Integral Leadership Review
Volume V, No. 4 - September 2005 Issue -
Table of Contents
- Leadership Quote
- Mission
- Article: Integral Scenarios for Leadership Development
- A Leadership Coaching Tip
- A Fresh Perspective: Partnership: An Interview with Riane Eisler
- Guest Article: Mike McElhenie, An Integral Response to HIV/AIDS: The "Leadership for Results" Story
- Integral for the Masses: Keith Bellamy
- Announcements
- Letters: Michael Kearns, Joe Rost
- Guest Article: Susan Cannon and Yene Assegid, Integral Africa: How Far Can Integral Go?…Transforming a Continent?
- Summary (publications worth noting)
- Coda
- A Request
I understand (from people who have recently seen him) that Ken Wilber is going through some very difficult times regarding his health and physical well being. I hope you will join me in wishing Ken speedy recovery in fitness and good health.
Russ
Leadership Quote
Leadership is a practice not a position. It is a practice of building influence relationships to create a movement for transforming change. My issue with most of the leadership stuff is that the followers—more appropriate in the idea economy or society to say collaborators or partners—are not considered in the leadership dynamic. This is counter-intuitive to the notion that the level of complexity we deal with on a daily basis requires the abilities and talents of people fully committed to the mission or tasks at hand. Leadership is contained in the leadership dynamic, not in the abilities of one person, the leader.
-- John Dentico
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 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 1146 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. That vision is being realized.
A Request for Voluntary Support
I trust you find the Integral Leadership Review brings value added to your work and interests. I am committed to keeping this ejournal available to all who wish to read it. Please consider a small voluntary donation to assist us in covering the costs associated with producing this Review: transcriptions, international telephone calls, webmaster time, etc. Voluntary donations of US$10.00 can be made securely at
Your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Russ Volckmann
Integral Scenarios for Leadership Development:
Scenarios and Leadership Development
4th in a Series by
Russ Volckmann
So what is all of this about scenarios? For those who are tracking this series of articles the question of what has this got to do with integral leadership must have occurred by now. Well, I think it has a lot to do with how the individual develops and prepares for leadership roles. This involves our shifting from thinking about leadership development as something we do to individuals to something individuals engage in with the systems in which their leader actions might emerge.
In this post-industrial age of the idea, keeping focused on old managerial notions of leadership is just not going to cut it any more, at least not in complex organizations facing high levels of ambiguity. And as we look around at what is happening in this world of natural and intentional disaster, complexity and ambiguity are here to stay. No, they will be increasing. And we are being challenged to prepare ourselves for that, individually and as human systems, organizations and institutions.
To read the complete article go to here.
If the executive you are working with has as a developmental objective to be able to recognize and engage effectively with others who may have different world views than her own, you can use a scenario approach. You can support them in recognizing other world views by learning about their own and then reframing perspective from the point of view of other developmental perspectives that they are likely to encounter. An integral framework would support this by having them examine their responses, their "stories," through the lens of AQAL, quadrants, lines and levels, to begin with.
A Fresh Perspective: Partnership: An Interview with Riane Eisler
Russ Volckmann
Introduction:
You can read about Riane Eisler in the interview. However, before you do so you may find the following material to be interesting and in harmony with much of what Riane talked about in our conversation. I spoke with Michael McElhenie, one of the leaders of the "Leadership for Results" United Nations program that helps catalyze collaborative solutions to HIV/AIDS in Africa, SE Asia and the Caribbean. (See his article below.) This is something he had to say that is very relevant to the interview.
Mike: We started these programs in 2001; we saw results right off the bat.
What we were doing was trying to impact multiple levels of systems. We wanted to impact individuals intrapsychically and behaviorally—to change how they saw themselves, how they saw their worlds and how they took action in them. We wanted to impact relationships throughout vast interconnected networks. Most importantly, we wanted these leaders to develop and implement more collaborative, more complete solutions to the complex issues surrounding HIV and AIDS. So when we talk about results we are talking about results at many levels of systems.
Russ: I remember one story you told (Integral Leadership in Action conference, Westminster, Colorado, April 2005) about bringing men and women into separate and then mixed groups to talk about their gender and sexual relationships and the impact that had. It brought tears to my eyes.
