I’itoi and the Leader in the Maze

April 2024

Amazement

Just a few weeks ago on vacation in Tucson, Arizona, I’m buying a couple of pairs of earrings from Carolyn Reino and chatting with her at her outdoor stall in a small courtyard of shops. The shops are located next to the Franciscan mission San Xavier del Bac, which dates to 1783, on land belonging to the Tohono O’odham Nation. Actor, singer and Navajo silversmith Joe Begay made the earrings, and Carolyn owns the business. I ask Carolyn about the woman’s voice I hear on her radio, and she says she is listening to a tribal council meeting.

Having just visited the mission, I am curious about the Tohono O’odham symbol that is incorporated into the metalwork of its garden gate, which I then find on stickers and other items in the mission gift shop – and moments later on Begay’s earrings. It’s called I’itoi (pronounced ee-ee-toy), “The Man in the Maze,” and looks like this: 

Death approaching

In response to my inquiry, Carolyn hands me a slip of paper that explains:

To the Tohono O’odham, the man at the top of the maze symbolizes the birth of the individual, the family, the tribe and Iitoi (our Creator). As the figure goes through the maze (a person’s life), it may encounter many turns and changes. Progressing deeper and deeper into the pattern one acquires more knowledge, strength, and understanding. As the figure nears the end of the maze it sees death approaching (the dark center of the pattern). Interestingly, it is able to bypass death and retreat to a small corner of the pattern. It is here that it repents, cleanses itself, and reflects back on all the wisdom it has gained in life. Finally pure and in harmony with the world, it accepts death. As a person journeys through their life (the maze), they can feel comfort in the fact that Iitoi is always there to help and comfort them.

She can sense I’m fascinated, which I am for multiple reasons, including because I’itoi depicts the journey to becoming a transformational leader. (By my definition, what makes a leader “transformational” is that, in addition to evolving a team or organization through her external presence, she too is transformed by her leadership as a result of internal growth that only comes from having grappled with darkness.) As I’m thinking this, Carolyn adds that she’s among those who believe I’itoi represents the self-reflective “shadow” journey, which is a more general psychological term for the very same dynamic.

What precisely is this dynamic as it applies to leadership? When we’re holding onto a self-image, a title, a mode of operating, or an identity that we’re in the midst of shedding, we’re “The Leader in the Maze.” Sometimes this can be a painful journey because the overall pattern is not yet visible to us; instead, we’re in the twists of the deepening labyrinth. Without the big picture, the maze can be confusing, exhausting and scary, especially near the dark center. Sensing the unknown and unknowable approaching, we may want to get out of the maze, but as a leader we can’t emerge without changing and being changed – often publicly – in profound ways we cannot predict.

“A small corner of the pattern”

How does this transfiguration work? For me, a key portion of the maze narrative is when the leader who sees figurative death approaching “retreats” to a “small corner” where she surrenders to the unknown. What exactly happens there? The I’itoi information sheet uses the language of repentance, cleansing and purity for what occurs in the corner, whereas for the leadership context I would use the terms humility, self-forgiveness and innocence. 

A useful self-coaching question in the small corner is: what must I personally risk for the sake of something larger than myself? When we’re a leader facing an existential threat to our identity – which we recognize by the force of our resistance to change – we can choose to name for ourselves what, precisely, we’re so vigorously defending. This is the humility piece! (Is it my pride or reputation? The importance of being right? The need to justify something I said or did?) When we have a handle on that, a second step – the biggest challenge for many of us – is to forgive ourselves, wholeheartedly and completely. (Will I offer myself love and compassion, and appreciate how I am way more than the part of me that appears to have a “problem”? Will I offer myself grace and let myself be imperfect, wrong – and enough?) Third, we can accept we must let something go, releasing the attached part of our identity along with it, and notice: I may be different, but I’m still here! And when we pause for noticing in this empty, fresh, non-judgmental space, we are in a state of innocence. We’re a beginner at being this new iteration of a leader, and we “know” nothing. From here, we can inquire with pure curiosity: How am I no longer the leader of the self-image that meant so much to me before? What have I out-grown? What next steps does that free me to relax into taking now? Who am I becoming as I walk this path that is walking me? 

