The Leadership Edge this month is focusing on Barbara Kellerman's book,Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters. Harvard Business School. 2004.
Leadership is leadership. Sometimes it is good and sometimes bad. Almost all leadership books focus on the positive, "light", side of leadership. Rarely does someone look at the bad side of leadership; the "dark" side. Kellerman goes even further in that she dedicates the whole book to the concept of bad leadership; something that no other author I've read has done. There is a dark side to the human condition and to deny that it plays a role in the exertion of leadership is folly. It is only in understanding this dark side and making different choices that we will develop differently. If we are not willing to investigate where leadership has gone wrong, analyze the situation and make different decisions, then we are destined to repeat the same mistakes of people in the past. George Santayana's famous quote is: Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Kellerman defines a leader as one who "chooses a particular course of action and then in some way gets others to go along; or, more subtly, the leader encourages the led to "choose" the course that the group will follow." (p.xiii) You will notice that she doesn't define leadership as a position a person holds.
She lists seven areas of bad leadership:
1. Incompetent
2. Rigid
3. Intemperate
4. Callous
5. Corrupt
6. Insular
7. Evil
For most of human history, it was presumed that leadership had "badness". Cruelty was assumed to be a part of leadership. In Machiavellian terms, the bad leader was a weak leader who refused to do what was necessary. Machiavelli and the U.S. founders shared something in common: the belief that people must be restrained from their base (and darker) instincts. That is the reason that so many protections were built in democracy: to constrain people from exerting power in harmful ways.
"Why Do Leaders Behave Badly?... leaders behave badly because of who they are and what they want." pp18-19
Why Do We Follow Leaders Who Behave Badly?...Unless followers are pressured or coerced into going along with bad leaders, they resist them- right? Wrong. p.21
She suggests that the primary reasons that people choose to follow bad leaders are because of individual and group needs. Bad leaders help to satisfy needs. (pp.22-25) Followers dedication to bad leaders is often strongest when their leaders are very bad, as opposed to only somewhat bad... it is a matter of self-interest." p. 25
Bad leadership falls into two categories: bad as in ineffective and bad as in unethical. p.33
"Ineffective leadership fails to produce the desired change.p.33
Unethical leadership fails to distinguish between right and wrong. p.34
She lists the things that ethical leaders do (and unethical leaders do not do.Ethical leaders put their followers' needs before their own... exemplify private virtues such as courage and temperance... exercise leadership in the interest of the common good. p34-35. She then follows with the issue of followers and their behavior. Ethical followers take the leader into account...exemplify private virtues such as courage and temperance... engage the leader and also other followers on behalf of the common good.
Incompetent leadership- the leader and at least some followers lack the will or skill (or both) to sustain effective action. With regard to at least one important leadership challenge, they do not create positive change.
Leaders that she writes about in this category:
Bernadine Healy, American Red Cross
Juan Antonio Samaranch, President of the International Olympic Committee
Abdurrahman Wahid, President (the first) of Indonesia
Jill Barad, CEO of Mattell, Inc.
Rigid leadership- the leader and at least some followers are stiff and unyielding. Although they may be competent, they are unable or unwilling to adapt to new ideas, new information,or changing times.
Leaders in this category:
Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa
Mary Meeker, financial analyst
Robert Haas, CEO, Levi Strauss & Co.
Summer Redstone, CEO, Viacom
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia
Intemperate leadership- the leader lacks self-control and is aided and abetted by followers who are unwilling or unable effectively to intervene.
Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia
Marion Barry, Jr., Mayor of Washington D.C.
Gary Hart, Senator, United States
Jesse Jackson, politician & clergyman
James Bakker, minister, Assemblies of God
Reverend Henry Lyons, President, National Baptist Convention
William Bennett, ex-Secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan
Callous- the leader and at least some followers are uncaring or unkind. Ignored or discounted are the needs, wants, and wishes of most members of the group or organization, especially subordinates.
Martha Stewart
Al Dunlap, CEO of Sunbeam Corporation
Rudolph Guliani, former mayor, New York City
Leona Helmsley, hotelier
Howell Raines, Executive Editor, New York Times
Corrupt leadership- the leader and at least some followers lie, cheat, or steal. To a degree that exceeds the norm, they put self-interest ahead of the public interest.
