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[Emergence]Leadership is the effective communication of a powerful story. Our greatest leaders are integral. They can speak the right hand side of the quadrant fluently…they can do the ROI, and the high performance, and the systems. But if we examine the great leaders of the last 100 years, all of them also have lived in and spoken from the left hand side of the quadrant. Their speeches moved us, because they were emotional, and values based. They spoke from their hearts to ours, not from head to head Practical action you can take to improve your leadership, communications and awareness. More than 1,600 subscribers now receive this free monthly newsletter. Thanks for passing it on! To SUBSCRIBE, please use the links at the bottom of this issue. Syzergy Pty Ltd. For permission to post or reprint, please see notice at the end. UpdateThis last month I have been working with many of my clients on accessing the ~below the neck~ heart/feeling based part of themselves, and bringing that into their leadership. Christine Leaders as Storytellers, combining the head and the heart.Up until about 500 years ago the way that we knew things in the world was via our leaders, and the leaders of the Western World at that time were predominantly the Church. If we were told the earth was flat, we believed them. If we were told by Aristotle that women had more teeth than men, we believed him. We didn’t even bother to count the teeth, not until half a century ago. According to developmental theory and in particular, Spiral Dynamics, until the right environmental conditions exist, we cannot start to ask some of the ~why~ questions. I can only ask these kinds of questions if I have evolved enough through the stages of development to a place where my environment allows the spontaneous emergence of the bigger questions. About 500 years ago, a disparate group of people started asking some of these questions. They were known as the empiricists. The scientists who like to measure things. Trouble is, they started to cause great fear within the Church, who at the time was the seat of power and all knowledge in the land. The Church and the scientists reached a kind of detente. The scientists agreed to only study and measure the exterior world of structure and form, and to leave the interior world of beliefs and spirit to the church. Enter the quadrants. Please visit www.syzergy.biz/integral-leadership.html to view the basic Ken Wilber quadrants. The entire right hand side of the quadrant is exterior/measurable. It is the world of form, structure and behaviour. I can see it and record it. It is also the world of return on investment, performance management, systems, such as democracy, theocracy, our monetary systems. It is the world in which our companies and corporations live, and our governments. It is the doing and action side of things. The entire left hand side of the quadrant is the interior/subjective/inter-subjective. I cannot see with accuracy the way you are feeling, or your values and beliefs, just by looking at you. I can observe and make assumptions of your vales and beliefs by watching you interact in the exterior world. If you say you are feeling happy, I have a choice to believe you or not. I really cannot be certain though, that you are telling me the truth. The left hand side of the quadrant is the world of our soul and spirit. It is our feelings, our emotions, our worldviews, our uniqueness. Over the last 500 years we have become experts at the right hand side of the quadrant. We have cut and diced and analysed and built and measured everything we can contemplate. We know how to build great big companies, and war machines and fancy cars, houses, technology. As we evolved, there has been a separation of Church and State (Spiral Dynamics states that we cannot skip stages of development, we all must go through the same stages to reach the higher levels, but we certainly can regress down the spiral, which in our current environment has/is happening in certain areas. Since 9/11 the USA has tended to slip from the Orange Achiever/Materialistic level, to the Blue Absolutistic/Saintly/Right Wrong level. But that is another conversation.), and hence for many people, the only way they have connected regularly with the left hand side of the quadrant was in their hour a week at Church, and for many, not even that. So we find ourselves in 2005, with gizmo’s and toys and quality of life, and busy businesses, all working on going faster and higher and bigger and better in our exterior world. And yet at the core of our being, we absolutely know that something is missing. There is a soul longing. An emptiness. A deep yearning for connection. And we start to ask the fundamental questions of life. Why am I here, what is my purpose? Why are we killing each other? Still? What is missing is an integration of the entire four quadrants. A reconnection to the left hand side, to our interiors. What is missing is a recognition and understanding of our intrinsic values, and an opportunity to bring our whole selves to our work, not just the performing monkey part. Many companies have started to recognise this. In the simplest terms, they have seen that any business is built on the conversations and relationship between people. That in order for them to be their best as a profitable business entity, they have to include the values and feelings and emotions of the people, and to nourish and nurture the culture. Cultural change initiatives are par for the course currently. As they need to be. The new age movement didn’t start on a whim. It started because the conditions were such that the fundamental questions of existence had to be asked. Similarly, if we ask the question, why is coaching present today that it wasn’t 20 years ago…what need does coaching meet that was not a need in 1960? The answer to that question from my perspective is that coaching is the only conversation that allows people to be supported in all four quadrants. It is responding to a need for integration of all parts of ourselves and our work. The exterior and the interior in both the individual and collective. Coaching is responding to the need for a greater conversation because we have become so isolated in our ever-increasing technological connectivity. We yearn to presence the truth of who we are in witness to someone else. We are at a stage of development where now it is time to ~know thy self~ but this time without the narcissism of the new age movement. We need to~ know thy self~ in order to serve others better. Leadership is the effective communication of a powerful story. Our greatest leaders are integral. They can speak the right hand side of the quadrant fluently…they can do the ROI, and the high performance, and the systems. But if we examine the great leaders of the last 100 years, all of them also have lived in and spoken from the left hand side of the quadrant. Their speeches moved us, because they were emotional, and values based. They spoke from their hearts to ours, not from head to head, which is the kind of conversation that works if you have a task to do, but simply will not inspire hundreds or thousands of people to create change (unless you use force). Think about the most profound conversations you have had in your life. The ones you will never forget. They were emotive. Heart to heart. Powerful conversation engages the heart. We as leaders need to go there. Not because we are weak, but because that is where our strength lies. For some people, accessing their emotional, feeling based left side of the quadrant is not so simple. We have been brought up to honour leadership as strong and all knowing, all controlling. Very right hand sided. Yet the leadership we are yearning for is that which draws on all, the head and the heart. It is the marriage of sense and soul. As a leader, I need to communicate a great story. Stories are so powerful because they are emotive. They do move us. And we love them so. (Look at the movie, TV and book industry…the constant search for great stories!) We love them so because we have neglected the left hand side of the quadrant for so long. (For this same reason, we are seeking to connect with the Eastern philosophies, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen) The questions then become, what stories are you telling as a leader? Are your stories right hand sided, about profit and ROI, performance and shareholder value? Or do they also have heart value? Do they create connection and a spontaneous desire in people to take action that is both tangible and intangible? Have a great month. Events and Offerings, Group Coaching Free Sessions, plus the Reiss Values ProfileGROUP CAOCHING For those of you interested in joining the powerful and provocative journey of group coaching, please join us for an information event on the following dates. Or. North America Wednesday April 20th at 6 pm EST Send an email to Christine@syzergy.biz to register and so we can forward you the telephone bridge number. The 7 pillars of this program are.
I am now qualified to deliver and interpret the Reiss values profile. This instrument, which takes about 20 minutes to complete online, is quite simply the most powerful instrument I have seen to determine your unique intrinsic motivators. If you are interested in why you do what you do, and would like to know how to motivate your staff, then this is a fast track way of accessing comprehensive understanding of the critical drivers. If you would like more information, please email me with your questions to Christine@syzergy.biz with ~Reiss~ in the subject line. If you would like to take the profile the fee is $200 (excluding tax for Australia) which includes the online assessment, plus a 30 to 45minute debrief. Email Christine@syzergy.biz and we will get you set up.
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