#ebbflisbon learning event - evolutionary leadership, a learnshop by alain gauthier

Evolutionary Co-Leadership LEARNSHOP Alain Gauthier

Evolutionary Co-leadership: The next stage in leadership development?

EBBF Learnshop

May 30, 2015

©Alain Gauthier Core Leadership Development

www.coreleadership.com

http://www.coreleadership.com

Addressing three questions in this learnshop

● Why are new forms of leadership urgently needed?

● What characterizes evolutionary co-leadership?

● What qualities does it require?

● Which integral practices enable its embodiment?

● How to develop it and scale it up?

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From heroic leadership to learning leadership…

Charismatic Visionary• Articulates a vision

• Passionate

• Unconventional

• Taking a personal risk

• Strong personality

• Charismatic

• Highly motivated to lead

Focused on his role as leader

Learning leader/Architect• Good listener

• Perseverant

• Thoughtful, systemic thinker

• Experimenting

• Humble

• Paradoxical

• Highly motivated to learn

Focused on building a learning team/organization

Inspired by Jerry Porras and Jim Collins’ research – Built to Last and Good to Great

What new forms of leadership have you experienced?

● Learning

● Collaborative

● Shared, distributed, rotating

● Complementary, co-creative

● Collective, community

● Collegial, cooperative

● Partnership, co-leadership

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Evolutionary Co-leadership: A new synthesis or a next stage in leadership development?

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Individual heroicleadership (thesis)

Collective/cooperative leadership(antithesis)

Evolutionary co-leadership (synthesis)

© Alain Gauthier

Polarity Map of

individual/collective leadership (1)

Inspired by Barry Johnson’s Polarity Management - Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems, 1997 and by Allison Conte

Upside(value)

Downside(fear)

Individual leadership Collective leadership

Clear way forwardFast decision makingClear roles, process, accountabilityIndividual initiative

Well-informed decisions made through widespread inputs and perspectivesHigh ownershipWider leadership base

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Polarity Map of

individual/collective leadership (2)

Inspired by Barry Johnson’s Polarity Management - Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems, 1997 and by Allison Conte

Upside(value)

Downside(fear)

Individual leadership Collective leadership

Clear way forwardFast decision makingClear roles, process, accountabilityIndividual initiative

Ill-informed decisions made through limited inputs and perspectivesLow ownershipIndividual attachment to decision

Well-informed decisions made through widespread inputs and perspectivesHigh ownershipWider leadership base

Confusion about goalsSlow decision makingAmbiguous roles, process and accountabilitiesWrong people making inappropriate decisions

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High-performance team: A step toward co-leadership

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Individual heroicleadership (thesis)

Collective/cooperative leadership(antithesis)

Evolutionary co-leadership (synthesis)

High-performance/ exceptional team

© Alain Gauthier

The Team Performance Curve

Working group (or single-leader unit) Potential

team

Pseudo-team

Real (or performing) team

High-performance(or extraordinary) team

Performance Impact

Time required

Source: J. Katzenbach & D. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams, Collins Business Essentials, 2003

Evolutionary Co-leadership: Above and beyond a high-performance team (1)

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● A High-Performance Team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are equally committed to common goals and a working approach – for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. Its members are also deeply committed to one another's personal growth and success. The team outperforms all reasonable expectations given its membership.

Adapted from J. Katzenbach & D. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams, 2003

Evolutionary Co-leadership: Above and beyond a high-performance team (2)

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● Evolutionary Co-leadership is practiced among leaders who regard each other and behave as co-creative and co-responsible partners in service of the the common good. They assume flexible, rotating, or joint leadership – according to what is perceived and required. They feel no personal need to stand out or to impose their views. Instead, they cultivate the ability to know or sense what needs to be said or done by contributing their unique gifts and tapping into collective wisdom.

Inspired by Collective Leadership Institute

● A High-Performance Team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are equally committed to common goals and a working approach – for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. Its members are also deeply committed to one another's personal growth and success. The team outperforms all reasonable expectations given its membership.

Team discipline is required when…

● The performance challenge cannot be met only through the sum of individual contributions

● Work products (or outcomes) are in large part collective and require joint efforts in real time

● Members need to work jointly to integrate complementary skills and talents

● Leadership roles need to shift among team members, and an adaptable approach works best

● Mutual accountability is needed in addition to individual accountability

Source: J. Katzenbach & D. Smith “The Wisdom of Teams”, Collins Business Essentials, 2003

Different levels of partnering

● Within self

● With others (team, organization, across organizations and/or sectors)

● With nature

● With the larger field

● With evolution, with Life (or the Divine)

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What qualities need to be developed to move toward evolutionary co-leadership?

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Qualities of evolutionary co-leadership

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I Relation to self

You and I Relation to others

All of lifeRelation to the whole

Head

Awareness

Clarity DiscernmentAttention

ExplorationAppreciation of diverse perspectivesHumility

Global interconn- ectednessGlobal vision

Heart

Care/love

OpennessNon-judgmentalIn touch with one’s feelingsIntuition

Empathic listeningWarm and ethical relationshipCourage

Global compassionService

Hara/body

Presence

Embodied intentionSelf-sufficiencySolidity

Presence to otherConnection at subtle energy levelEntrainment

Right action informed by global awareness and larger energy field

© Alain Gauthier

Co-leadership consciously integrates and balances:

• reflection and action

• intuition and logic

• body, heart and intellect

• presence and vision

• emotional intelligence and complex thought

• individual creativity and collective intelligence

• experimentation and dissemination

• economic, ecological, social and human goals

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Non-violent communication

Shift from a MAJOR/minor mental model (about characteristics or viewpoints) …

M

… to an Equivalence mental model (we are different but have equal intrinsic value and are worthy of each other’s respect)

E E

m

Adapted from Albert Preira

EBBF Values and Evolutionary co-leadership

● Human nobility

● Service

● Gender equality

● Justice

● Unity

● Moderation

● Sustainability

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EBBF Operational Principles and Evolutionary co-leadership

● Consultation

● Collaboration

● Accompaniment

● Ever-advancing learning

● New work ethic

● Ethics in business

● A new paradigm of economics

● A learning community

● Responsibility20

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Inner and external dances of evolutionary co-leadership

Inner danceof partnering

External dance of partnering

Personalpractices

Interpersonal & systemic practices

R

Evolutionary call

Metasystemic practices

R

R : reinforcing loops

R

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Co-leadership development practices span the four quadrants

Subjective/Invisible Objective/Observable

Individual (I)

Collective (we)

(it) Personal Practices

(its)

Interpersonalpractices

Systemic practices

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Examples of evolutionary co-leadership practices


(I)

(We)

(it)

(its)

Feeling interconnectedInner dialogueTrusting life/evolutionValuing each stages of developmentStaying humble, open

© Alain Gauthier, based on Ken Wilber’s four quadrants

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(I)

(We)

(it)

(its)


Tuning one’s instrumentSensing, looking, and listening; deep breathingExpressing tough loveWillingness to improviseand experiment


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(I)

(We)

(it)

(its)



Co-hosting/sacred spacePracticing impersonality(allowing collective flow) Co-creating through generative dialoguePeer co-development


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(I)

(We)

(it)

(its)



Co-hosting/sacred spacePracticing impersonality(allowing collective flow) Co-creating through generative dialoguePeer co-development

High-performance teamCollective U processSystem in the roomWorld café/Open spaceBehavioral agreementsHolacracy/sociocracy


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Personal practices

Engage in individual action inquiry (first-person research)

• Journaling about one’s personal observations, reflections and learning; auto-biographical writing

• Noticing one’s contradictory desires, and of the distinction between desires and intentions

• Surfacing and challenging one’s assumptions (using the ladder of inference, the four-column exercise), including about leadership

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Personal practices (2)

Engage in individual action inquiry (1st-person research)

• Deepening one’s intuition and inner knowing through consciousness practices (e.g. meditation, nature, martial arts, improvisational theater)

• Seeking coaching/mentoring and role-playing

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Interpersonal Practices

Engage in collaborative action inquiry (2nd person)

• Practice high-quality advocacy and inquiry, active listening, reflective and generative dialogue, including in peer groups

• Address conflicts as opportunities to learn

• Work creatively with dilemmas and paradoxes (e.g. using a polarity map)

• Apply systems thinking archetypes to complex issues in groups of peers

• Use every meeting or interaction as learning opportunity; agree upon behavioral norms and evaluate how well they are respected

Systemic practices

● Build a shared vision from the viewpoints of stakeholders as a lead-in to transformation, using creative tension

● Form a micro-system with stakeholders’ representatives, practice active listening and co-designing of prototypes, by calling on collective wisdom

● Engage peers and other actors of the eco-system in learning journeys in other cultural contexts

● Connect with other leaders across organizations and sectors who sense the evolutionary call and are experimenting with new liberating structures

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4. How to scale up evolutionary co-leadership?

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Dissemination of evolutionary co-leadership

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% of population

Attitude towardco-leadership

Resisters

Fence sitters Supporters

Innovators inco-leadership

Adapted from Rupert Everett’s innovation Curve

What groups/organizations/communities do you know

that are already engaged in co-leadership practices?

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Possible next steps

● Individual and collective inquiry, experimentation within own organization/community, feedback, and sharing

● Identifying, connecting with, learning from and supporting other evolutionary co-leadership experiments

● Peer development through communities of practice

34© Alain Gauthier

Principles of evolutionary co-leadership● Remain deeply grounded in the purpose of evolution – not

getting lost in details and difficulties

● Trust the process of evolution – letting go of certainties and being open, curious, receptive, humble, experimenting, and courageous

● Embrace complexity – without making it more complex or more simple than it is, but looking for “simplexity”

● Be moved by the evolutionary call toward perfection in this imperfect but changing world – without becoming a perfectionist nor discouraged by the current imperfection

35Adapted from Craig Hamilton

Principles of evolutionary co-leadership(cont’d)

● Explore the way of the future in collaboration with others – inviting them to become co-leaders who express their own gifts in synergy

● Be intuitive and et receptive to the surrounding field, by using all ways of knowing – somatic, emotional, cognitive, immediate – with discernment

● Listen to the call of the future, while taking together a first step with confidence

● Commit to play wide, to change the game, staying on the razor’s edge, crossing a threshold – without listening to self-limiting beliefs.

36Adapted from Craig Hamilton

To learn more and go further● Read:

Actualizing Evolutionary Co-leadership – Evolving a Creative and Responsible Society by Alain Gauthier

Evolutionary coaching by Richard Barrett

Evolutionary leadership by Peter Merry

Evolutionaries by Carter Phipps

● Consult: www.coreleadership.com

● Contact: [email protected]

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http://www.coreleadership.com

mailto:[email protected]

38Available as an eBook at amazon.com

#ebbflisbon learning event - evolutionary leadership, a learnshop by alain gauthier

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