A. Alfred Taubman, Owner of Sotheby
Diana(Dede) Brooks, CEO of Sotheby
William Aramony, United Way of America
Vincent (Buddy) Cianci Jr., Mayor, Providence, Rhode Island
Mario Villanueva, Governor, Quintana Roo, Mexico
Andrew Fastow, CFO, Enron
Insular leadership- the leader and at least some followers minimize or disregard the health and welfare of "the other" - that is, those outside the group or organization for which they are directly responsible.
Bill Clinton, President of the United States
Lee Raymond, President, Exxon Corp.
James W. Johnston, CEO, R.J. Reynolds
Evil leadership- the leader and at least some followers commit atrocities. They use pain as an instrument of power. The harm done to men,women,and children is severe rather than slight. The harm can be physical, psychological, or both.
Foday Sankoh, guerrilla leader in Sierra Leone
Radovan Karadzic, President of Bosnian Serbs
Saddam Hussein, Iraq leader
Pol Pot, Cambodia leader
Jim Jones, sect leader (Jonestown, Guyana)
David Korresh, sect leader (Ranch Apocalypse)
"We know three important things:
1. Sometimes leaders, and followers, make a difference.
2. Sometimes this difference is significant.
3. Sometimes the outcome is bad." p.48
Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. Clifford Geertz
In the later part of the book (p.233) she offers some suggestions to leaders on how they can be more effective and ethical.
- Limit your term
- Share power
- Don't believe your own hype
- Get real, and stay real
- Compensate for your weaknesses
- Stay balanced
- Remember the mission
- Stay healthy
- Develop a personal support system
- Be creative
- Know and control your appetites
- Be reflective
She continues (p. 235) with ways that leaders can work with followers to get the best work in the best possible way.
- Establish a culture of openness in which diversity and dissent are encouraged.
- Install an ombudsman
- Bring in advisers who are both strong and independent
- Avoid groupthink
- Get reliable and complete information, and then disseminate it
- Invite an historian to the table
- Establish a system of checks and balances
- Strive for stakeholder symmetry
On p. 239 she begins to explain things that followers could do to implement corrections.
- Empower yourself
- Be loyal to the whole and not to any single individual
- Be skeptical
- Take a stand
- Pay attention
Then on p. 240 she explains ways that followers can work with others
- Ensure that the punishment fits the crime
- Find allies
- Develop your own sources of information
- Take collective action
- Be a watchdog
- Hold leaders to account
Questions to consider and find your answers for:
Which of the bad leadership traits do you have personal experience?
What have you done when faced with this type of leadership?
Do you see any subtle traces of some of these traits? Which ones? How do you counter them/it?
If you are a small business owner, how do you implement the suggestions that she makes?
If you are in many positions of followership, in what areas can you apply her suggestions?
What are three steps that you can take to improve bad leadership within your sphere of influence and control?
Friday, January 9, 2009
Monday, November 17, 2008
Snychronicity: 11/18/08
Synchronicity
Joseph Jaworski
Barrett-Kohler 1998
This leadership book details the life and learning of Joseph Jaworski. He is the son of the Watergate special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. Joseph’s career has gone from being a successful law practice and owner of race horses to the creation of one of the most wide-spread leadership development programs in the United States: The American Leadership Forum. The book ends with his work on scenario development with Shell Oil. It is an insightful journey of one man uncovering the meaning of leadership. He refers a lot to the seminal book, Servant Leader, by Robert Greenleaf.
Preface
“…synchronicity ‘as meaningful coincidence of two of more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved.’”
“I have come to see this as the most subtle territory of leadership, creating the conditions for ‘predictable miracles’”.
Introduction by Peter Senge
3 “Ultimately, leadership is about creating new realities.”
10 “…it’s about a shift from seeing a world made up of things to seeing a world that’s open and primarily made up of relationships…” Once we see this, we begin to see that the future is not fixed, that we live in a world of possibilities…But deep down, we’re resigned to being absolutely powerless in the larger world. Yet if we have a world of people who all feel powerless, we have a future that’s predetermined. So we live in hopelessness and helplessness, a state of great despair. And this despair is actually a product of how we think, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.”
12 “Sometimes the greatest acts of commitment involve doing nothing but sitting and waiting until I must know what to do next.”
14 “Lastly, when we are in a state of commitment and surrender, we begin to experience what is sometimes called ‘synchronicity’. In other words, synchronicity is a result.”
