was really frustrated from hitting my head against the wall because I happen to be a little more progressive than most. Later I decided to sell my CPA practice and go back to school to learn one on one ministry, started reading all the Vatican II documents and was integrating all of them and the worldview they were trying to birth. That was back in the eighties. I spent the nineties doing my public issues work as action research and ended up doing a lot of similar work for Kettering Foundation. I am living my dream of integrating public work, spiritual work, and development work while just being a life-long learner. I'm back in school working on my doctorate in international political development at Union Institute & University, in nearby Cincinnati.

Q: As a result of reading your postings on the Internet and some of your writing it is clear that the scope of your knowledge or breadth of reading and understanding of work of people ranging from Torbert to Wilber seems quite extraordinary. How did that happen?

A: Its background started in the eighties. I kept reading and I went into theology and philosophy, and in the meantime I had one of those classic unlovely experiences they call the dark night of the soul. It was dark and it was long. I found myself knowing nothing anymore and asking everything even if it made no sense to ask the question. It led me into everything. So I have read probably something of everything there is.

Years later I realized I had come up with my own synthesis. I started to recognize it's all the same story and everything was connected in my mind. Then, when I happened to first read Wilber I realized that I knew this, because it was already kind of synthesized. The link to your question is that all that was in place when things in I-I weren't "adding up," and I dove back into studying loads of adult development stuff to figure out what was going on.

Q: What's your connection with Bill Torbert?

A: I first got acquainted with him, I guess in 1999 or 2000. Thomas Jordan introduced us. He wanted a little group of people to help him think about how to do an organizational assessment manual using an integral approach and I said I sure want to do that, and Torbert and several others did, too. So that's how I got to know Bill.

Q: What I've seen of your work is that you've been bringing together a lot of the things that many of the others in the integral world are familiar with and applying them in the public sector in the community context through research and publicly speaking. Furthermore, you have expressed concern for and an interest in development of the integral community itself. Is that a fair summary?

A: You know, it's funny Russ, because I don't really divide things in my mind. Again, it's all the same story and it's always about changing the culture. It's always about putting in practice the new ways of being together politically, new ways of relating. It's all political. How can we alter our ways of relating in a developmental way so we can accomplish the things that need to be done in this world? You could divide it into my public work and my research, but to me it's all the same thing because the same core dynamics are needed everywhere.

Q: So it's metasystemic.

A: Oh, yes.

Q: And by looking at it through your lens, your metasystemic lens, then what we're looking at is a Sara Ross doing herself metasystemically in the world, whatever we want to label it.

A: Yes, because there isn't anything I'm not interested in or care about and it's all the same story. It's really simple.

Q: I read "Integral Public Practice for Complex Public Issues." What you offer there is a methodology for use in community, which I assume would be scalable to any size of community, but when I read it I had in mind kind of the small community, be it a community of individuals extracted from a larger community, or be it the public community like a town or a city.

A: Yes. I see the basic structure as being not only scalable in the public realm but also cross-boundary. I mean, it's organizational. It could be legislative or national.

The Kettering Foundation's insights form part of this work. Its insight was the crucial one for any time you have people with multiple world views together. Now Kettering has no developmental awareness in its approach. But its insight was, some years ago, that the usual framing of any question -- whether it's in an organization or publicly -- is often posed in a yes/no fashion. Therefore we have debate. Issues are usually cast in a closed-minded fashion. But its insight was that you have to use open-ended questions. You have to create a vehicle for the prevailing points of view to have their say, but more than to have their say. Kettering's driver is that citizens have to make a choice. To do that, folks have to deliberate.

This is the crucial part of it: it's to share and exchange life experiences about why you have the view you have on an issue. How does it impact you, your interests, and those close to you? Then in deliberating, wrestle with the trade-offs in what's valuable, the competing internal and external tensions. That's one of the transformative elements. It is still pretty basic human stuff. Where I differ with Kettering is that my analyses of issues says it's not about making "a" choice – it's about deciding how to use the new understandings of complexity that requires some of what every worldview and life experience demands in different skillfully used combinations. But their main insight was framing questions in such a way that they're depolarized and open to all the perspectives so that they are then worked through.

Q: Is the notion of getting to the genius of the both/and instead stuck in the either/or?

A: Right!