Final note: seasonal connections

It’s Easter as I draft this post, Passover’s coming up, and Ramadan happens to be occurring right now this year, too. We’re in the season when many of us retreat in spirit to a non-rational place where we give over to life’s greatest mysteries and celebrate what is miraculously liberated in the process. Not coincidentally, these religious observances mirror (in the northern hemisphere) nature’s own bittersweet rites in the sacred violence of birthing, hatching and sprouting. In my view, all of these are intertwined with the universality of I’itoi’s message: take solace in trusting that this incomprehensible pattern – the cosmic cycle of rupture, encounter with death, and an irreversibly altered life on the other side – is not to be understood through the logic in our heads, but through the gate in our hearts.

I took this photo of the east garden gate at San Xavier del Bac Mission on the tribal land of
the Tohono O’odham (Tucson, Arizona) in March 2024.

Calling Off the Search: The Still Point in Leadership Decision-Making

March 2024

Whatever the conditions of the body in this moment, whether you’re incredibly comfortable or incredibly uncomfortable, whatever the conditions of the mind, whether your mind is empty and peaceful or full of different thoughts and agitated, or a little of both, notice the quality of stillness, of spaciousness, beyond push and pull, beyond what’s pleasant and unpleasant. Notice at the deepest level of who you are in this moment, there’s a natural quality of contentment. You can just rest in this moment and allow yourself to be deeply satisfied, calling off the search. No seeking.

–Thomas McConkie

Applied Integral Polarity Practice

I am currently enrolled in the Integral Polarity Practice Institute’s online course, “Introduction to Using IPP Principles and Practices for Work in the World” with IPP’s founder, John Kesler. (Thomas McConkie – quoted above – is affiliated with IPP and sometimes teaches with Kesler.) My definition of a polarity, borrowed from others’, is that it’s a pair of seeming opposites that are, paradoxically, both necessary for thriving over time. John has spent the last two decades researching polarities, including through his active participation in the Harvard Flourishing Network, and particularly the Harvard/Oxford working group on Leadership for Flourishing Together.  

In the course I’m taking with Kesler, we are exploring the basic polarities in his theory and their practical applications to leadership and other contexts. We usually begin with a meditation on one of his four fundamental polarities (Life, Perception, Awareness and Intention), at the center of which lies the state of consciousness called the “still point.” For example, in the Life polarity, there is literal and figurative contraction (the out breath) on left pole and then literal and figurative expansion (the in breath) on the right. When the Life polarity is blocked, there is distress, overstimulation and exhaustion, whereas when the Life poles are in virtuous harmony – at the still point – there is calm, serenity and rest.

Pragmatic Paradoxes Aplenty

I am only a beginner at Integral Polarity Practice, but what I’d like to share at this juncture is that I can see already that still point meditations are powerful centering practices for leaders, and I recommend them. The meditations are meant to train a relaxed mind and an enlarged heart how to hold, simultaneously, the common leadership polarities of (among others): being in considerable discomfort while experiencing deep satisfaction; cultivating quietude in service of action; and leading without seeking. Radically counter to our hyper-reactive culture, operating from the still point awakens a leader to fuller sensing and greater choice. This type of presence, in turn, widens the range of options for what is possible and – therefore – the future that emerges.

Here’s an illustration of this from McConkie, who alludes to the classic polarities of Agency and Receptivity, and Individuality and Community: “When we’re in the still point – when we’re resting in a quality of open spaciousness, pure potential – our lives become intuitive. We can be receptive to exactly what the moment calls for. For example I have a tendency towards agency, towards wanting to express my individuality. But If I’m perfectly centered, if I’m at the still point in this meditative space, I might be present enough to recognize that what the situation really calls for is communion.”

The Still Point, Leadership and Spirituality

In the IPP conceptual introduction course in January, Kesler explained that the still point (which is “so full it’s empty”) within any operative polarity is the deep intuitive portal to Source and unlimited abundance. Integral polarity practice, he said, supports one’s life-affirming centering in alignment with wisdom, transcendent values, spiritual purpose, and trust in our less egoic higher self or “who you really want to be,” in whatever philosophical or faith-related terms you may wish to apply. 