Chapter One Watergate
This chapter tells about his experience with his father and the changes experienced after his father’s return from war. It goes on to give an insight to the disillusionment that came from Nixon’s actions. At one point he questions (p.22) “How could someone with such low moral and ethical base ascend to the highest office of the most powerful nation in the world? How could this happen? Who was responsible? How could we prevent this from ever happening again?...(p 23) I was disillusioned with our political leadership, but I recognized that we all bore some personal responsibility for what was happening in Washington. We were getting what we deserved. I began thinking about the role that ordinary citizens like myself should be playing the life of our country.”
Chapter Two Making a Mark
This chapter details his successful rise as a trial lawyer and his immense material success in different areas of his life, including a lucrative quarter horse operation. He ends the chapter with, “The end to this illusion would come to me, as it has for so many, by means of a personal crisis.”
Chapter Three The Journey Begins
Through his personal crisis he was forced to do introspective work. “I began to reflect upon how I was living, where I was heading, and what I wanted out of life…It was to be years later as I looked back at this time of my life that I realized that this was the beginning of a new life journey for me…” pp34-35
Chapter Four Freedom
A divorce and the selling of the horse operations came at this time of his life. “…I found myself thinking about two notions of freedom… The first was “freedom from”, that is freedom to get away from the oppressiveness of circumstances. A great deal of what I was experiencing was the need to break loose from the conformity of my life over the previous fifteen years. But another notion of freedom was… the freedom to follow my life’s purpose with all the commitment I could muster…”p.39
Chapter Five Grand Prix Test Run
“Ever since I was a teenager I had been fascinated by Ferraris, and in later years I enjoyed Grand Prix racing.” p 40
This chapter covers his unique experience around Grand Prix racing in Monza, Italy. This covers his challenges to getting into the racing pits. He meets a unique person (Manny, a former U.S. fighter pilot) who is seminal in helping him to achieve his dream. His question is, how much do we let things happen and how often do we force it to happen?
Chapter Six The Art of Loving
In this chapter he describes the impact of Eric Fromm’s book, The Art of Loving.
p. 46 “I learned that our deepest need is to overcome our aloneness and out separateness…We seek conformity, mistaking it for union.”
“Fromm sets forth the elements of love: care, which is active concern for the life and growth of the one we love; responsibility, which is caring for one’s physical needs as well as one’s higher needs; and respect, which is allowing others to grow as they need to on their own terms.”
p. 47 “It was all a part of my experiment with trust of and patience with the natural flow of life, with being open to the next step, and then taking it when the moment seemed right.”
Chapter Seven Oneness
“Sometimes the oneness happens between a lawyer and a jury. I’ve talked to many of the best trial lawyers, and they acknowledge that there is often a moment, either in the closing argument or the trial itself, where there is nothing between you and the jury. You’re a part of them, and they’re a part of you.” p.53
“I ran into Fran Tarkenton, the former quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings…He and the receiver were in complete accord. Things would slow down and be almost effortless. He knew before the ball ever left his hands that it was a completed pass.” p.54
Chapter Eight The Dream
“…I began to feel that the organizing principle of the universe is ‘relatedness’, and that this is more fundamental than ‘thingness’. It kept occurring to me that this new understanding is what’t missing in how we think about leadership. We’re always talking about what leaders do- about leadership style and function- but we put very little emphasis on the being aspect of leadership.” Pp. 58-59
“”The essence of leadership, says Greenleaf, is the desire to servce one another and to serve something beyond ourselves, a higher purpose. In our traditional way of thinking, “servant leadership” sounds like an oxymoron. But in a world of relationships, where relatedness is the organizing principle of the universe, it makes perfect sense.” p.59
“By the time I left the mountains, I had a basic outline for an institute that would develop servant leadership. Eventually, I would call it the American Leadership Forum. It would be patterned in some ways after the well-known White House Fellowship Program… it would heighten their sense of public responsibility, and it would enhance their capacity to lead in a pluralistic society where no one would ever be “in charge” again. The overarching principle would be one of ‘servant leadership’.”p.60
Chapter Nine Cairo
“Leadership is all about the release of human possibilities. One of the central requirements for good leadership is the capacity to inspire the people in the group to move them and encourage them and pull them into activity, and to help them get centered and focused and operating at peak capacity. A key element of this capacity to inspire is communicating to people that you believe they mater, that you know they have something important to give. The confidence you have in others will to some degree determine the confidence they have in themselves.” p.66
Chapter Ten Collapsing Boundaries
Through a personal tragedy he finds an impetus to move the dream into reality.