Q: Also, does this relate to double or even triple loop learning that has to do with the learner learning about the learner.

A: Yes. That's not something Kettering does, but that's a crucial, absolutely indispensable element in any work from one person on up.

Q: Further, is this the idea of dialogue?

A: Um hmm. Dialogue is work. It's political work. It's ways of relating. What makes human relationships work is languaging. You cannot language without communicating. You can't communicate without dialoguing, unless you want to debate the other person down, the other side down. Dialogue is the only way of communicating, it's the only way to get from point A to point B.

The hub of all of my work, in all of the leadership and public process kind of work that I've done, is conversation as the process container. The structure of the conversation is the important thing. Nobody wants to spend any time talking for the sake of talking. I develop processes that are structured. They're methodical. There's a reason for every part of the conversation and what that stage needs to produce to evolve the dialogue toward the next productive ends of knowledge creation and decision making.

The process described in the paper is a complete process beginning with how you decide what you're talking about. And that is believe it or not, Russ, in my experience the single most important first step, whether it's organizational or public or private relationships issues. How do we really name what the problem is, accurately? And then we start learning how systemic everything is because you could name it this way, and we could name it that way, depending on what affects or effects of the problem we're concerned about.

Q: The way you define the problem constrains the solution; it defines the solution. Is that the message you're offering here?

A: With another message along with it:   we can't think we're done with only identifying one aspect, because there are so many different layers, so many different connections. If we grapple with a so-called problem or issue as just an isolated issue we'll never get done addressing all its entangled roots. I'm working on a multi-layered process in my head involving what methodical way people would understand what should be addressed first and then next and then next, because I don't think we can ever deal with one thing and walk away from it.

Q: And do you have some hints at what that methodology is?

A: It's a parallel sequence. It's starting out with people identifying all of the elements, all of the connections, the way my methodology starts. Have everyone engaged in that at the beginning so they can prioritize the order of attention so no one goes nuts with how complex it is. Then there can be parallel systemic efforts worked on simultaneously with a good feedback system so that everyone can hear how each aspect is getting addressed, get on board, and know their role in it. We get internal buy-in. We have to internalize why something should be done before we're able to do it. In "integral" terms, it's about consciously creating new "left-hand quadrant" commitments of individual and collective understandings to enact new "right-hand" behaviors.

Q: Here's where the role of dialogue becomes socially important because it's about hearing each other and in some way unblocking what is coming from the other.

A: Yes. And learning together! When you get right down to it I think ultimately we all have to be engaged in the mental and social and political processes of thinking and doing.

Q: I'm working with someone right now who is an executive in the public sector and he has been heading up a program that essentially is bringing critical services to disadvantaged people in the community. What has occurred over the last year or so is that a coalition of people, mainly from the business and public sector world of local government have sought in the face of shrinking resources to access the resources this other program has. It is federally funded and doesn't draw on local resources.

These interests have positioned themselves to exercise greater and greater control to divert the resources into programs where they actually have either a direct financial or a direct political interest. The dilemma is that any attempt at dialogue is met with subterfuge and political action that further undermines the position of this person in this leadership role. So the point is that not everybody has good will when it comes to politics, money and power. How does that connect to the kind of dialogic processes that you're talking about?

A: One of my first reactions is to think of the old proverbial three legged stool. At least in some circles the three-legged stool is seen as business, government and well, I'll say civil society. And that's the element I hear missing from your scenario there.

Q: Is the civil society?

A: Plain old citizens who have an interest in the whole gig.

Q: In this case I think plain old citizens don't know what's going on, and since it deals with a disadvantaged sector of the community that most of the plain old citizens don't directly care about. That creates a problem.

A: Okay. That is the perfect application for something like the process we have been talking about, because so often we see the problem as being restricted to a disadvantaged population. I know umpteen million stories that go this way. Once people start analyzing what's been called the presenting issue, the question that needs to be addressed, people very quickly see what the connections are and they no longer isolate that disadvantaged population. They begin to see how it comes around and impacts their quality of life, the community's welfare. But what I really want to say is this comes back to my issue-naming process. Are we treating others as "its," as "the problem"? Are we "doing to" or "doing for" them – or can we shift our modus operandi and do things "with" them, starting with engaging them in defining the problems and needs from all perspectives. That sounds like a piece that's missing, not treating them as agents, but recipients. That's one of the ways to get better clarity about the real nature of the issue and public support for that spending. The transparency of that is another element. When it's discussed in public things become more transparent. That's really where, to me, its strength as a political element has its greatest power.

