As we open our forum dedicated to the stories and learnings of whole leaders, I thought I’d stir up some thoughts on what I mean by whole leadership and why it matters.
Whole Leadership – might sound a bit New Age-y to some, as in yesterday’s leader could tell people what to do, divide, conquer, and strike fear into people’s hearts, but today’s leader needs to be more rounded and ”whole.” Or maybe whole leadership sounds like an impossible dream: being all things to all people and situations - the “answer” to the daunting challenges facing leaders today.
There’s some truth in these views. Today’s leader does need more than a driving, my-way-or-the-highway style to be successful. And today’s challenges do call for unprecedented learning agility. But whole leadership is much more than the fashion of the day, but rather a developmental leap to greater awareness and capability – and those things DO go together. Far from being impossible impostoring, whole leadership is none other than the authentic, value-adding expression of the whole Self.
But by capital-“S”-Self, I’m speaking to something beyond the ego (hence the developmental leap). Not just our usual thinking self, but a whole mind-body-spirit Self, an energetic and material Self, a paradoxically individuated and interconnected Self. It is a whole Self that meets diverse challenges with agility, not through impostor-ish surface behaviors, but by deeply engaging and using any of its 4 energy patterns at the right time. Whole leadership in this sense is not becoming other than who we are, just more clear, free and fully who we are!
How do we become more clear, free and fully who we are? That’s one of the things we’ll explore in this forum. From birth to death, we’re on a path of development that we might describe as growing or shrinking, flowing or stuck, becoming more capable or more of a caricature. Growth sounds like the only side of this equation we’d ever want to be on, but we’re paradoxically put together such that the opposite is often true: when we’re growing we’re not comfortable and when we’re comfortable we’re not growing. Challenging learning curves and hardship are known to be reliable catalysts for developing leaders - especially when combined with reflection. This forum might be just the place to do that: reflect on your own pivotal learning experiences and learn from the reflections of others.
The other known catalyst for development are what the great integral philosopher, Ken Wilber, calls “integral practices,” that is, integrated mind-body practices that engage and develop the whole person. For example, Wilber cites a study measuring the percent of people at an advanced stage of development he calls “Tier II,” that we could equate with the capacity for whole leadership. Among the general population, less than 2% are at this stage, however among people who have meditated for at least 3 years the number is 38%. What’s chicken and what’s egg? I say run your own experiment, and you’ll see that it doesn’t matter! This forum (and website!) might provide just the spark of inspiration for you to find your own best practice for whole leadership, and to share what’s worked for you or for leaders you know.
So whole leadership - and our forum dedicated to its exploration - embraces both the spectrum of agility needed to be an effective leader in the world today, and using our whole selves to foster that critical development. Why does it matter? There are plenty of logical reasons: we’re either growing or shrinking – and whether we’re talking about a company or ourselves, navigating the challenges of growth is much more rewarding than is the suffering of being stuck. But beyond that, if whole leadership is the fullest, value-adding expression of our very nature, what could be more natural than that?