Integral Leadership Review
Volume V, No. 2 - April 2005
Table of Contents
- Leadership Quote
- Mission
- Article: Scenarios: Emanation and the Learning Challenge
- A Leadership Coaching Tip
- A Fresh Perspective: Big Presence: An Interview with Diane Hamilton
- Guest Article: Mike Jay, The Rise and Fall of Development
- Integral for the Masses: Keith Bellamy
- Summary (publications worth noting)
- Coda
- A Request
Leadership Quote
"It is an assumption that leadership starts with a capital "L" and that when you’re on top you’re automatically a leader. It’s part of a larger hero myth that inhibits us from seizing the initiative. ‘It’s not my job,’ we say, and we wait for someone to ride in and save us."
-- Kouzes and Posner, The Leadership Challenge
Mission
We are in the fifth year of publication of the Integral Leadership Review. It is increasingly taking the form that I hoped, although I am sure there is still much that can be done to make this a useful document that attracts a wider audience, particularly in the fields of consulting, training and coaching, as well as among business and other organizational leaders who have a passion for leadership.
I am grateful to the 983 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
Scenarios: Emanation and Learning Challenge
Russ Volckmann
This is the second in a short series of articles that recommends the use of scenarios in leadership development. Further, it suggests that an integral approach to learning from scenarios adds a level of richness that better prepares potential leaders for future events. That is the purpose of leadership development and of the use of scenarios: to develop leadership potential.
In the last issue I suggested the use of scenarios for leadership development through the phase of emanation. I considered the role of the consultant/trainer/coach (CTC) as scenarioist in the design of scenarios. The scenario has been designed or chosen by the client and the support of the CTC. The choice of the scenario is guided by the identification of potential events that would exercise the integral aspects of leadership. It is used to generate potential action and implications (emanation). I briefly presented the idea that the CTC then works with the individual client or a group to reflect on what has been learned. And now it is time for 'formalizing" the learning process to this point.
Keep in mind that when we talk about "integral," we are talking about two things. First, integral refers to the use of integral theory and models to guide learning and development. Second, integral refers to a stage of development. In these articles I am interested in the former and hold the latter as a place to learn about for its lessons on leadership and strategy and potentially a place to be or to access, sometimes.
This is the phase that takes the experience of analysis and furthers the crystallization of learning on the part of individuals and on the part of teams involved in the generative process described in the last issue. The challenge is to focus in on, describe and generate learning from what has happened in the process so far. While it is possible to integrate the identification of learning into the scenario process during the generative phase by alternating generation with focus on learning, it is useful to treat it as a separate process within this phase.
Keith Bellamy notes,
"Whilst in emanation, the laws of reality are suspended. As a consequence, the scenarios that have been developed at this stage will, should they ever ‘leak out’ of the development team, appear totally crazy and could be seriously career limiting for all involved. This is exactly as it should be at this stage…There is great leadership development potential from ‘playing’ for a while in this state as it forces the scenario development team to explore places that would otherwise be blocked to them in the ‘real world.’ This provides them with insights and understanding that will allow them to be effective ‘prophets' and ‘ambassadors’ for the scenarios as they pass through the lower levels."
The next article in this series will address the dissemination challenge in the third phase of the use of scenarios. The point to be taken here is that the learning process using scenarios be understood as an exercise in the explorations of possibilities such that individuals and teams have an opportunity to stretch the boundaries of discovery. The less inhibited this process, the greater potential for that stretch including the quadrant, level and stream dimensions of the integral model.
Suppose that a client is working with the scenario of a merger, using this scenario to explore and develop his (or a team’s) leadership and to identify leadership opportunities throughout the company. How can an integral approach support that learning?
To begin with we would support processing the analysis through the lens of the quadrants. We would want to look at
- What were the assumptions, beliefs and values that shaped the client’s response?
- What were the actions that stemmed from these?
- What were the cultural factors that influenced the response? and
- What were the interactions with systems, processes and technology that related to the client’s actions?
By asking questions such as these we can use the model of the holon to guide learning. The client has the opportunity to get insights into choices made and opportunities missed. By the way, if we chose an alternative view of the holon, e.g., Mark Edwards’ holonics, we might ask different questions. But for now, let’s continue with the approach that we have begun.
What about stages or levels of development? Here we can use any one of the stage models: Torbert/Cook-Greuter, Kegan or Graves/Spiral Dynamics®. An expert CTC could walk the client through an analysis of choices in relation to levels of development and the possibilities from the perspectives of other levels.
The goal here is not to determine which choice is right, but to enable the client to develop the capacity to think about situations with these frameworks. This is an important reminder that using scenarios is not about making a decision or planning what to do in the future. Rather, it is to provide the client with an opportunity to develop capability, to become familiar with ranges of options through an integral lens. This is where the idea of scaffolding comes in. This process would support leveraging capability and access to the different perspectives of the different stages. While this does not guarantee a higher stage response in the crunch of the moment, it will open up possibilities.
Probably what is most important to leadership development is to focus on horizontal development that is, focus on existing strengths and how they can be leveraged. Then examine the implications for the client and those stakeholders with whom he will likely be interacting. What are the levels in Graves’ framework that are likely to show up in the scenario? Will the client or other stakeholders be in survival mode? Who would be seeking to promote their own power and control? What rules might be invoked? What aspirations are held? How does community show up? Are there opportunities or capacities for including consideration of all levels in the strategic options that are identified?
Then it would be important to reflect this back on the clients, the individuals engaged in their own development. What levels are difficult for this individual to see or understand? What level is there a gut level reaction against? What skills does the individual possess that supports engaging different levels? What is the impact of the client’s responses to the expectations/values/worldviews of the capacity to find high potential strategies?
The use of scenarios for leadership development offers a high potential for self-discovery and learning. This can be leveraged in future situations demanding effective leadership and strategy. It offers the individual and the team an opportunity to broaden the scope of their own strategic thinking, recognition of their own responses to strategies, and the development of methods for engaging stakeholders.
If we add a focus on the notion of leadership, we can also use this approach to explore opportunities for individual and collective leadership. This would include preparations for co-leadership and he capacity to recognize how leadership can be generated throughout the organization over time to meet the requirements of different situations.