Q:Is there's any parallel between what we've been talking about and the experience you've been having with the integral community in terms of your attempt to nudge us all around the question of community?

A: Very much so. I think the parallel is that until we start doing things differently, via whatever catalyst it might be -- whether it is a letter I write or a process to be done -- there isn't much to shake people out of entrenched assumptions and mind sets about well, what we're doing is the way it ought to be. It isn't until we experience something different that I think we start to wake up, our blinders open a little bit wider around our eyes and we get some peripheral vision and some new learning experience.

The big question spans both: how can we start to do things differently? We need people stepping in saying, "Here is a way; let's try this." Usually people answer, "Yeah, let's try this because what we're doing isn't working." There are almost always, to use the magnet image, iron filings that are attracted to the magnet. They try it and it works.

Q: The critique that you made was that we were creating boundaries, if you will, by our choices of attention on particular theoretical constructs. I'm stating this rather abstractly, but.

A: That's a very good way to say it. That's what it is. Delicately, too.

Q: What you were advocating was that we needed to pry open the range of attention a little more in order to really address our own learning, our own development, and so forth. Is that a fair statement?

A: Yes.

Q: We're moving towards an orthodoxy that we need to transcend and include.

A: Yes. And the difference, the challenge I have found is that certain mind sets cannot grasp the concept of the culture. Isn't it funny, that in an integral community where we have that lower left quadrant that's all about cultural norms and beliefs? If we don't build in that self-reflective element in everything we're doing we will have a cultural change and we won't even see it, for good or for ill.

Q: In your writing (about a year ago) if I can paraphrase, you indicated that while we are purporting to hold up an approach, a model that transcends and includes, that is oriented to learning, somehow we are getting into a dogma.

A: Oh, very much.

Q: And how do you characterize the dogma?

A: The prevailing dogma is believe as I believe, do as I say, and if you don't do either of those then you're first tier. If you do come follow me then you're one of the saved. So it's a very ideological culture, and that's recognized by a lot of people.

Q: Then you're suggesting that there's a certain amount of intellectual hubris that's at the leadership of this movement?

A: Unfortunately it's not just in the leadership. It has contaminated much of the population.

Q: And what are they attached to?

A: I think it is different for different people, but it is largely a very linear thinking culture, it's a very orange-blue culture. There seems to be a lot of attachment to the "enlightenment bandwagon." That seems to be the anchor we must revolve around or not be among the saved or second tier. That whole second tier terminology has slanted the dynamics from the beginning. It's like the old mind/body split. We transcend our earthly way of being so we can earn Heaven. It is the same kind of thing -- not healthy.

Q: One of the questions about myself is maybe I'm just too green or I'm too much of an individualist and I haven't developed my strategist level yet. I would be automatically judging myself as not having developed to a stage where I could comprehend the point beyond those levels. Isn't that the kind of response you got?

A: It's the response I predicted I'd get. It's the in-built catch-22 in that culture. Those on the bandwagon "get it" and are second tier; others by default must be first tier. What I wrote dissented with those norms.

Q: What I've been hearing in the responses to you is a judgment that you see the issue the way you do because of the level of development you're at.

A: I think that's right – it's the catch-22's programmed response.

Q: How would you respond to that, because it seems to me to be representative of what you're talking about, the whole dynamic?

A: I really don't have a response to it, other than understanding that that's just the way things are here. At the same time, by and large what I heard from people is that they also had been recognizing there was something not "integral" there.

Q: And what is it that you think we, as a community, need to be doing?

A: I think we need to recognize we can't change others. I'd set up the Phoenix forum, to provide a way to start thinking together about if we need an integral community. If we do, what do we need it for? What function do we need to meet and what form might help serve it? Unfortunately, there were software delays before it could be activated, and by then it seemed the energy had dissipated in those dozens who had written to me after the letter. So be it. Each thing in its own time.

Q: Anything else about the kind of response that you got that you'd care to comment on?

