Some of the ideas that struck me during our webinar last week with @jgberger, Eliat Aram and Mary Uhl-Bien ..
"Leaders are condition creators. Leaders create and shapes contexts in a complex world. Our role now is to figure out how to nurture life-giving contexts that support the leadership of all of the actors in that system." - @jgberger
Leaders work at the interface of finding authority from within (self-authorising) in the context of the group/collective and formal authority and power structures. - Eliat Aram
Mary Uhl-Bien referenced Benyamin Lichtenstein's notion of generative emergence and how we need leaders who are able to lead IN emergent contexts and capable to be leaders OF generative emergence in systems.
Grave mistakes leaders make is rely on past experience or they try to overly shape and overly control the response. In complexity, "I don’t know", is more useful. Nurturing what is emerging now vs imposing your vision onto the system. @jgberger
@jgberger reflected how all of the leaders she works with now, unlike in the past, are already in the space of “I don’t know”. A big part of our work was to help leaders cross the bridge to “I don’t know”, now they approach us already there. "I don’t know, now what?".
We need to develop a transformed capacity for making sense (and creating groups of people in various systems that can make sense together) in ways beyond the automatic human reflex that says complexity is terrifying and therefore I need to control it. @jgberger
(1 of 2) One of the core leadership moves required now is to support people to be able to handle complexity in new ways. If everyone is auto-metabolising complexity as threat, our nervous systems respond by looking for certainty.
(2 of 2) This creates reactive systems where we choose leaders who tell us things that may not be true, but that allow our nervous systems to relax and we end up placing our trust in dangerous places. @jgberger
Uncertainty and the anxiety of not knowing is not only a threat, it triggers shame. Shame is an integral aspect of learning, but it produces anxiety similar to fear of death. Now our lived reality with COVID19 = the stresss not knowing (shame) + fear of death. - Eliat Aram.
Enabling leaders are able to create adaptive space, adaptive responses and ultimately adaptive organisations - Mary Uhl Bien
Adaptive response: System experiences pressure to change; leaders allow tension (push for novelty vs pull of stability) & conflicting; then enable connecting across differences so novelty emerges; then figure out how the formal system can accommodate the novelty. -Mary Uhl-Bien
Complexity offers the potential for creativity and destructiveness. It invites people to engage with the concept of risk, but what needs to be clear is our purpose. What is our task. The task boundary is the most important boundary in a human system. - Eliat Aram
Leadership emerges in relationality. It is a dynamic process of leading and following. There is asymmetry in the relating - it is a fluid, dynamic co-created process of influencing and deferring. - Mary Uhl-Bien
How do we create the conditions collectively to enhance the carrying capacity of the human race for complexity? No single leader can hold the complexity. We all need to be holding more gracefully, with maybe something like joy, the peril and possibility of complexity. @jgberger
We're in a world where the old stories that held at bay complexity are shattering. As the faultlines in those stories become more apparent in tangible & indisputable ways, it creates a moment for us to collectively shape new, more complex stories of what is possible. @jgberger