I am curious whether the still point, as Kesler conceives of it, is akin to what T.S. Eliot’s refers to as the “still point of the turning world” in the poem “Burnt Norton” (discussed insightfully by Maria Popova here in The Marginalian), and/or Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s “point vierge” (a “virgin” point free of illusion, per progressive Franciscan monk Richard Rohr). Perhaps it is the “white dawn” in this haiku by my best friend from college, the Maine poet and naturalist Kristen Lindquist:

white dawn

a poem writes itself

in my head

It may be that the still point is also comparable to innocence as I use that term (similar to beginner’s mind in Zen) in my recent posts about the “narrow way” of leadership. In any case, the still point has been specifically postulated to be Taoist, an idea with significant implications for leaders. As Trish Nowland summarizes in “Exploring Integral Polarity Practice, in Relationship with the STAGES Matrix” (Integral Review, April 2020, Vol. 16, No. 1): “Practice with polarities within IPP requires comfort with paradox in concert with attentiveness to both spiritual awareness and meaning-making. One way of describing falling into the still point is that the human equivalently disappears into the Tao – non-egoic virtuous action is possible, if the individual is willing to let go of the self.” 

Intrigued? To try a still point mediation, consider starting with this one guided by Thomas McConkie.

Photo by Christophe Hautier on Unsplash

Leadership and the Highest Expression of Courage

Common Dominant Worldview Manifestations #25: Aggression as highest expression of courage

Common Indigenous Worldview Manifestations #25: Generosity as highest expression of courage

– Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez, from the Introduction to Restoring the Kinship Worldview

In capitalist societies whose economies depend on creating a persistent deficit mentality in order to drive our profit-centric culture of pathological consumption, we forget: there is enough of everything needed to sustain all life on this planet, each of us personally is enough simply by being who we are, and conscious leadership (of a life, or a family, team or organization) necessitates self-risk. Leadership, if it is sincere in its vision to serve that which is greater than the self, is by definition a courageous act of generosity.

This view has been increasingly informed over the past couple of years by my inquiry into Indigenous perspectives on non-Indigenous culture, which are offering new portals for my reflection on what leadership is, both historically and as medicine for These Times.

An introduction to Indigenous critiques of Eurocentric thought

One of my favorite resources so far is David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021), which – though illuminating in its entirety – is at its best in the initial chapters, wherein the authors methodically subvert our dominant culture’s persistent notion that Europe “civilized” the Americas. (In actuality, Graeber and Wengrow argue convincingly, the Enlightenment era was seeded by colonizers’ 17th-century contact with Native Americans whose thought systems inspired the Europeans. For example, the formidably skillful Wendat leader Kandiaronk had a well-documented direct influence on French political philosophy in the late 1600’s.) The whole book explores the latest available information, gleaned from previously ignored as well as new archaeological discoveries, on what it is that various societies around the globe have valued (or not) since humans’ emergence in Africa a couple of hundred thousand years ago. Whether or not you agree with the book’s thesis about “how humanity got to this point,” The Dawn of Everything – even if flawed – is a revelatory exploration and holds up an enjoyably decolonizing mirror to the open-minded reader.

A primer on the Indigenous worldview from all over the globe

Another consciousness-expanding book, whose teachings on leadership I’m still metabolizing, is Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Balancing Life on Planet Earth (North Atlantic Books, 2022). In an essay that particularly captivated me, “Circular Time and Knowledge,” the authors discuss the nonlinearity, tangibility and endlessness of time, and time’s relationship with “knowing.” The piece opens with fascinating observations on the nature of cyclical space-time by Tyson Yunkaporta, Aboriginal member of the Apalech Clan in Queensland and author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (Harper Collins, 2020). And then the authors connect this precept of circular time and knowledge to the 2 Ways of Knowing Project, which has practical leadership implications. Designed by geological surveyor and First Nations treaty negotiator Kim Hudson, the Project’s model offers a contrasting set of steps for facing a challenge (which you can view here). Blending the two ways of knowing – linear and circular – is an option of course, but if you were to pick only one of them as a leader, which would you choose (and why)? What’s at risk in the linear process and what’s at risk in the circular process? Which would require more courage from you? Which is more generous, and to whom?

Additional recommendations

I’m currently reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s enriching Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed, 2013), whose definitions of wealth (gratitude) and leadership (generosity) are pertinent to my inquiry. I recommend it. Also, if botany is your thing you might also enjoy Beronda Montgomery’s ingenious leadership book, Lessons from Plants (reviewed here in the Leadership Library). For more Leadership Library discussions of Indigenous thought systems, please see my posts on “Leadership, Ubuntu and Evolving the WEIRD Mindset” and on ancient Taoist philosophy through the contemporary theory of “quantum leadership” here. For more about circular time and space, see my post on “Time’s Innocence: Leading from the Emerging Past.”