A: The biggest invitation of these times -- especially in a community where everyone does a lot of talking about development and what it is -- the biggest invitation to begin to translate knowledge of stages of development into methodologies. For a leader or a researcher or anyone trying to be a change agent, I find it useless after a certain point to keep talking about the "what" of the stages. My big gig is to develop the "how." How do we put this knowledge into productive application? And that means, to me, methodological processes.

Q: What do your approaches mean for the idea of leadership?

A: The relevance for leadership in all of this is discriminating between learning static information about the "whats," and developing dynamic knowledge about "how." I know there are some people doing some good things, but there is a chasm between telling and talking about what ought to be and creating the methodology that brings it into being. Everyone isn't that creative or has the time and energy to dedicate to figure out how do I turn this information into something usable?

The trick is, the need is, to develop the productive processes for people to address their pressing problems or informational challenges. Or their visioning! You name it! Provide the methodology that leads to some new kinds of strategies that effect whatever they want to effect. It's the biggest gap. How do you do it?

Q: The whole idea of integral leadership is to provide a window on how can we make leadership from an integral perspective actionable. And so I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about that?

A:   Well, I guess there are a lot of different definitions of leadership, which is one of the first things I always pay attention to: how is somebody defining the term.

Q: I don't mean heroic leadership. I'm asking about leadership as a phenomenon that is manifested in any system. It doesn't necessarily come from someone who is in a formal position within that system.

A: Good, okay. And the question is, how do we make leadership actionable?

Q: Yeah, how can the integral approach or the approaches you've been talking about help us learn how to make leadership effective and actionable?

A: First, I think it's useful to recognize that when we start to work with a new framework, like integral theory's all-quadrants, all levels, or Torbert's equally integral 1 st -, 2 nd -, 3 rd -person inquiry, we have a developmental learning curve to go through. It takes time to outgrow a mechanical application and develop a fluid, dynamic understanding, first, then second, a process to use it.

These are good frameworks for designing efforts, no doubt about it. Yet it means we must internalize the ongoing interplay of "me," "us," and our environments, and that takes time, and we aren't all skilled at the same things. Sometime folks stop at just trying to use individuals' stages of development and forget the cultural processes and social structure aspects of an integral approach. I think we need to help each other craft methods and evaluative processes to assess how we're doing, and share what we know, what we've developed.

My process has particular applications, but it might also be a generic model of how to integrate the "what" and the "how" to work with all quadrants, all levels, in a practical, productive way. It responds to your leadership question insofar as it engages and invites forward the capacities needed, wherever they lie, to address things. My hunch is that if we make the well-articulated issues or challenges our "organizing principles" and design consciously integral efforts around them, it re-orients us in a productive way.

Q: Thank you, Sara.

Sara: Thanks, Russ.

Both of the papers referred to here are posted at the Integral Politics articles page at http://noosphere.cc/iparticles.html

^— ———-——— —^

1 Phoenix Rising by Russ Volckmann is now available,

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Summary

Don Beck: "Spirit and Business in the Fast Lane"

(Part 1), Transformation

David Zweig, Sr. Editor of The World Business Academy's website/ejournal, Transformation, introduces comments by Don Beck at the recent Global MindChange Forum in Santa Barbara, California, with a summary explanation of Spiral Dynamics. This is followed by the first part of Dr. Beck's comments. The second part will be published in the next iteration.

After presenting his case for the importance of verticality and memes, the connection with Clare Graves work and the evolution of the idea of spiral dynamics, Beck talks about his involvement with the work of Ken Wilber and the integral association of his work with Spiral Dynamics. In referencing the levels of the spiral he comments,

"These become the evolutionary codes that shape how cultures emerge. These particular codes are not inborn to our chassis like a Calvinistic script or crop circles in your psyche. These are complex, adoptive, contextual, intelligences --calm cues that emerge only in response to life conditions. So I have life conditions – I have the awakened memetic codes--to deal with the life conditions, and then I have the issues that those codes have penetrated as carriers of the meme. So I have to look at all three of those."

He neatly disposes of the "Green" resistance to hierarchies and adds,

"You cannot be an evolutionist or a student of human emotions without recognizing that which is true in all human forms, true in bacteria, viruses, genes, and memes: that our nature is an adaptive nature, not a predetermined nature. Spiral Dynamics represents the very first psychological theories based on how systems emerge in people. What we're looking at here are worldview, mindsets and memetic codes in us. We're not at a level, but the spiral exists in our heart and soul or in the Ark of a Covenant in the private closet in executive suites, or at the decision-making centers of entire cultures."