Mike: This work was tremendous! One of the things that is very clear in the research cited by our friends at the United Nations Development Programme is that when you increase women’s empowerment you decrease the incidence of HIV and AIDS.
Russ: What you are saying is so in keeping with the message that Riane Eisler is putting forth.
To read the rest of this introduction and the interview with Riane Eisler, go here.
An Integral Response to HIV/AIDS:
THE "LEADERSHIP FOR RESULTS" STORY
Michael McElhenie
Background
The need for leadership development to enhance an effective, coordinated response to HIV/AIDS and related issues has been gathering momentum over the past several years in many developing nations. Throughout the world, HIV/AIDS has rapidly increased the complexity of living within and managing any system, anywhere. The capacity and leadership required to respond to this complexity far exceeds existing levels in all but the most developed countries. To further heighten the challenge, millions die of AIDS every year; so-called developing countries simply cannot develop with attrition of this intensity. The necessity for an accelerated, coordinated response is clear, as is the need to fully embrace HIV/AIDS’ multiple causative and perpetuating factors.
Our collective work supports the United Nations’ UNGASS Declaration of Commitment that makes the case for strong leadership at all levels of society as an essential element of an effective response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We have implemented and built capacity to sustain an innovative process of leadership development with demonstrated impact that involves people from government, civil society, the private sector and people living with HIV/AIDS. Our approach has participants view HIV/AIDS holistically and not simply as a health issue. Through a multi-modal process, participants evolve their understanding of the epidemic to one that involves individual and collective systems and as well as tangible and intangible elements. Participants also view their own development as evolving along multiple developmental lines - mind, body, emotion, relationships and spirit to name just a few. As a result of this process, we have seen the genesis of creative and truly effective responses to the epidemic, gender equality, promotion of human rights, and equitable access to prevention, care and treatment.
For the rest of this article, go here.
Integral For the Masses! Keith Bellamy
i-WET!
Saturday, August 6th 2005
The thunderstorms that we had been promised overnight had failed to materialize, although the air most definitely felt a little cooler and less humid than we had been experiencing for the past few days. I then reminded myself that it was 7:30 in the morning as I was climbing into the car to drive into the City, and that I have no past memory of atmospheric conditions at this time of day for some considerable time. What was I doing at such an ungodly hour on a Saturday morning? I was heading into Manhattan to participate in the second Integral Institute i-WET workshop.
The first workshop had taken place the previous weekend in San Francisco and this weekend the gang from Colorado were rolling into the Big Apple to give us a chance to taste the integral Weekend Experiential Training that had been promised for so long. Personally, I was looking forward to an experiential weekend; the time for talking and reading about all matters integral, as far as I was concerned, was past; now it was time to get real! As I headed out from home and onto the Hutchinson River Parkway, the sun was shining; the sky was bereft of clouds and with the wind blowing in my hair as I drove the Miata with the top down a sense of excitement and a degree of trepidation was growing in the pit of my stomach.
For the rest of Integral For the Masses! go here.
- Leadership University TeleProgram,Mindful Leadership II Series
- Bill Torbert Presents!
- Call for Papers: ARINA's Integral Review
- Leadership Research Request
- i-WET: New Schedule
- i-WET San Francisco Review by Russ Volckmann
Letters
Greetings Russ,
...I was a student of Joe Rost (1995-97) at USD. Joe just forwarded to me a link to your interview with him... it was great! Congrats!...
I also note in your journal, you had Denny Roberts write a nice note about Rost's influence at the University of Miami-Ohio. I wanted you to know that my dissertation research was on Rost's postindustrial concept (an evaluative study of its currency and praxis) and that I just recently accepted an Assistant Professor position at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas. Their entire program is based in Rost's postindustrial concept, and, as far as I have discovered, is the most successful Leadership Studies program in the USA that uses Rost's work as a cornerstone. Please see "Making the Case for Leadership Studies and check-out our program www.FHSU.edu/leadership
Cheers,
Michael S. Kearns
— ———-——— —
Dear Russ,
On the International Leadership Association listserve messages about our failure of leadership in responding to the Katrina disaster have been on target, and the whole episode of Katrina should make the most fervent great-person leadership advocate rethink that whole paradigm. Clearly, Bush has been the United States' most visible adherent of the great-person leadership model, and I think that there is ample evidence to indicate that it has not worked in his administration. The Katrina episode is only the worst of many other examples that could be given.