A “circular time and space” photo I took on a walk through Corkscrew Swamp in the Western Everglades, former territory of the Calusa people, in November 2023.

Leadership Library Review: ServiceSpace AI

January 2024

AI + Wisdom: Can ancient wisdom and modern tech find a middle path? How do we work at the intersection of algorithmic intelligence, evolutionary intuition, and collective emergence? We’ve launched more 80 bots with prominent authors, indigenous wisdom keepers and historical figures – and you! Join us to co-create a new narrative.

–ServiceSpace AI

Given heightened tenuousness in the global situation overall, plus looming presidential election agita in the U.S., being a leader – in any context – over the coming year is probably going to feel like rafting through rapids, increasingly frenetically roiled by artificial intelligence.

By my reckoning, the invitations of 2024’s whitewater adventure will be for us to (1) design, paddle and love our own raft, focusing on reciprocal alignment with the flow while keeping keenly aware of the rocks; (2) regard others’ rafts with respect and compassion, no exceptions; (3) slow down – like, literally move more slowly throughout our day – and choose the tonal quality of our attention as wisely as possible; and (4) stay curious, listening generously.  The story of 2024 is yet unwritten, and it belongs to us.

In the light of all the above, I commend leaders (which is everyone; we are each the leader of our own life…) to an artificial intelligence tool made for this moment, ServiceSpace AI. I first encountered ServiceSpace through a talk delivered by its founder, Nipun Mehta, at October’s Inner Development Goals Summit in Stockholm. (As much as I would have loved to visit Sweden, I attended the conference virtually.)  Trading on the gift economy, ServiceSpace operates outside of capitalism and exists to “nourish the human spirit.” 

How does an AI like that function?  Here is an eye-opening example.  While admittedly the same question generated a less interesting response in late December, when I initially asked ServiceSpaceGPT “What is leadership?” in November, the substance of its reply was:

Firstly, leadership is about behavior – how we treat others, build trust, appreciate people, and hold ourselves and others accountable to excellence. It is not a static role, but a dynamic process that either fosters growth or induces decay. We must strive to constantly evolve, moving towards light and growth.

Secondly, it involves unlocking the spectrum – recognizing the diversity and richness of approaches to success. Leadership is not about imposing a single ‘right way’, but fostering an environment where multiple ways of ‘singing’ or succeeding can coexist and thrive.

Thirdly, effective leadership requires embracing uncertainty and letting go of the illusion of control. In an unpredictable world, leaders don’t eliminate uncertainty but learn to navigate through it, appreciating its pervasiveness and truth.

Finally, at its core, leadership is about love. This perspective arises from the belief that every significant battle in life has been a fight for love. Leadership involves cultivating self-love and then acting from that place of love. In essence, it is about creating new worlds through our thoughts and actions – choosing love over fear or doubt.

If those aren’t life-giving observations with which to embark upon 2024’s leadership expedition, I don’t know what are.  Thank you for the beaming light that is your work in These Times; I can see it from my raft, not far from yours.

The Top Four Most Influential Ideas on My Leadership Coaching Practice in 2023

December 2023

INCLUSIVE ORGANIZATIONS

You come in and you can do the job. But what’s sitting above and beyond the doing of the job? How do you live in that environment? How do you live as part of that community? Because the workplace IS a community! Having that sense of belonging comes from the level of acceptance of your authentic self.

–Claire D’Abreu-Hayling

One of the most popular emerging approaches to JEDI (justice, equity, diversity and inclusion) or DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging) in the workplace is the idea of inclusive organizations. The best book about this that I came across in 2023 – thanks to one of my clients – is Cultures of Belonging: Building Inclusive Organizations that Last by Alida Miranda-Wolff (Harper Collins, 2022). It is a comprehensive and developmentally-informed explanation of what constitutes an inclusive organization that is also an accessible step-by-step guide for leaders on how to create and maintain one. Its recommendations are consistent with two other resources on workplace inclusivity that I loved this year: the Leading for Good interview with Claire D’Abreu-Hayling, Chief Scientific Officer at Sandoz, and Laura Morgan Roberts’ superb Harvard Business Review article entitled, “Where Does DEI Go from Here?”

RADICAL UNCERTAINTY

But above all, what hope is about for me is uncertainty.