The remainder of this portion of the presentation accounts for the growth of terrorism in Spiral terms. He points out that Western civilization has been dominated by the Orange meme; this brings it directly into conflict with Red meme dominated cultures.

"So we have had 300 years of the emerging dominance of this Orange memetic. Well, don't make the mistake of thinking that the rest of the world is at that stage because it's not. And that's why so many attempts at global capitalism have done great damage, because they are imposing a memetic code that's not indigenous. It's exotic to the memetic vocabulary and experience and capability of people living in those zones.

Quoations Source: Copyright 2004 World Business Academy, 428 Bryant Circle, Suite 109, Ojai, CA 93023, Phone 805 640-3713 Fax 805 640-9914
Website www.worldbusiness.org, Editor, David Zweig, davidz@worldbusiness.org Phone 510 547-3223

Integral Organizational Leadership 

Here is the workshop many of you may have been waiting for. Here is integral leadership as applied to organizational life in our times. The faculty is a solid in-crowd from the Integral Institute and all of them are active in applying integral concepts in consulting, training, coaching, and/or executive education. If there is any place in the world where the best of integral leadership and organizational thinking should be brought together in a meaningful way it will be here. - Russ

Faculty: John Forman, Brett Thomas, Bert Parlee, Leo Burke

Ken Wilber will facilitate three half-day sessions
August 30 - Sept 3, 2004: Denver, Colorado
http://integralinstitute.org/seminars/ii-business0804.shtml

Here is an excerpt from the program description, Russ

Five Days to Breakthrough Leadership Effectiveness

Integral leadership is the capacity to engage both people and systems. Most of today's leaders are proficient with the technical dimensions of their organization's products and processes. Others are adept with the human elements of culture, ethics and behavior. Only the Integral Approach offers a complete roadmap that includes both the interior and exterior competencies necessary for effective leadership in today's brutally competitive and fast-changing world.

Through an unfolding series of didactic and experiential learning modules, you will be guided into a deeper understanding of the world's first truly Integral Approach to business leadership, known as AQAL ("all-quadrant, all-level"), an integral approach tailored directly to your specific leadership challenges.

Learning Objectives and Outcomes:

• Learn how to navigate the basic elements of the Integral Model (all quadrants, lines, levels, states and types). You'll leave with deeper theoretical understanding of the integral approach as well as practical strategies specific to your actual working situation.
• New leadership tools and methods for integrally informed strategic thinking, innovation, communication, collaboration, negotiation and conflict resolution.
• Multiple intelligences: not just emotional intelligence, but interpersonal, spiritual, moral, and even physical.
• Using the four quadrants as a quick scanning device to diagnose your organization's ailments, so you can design more complete treatments. NOTE: You are invited to bring your current problems and opportunities to the workshop for discussion and real world application.
• Gain a panoramic view of society's evolutionary development in a cultural, technological, environmental and geopolitical context, revealing dynamics crucial to your organization's-and your own-success.
• How to use multiple perspectives to gauge an individual's or group's meaning-making systems so that you can more effectively influence, support and lead them.
• Integral decision-making: techniques that allows for more comprehensive assessments and laser focused action.
• Integrally informed methods to expand your team's capacity to make sustainable changes and resolve situations that have proven resistant to change.
• Gain a clearer sense of your own growth along various lines of development. Identify personal and career goals and specific methods strategies for achieving them.
• PLUS you'll have the opportunity to receive Ken Wilber's perspectives regarding your most pressing questions, concerns and issues in an informal, intimate atmosphere of learning and discovery.

(We have received no payment for this announcement and it was unsolicited by Integral University or anyone else for that matter. – Russ)

Guest Article 

Integral leadership: the Case of Mother Teresa
Thierry C. Pauchant and Pierre-Alain Giffard
HEC Montreal

The reality of integral leadership has been exemplified by leaders such as Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Rachel Carson or Mohandas Gandhi. Mother Teresa is another example on which this article is based. These leaders are perceived today not only as some of the most ethical of the 20 th and 21 st centuries, but also as some of the most efficient, having tackled the deepest scars of our world. These leaders have not only had the capacity to mobilize many followers and to be efficient; they followed themselves their deepest Self and, in the process, helped themselves and others to become more integral.