Chapter Eleven The Mystery of Commitment
At this point he resigns from the law firm.
“At the moment I walked away from the firm, a strange thing happened. I clearly had no earthly idea how I would proceed. I knew next to nothing about leadership curriculum and development. I knew no one who could help me on the substantive side of things, no network of experts.” p.75
Chapter Twelve The Guide
In this chapter he describes his encounter with one of the world’s eminent theoretical physicist, David Bohm, and how that help guide his next steps. A part of Bohm’s work that impacted him, “This everything in the universe affects everything else because they are all part of the same unbroken whole. Bohm thinks that the current trend towards fragmentation is embedded in the subject-verb-object structure of our grammar, and is reflected at the personal and social levels by our tendency to see individuals and groups as ‘other’ than ourselves, leading to isolation, selfishness, and wars.” p. 78
Chapter Thirteen Synchronicity: The Cubic Centimeter of Chance
At this point he has a “chance” meeting with the woman who would become his wife.
“At the very moment when we are struggling to attain a sense of personal autonomy, we are also caught up in vital forces that are larger than ourselves..” p.88
Chapter Fourteen The Moment of Swing
He begins to detail out the sequence of events that lead him to some of the leading Leadership experts in the United States.
“1. The trouble with American leaders is their lack of self-knowledge.”
2. The trouble with American leaders is their lack of appreciation for the nature of leadership itself.
3. The trouble with American leaders is their focus on concepts that separate…rather than concepts the express our interconnectedness.
4. The trouble with American leaders is their ignorance of the world and of U.S. interdependence- their lack of worldmindedness.
5. The trouble with American leaders is their inattention to values- forgetting to ask “Why?” and “What for?”
6. The trouble with American leaders is that they do not know how to makes changes, to analyze “social architecture”, and to create a team to make something different happen.”
7. The trouble with American leaders is an insufficient appreciation of the relevance of stakeholders; of the implications of pluralism; and of the fact that nobody is in charge; and therefore each leader is partly in charge of the situation as a whole.
8. The trouble with American leaders is that they are not sufficiently aware of the context, or the external environment, of whatever it is they are responsible for doing.”
Chapter 15 The Wilderness Experience: A Gateway to Dialogue
A wilderness experience was included in the design of ALF. It was intended to:
“1. Strengthen the fellows’ power of self-belief, their feeling of self-efficacy, and the belief that they can accomplish what they set forth to do.
2. Encourage the fellows to rely on their inner resources that are so seldom tapped, to use their intuition and the ability to extemporize, and innovate in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity.
3. Build deep trust and respect among the group, and help each fellow get beyond the devaluing prejudices that we all hold.
4. Evoke their higher nature and have them experience that we are all connected.
5. Learn…how to be flexible and adapt quickly to change and new environments.” pp.101-102
Chapter 16 Dialogue: The Power of Collective Thinking
“… a great deal of what we discuss is not deeply serious in the sense that there are all sorts of things which are nonnegotiable- the ‘undiscussables’. No one mentions the undiscussables- they’re just there, lying beneath the surface, blocking deep, honest, heart-heart communication.” p.110
Chapter 17 Lessons: Encountering The Traps
“Some who are called to the adventure choose to go. Others may wrestle for years with fearfulness and denial before they are able to transcend fear. We tend to deny our destiny because of our insecurity, our dread of ostracism, our anxiety, and our lack of courage to risk what we have.” p.119
The Trap of Responsibility p.121
The Trap of Dependency p. 123
The Trap of Overactivity p. 127
Chapter 18 The Power of Commitment
“There are two aspects of commitment. There is a commitment to take action… But there is a second more subtle aspect to commitment and will, and that is the ground of being for taking action.” p.133
Chapter 19 The Return- and Venturing Forth Again
He details a description of the beginning of a new chapter in his life: an offer to head Shell’s worldwide scenario planning team.