There is a next step to this process: creation. Here the client takes the learning and designs a process that moves learning into the organization, either in the context of the leadership development program with a team of fellow participants or through processes in the real organization. The next article in this series will address that.
Have you used scenarios in relation to leadership development? Please contact me. russ@leadcoach.com
Clearly, our capacities for seeing and understanding different worldviewsand action logics, much less be able to strategize from those perspectives, is a function of our integral development. Cognitively, we can learn to recognize the signs and symbols (and symptoms?) of various levels of development along multiple streams. A challenge in coaching executives is to first, help them recognize streams and levels within themselves and then be able to translate that into comprehending others. But the capabilities and capacities for doing this will not be the same for everyone or for all contexts. Ultimately, the executive, not the coach, must determine what is important.
A Fresh Perspective: Big Presence:
Excerpts from an Interview with Diane Hamilton
Russ Volckmann
Q: Diane, you were described as a student of Genpo Roshi and an authorized Big Mind process facilitator. I had never heard of Diane Hamilton and all of a sudden she shows up at the Integral Organizational Leadership Workshop in Colorado and does this extraordinary job of leading 50 plus people through Big Mind. From what I got from doing interviews with participants and from the evaluations at the end of the workshop, it was hugely impactful on everyone in the room. Rarely have I seen anything so powerful in terms of the responses people had to you and the process. Virtually everyone indicated that your presentation was the most powerful experience of the whole week. In that context that is very powerful and positive feedback. Now I find out that you are also doing the Integral Practice Seminar in Europe and elsewhere. Last spring I knew that the Integral Institute was recruiting trainers for some of the programs that they’ve been developing. So, apparently, you ended up in that role, is that correct?
A: Yes, that’s right, for that particular seminar.
Q: Today I would like to talk a little bit about the Integral Practice Seminar. I would like to talk also about some of the things that you had to say on Integral Naked about the importance of teachers having leadership training. Does that work for you?
A: Yes…
Q: In a very brief video on Integral Naked, the point I think you made is that people who are in teacher roles, albeit in spiritual traditions or other traditions, need to understand and be trained in leadership. Is that correct?
A: Yes, I made that comment on a panel that we held at Ken’s. We were questioning the whole influence of integral practice on the practice of Buddhism. The point that I was making is that Buddhist practice helps us let go of our conventional notions of how things should be, cut through our conceptual thoughts and relate to the world as a field of experience in an integral way. One of the things that I’ve observed is that within Buddhist organizations there is a tendency not to utilize conventional wisdom regarding leadership, organization, negotiation patterns and communication skills.
My view about that is just like within medicine: you can be a profound Buddhist practitioner and be a much stronger healer because of that, but you still are going to utilize conventional methods of healing. You are still going to utilize emergency room techniques to heal a broken bone. The reliance on meditation and the realization of emptiness underlies our ability to work together in a more straightforward, conventional way.
I was speaking for the need to join meditation practice with organizational skills, including leadership and teamwork skills, and not throw those out just because there is a deeper realization that we’re also working from. That was the perspective I was bringing.
Q: How would you see that working?
A: Let me see if I can explain how it comes up in my experience. Meditation practice frees us from our expectations of how things should be so that we don’t get stuck in petty little worldviews. At the same time, we can lose our ground as an organization. What I mean by that is, for instance, we get thrown back on ourselves every time we set up an expectation that the organization is going to perform in a certain way, that certain deadlines are going to be met or we are attached to a whole range of conventional notions related to organizations and getting along with other people.
There’s a really powerful practice within Buddhist practice to look into your own mind at those moments and notice what sort of idea you’ve become attached to about how things should be and how things should run. Very powerful! Very important! But organizations can start to be a little bit aimless in my view, if we don’t also include the relative form side of leadership, negotiation and good communication skills. If every time I go to communicate with a colleague I’m told that I need to work with my own mind, there’s never that moment where as Ken would say, we now explore what happens in the "we" space. In other words, we privilege the "I" awareness a lot without necessarily looking at problems within the "we" space.
Q: If we are going to talk about leadership from an integral point of view, then we have to include all four quadrants.
A: Absolutely.
Q: And you’re suggesting the lower quadrants are also part of leadership.
A: Absolutely.
Q: Tell me a bit about what you mean by "leadership."
A: In the context that I was speaking in, what I was thinking mainly about was the skill set that allows an organization to function and allows people to coalesce. For instance, in a Zen center or in an organization whose function it is to provide spiritual practice to others there needs to be somebody in a leadership position who has vision, provides direction, helps decision-making processes and knows how to build teamwork among the people within the organization. To the extent that leader provides those, that organization is going to increase its capacity to provide the service to others. To the extent that those qualities are missing and we’re relying mainly on the teachings themselves, then I feel like we diminish the capacity of the organization to actually be of service.
Q: Let me push back just a little bit because there’s a tendency when talking about leadership—despite the admonition to attend to the collective—to focus on what historically might be known as a heroic notion of leadership. There is one leader who does all those different functions that you named. Increasingly I’m finding both in the academic world and elsewhere more and more attention to the notion of collective leadership or to leadership as an emergent property within organizations that is manifested by multiple individuals throughout the organization. Given that different slant on it, does that alter at all the way you think about leadership in the kinds of institutions you’re interested in?
A: Not terribly. I mean I think that leadership as an emergent property. Leadership that is flexible and moves among members of the organization is a more powerful leadership ultimately because it’s contained by the whole. But even one good leader makes all the difference in my view.
Q: So you can never have enough, but…
A: I’ll take a General Patton if that’s…
Q: … so you can never have enough, but one is great.
A: Yes. When you’ve got a group of five or six, how wonderful. But just one is essential.
Q: And what meaning am I to make of the fact that you cited a military leader in your example?
A: I used to watch Patton when I was a kid—the movie with George C. Scott. Actually he had some flaws as a leader. But he did have quite a remarkable ability to see the big picture and to strategize how to move successfully. It takes a lot to hold the big picture. to help coalesce people behind a vision to get an organization to move fluidly and to help people to move fluidly. There’s nothing more frustrating than working within an organization where everybody has great intent, but there’s no galvanizing presence. Leadership is either disbursed, confused or conflicted. I certainly see that as a mediator. I’ve seen a lot of organizations like that, a lot of them.
Q: So your mediation brings you into organizations, not just mediating between individuals.
