This is the time to look at leadership in a radically different way. We are learning the hard way that the worldly condition and the human condition are interrelated. As such leadership holds a responsibility to the world’s wellbeing by being well.
Such a perspective is befitting of the systemic, interconnected nature of reality and the responsibilities that today lie in the hands of the leadership that impacts tomorrow. So, when we look at leadership beyond sustaining the myth of economic growth and business as usual, what is the new narrative for leadership that will actually serve the future?
Quantum theorist David Bohm stated a long time ago that “The first step in economics is to accept that the earth is one household and all that it depends on is one. When we take a coherent approach to reality, then reality will respond coherently to us. Coherence will produce the results we intend, rather than the results we don’t intend“.
The latter being the essence of leadership to me, Bohm’s ‘implicate order’ suggests a new way for leadership much more appropriate for todays challenges. Leadership that is well aware of the impact of business on the earth and those who inhabit her at this moment and those who will inhabit her in the generations to come.
In acknowledgement of the long term relationship between man and his environment, one’s choices will be very different to those coming forth from separation between man and his environment. One could even argue that leadership from separation has become irrelevant: as within, so without.
Therefore, if the best way to predict the future is to create it (Abraham Lincoln), the leadership that serves a flourishing future requires to be more than the means to sustain an outdated notion of economy and business, and, if anything, it requires a deep and personal involvement currently unexcercised by most leadership.
To know one’s inner world is therefore key in leadership for sustainable transformation of our outer world. The idea of leadership is thus shifting from being merely functional to something else, something more essential. Instead of something one does, leadership becomes something one is.
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… – A little something I’m working on for my book.
S.
#theleadershipthe22ndcenturyneeds