We are presently studying the integral leadership exemplified by Mother Teresa. We will publish our results in a book we call a "leadergraphy", i.e. a short book written for leaders and leaders-to-be which goes beyond a mere biography. In this book, we describe the integral aspects of her leadership as well as the process and path she has taken to develop herself.   We present below some of our results.

As opposed to many leaders idealized by the business community, Mother Teresa was operating at a spiritual level. This propelled her to create and lead an organization entirely devoted to the love and the service of the poor. Further, she did not want to become herself a leader. She accepted to become one, a serving leader. giving her life and her comfort for the sake of others. "loving until it hurts", as she liked to say.

In 1946, as she was traveling, she intensely experienced a divine presence, that she called God from her Christian perspective, and felt she was given an "inner command". She was to leave the comfort of her convent and help the poorest of the poor while living among them:   "It was an order" she declared "to fail it would have been to break faith with God." Through her faith and obedience to this spiritual calling she achieved what some consider as unachievable for a human being. Colleagues at work saw in her "a mix between a military commander and St. Francis". For example, when she flew in the war torn West Beirut, a Red Cross officials said, "What stunned everybody was her energy and efficiency.   She saw the problem, felt to her knees, prayed for a few seconds, then she was rattling off a list of the supplies she needed - nappies, plastic pants, chamber pots."

Differing from many leaders, Mother Teresa's was simple and humble. She kept no account of the awards heaped upon her: "She accepted them but did so with a profound sense of her own unworthiness and an insistence that she did so only on behalf of the poor." She was also immensely respectful of others, including their own religion. For example, in all the years she had known her Hindu biographer, Navin Chawla, not once, not even obliquely, did she suggest him a conversion of faith. Her frequent refrain to him was only: "have you begun to pray yet?"   Navin Chawla considers Mother Teresa as one of those rare souls who has transcended all barriers of race, religion, creed and nation:   "She aspires for no kingdom" he said, "no honor, not even salvation or moksha.. (She is) wholly dedicated to the removal of peeda paraayi (the pain of others)." This spirit is quite different from traditional leadership whose goal is often to "win over others", for the benefice of a group, an organization or a nation.

The way Mother Teresa lead organizations was also quite surprising, going against most current advise in traditional leadership books. For example, she was not afraid of giving up all resources and keep nothing for the future. She was unshakable in her conviction that, as she said, "God provides".   "Money," she declared "I never give it a thought.   It always comes.   We do all our work for our Lord.   He must look after us". Accordingly, she would be attentive to "spiritual signs". For her, if God did not provide for a given project, it meant that what she was planning to do was not to be, a very different conception of traditional decision-making and strategic planning: "If He wants something done, He must provide us with the means.   If he does not provide us with the means, then it shows that he does not want that particular work. I forget about it."  

Mother Teresa did not get involved in politics as most current leaders do in order to achieve what they want. But she used her influence when it came to promote the respect of human dignity and freedom. For example, when a bill named The Freedom of Religion Bill was proposed by the Indian parliament, an attempt to reinforce a discriminatory legislation, she wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of India: "This new move that is being brought before Parliament under the cover of freedom of religion is false. There is no freedom if a person is not free to choose according to his or her conscience (.). All these years our people have lived together in peace. Now religion is used as a deadly weapon to destroy the love they have for each other, just because some are Christians, some Hindus, some Tribals."

As a last difference with traditional leadership, Mother Teresa was not only about "doing". She founded her order first on the depth of contemplation. As opposed to focus on the future, she insisted that actions needed to be grounded in the present moment and be filled with love. She considered lack of love and charity as this world's greatest evil. Her beliefs were simple, almost limpid, revolving around a unique principle: loving God and others. Communion and obedience to this Principle gave her the ambition and faith to do something, in fact anything she could, for the poorest of the poorest and lead an organization that answered the most pressing human needs.  

But Mother Teresa was not perfect. She was indeed "one of us". Her life demonstrates that she had herself to grow, sometimes painfully, in the different dimensions of her life, physical, emotional, intellectual, social, ethical and spiritual. Her life demonstrates that we too could take a similar path towards integral leadership. The "leadergraphy" we are working on is not a list of magical recipes. We are conceiving it to be an inspiring book, based on one specific example. We hope it will inspire the men and women working in private and public organizations not to engage themselves in a religious order but to engage themselves in the path of integral development and make a real difference in the world by becoming the best they can be. We are also preparing other "leadergraphies" on other integral leaders.