A: Absolutely. I’ve done a lot of mediating within organizations and these issues related to leadership emerge pretty much all the time.
Q: Could you give an example?
A: I helped to facilitate a meeting of cardiologists who ran a practice together. There were somewhere between 10 and 12 doctors who participated in this practice. There was one de facto leader who had a very bold presence and who had great skill as a doctor. People intuitively followed him. But the way that the organization was governed was actually by consensus. What they had done unknowingly is create a group norm that required a unanimous vote in order to implement any initiative. They weren’t necessarily aware that they had done that.
There were two levels of governance. One was the intuitive level where people spontaneously followed this one person’s lead and then there was the next level, which was the more formalized level where they would take a vote. Without realizing it they had created a governance model that kept them from being able to make any decisions, because they could never reach a unanimous decision. But they didn’t understand why they couldn’t get anywhere. I think one person was able to block whatever decision they wanted to implement. Once I diagnosed that, we changed it and required a super-majority. They were able to move forward after that.
Q: In other words, they had a conflict between the lower left and lower right hand quadrants.
A: Perfect, yes.
Q: Because the culture was saying one thing, but the formal system was saying something else.
A: Precisely, and they just didn’t know. They just didn’t quite understand what had happened…
Q: Have you given any thought to how these different streams of development are related to the practice of leadership in organizations and systems? Would it be helpful if we just took them one at a time and see what you have to say about it?
A: Sure.
Q: Okay. How about the spiritual? How is that related to the role of leadership in organizations?
A: The spiritual manifests in a number of different ways. Let’s say from a Zen perspective, the mind is free. The mind is utterly free to relate to whatever conditions arise, because it’s not attached to conventional views about how things should be or how things should get done. It’s a field of creative opportunity. It also allows for outcomes or for direction that was sort of unprecedented.
There’s the possibility for new vision as well. When somebody has cultivated a deep spiritual practice the values that emerge from that kind of practice are values that tend to create more of the same. Let’s say the value of compassion for instance. The organization starts to have a quality of caring for itself, the whole and whatever it’s organized towards. There is some sense that actually benefits others. Compassion would be another by-product of a spiritual leader and wisdom.
I think it’s really great to think about certain leaders traditionally who’ve had highly developed spiritual roles. If you are in a leadership role, these spiritual qualities necessarily emerge or you just can’t handle it. If you take somebody like Gandhi or Nelson Mandela, they penetrate to that ground of being and that heart of compassion in order to lead. It’s not even possible to lead in those kinds of situations without spiritual integrity. I always think about when someone commented to Nelson Mandela that 30 years is a terribly long time to spend in prison. His response was, "It’s just the right amount of time to teach the guards to read." That comes from somebody who has deep spiritual awareness…
Q: Okay, the physical side, the physical stream and leadership—the obvious is that by keeping oneself fit and in good health one’s mind is fit and in good health as well, since there is no mind/body dichotomy.
A: In a way, it’s the most obvious. In fact, they’re all important, but the physical seems to be the most obvious. A healthy, relaxed, open body is just going to perform better. People are going to be more attracted to it. People are going to listen better. It seems the most straight-forward of the four, but for some of us, the hardest to implement.
Q: And perhaps equally obvious, the whole psycho-dynamic piece in relation to leadership.
A: The psycho-dynamic aspect tends to be underplayed a little bit because my guess is that for most of us, unless we have done a lot of psycho-dynamic work, there’s still a tendency to see those disturbances that occur, not as emanations of our own mind or at least in part a relationship of our mind to the world, but as the world itself. It’s a really strong developmental shift when a person starts to take responsibility for those disturbances and work on them from an upper-left perspective, as well as say a lower right perspective or a lower left. Does that make sense?
Q: I’m trying to make that connection to the lower right. Are you referring to something you said earlier?
A: Well, just that we often relate to the world as an "it." There may be a person or a set of people in the field that are causing this trouble, let’s say Republicans for instance. Then we may get organized around just trying to overcome the Republican agenda, as opposed to picking up the part of us that’s also Republican—that cares about certain kinds of values, security, predictability, those kinds of things—really seeing those aspects in ourselves. Our next step would be to address what is in the field, because it changes our relationship to it, if we see it as part of us. We can’t be as cavalier. We can’t be as one-sided. We ultimately can’t be as violent.
Q: Also, it frees us to focus on what we may have control over, which is ourselves.
A: Yes. We don’t have to go around in a big fight with the world all the time.
Q: Or under the illusion that we can change others.
A: Yes, that one.
Q: What about the cognitive integral theory part? Why would leaders in organizations want or need to understand integral theory?
A: Well, for a lot of different reasons. Integral theory can help us understand individuals. It can help us see an organization as a whole and understand it’s methodology. If we were to include all four quadrants in our thinking that would expand the functioning of the organization and the orientation of the organization.
I do a lot of work for the Nature Conservancy and there are two people who are there studying integral theory. Let’s take something specific like ecology. If we take a four quadrant view and are really working all four of those quadrants, as well as looking at levels of development, we can have a much more nuanced approach to how it is we do our business: how we work with government officials, how we work with land owners, how we create policy, how we build strength in our own organization. It’s just a more expanded and whole approach to doing what it is we do, doing what it is we care about and what we value. That’s my view. It’s been really helpful to me. It’s explained a lot of things that I just couldn’t make sense of before I encountered Ken Wilber’s work.
Q: Ethics seems fairly straight forward. What about art? Why would you include the aesthetic stream in understanding or developing leadership?
A: Well, people are impacted by their aesthetic environments a lot. It’s not coincidental that successful organizations generally have beautiful surroundings...
My husband works in a law firm downtown. They remodeled recently. They did just a beautiful and very tasteful job on the remodel. Every time a client comes in they remark on how beautiful the environment is. Not only does the beauty get communicated, but there is a sense of relaxation and comfort that sets in. The clients feel like they will be taken care of, like they’re going to be okay.
Q: Wonderful. Well, is there anything I haven’t asked you about you think I should have?
A: I think the important thing for me—and this comes from the Zen side—is the realization that we practice even though there’s nothing to attain. We already are fully who we need to be. To hold that particular paradox is really important when it comes to integral practice. Otherwise, we get too much oriented towards some project that we can really never fulfill.
Q: Thank you very much, Diane.
