New Issue of Integral Leadership Review

Leading Comments:Leader, Leader, Who is the Leader?

Russ Volckmann

As people around the world who are interested in the practice, development and theories of leadership, we face a dilemma. Well, maybe more than one. For example, how does it feel to be a part of a field of understanding with no agreement about what the field is about? Is it about management? Is it about something that is different from management? Is it about service? Is it about charisma? Is it about transformative change? Is it about leaders and followers? And what other variables are important for us to think about?

It isn’t that there aren’t answers to these questions. It is that we have many, many answers. The problem is that we have no agreement and no map for creating agreement.

Is culture an important factor? Most agree it is, but do we find culture included in definitions of the field? Rarely. Yet we find ourselves divided by our cultures around the world. In some places leadership is highly valued. In others it is highly suspect because the language of leadership and leaders is provocative of unpleasant memories of oppression.

The result of all of this—and I have just scratched the surface of our dilemma—is that each of us feels forced to choose. We choose to focus on one small aspect of leadership. If we are academics, that may be a good choice for our careers, but how does it strengthen the larger field, particularly when most of our institutions pit one perspective against another, as though one is right and the other is wrong. Or we choose a theory of leadership that fits with our values: servant leadership, transformational leadership, leadership as decision-making and so on. We have thereby built camps of followers of particular leadership theories. Or we choose to focus on the lessons we can discover in the experiences of other leaders in business, politics, government, communities, academia, schools and health systems. Somehow, if we can identify what worked for them, how they became recognized as successful leaders, maybe we can then identify what will work for us.

Look at the literature you have accumulated on the subject of leadership. Think of all of the authors and what stands out for you in their work. Look at all of them, not just the ones you are currently most closely associated with in your practice, development or theory. Many of you are highly skilled at reciting the strengths and weaknesses of these various approaches. Run those through your mind. Think about the people these perspectives relate to and what they are doing in their lives and careers. Notice what differentiates you from them and what brings you together.

We can choose one side or another or we can begin to choose an approach that seeks the truth in all of the different approaches to the subject of leadership. Surely, they fit together if we consider the whole of leadership, the leader in context, the movie and not just the snapshot...."

The second article is from Matthew Kalman, my colleague at London Integral Circle for a longer time.

Kalmans Kosmos

Matthew Kalman MA, is a founder member of the Integral Institute, and launched the London Integral Circle in 2000. The group has hosted Integral Institute founder members including Susanne Cook-Greuter, Don Beck, John Rowan, and Rabbi Michael Lerner at events attracting up to 300 people. He has worked with Henley Management College to develop the first model of Integral Knowledge Management. Matthew works as a media professional and lives with his family in London, England.

Integral Strategies

Matthew is reviewing the book of Steve McIntosh about Integral Consciounses. I like the European voice, this time in  UK fashioned call for evidence and sounder emprics.This is how the review of Matthew ends:

"However much I like parts of Steve’s book, I’m left feeling that Integral urgently needs to up its game. We ought to try lessening the chorus of hyperbole and more clearly distinguishing valid evidence from personal opinions and wishful thinking. Despite Steve’s complaint that Wilber plays “fast and loose with a lot of serious scholarship”, I see little sign yet in Steve’s own work of any needed sea-change that will take integral over the threshold to widespread—including academic—credibility."

its clearly on a line with the leading questions of Russ. And ILR is attempting to put the pieces and fragments together. 

For me the new forms of collaboration and complex constellations of collective intelligence will be decisive. Check out new issue of Kosmos Journal in second week of May which will adress the theme of connectivity. I was very glad -in my recent conversation with Nancy Roof, editor in chief and founder of KJ -to agree about the new roles of new and old Media which are an estate in their own way.

Russ asks:

."..Leadership, we face a dilemma. Well, maybe more than one. For example, how does it feel to be a part of a field of understanding with no agreement about what the field is about?..."

I feel comfortable about it! The emrging and converging evolutionary flows in 21st Century are so fast and complex that no single theory label is sufficient anymore. And immediately the tension and friction of going into sustainable and effective action is felt.Waiting for new evidence in new theory isnt affordable. The time is NOW. So lots of intuition and networking intelligence, collaboration and values based conections  are the real "killer application."

New Leadership Imagination and Innovation is in demand.