Chapter 20 Setting the Field
At this point he has joined Shell. “The first task was to set the vision for our team… I was struck, however, from the very outset at how rational the Westerners in the group seemed to be, and how skeptical and even disdainful most of them were of anything that smacked of what they referred to as the ‘soft stuff’- anything that could not be measured or quantified. This was very difficult for me because over the previous then years or so, I had come to see the immeasurable as precisely that which was most real…” pp 151-152
Chapter 21 Barricades
“From the very outset I sought to gain collective agreement on the team about the driving forces that were influencing world events… Eventually we agreed that two interrelated patterns characterized fundamental change around the world: increasing liberalization and increasing globalization.” p.155
Barricades is basically the scenario they agreed is the possible downside of the liberalization and globalization.
Chapter 22 New Frontiers
New Frontiers is about the upside of the liberalization and globalization.
“This title seemed fitting for a scenario of what can occur if the world embraces the unprecedented challenge of securing political and economic freedom for all people in the world.” p.166
Chapter 23 A World of Possibilities
“… the awesome power of these words, “We the People”… I kept thinking about how we the people in fact do create the future through our declarations, our actions, our way of being.” p. 173
Chapter 24 Creating the Future
“The conventional view of leadership emphasizes positional power and conspicuous accomplishment. But true leadership is about creating a domain in which we continually learn and become more capable of participating in our unfolding future.” p.183
Epilogue Bretton Woods and Hadamar
This final chapter describes a powerful gathering of 350 people who were asking, “What next?” in a global sense. A touching story is shared about a woman’s father who died in Auschwitz.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Joseph Jaworski
Barrett-Kohler 1998
This leadership book details the life and learning of Joseph Jaworski. He is the son of the Watergate special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. Joseph’s career has gone from being a successful law practice and owner of race horses to the creation of one of the most wide-spread leadership development programs in the United States: The American Leadership Forum. The book ends with his work on scenario development with Shell Oil. It is an insightful journey of one man uncovering the meaning of leadership. He refers a lot to the seminal book, Servant Leader, by Robert Greenleaf.
Preface
“…synchronicity ‘as meaningful coincidence of two of more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved.’”
“I have come to see this as the most subtle territory of leadership, creating the conditions for ‘predictable miracles’”.
Introduction by Peter Senge
3 “Ultimately, leadership is about creating new realities.”
10 “…it’s about a shift from seeing a world made up of things to seeing a world that’s open and primarily made up of relationships…” Once we see this, we begin to see that the future is not fixed, that we live in a world of possibilities…But deep down, we’re resigned to being absolutely powerless in the larger world. Yet if we have a world of people who all feel powerless, we have a future that’s predetermined. So we live in hopelessness and helplessness, a state of great despair. And this despair is actually a product of how we think, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.”
12 “Sometimes the greatest acts of commitment involve doing nothing but sitting and waiting until I must know what to do next.”
14 “Lastly, when we are in a state of commitment and surrender, we begin to experience what is sometimes called ‘synchronicity’. In other words, synchronicity is a result.”
Chapter One Watergate
This chapter tells about his experience with his father and the changes experienced after his father’s return from war. It goes on to give an insight to the disillusionment that came from Nixon’s actions. At one point he questions (p.22) “How could someone with such low moral and ethical base ascend to the highest office of the most powerful nation in the world? How could this happen? Who was responsible? How could we prevent this from ever happening again?...(p 23) I was disillusioned with our political leadership, but I recognized that we all bore some personal responsibility for what was happening in Washington. We were getting what we deserved. I began thinking about the role that ordinary citizens like myself should be playing the life of our country.”
Chapter Two Making a Mark
This chapter details his successful rise as a trial lawyer and his immense material success in different areas of his life, including a lucrative quarter horse operation. He ends the chapter with, “The end to this illusion would come to me, as it has for so many, by means of a personal crisis.”
Chapter Three The Journey Begins
Through his personal crisis he was forced to do introspective work. “I began to reflect upon how I was living, where I was heading, and what I wanted out of life…It was to be years later as I looked back at this time of my life that I realized that this was the beginning of a new life journey for me…” pp34-35
Chapter Four Freedom
A divorce and the selling of the horse operations came at this time of his life. “…I found myself thinking about two notions of freedom… The first was “freedom from”, that is freedom to get away from the oppressiveness of circumstances. A great deal of what I was experiencing was the need to break loose from the conformity of my life over the previous fifteen years. But another notion of freedom was… the freedom to follow my life’s purpose with all the commitment I could muster…”p.39
Chapter Five Grand Prix Test Run
“Ever since I was a teenager I had been fascinated by Ferraris, and in later years I enjoyed Grand Prix racing.” p 40
This chapter covers his unique experience around Grand Prix racing in Monza, Italy. This covers his challenges to getting into the racing pits. He meets a unique person (Manny, a former U.S. fighter pilot) who is seminal in helping him to achieve his dream. His question is, how much do we let things happen and how often do we force it to happen?