The Rise and Fall of Development
by Mike Jay
Paper presented under the title, "The Evolution of Human Striving," at the 2005 Conference of the Society for Research in Adult Development, Atlanta, Georgia, April 6-7, 2005.
Disclaimer from Prince 1999: "I was dreaming when I wrote this, so forgive me if it goes astray…"
This presentation is designed to disquiet current thinking and augment it with some additional opportunities; that is my aim. Please, take this all with a grain of salt. You might even say that I’m full of beans, but perhaps the indigestion that I’ll create will cause you to consider your own development in a different light.
What I’m about to do should not be attempted by the uninitiated as it is likely to be dangerous to your current relationships and possibly your career. To begin with let me state some hypotheses.
- Blank Slate is dead; tabula raza was a nice paradigm that made everyone feel good, because we wouldn’t want anyone to think they were second rate would we?
- Because there is nothing any better than blank slate, blank slate lives, truly the paradox of our developmental time.
- Everyone can’t be anything they want to be and if most of us try, we’re going to be largely unhappy, unfulfilled and part of the nasty environmental problem arising from living unsustainably, which may end most of our developmental trajectory as humans indirectly.
- Everyone CAN be anything they CAN be, and those rights should be facilitated as the pursuit of happiness. Is authoring a new constitution the aim? Perhaps.
- In large part, the developmental trajectory of most people is going to be more horizontal than it is vertical. However, the ladder climbing busyness is in full swing to capture the fantasy island of those blank slaters in motion.
- Verticality is happening all around us, yet it’s just not happening to us! Because we can see it, we are using it in whatever ways possible and the "hits" just keep happening.
- Confusing horizontal development with vertical development is the most dangerous meme of all. Spiral doesn’t just mean up, it means out as well.
- Because most development is horizontal within a particularly flat trajectory; mobility—movement among, between and across levels, which is nuanced by vertical and horizontal developmental capacity, is low.
- Development means a lot of things to a lot of people and that’s an issue in the developmental community, as well as an issue that promotes the illusion of development in the community of hosts at large.
- Capacity, Capability and Potential are the Occam’s razor of development and lead us to emergent developmental agents, rules, tensions and conditionals that are actionable.
I could go on, but these 10 are enough to present here before I demonstrate my own limitations in making my points.
Conclusion?
Okay, so it’s out of order, but let me begin at the end (in accordance with one of the 7 habits?). Solutions generated by people who confuse their horizontal sophistication with their vertical capacity are more than likely to be incremental at best. Since in large part there is no direct correlation between smart people and vertical developmental capacity, there must be several programs running as a result of DNA (which brings about the nod to evolution for having spent billions of years testing more than 1035 organisms and coming to the conclusion that 10 megabytes is enough to create fitness today). Now, the question answered is what are those programs responsible for development—and how can we tell. Which ones are running and where are they likely to run more efficiently, effectively and sustainably over time.
Clearly, we have to use a cross-paradigm approach to assimilate the question; otherwise we sub-optimize the answer. One thing I believe about the crossing paradigms as an approach is that it preserves the paradigms or fields that are created and allowed to run as modules on top of the DNA program. In other words, it’s part of the evolutionary program to allow modules to develop on top of the operating system or base applications programs so that learning takes place—testing the organism against the situational environment and preserving those programs that remain fit. In some cases, because the programs of programs can be modularized, parallel evolutionary paths develop.
The Beginning
So, let’s begin with the first hypothesis.
1. Blank Slate is dead, tabula raza was a nice paradigm that made everyone feel good; because we wouldn’t want anyone to think they were second rate would we?
Modern research is beginning to show that we enter into the world with a compressed program that is the result of DNA. Many scholars and scientists have suggested that we have inborn traits, motives and perhaps values. Stephen Reiss at Ohio State has shown that our values have primal roots in animal behavior, which is consistent with the idea that evolution has built these programs over time using iterations of less complex life. What remained fit in the face of circumstances survived and became a part of the program.
I must apologize to those of you who find offensive the notion that we are nothing more than a computation, a program that has evolved itself over billions of years. Actually, I do find the notion of God throughout the program, yet you may infer God to be wherever you like and it would be fine with my argument. In fact, what I’m going to discuss doesn’t remove any of the possible reasons why it’s all happening, even the reason of "I don’t know what I don’t know." Essentially, in my view, it is not necessary to know. In your view, it may be necessary and that’s okay with me. With that solved for the moment, let’s move forward.
Therefore if there is no blank slate, then what is there?
2. Because there is nothing any better than blank slate, blank slate lives, truly the paradox of our developmental time.
Until we find a way to replace blank slate, then all the paradigms, including education, business, economics, politics, science, etc. will continue to be based upon tabula raza. I found this to be most interesting in an informal discussion held in 2004 on the discussion list: adultdevel@yahoogroups.com. No one could cite a developmental study that corrected for innate baselines. In other words, before we assume people can learn or develop to x or y, why not identify if there is an inborn bias to develop to x or y? Most research is based on an assumption that we don’t come to the table dressed, but just show up.
I don’t know what will replace blank slate because it will probably have to occur across generations. It may remain the favorite explanation of the way the world works for some. In my view that’s entirely acceptable. Yet it won’t naturally improve our developmental alignment with exponentially increasing complexity and linear incremental problem solving where non-linear solutions are what one might suggest are required for evolution in more or less, real time. A caveat remains that the answer will be uncovered with time, regardless of our responses.
It is quite fascinating for me, a kid who grew up in a small town in Nebraska, to come to the conclusion that one way or another; things are going to work out. We can either do what we’re doing or do something else. Whatever we do, evolution keeps evolving—often without the conscience it has bestowed on us. What a concept!
3. Everyone can’t be anything they want to be and if most of us try, we’re going to be largely unhappy, unfulfilled and part of the nasty environmental problem arising from living unsustainably, which may end most of our developmental trajectory as humans indirectly.
Because of the underlying assumption that we come into life without a predisposition or an inductive bias to learn certain things as opposed to others, researchers have long thought that anybody can be anything they want to be. First I’ll tell you why we can’t. Then I’ll tell you how we can—to sweeten the paradox.