For more information on this research project: www.leadergraphies.com

Spink, Kathryn (1997). Mother Teresa : A Complete Authorized Biography.
HarperSanFrancisco: San Francisco, p. 163.

Editor's Note: Dr. Giffard works with Dr. Thierry Pauchant, Chair of Ethical Management, HEC Montral, an Affiliate of the University of Montreal. A forthcoming issue of Integral Leadership Review will feature an interview with Dr. Pauchant about his (and others') work in integral leadership.

CODA › Russ Volckmann

The 100 book project on Integral leadership
A Call for Contribution
Thierry C. Pauchant
www.leadergraphies.com

Abraham Lincoln defined leadership as a growth process - a course of development and maturation - which encourages people to act from "the better angels of their nature". Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, Rachel Carson and many others demonstrated the power of such leadership. In the process, they changed the world around them. Imagine what could happen in our societies if all leaders were as purposeful, meaningful, ethical, integral? What would happen if we were developing in ourselves and others some of these same qualities?

In the first systematic research effort of its kind – involving one hundred researchers around the world over a ten year period (leadership scholars, executives, consultants, graduate students, etc.), – this research project explores practical yet profound questions about this more integral type of leadership: What are leaders who are considered to be operating at a more mature level of development doing differently?   How have they achieved this maturity? How can we help future leaders to undergo such development?

Answers to these questions could modify our current views of leadership and change the way leaders are chosen and trained. These answers could also help us to address the four great challenges of our world, as defined by UNESCO: The challenges of peace, poverty, ecological viability and collective meaning and purpose. Integral leaders are not only men and women of great principles. They also help us to effectively tackle the most challenging problems of our world.

We will publish over 10 years 100 books on 100 integral leaders, allowing conclusions to be drawn across time, space, cultures and religions. These short and jargon-free books will not be standard biographies but – what we call – "leadergraphies". Leadergraphies are inspirational and didactic books written for leaders-to-be, leaders who want to learn and people who work with them. These volumes go beyond a mere chronology, documenting the innovative actions of integral leaders in four interrelated domains: their behaviors with others, the organizational tools they use, the shared meanings they promote, and the development of self they encourage in themselves and others, i.e. the four quadrants model developed by Ken Wilber. Further, these volumes go beyond the one man show and issues of fame, power, status or charisma, so common in traditional leadership studies which often miss the context of leadership. Rather, they document how these perfectible human beings – like all of us – have grown in many domains of life, including the physical, emotional, intellectual, social, ethical and spiritual domains. Lastly, each volume is supported by a synthesis of more than 1,000 pages of data carefully chosen and coded into a computerized database by a multidisciplinary and multicultural research team.

We will complement this 100 book series with teaching aids and seminars, didactic case studies, computerized instruments, pedagogical videos, multimedia presentations, conferences and workshops, and a dedicated web site. We will also publish several synthesis books, drawing from our unique database which will include at term 100,000 pages on 100 integral leaders. Our hope is that this multifaceted material will inspire the men and women working in private and public organizations to engage themselves in integral development, individually and collectively. As opposed to mimicking the behaviors of famous leaders – a common practice in current leadership training programs – the great challenges of our world require that we become the best we can be. Integral leaders are driven by the same vocation: they are helping themselves and others to act from the better angels of their own natures.

You are invited to contribute to this research effort by facilitating its logistics or by becoming a co-researcher and the author of a leadergraphy.

Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences 

14th Annual International Conference
15-18 July 2004
Milwaukee, WI, USA

Featured Speakers:

• Dr. Glenda Eoyang, Executive Director of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, Options for Action: Paradox and Surprise in Human Systems Dynamics
• Dr. Raima Larter, Program Director of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry at the National Science Foundation, Lessons for Life from the Newest Science
• Dr. Michael Gillespie, Professor of English, Marquette University, The Chaos and Complexity of Classic Hollywood Cinemahttp://www.societyforchaostheory.org/conf2004/about.html

(I was asked to share this information with you and readily agreed. This group has always been cutting edge and challenging.-- Russ)

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