In an era of increasing discontinuity, wise leadership has nearly vanished. Many leaders find it difficult to reinvent their corporations rapidly enough to cope with new technologies, demographic shifts and consumption trends. They can't develop truly global organizations that operate effortlessly across borders. And they find it tough to ensure that their people adhere to values and ethics. The authors assert that leaders must acquire practical wisdom, or what Aristotle called phronesis: experiential knowledge that enables people to make ethically sound judgments. Wise leaders demonstrate six abilities: (a) They make decisions on the basis of what is good for the organization and for society. (2) They quickly grasp the essence of a situation and fathom the nature and meaning of people, things and events. (3) They provide context in which executives and employees can interact to create new meaning. (4) They employ metaphors and stories to convert their experience into tacit knowledge that others can use. (5) They exert political power to bring people together and spur them to act. (6) They use apprenticeship and mentoring to cultivate practical wisdom in others. [Harvard Business Review Executive Summaries, May 2011]
This
article is excerpted from Chapter 20: The Round Table &
Collective Leadership, part of a new (and not yet fully completed)
book by Diana Durham,
with the working title: "Who We Are Is What We Do - Decoding
the Wisdom Teachings, East & West." Diana opens up our thinking about possibilities of collective
leadership and important distinctions between collective intelligence
and collective wisdom.
“… creativity is... ultimately the action
of the infinite in the sphere of the finite -”
- David Bohm from Soma-Significance and the Activity
of Meaning
A useful lens through which to view the field
of collective wisdom is as one might view the spiritual traditions,
to varying degrees all include three fundamental elements: study,
practice and service. In an interview
by Prasad Kaipa with Peter Senge, these three elements are brought
to focus: “There is a study, a
body of knowledge that you are studying, but it is meaningless if
it’s not in line with your practice. Whatever is your practice
-- your meditation practice, your cultivation practice ... is that
present state of your mind-body system ... Then there is a reason
for doing it all, which is your service -- how you are trying to
be of use to the world.” Peter
Senge suggests that a needed next stage in our development of consciousness
is to bring back an interior sensitivity and awareness, to be in
balance with our exterior awareness embodied in action. This comes
through the discipline of study linked to practice linked to service.
He speaks of whereas a world community we might next turn our attention:“I think science, spirituality and society
will be the new nexus for our attention. It’s not the old
individual spirituality any more. It is about collective awakening.”
Vital
to our ability to access collective wisdom is cultivating our
capacity to maintain a “sense of wonder”, to remain
open to surprise. Sense of wonder is the capacity to appreciate
and delight in groups, in the intricacies of events and in details
available to our awareness in the moment. Jon and Maureen Jenkins
bring focus to such a state of consciousness in their new book,
The
Nine Disciplines of a Facilitator: Leading Groups by Transforming
Yourself. Excerpted here is Chapter 10, “Sense of Wonder:
Maintaining the Capacity to Be Surprised”. They describe
with personal and anecdotal illustrations this way of being, adding
suggested exercises and guidance for practice. Made real and felt
are such concepts as “encounter”, “entrapment”,
“collegiality” and “co-creation”, thus
adding to our language for describing collective transformational
experience.
EXCERPT: Individual and Collective Practice of Presencing
Some
say collective wisdom entails a different way of knowing: direct,
spontaneous, and alert to what is emerging. More spatially-oriented
than time-based, and akin to the awareness of the artist, the
practice of collective wisdom requires a mind in readiness, present
to the moment, alert to hidden wholeness and receptive to an insistence
that presents itself. Surrendering
Control aptly describes this receptive creative stance.
Weaving together extensive interviews with personal experience,
Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, Otto Scharmer, and Betty Sue Flowers
explore this different way of knowing in their book, Presence:
Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, which contains
the above excerpt. These four authors refer to this way of knowing
with its inherent call to action as "presencing." They
speak of simultaneously holding this receptive stance with a capacity
to act as "surrendering into commitment"To study the
original interviews from which the concept of presencing was derived
in-depth, go to www.dialogonleadership.org.
A good place to start in deepening your understanding of capacities
for collective wisdom is the interview with Eleanor Rosch, "Primary
Knowing: When Perception Happens from the Whole Field,"
which focuses on her research in cognitive psychology and study
of Buddhism, Taoism and meditation. See also Tools
from The Presencing Institute.
See what others
have said in response to this excerpt
Pele
Rouge reflects on her years of experience convening and caring
for the learning experiences of people (in groups) in a sacred
circle. She identifies and illuminates several key capacities
that (she has found) enhance the emergence of collective wisdom,
beginning with setting and holding clear intention and ending
with the ability to be “pierced” by beauty. Pele is
a carrier and teacher of an ancient body of Earth Wisdom Teachings,
which were passed to her in an eight year formal apprenticeship
with WindEagle and RainbowHawk, co-founders of Ehama
Institute. These teachings, which represent the collective
wisdom of thousands of years of human experience, help The People
remember how to walk in respect, wholeness and in balance with
the self, with others and all of life.
Many
agree that circle practices contribute to the deepening of groups.
What skills and capacities of individual participants make it
possible for this deepening to occur? How do individuals pass
over the threshold into the collective experience, and how does
this enhance collective capacity and the emergence of collective
wisdom? Otto Scharmer’s interview
with the Circle of Seven, a group of woman who has been meeting
together for eight years, sheds new light on these questions.
An
invisible aspect of enabling the appearance of collective wisdom
is the capacity to gather groups together, in particular over
a period of time. This role and capacity to convene is itself
a personal practice and a describable art form. Vicki Robin illuminates
some essential elements of the role and competence of the convener
using her recent experience of the Simplicity Forum as a point
of reference. For more reflection on her own development as a
convener, see My Call to Convene.
This
article
An
invisible aspect of enabling the appearance of collective wisdom
is the capacity to gather groups together, in particular over
a period of time. This role and capacity to convene is itself
a personal practice and a describable art form. Vicki Robin illuminates
some essential elements of the role and competence of the convener
using her recent experience of the Simplicity Forum as a point
of reference. For more reflection on her own development as a
convener, see