The program that is responsible for identifying how tall we can become, is also responsible for how smart we are, how we learn, what we learn, how we take in and process information, what our filters are set to avoid, or allow through, etc. etc. Yet, underneath all of the conjecture of this new and old knowledge lies the motivational stirrings of possibility that we truly can—if we try hard enough—be anything we want to be. It is kept alive in our entertainment, our parenting, our coaching, our business, education, and economics (where it is often used against us). Throughout our lives we live with the underlying assumption that it’s just under the rainbow, in a falling star, the right training program, the "next" exciting career, a new spouse…or whatever your dreams will have with you.
All the while we fail to realize what is there and work from that soul point. I’d like to invoke the soul here, because I believe the soul is actually an emergent potential of the real slate (if it’s not blank, then it must be something real). My hypothesis is if you want to experience soul, know yourself and act accordingly. Don’t kid yourself or allow others, to get you to walk across fire, navigate ropes courses, or join ashrams. Just discover yourself, disclose that to others who are in a similar journey and reach for the acceptance that you’ll find there…then leap all you wish.
4, Everyone CAN be anything they CAN be, and those rights should be facilitated as the pursuit of happiness. Is authoring a new constitution the aim? Perhaps.
This particular hypothesis gets into the nitty-gritty of the substitution of the real slate for the blank slate, I’ll call it real slate because I can’t think of anything else in this dream. Real Slate = pre-wired (programmed) + re-wired (programmed).
Now, remember I said I would tell you how the paradox works: you can be what you want to be—as long as you create an emergent system (program) around you that compensates for your limitations (and strengths!). You (collectively) can be anything you want to be. However, you yourself are just what you can be and until you realize that, you can’t be everything you can be.
Essentially, the right to be your self is an important one, as long as that right doesn’t impinge on the rights of others. Yet, the system of blank slate is going to delude you into thinking that it is what you want. The only way to break free—for the masses—is to change the rules of development. In other words, instead of rising, it’s falling for your self, so to speak—and working from there.
5. In large part, the developmental trajectory of most people is going to be more horizontal than it is vertical. However, the ladder climbing busyness is in full swing to capture the fantasy island of those blank-slaters in (co)motion.
Believe me, this one won’t sell near as well as blank slate. Nobody wants to hear they have limitations and no one wants to barbeque their sacred cow! The ladder busyness is really prospering. As verticality has produced a literally infinite supply of "It’s better to be up here than down there" or "Oh what a wonderful world it could be!" our frequencies are jammed with more snake oil than ever.
Very few people are even tenured enough to start rocking this boat. While research exists to show that we are more likely to develop within a band of capacity than to develop outside of it, we still keep trying, because who are we if we don’t try, right? It is probably the nature of the program—the beast—that keeps most of us on the treadmill. The want more, do more, have more, become more program is largely insatiable and keeps us in busyness—an unsustainable one.
However, I’ll offer a caveat. Change the underlying assumptions of blank slate and then the "do more-have more-become more" train goes down a different track. Same engine, same noisy process, but the focus is different. Instead of looking up, we look in. And I don’t mean all that spiritual stuff. No question, that stuff is important. Let’s just take our simple everyday systems and point them in a direction. Get the masses off the ladders and get people to begin to accept the idea that we all have gifts and what makes us happy is applying them—contributing in some way. It’s not what others want us to be, but what we have within what we can be that drives contentment at the end of the day. Did we resolve the inner tensions, urges or vassanas (Vedic term for desires) in efficient, effective and sustainable manners?
6. Verticality is happening all around us, yet it is just not happening to us! Because we can see it, we are using it in whatever ways possible and the hits just keep happening.
This is the pivotal point of this diatribe. Because the programming of some beings is on such a steep vertical trajectory, those rare beings are producing and generating very complex memes, or schemas at a very high-level thema, or pattern of organization. They are as attractive to folks, as they are to me as I walk down the food midway at the Louisiana State Fair!
The outputs of these schemas are generated as tools, memes, beliefs about the way the world works, etc. Those quickly assimilate into the memepool through connectivity, which is exponential in adoption nowadays compared to earlier forms of meme generation. Almost anything in the world that happens is quickly spread throughout the world and assimilation is triggered—hence verticality and complexity is unbounded and ever-increasing in scope and scale.
What is the issue? The problem is that what it takes to generate these memes is not what it takes to begin to assimilate and attach them to lesser sophisticated reality systems. The people who invented the atomic bomb were the same group that rose up a few years later to decry the use of the bomb. Huh? Then why did they build it? Their reality, even though it was driven through impending doom and crisis, was that in building it they wouldn’t have to use it—a much higher level reality—although silly when you look at what lesser sophisticated realities do with higher reality tools. We’re plagued by this today as SIMAD: single individual, mass destruction.
Verticality is what is happening to us, NOT in us.
Once a meme, tool, schema or whatchamacallit is created it becomes available for assimilation by those capable of attaching it to their current programs as an application. If you have a lesser sophisticated operating system, but an application that can run on it, you use it, if you need to use it. Just like you may have PowerPoint on your computer, but only use it for whipping up slides, not all the complex functions it can perform—we use what we can of things, even though the complexity to do great things lies hidden in the code.
Therefore, we get developmental distortion, complexity and new emergence of behaviors that are not sophisticated, but can utilize sophisticated tools, memes and schemas. Tell me, we don’t have labs around the world churning out human clones or attempting to. And I’ll tell you that you are deluded.
Every piece of technology, every formula, every nanobyte that arises into the developmental pool becomes accessible to anyone looking and is accessed by anyone who can, with what they can, even if it means using the "code" or algorithms in a morality never intended. Vertical capacity in morality, ego complexity, or reasonableness is not required to assimilate these "outputs" of verticality.
Does this stop verticality from happening? Of course not, the vertical people have their own world to play in. They hardly see the small shapes below—maybe like ants, busily going about their daily bread, every now and then a disturbance or two, a threat causes collective sentience, beyond that, the ants are as predictable as night and day.
7. Confusing horizontal development with vertical development is the most dangerous meme of all. Spiral doesn’t just mean up, it means out as well.
Now, that we’ve pivoted, here’s the deal from my point of view.
It is difficult for all but a few to discern whether vertical content is being used or generated, although it’s not so difficult for the trained developmentalist in my view. We have to look at the underlying developmental structure and identify whether or not the use of verticality is an extension of the underlying code held by the individual or whether it is being "used" by lower level developmental structure and capacity.
