Redefining/Redesigning Leadership

I had an amazing conversation today with a friend/colleague from another city. He’s in an MBA program and is exploring leadership and – lucky me! – I got to be on his short list of people to talk with about notions of leadership. During the hour or so that we spent in conversation, there were all kinds of notions that just popped into my awareness as we spoke. An Emerging Future, in action!

Here are some of the things that we talked about:

* Leadership is a nominalization. If we denominalize ‘leadership’, all that’s left is experience – and experience can only occur in the body. When we consider ‘leadership’ as an experience in the body, we can no longer separate the idea from our capacity to engage it.

* We have been taught to think of ‘leadership’ as a verb or a process. We explored the notion of ‘leadership’ as a result or by-product of something else. What was that ‘something else’?

* We considered the relationship between leadership and evoking potential; and the implications of time (i.e. past, present and future) to these notions. ‘Potential’ is future oriented, with potential implying what can be and does not yet exist. And yet, much of our conversation about ‘leadership’ is based on the past (i.e. seeking frameworks/templates/designs from observing/experiencing leaders; or identifying characteristics of leaders/leadership from observation of past experiences). The result is that we attempt to create the future (potential) from what we know (the past), resulting in our recreating the past over and over again. It would be a quantum leap forward if we were to find a way to stand (at least) in the present in our desire to evoke the potential (i.e. trusting emerging futures as they are in the flow of the ‘now’).

* We spoke of the recent IPCC Climate Change report – and we both acknowledged the urgency to redefine ‘leadership’. Our existing models of/thinking about leadership will not give us what we need to create a new and different future. We need to offer whole new ways of thinking about creating our future; and we need to find ways to quickly awaken those new ways of being, given the density and intensity of challenges that we face.

Those are just a few of the things we talked about. It was energizing, revitalizing – and gave me a great sense of hope for our future.

One more thing: we also had a simple and living example of the power of an emerging future and its relationship to ‘leadership’. My friend engaged in the simple act of posting some of his own thinking to his MBA group email list. Without editing himself (what would they think, how would it affect his grade, did others think like him, etc.), he shared his thoughts. His comments appeared to go into a black hole, with no comments or feedback from his colleagues. Except one woman. She got in touch with him and is now enthusiastically pursuing a new line of thought for herself. Had he not just engaged and been willing to offer what was there in the moment, she would not have had the opportunity to awaken to a new thought. It takes courage to be willing to just be ourselves - and engage!

There is much more and, no doubt, more extensive parts of that conversation will make their way here.

Another great day, just hanging out with some great people on an adventure of new ideas!

Breathing is good….