Chapter Six The Art of Loving
In this chapter he describes the impact of Eric Fromm’s book, The Art of Loving.
p. 46 “I learned that our deepest need is to overcome our aloneness and out separateness…We seek conformity, mistaking it for union.”
“Fromm sets forth the elements of love: care, which is active concern for the life and growth of the one we love; responsibility, which is caring for one’s physical needs as well as one’s higher needs; and respect, which is allowing others to grow as they need to on their own terms.”
p. 47 “It was all a part of my experiment with trust of and patience with the natural flow of life, with being open to the next step, and then taking it when the moment seemed right.”
Chapter Seven Oneness
“Sometimes the oneness happens between a lawyer and a jury. I’ve talked to many of the best trial lawyers, and they acknowledge that there is often a moment, either in the closing argument or the trial itself, where there is nothing between you and the jury. You’re a part of them, and they’re a part of you.” p.53
“I ran into Fran Tarkenton, the former quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings…He and the receiver were in complete accord. Things would slow down and be almost effortless. He knew before the ball ever left his hands that it was a completed pass.” p.54
Chapter Eight The Dream
“…I began to feel that the organizing principle of the universe is ‘relatedness’, and that this is more fundamental than ‘thingness’. It kept occurring to me that this new understanding is what’t missing in how we think about leadership. We’re always talking about what leaders do- about leadership style and function- but we put very little emphasis on the being aspect of leadership.” Pp. 58-59
“”The essence of leadership, says Greenleaf, is the desire to servce one another and to serve something beyond ourselves, a higher purpose. In our traditional way of thinking, “servant leadership” sounds like an oxymoron. But in a world of relationships, where relatedness is the organizing principle of the universe, it makes perfect sense.” p.59
“By the time I left the mountains, I had a basic outline for an institute that would develop servant leadership. Eventually, I would call it the American Leadership Forum. It would be patterned in some ways after the well-known White House Fellowship Program… it would heighten their sense of public responsibility, and it would enhance their capacity to lead in a pluralistic society where no one would ever be “in charge” again. The overarching principle would be one of ‘servant leadership’.”p.60
Chapter Nine Cairo
“Leadership is all about the release of human possibilities. One of the central requirements for good leadership is the capacity to inspire the people in the group to move them and encourage them and pull them into activity, and to help them get centered and focused and operating at peak capacity. A key element of this capacity to inspire is communicating to people that you believe they mater, that you know they have something important to give. The confidence you have in others will to some degree determine the confidence they have in themselves.” p.66
Chapter Ten Collapsing Boundaries
Through a personal tragedy he finds an impetus to move the dream into reality.
Chapter Eleven The Mystery of Commitment
At this point he resigns from the law firm.
“At the moment I walked away from the firm, a strange thing happened. I clearly had no earthly idea how I would proceed. I knew next to nothing about leadership curriculum and development. I knew no one who could help me on the substantive side of things, no network of experts.” p.75
Chapter Twelve The Guide
In this chapter he describes his encounter with one of the world’s eminent theoretical physicist, David Bohm, and how that help guide his next steps. A part of Bohm’s work that impacted him, “This everything in the universe affects everything else because they are all part of the same unbroken whole. Bohm thinks that the current trend towards fragmentation is embedded in the subject-verb-object structure of our grammar, and is reflected at the personal and social levels by our tendency to see individuals and groups as ‘other’ than ourselves, leading to isolation, selfishness, and wars.” p. 78
Chapter Thirteen Synchronicity: The Cubic Centimeter of Chance
At this point he has a “chance” meeting with the woman who would become his wife.
“At the very moment when we are struggling to attain a sense of personal autonomy, we are also caught up in vital forces that are larger than ourselves..” p.88
Chapter Fourteen The Moment of Swing
He begins to detail out the sequence of events that lead him to some of the leading Leadership experts in the United States.