Most people don’t have the mechanisms or training to discern this. Generally, we fail to understand those few who can discern at the higher levels.
So what do the rest of us do?
In some cases, quantifiable systems of identifying the potential at higher levels are beginning to appear. There are hierarchical scoring systems, which identify aspects of capacity and verticality. There are more people using Subject/Object Interviewing—even with its inherent limitations, the system does differentiate structure. There are measures of ego complexity, functional dynamics, Spiral Dynamics®, a new emergence of integral work and so on.
However, I challenge any of those who are trying to understand what I’m saying in this presentation not to confuse espoused theory with theory in use. The majority of these instruments will measure espoused theory: what we say we do, rather than what we actually do. While this may still be useful the measurement is not of the real slate, but an imagined one.
It’s not the content of the meme that’s important, or even the context so much; it’s the meme’s structure of use that is critical to understand. In other words, how it is used and in what manner it is employed to make or solve problems. Here is where we can discover leverage of development.
8. Because most development is horizontal within a particularly flat trajectory; mobility—movement among, between and across levels, which is nuanced by vertical and horizontal developmental capacity, is low.
Mobility may be the key: the ability to nuance, not just at the content level, but at the level of context, conditions, code, culture and core. This aspect of capability stems directly from capacity in my opinion, which is innate in most cases, and the potential as it is applied or limited during specific windows of opportunity, an example being, language development, which has been shown to be easier at younger ages, possibly not at all, if those windows are closed by some condition.
Figure 1 is recreated from the book Human Capability by Jaques and Cason. It is based on the research Jaques and others have performed using his model of information complexity to identify vertical complexity.
Figure 1: Paths of Human Capability (Adapted)
I’m not going to pretend this is reality, but am offering it as a visual analogy for vertical scaling and complexity, horizontal scope and complexity and vertical/horizontal mobility. Think about the implications here for disquieting the current paradigm of development as it’s generally formulated with blank slate.
Jaques went on to discuss that, unlike Piaget’s model, people don’t develop along a single trajectory, but multiple trajectories that in most cases were programmed for potential through innateness. The implications of this particular representation of reality are enormous as a developmental disturbance in the force, so to speak.
It becomes obvious when using the lens I’m suggesting that most of us are developing horizontally rather than vertically, and that’s ok! Therefore all those vertical schemas being created by those on steeper trajectories are being morphed to lesser-sophisticated individuals who use them in horizontal development. Once more, there is no problem with that adaptation. Often it is necessary development for the masses. However, we have to know it is happening or become a victim of it in some way—directly or indirectly.
Remember, Figure 1 is not exact. It is a depiction, an analogy. I refer you to Jaques own ideas in his and Cason’s book: Human Capability, 1994. Some of you may notice I even added some colors to it on the side that indicate nodal representations of instrumentation occurring as these trajectories stabilize "far from equilibrium" yet become effective generators (dissipative structures) of entropy and resist change.
9. Development means a lot of things to a lot of people and that is an issue in the developmental community, as well as an issue that promotes the illusion of development in the community of hosts at large.
This is a confusing hypothesis, but it’s directly reflective of the current standing of the developmental paradigm. You say development and you get an infinite number of meanings, even the confusion of learning with development, which are really two different modalities. While this exists throughout social science, it is confusing our ability to put it all together and formulate practical applications, rather than unlimited theoretical extensions.
I don’t think there will be a concilience, except by those who attempt at least metasystems or cross-paradigm approaches. Even these are likely to fail in many ways as the differentiation of evolution is accelerating. Whom I ask has that kind of cognitive, symbolic, behavioral and affective horsepower, or what’s more inductive bias so robust in scope, scale and mobility? In any case, that doesn’t stop some of us from trying to conceptualize it. It certainly hasn’t stopped me. Perhaps in the illumination of our failure lies learning that can pave the way for those who come behind.
I’m suggesting that there is an approach that we can take and it may be one level above cross-paradigms. Cross-paradigmatic may NOT be quite enough conceptualization to pull it off. This level beyond cross-paradigms might be meta-paradigmatic, which would make it easy to frame as "about" cross-paradigms. The ox has to remain ungored, or the high level illusion is seen through.
Therefore, there has to be a concilience, which "allows" the existence of the paradigms. It allows the crossing over of those paradigms without destroying them, but making them available, one to the other. Then a generalizing of a new paradigm can occur, which in and of itself—the rise and fall—creates the opportunity for assimilation by the lesser sophisticated levels as horizontal expansion of complexity.
10.Capacity, Capability and Potential are the Occam’s razor of development and lead us to emergent developmental agents, rules, tensions and conditionals that are actionable.
In the beginning, I wrote the rather strange conclusion and in the end, I write the rather strange beginning, a circle is formed, not knowing where the creator intervened.
My own system of outlining Capacity, Capability, and Potential (CCP) for engaging leaders, which is what I’m leading into in this discussion, is to formulate a system which identifies CCP issues around a number of different dynamics as a metapardigm approach. The following are representative of metasystems, paradigms, or fields:
- Motivational: core trait-motives or motive systems
- Developmental: hierarchical progression and capacity
- Functional: innate programs identify the processes guided by induction
- Instrumental: means structures employed to facilitate ends
- Reciprocal: correlation between conditions and action
- Integral: systems processing produces multi-level considerations.
- Differential: capability to discern and identify constituents of multilogue
- Experiential: topology or phase space of subjective experience
- Emergent: agents, rules, tensions and conditionals in non-linear events
- Energy: energy and information
This is an oversimplified view of the system, but it’s a start. At the levels closest to the program we see measurements appearing to identify the structure. By utilizing a broad-based concilient approach, we get more data and information, which can be used by the discerning leader to create nuanced engagement, not just at the content level, but levels with deeper learning potential and more effective—actionable engagement. See Figure 2, below.
In general the layperson doesn’t have to understand the implications of this work, however benefits will accrue from the use of it. As developmentalists it’s our goal to produce actionable inquiry, discovery, disclosure and acceptance to accelerate the evolutionary programs when appropriate in horizontal vertical and oblique directions.
While in the process, don’t harm anyone and have a little fun.