Someone wrote that some leadership experts would call what happened in the Katrina disaster or even what should have happened as a result of the Katrina disaster "management." Since I have been one of the strongest advocates of distinguishing leadership from management, I would like to offer my opinion on that subject.
Succinctly, I think that it is a case where leadership should have happened and didn't. The response called for leadership defined as "an influence relationship among leaders and collaborators who intend significant changes that reflect their mutual purposes." This is the only kind of approach to leadership that would have worked in responding to the Katrina disaster. There were (and are) multiple agencies involved (governmental and nongovernmental) with specialized expertise who could have come together and agreed upon significant changes in disaster relief that reflected their mutual purposes quickly and effectively if a collaborative approach had been initiated at the very beginning and even before the catastrophe.
Integral Africa: How Far Can Integral Go?
…Transforming a Continent?
Susan Cannon and Yene Assegid
At this critical evolutionary moment in Earth’s history, as the integral wave begins to coalesce, "boots on the ground" global initiatives for integral leadership development thankfully are emerging. One such initiative is Integral Africa, at this very moment self-organizing against the fearsome odds for which Africa is renowned. Yene Assegid, a native of Ethiopia and an emerging woman leader in her own right, was so profoundly changed by her experience in a Seattle-based integral leadership development program, that she is taking the audacious stand to bring a similar learning experience to Africa.
For her part, Yene is the founder and Executive Director of everyONE, an Ethiopian NGO dedicated to empowering and improving the lives of persons living with HIV/AIDS and other debilitating diseases. everyONE accomplishes this feat in part by creating enabling conditions for "the economic and personal development" of their clients - a break with traditional African NGO models.
Success stories abound. I witnessed a crippled leper living in an underground sewer now enthusiastically supporting himself as a community HIV trainer. I met grandmothers, facing life in the streets, who now sit together embroidering goods for sale while passing their wisdom on to the young girls at their feet. Yet even with this tangible expression of her leadership, Yene felt called to do more. The program that lit her integral fire is the two-year Generating Transformative Change in Human Systems (http://www.pacificintegral.com/programs.htm) program currently offered by Pacific Integral LLC. With the integral framework under her belt, Yene was able to see and experience a pragmatic way to realize her dream of helping the continent of Africa through these dark days to a more positive future.
For the rest of this article go here.
Journal of Organizational Change Management:
Integrally informed approaches to organizational transformation,
Nancy E. Landrum and Jim Paul, eds., 18, 3, 2005.
There is no way I can do justice to all of the material in this publication in a brief space. Therefore, I will highlight a couple of interesting pieces related to integral leadership. Here are the articles included in this issue:
Thierry C. Pauchant, Integral leadership: a research proposal
Ron Cacioppe and Mark G. Edwards, Adjusting blurred visions: a typology of integral approaches to organizations
Nancy E. Landrum and Carolyn L. Gardner, Using integral theory to effect strategic change
Carla C.J.M. Millar, Chong Ju Choi, Edward T. Russell and Jai-Boem Kim, Open source communities: an integrally informed approach
Mark G. Edwards, The integral holon: a holonics approach to organizational change and transformation
Russ Volckmann, Assessing executive leadership: an integral approach
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first peer-reviewed journal to devote a special issue to any aspect of integral studies. If you know of others, please let me know.
To read the rest of this summary go here.
Colin Morley and Ken Wilber
On July 7th Colin Morley, a marketer who used his experience to make a real difference in the world who touched lives all over the world—a leader, in other words—with his involvement in the Be the Change movement and the London SDi group, was killed by a terrorist bomb while riding a tube on Edgware Road in London, England.
To read this article go here.
A Request
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Feedback
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russ@leadcoach.com
Thanks for taking the time to consider this epublication 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@leadcoach.com
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