“1. The trouble with American leaders is their lack of self-knowledge.”
2. The trouble with American leaders is their lack of appreciation for the nature of leadership itself.
3. The trouble with American leaders is their focus on concepts that separate…rather than concepts the express our interconnectedness.
4. The trouble with American leaders is their ignorance of the world and of U.S. interdependence- their lack of worldmindedness.
5. The trouble with American leaders is their inattention to values- forgetting to ask “Why?” and “What for?”
6. The trouble with American leaders is that they do not know how to makes changes, to analyze “social architecture”, and to create a team to make something different happen.”
7. The trouble with American leaders is an insufficient appreciation of the relevance of stakeholders; of the implications of pluralism; and of the fact that nobody is in charge; and therefore each leader is partly in charge of the situation as a whole.
8. The trouble with American leaders is that they are not sufficiently aware of the context, or the external environment, of whatever it is they are responsible for doing.”
Chapter 15 The Wilderness Experience: A Gateway to Dialogue
A wilderness experience was included in the design of ALF. It was intended to:
“1. Strengthen the fellows’ power of self-belief, their feeling of self-efficacy, and the belief that they can accomplish what they set forth to do.
2. Encourage the fellows to rely on their inner resources that are so seldom tapped, to use their intuition and the ability to extemporize, and innovate in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity.
3. Build deep trust and respect among the group, and help each fellow get beyond the devaluing prejudices that we all hold.
4. Evoke their higher nature and have them experience that we are all connected.
5. Learn…how to be flexible and adapt quickly to change and new environments.” pp.101-102
Chapter 16 Dialogue: The Power of Collective Thinking
“… a great deal of what we discuss is not deeply serious in the sense that there are all sorts of things which are nonnegotiable- the ‘undiscussables’. No one mentions the undiscussables- they’re just there, lying beneath the surface, blocking deep, honest, heart-heart communication.” p.110
Chapter 17 Lessons: Encountering The Traps
“Some who are called to the adventure choose to go. Others may wrestle for years with fearfulness and denial before they are able to transcend fear. We tend to deny our destiny because of our insecurity, our dread of ostracism, our anxiety, and our lack of courage to risk what we have.” p.119
The Trap of Responsibility p.121
The Trap of Dependency p. 123
The Trap of Overactivity p. 127
Chapter 18 The Power of Commitment
“There are two aspects of commitment. There is a commitment to take action… But there is a second more subtle aspect to commitment and will, and that is the ground of being for taking action.” p.133
Chapter 19 The Return- and Venturing Forth Again
He details a description of the beginning of a new chapter in his life: an offer to head Shell’s worldwide scenario planning team.
Chapter 20 Setting the Field
At this point he has joined Shell. “The first task was to set the vision for our team… I was struck, however, from the very outset at how rational the Westerners in the group seemed to be, and how skeptical and even disdainful most of them were of anything that smacked of what they referred to as the ‘soft stuff’- anything that could not be measured or quantified. This was very difficult for me because over the previous then years or so, I had come to see the immeasurable as precisely that which was most real…” pp 151-152
Chapter 21 Barricades
“From the very outset I sought to gain collective agreement on the team about the driving forces that were influencing world events… Eventually we agreed that two interrelated patterns characterized fundamental change around the world: increasing liberalization and increasing globalization.” p.155
Barricades is basically the scenario they agreed is the possible downside of the liberalization and globalization.
Chapter 22 New Frontiers
New Frontiers is about the upside of the liberalization and globalization.
“This title seemed fitting for a scenario of what can occur if the world embraces the unprecedented challenge of securing political and economic freedom for all people in the world.” p.166
Chapter 23 A World of Possibilities
“… the awesome power of these words, “We the People”… I kept thinking about how we the people in fact do create the future through our declarations, our actions, our way of being.” p. 173
Chapter 24 Creating the Future
“The conventional view of leadership emphasizes positional power and conspicuous accomplishment. But true leadership is about creating a domain in which we continually learn and become more capable of participating in our unfolding future.” p.183
Epilogue Bretton Woods and Hadamar
This final chapter describes a powerful gathering of 350 people who were asking, “What next?” in a global sense. A touching story is shared about a woman’s father who died in Auschwitz.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
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