Figure 2
© Copyright 2005 Mike R. Jay
Integral For the Masses! Keith Bellamy
This column is written partially in response to the article cited: http://www.spiraldynamics.org/documents/MGM_hyp.pdf. There have been additional comments that have been published on list serves. In addition, there have been other recent exchanges critiquing and defending various perspectives on integral theory, Spiral Dynamics® and their proponents in relation to contemporary politics and other issues. I hope that Keith’s column this month is a step in improving the dialogue. — Russ]
I tend to consider myself as a fairly simple soul, although others who are close to me might think differently. Since discovering Integral Theory, I have attempted to lead my life in a manner that allows the decisions that I take to be integrally informed. I have the humility, I hope, to recognise that I still have a long way to go before I can hope to achieve that stage of development where I am permanently integrally conscious and that my insights into life, the universe and everything naturally stem from this higher enlightened state.
I am reasonably comfortable with this state of being. It provides the inspiration for further personal development. It lso allows me to seek integral insights that influence and inspire my everyday decisions. I have to admit, however, that it is not easy; in fact it is darned hard. Whilst not having a particularly addictive personality, I am finding it very hard kicking the habit of rational thinking and being able to see the world, when appropriate, from a trans-rational perspective.
Flatland thinking served me extremely well in my career in the world of business, and to be honest I would probably be better off in terms of material rewards if I had remained "hooked" on that particular cognitive opiate. However, it was not to be; circumstances conspired in my world that left me with no choice but to move on. In more lucid moments, I like to think of the path that I am pursuing as the equivalent of "Integral Cold Turkey!" It is hard to make the shift and it cannot be done alone.
I need help, and achieve much assistance by actively seeking out the writings of the giants in the field who can provide me with the doses of Integral Thinking that are the equivalent of Methadone to the Flatland heroin that has been such an important part of my life for so long. In this struggle for personal growth, it saddens me when I see some of these giants battling amongst themselves. As I look around at all of the issues our planet is facing and how integrally informed decision making could make such a significant difference, I find that some thought leaders seem to be acting more like medieval monks discussing how many angels can dance on a pin-head!
This was all brought to a head for me when I was sent a copy of the March issue of Spiral Dynamics Newsletter edited, I assume, by Chris Cowan and Natasha Todorovic. I was aware, of course, that there was a rift between Chris and his erstwhile writing partner Don Beck. I also knew that Chris had made some fairly scathing comments about Wilber in the past. None of this particularly worried me, as no one person has access to the absolute truth and that discussion, disagreement and debate are essential elements in pushing against the barriers of understanding.
What I didn’t understand, before reading this newsletter, is just how wide and pernicious the gulf between the parties appears to be. Looking forward to a set of insights that were different from those promulgated by the Integral leaders in Colorado, Texas and Massachusetts (to name but a few), what I found was a bitter, negative publication that was more interested in proving that the others were wrong and that the "Spiral Dynamics people," as they choose to call themselves, are right. Now I have no doubt that actions, either real or perceived, may well have left a bitter taste in the mouths of the newsletter editors; but the vein of negativity that ran through the publication detracted from the positive contribution that could and should be made to the Integral debate.
Let me hasten to add, I do not side with one party or another in this affair. I like to describe myself as a neo-Marxist of the Groucho rather than Karl variety. Following his immortal line, "I would not be member of any club that would have me as a member," I shy away from becoming too closely aligned with any particular camp. By "blindly" following the teachings of one prophet to the exclusion of all others has the potential to restrict the way I think about issues, and I perceive this to be very dangerous. The Integral movement does not need bunches of groupies shouting, "Ken said this," or "Don said that," or even "Chris & Natasha think the other." What we need are individuals who know what Ken, Don, Chris & Natasha have said and think and then, through their own lens of personal experience, provide an unique perspective that none of the previous could ever have uttered.
What never ceases to amaze me is the way that the "Cobblers Child" Syndrome tends to emerge in situations like this. All the parties involved use their insight into evolutionary unfolding to help other individuals, corporations and even nation states to overcome internecine rivalries that are destructive and detract from the value that all the parties have to offer. Never, has the need for command, "Healers heal thyselves," been so appropriate and necessary. As I mentioned earlier, the need for integral perspectives has never been so great in so many different areas than it is today. Yet, the credibility of practitioners is sorely undermined by the feuding that is taking place.
Don’t get me wrong, I am under no illusion that all of the participants should sit down around a table and come out at the end of the negotiations as bosom-buddies. I gave up that level of naïveté many years ago. I am not arguing that the parties necessary have to agree with one and other, in fact disagreement is a good thing. What I am arguing is that the parties stop attempting to undermine one another and that the undercurrent of personal animosity be removed from a debate that is so vital to all 6 billion plus of us who inhabit this planet today.
I really do not have the time and space in this article to dissect and criticise what has happened in the past, and I’m not sure that it would serve any purpose other than opening old wounds and sores. Our focus should be on the future and building an Integral movement that recognises the differences of opinions that exist and acknowledge them as jewels not worthless baubles.
In such an environment we would recognise that Wilber’s use of Spiral Dynamics to illustrate his Theory of Everything was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Graves’ theory enhanced by Beck and Cowan provided a wonderfully understandable insight into what is a highly complex subject. However, in doing so, it diluted many of the complexities and intricacies contained in the original work. Then again, A Theory of Everything gave Spiral Dynamics a far wider audience and opportunity to influence decisions in so many fields than had been the case up until its publication.
The colour-coded levels of the spiral became the de facto lingua franca in Integral circles, yet when it was applied to Holons other than the societal level in which it was originally rooted it started to become misused, abused and sometimes the source of confrontation. In the blink of an eye we had created our very own tower of Babel. So when somebody claimed that the CEO was operating from Red it could be both true and false simultaneously! From the purist societal Holon the statement is obviously nonsensical, however from the Enterprise Holon context this is a perfectly valid statement.
I think it was Peter Drucker, the great business thinker, who pondered the paradox as to why businessmen would march down Wall Street to the tune of "Free Markets" only to arrive at their desks to become dictators of their own "Planned Economies" as they attempted to control everything in their personal empire. Drucker failed to come up with an answer to this conundrum. Pure Spiral Dynamics doesn’t answer the challenge either. Applying SD within the AQAL model of Integral Theory and the contradictions dissolve completely.
If Integral is going to permeate the lives of a broader constituency, we need to recognise that work is required at all levels of the developmental spiral. Just because some focus their attentions on the pathologies emerging lower down whilst others are working at enticing the higher levels to become more established makes neither party wrong. They are just operating from a different perspective and if we are to be true to the Integral Model, we need to be able to accommodate both.
This is not achievable when one group publishes pseudo-scientific papers attempting to demolish the arguments of another party. I am sure that if one were to listen carefully, one could hear the body of Benjamin Disraeli spinning like a top in his grave. If we listen really hard, the hum being generated sounds very much like "lies, damned lies and statistics." Attempting to blind us with disputable facts and figures is designed to create division rather than reconciliation.
Furthermore, it really helps when the paper is attempting to refute the same thing as the other party is talking about. The Mean Green Meme debate is a case in point. Wilber & Beck are talking about the emergent pathology that can arise from the Green v-meme. Cowan & Todorovic are talking about those people who reject Green values. Both interesting subjects, but different; and when you cut to the chase, there is a very strong case to suggest that they run the risk of violently agreeing.
I could go on but fear that the thrust of my argument will get lost. My belief is that if we are to build a world where leaders are at a minimum integrally informed and over time increasingly integrally conscious, then we have to get our own house in order. If we are perceived to be acting like kids in the playground shouting, "my dad’s bigger than yours!" then we are not going to be listened to by those with most to gain from allowing Integral Theory into their worlds. The biggest victim in all of this is that an opportunity to make a real difference could be lost. I think all of us associated with the nascent Integral movement need to think long and hard on this the next time we decide to side with one party or another in defending what is really indefensible.
Keith Bellamy is an independent consultant to businesses in Great Britain. He formerly was an IT executive and a futurist for Barclay’s Bank. He is active with Integral and Spiral Dynamics groups in London.
We invite responses to this or any of our articles.
David Rooke and William R. Torbert, "Seven Transformations of Leadership," Harvard Business Review, April 2005, pp. 67-76.
Probably what is most important about this article is that it is a breakthrough into the "popular" business press for a developmental perspective related to leadership. Readers of Rooke and Torbert’s earlier works, e.g., Action Inquiry or Personal and Organisational Transformations Through Action Inquiry, are not likely to find much new material here. However, it is well worth the read to see how their ideas are communicated to a business audience.
Their focus is on action logic of individuals related to leadership. There is good reason for this because, as the authors state, "…we’ve found that leaders who do undertake a voyage of personal understanding and development can transform not only their own capabilities but also those of their companies." The authors ut forward their seven category set of ways of leading: opportunist, diplomat, expert, individualist, strategist and alchemist. The first three account for 55% of the "leaders" in their surveys. Achievers are 30%, Individualists 10%, Strategist 4 % and Alchemist 1%.
Opportunists generate distrust and tend not to remain managers for long. They seek to win any way they can. However, they can contribute importantly in emergencies and in sales. Diplomats are loyal and tend to avoid conflict. They provide supportive glue in bringing people together. Experts are rational and efficient, but find collaboration challenging. They are best in the role of individual contributor. Achievers challenge and support others in pursuit of objectives. They have difficulty thinking outside the box. Generally, they are effective action and goal-oriented managers. Individualists see their action logics and those of others more objectively. The tensions that are a result foster creativity. They are effective in venture and consultation roles. Strategists lead change through attention to personal relationships, organizational relations, and national and international developments. Through mutual inquiry, vigilance and vulnerability they are transformational leaders. Finally those rare individuals with Alchemist action logics are in continuous processes of discovery and renewal and have the capacity to think in terms of metasystems. They have high integrity and are charismatic. They can lead society-wide transformations.
In relation to the nature/nurture question, Rooke and Torbert point out that they have observed leaders who have transformed from one action logic to another. Personal changes and external events support such transformation. Change strategies include hanges in work practices, structured development interventions, formal education and training. For further development the use of coaching and other interventions to foster self-awareness, learning about development through collaborative inquiry and peer-to-peer development is encouraged. The authors state that the higher the level of development of action logic, the more effective leaders and teams become.
An Integral Approach Described
by Michel Bauwens
P/I: PLURALITIES/INTEGRAL
A newsletter about participation in multiple worlds, multiple visions, but one humanity ; a monitor of P2P developments ISSUE 65: April 20, 2005
If you would place explanatory theories about the evolution of matter/life/ consciousness into two axes, one defined as the "relative attention given to either the parts or to the whole" and another as "relative attention given to difference or to similarities," integral theory would be that kind of hermeneutical system that pays most attention to the whole and to structural similarities, rather than to the parts and to difference. In doing this it runs counter to the general tendency of modern objective science to focus on parts (to be analytical), of postmodernism to focus on difference, and hence to reject integrative narratives, and to systems theories and its follow-ups, which ignore subjectivity. It is this distinction from dominant epistemologies, which makes it particularly interesting to uncover new insights missed by the other approaches. A key advantage of the integral framework is that it integrates both subjective and objective aspects of realities, refusing to reduce one to the other.
Generally speaking, an integral approach is one that:
- Respects the relative autonomy of the different fields, and looks for field specific laws;
- Affirms that new levels of complexity causes the emergence of new properties and thus rejects reductionisms that try to explain the highly complex from the less complex;
- Always relates the objective and subjective aspects, refusing to see any one aspect as a mere epiphenomena of the other. This implies a certain agnosticism as to the theories that posit one particular quadrant as the more fundamental cause (such as for example historical materialism);
- In general, attempts to correlate explanations emanating from the various fields, in order to arrive at an integrative understanding.
The combined use of the four quadrants also has important advantages in avoiding various kinds of reductionisms:
- The analytical-materialist reductionism (scientism), which attempts to totally explain the world of life and culture by the properties and processes of matter;
- The biological/Darwinistic reductionism, which attempts to totally explain the life of culture by the animalistic processes of survival of the fittest;
- The 'wholistic' reductionism of the system sciences, which do not take into account the agency of the subject;
- The linguistic reductionism of extreme postmodernists, which tend to totally bypass materiality and reduce everything to language games.
In conclusion: the integral approach allows us to use these various partial perspectives and to use them as heuristic devices, so that we can obtain a fuller picture combining them. What distinguishes an "integral approach" from the other approaches is its use of a subjective-objective explanatory framework.
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Coaching Leaders in Business and Life
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