I really wanted to just come to terms with the radical uncertainty and there’s something in a lot of us that hates uncertainty and we’ll fill that void…with false certainty….And I find certainty such a form of ignorance really. And of not really seeing what’s out there, which is I think a mysteriousness, a kind of beauty in mystery that is itself kind of exhilarating. We don’t know what’s gonna happen, so let’s go do this thing.

–Rebecca Solnit

Amidst the tumult and confusion of These Times in our VUCA and BANI world, there is enlivening refreshment to be had in viewing uncertainty as a source of hope.  Solnit’s insight, from her interview on The Science of Happiness podcast, is very astute from a leadership perspective. As leaders we reflexively reject the reality that we do not know things because it’s too threatening (traditionally in Western culture, leaders are not just supposed to know things, but must also be right), even though – if we consciously sensed into the situation more deeply – we’d realize that pretending to know what we don’t is actually the more terrifying prospect! While humans are wired to seek certainty, simplicity, stability and resolution, these instincts cause us great suffering. When we rush to decide, declare, order, rationalize, dissect and complete things, we are making a futile attempt to go against the prevailing conditions and – worse, as Solnit underscores – we close ourselves off from the fertile realm of possibility. In our suffering from willful ignorance we miss out on “a kind of beauty in mystery that is itself kind of exhilarating.”

DEEP CURIOSITY

It has become rare to practice deep listening. Instead, we cancel people instead of calling them in (as Loretta Ross says) with accountability, meaning we are more likely to shame, judge, or dehumanize the people we disagree with…This era of incuriosity is literally killing us…If we want to strengthen our relationships rather than rupture them, we have to learn to ask more powerful questions rather than pass judgment. We need to become the kind of people who search for stories rather than positions, and values instead of views. We have to look inside of ourselves, getting curious about our own past and emotions, and not just rely on learning about the world outside of us.

–Scott Shigeoka

Greater Good Science Center’s curiosity researcher, Scott Shigeoka (author of Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World, Balance, 2023) offers some fortifying leadership advice for navigating the myriad crises across the globe fragmenting our attention. There is a leadership move we can choose to make at any given moment: being present with curiosity, starting with ourselves. (What am I noticing? What sensations am I feeling? What is closed, and what is open? As Jennifer Garvey Berger asks: What do I believe, and how could I be wrong?) Getting curious about the different perspectives we hold inside ourselves supports our ability to experience the external world’s complexity through more lenses – with more nuance, compassion and agility. Shigeoka argues in favor of employing not just the intellectual curiosity many of us credit ourselves with (“Let me look that up on the internet!”), but what he calls “deep curiosity.” “This is the kind of curiosity,” he writes, “that invites us to use it as a force for meaningful connection and transformation. This is what strengthens our relationships to ourselves and each other.” 

INNOCENCE

I don’t think we understand the medicines that are given to us each and every second. And it’s usually one of the ways that we’re given the medicine to understand, is to understand that every moment is innocent. Every moment is innocent, and…you can say it clears the slate.

–Tiokasin Ghosthorse

The concept I came across in 2023 that probably had the heaviest influence on my evolving philosophy of leadership is the Indigenous perspective on time as expressed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse. Member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and Indigenous activist who serves as guest faculty at Yale University’s School of Divinity, Ghosthorse – in an interview on For the Wild podcast – uses the word “innocence” to describe the regenerative properties of time on consciousness. What if every single moment were a blank slate, a fresh start, a place unbound from precedent where anything can happen next?

Akin to “beginner’s mind” in Zen, “innocence” is the moniker I have adopted to more accurately reflect – in Western, English-language terms – the vulnerability, vastness and potency of this type of awareness in the leadership context. (To be clear, innocence does not equate to lack of knowledge, experience or political savvy. It is not without guilt, shame, corruption and failure. In fact, innocence is quite the opposite: it is a product of grappling extensively and increasingly honestly with our brokenness, our disillusionment, wounds, losses and despair. In other words, the journey to developing innocent awareness actually forges the kind of skillful leadership behavior that only comes from a profoundly dismantling type of self-knowledge.) What does “innocence” look like in a leader? It looks like being authentically alive to the adventure of leading, and rarely appears preoccupied or rushing. When connecting with other people, it shows up as availability, exploration, listening, humility, compassion, holding space, learning, playfulness, and asking questions from a place of genuine curiosity. (If that sounds like a lot, you might be wondering, How does one begin? Well, simply by slowing down and bodily attuning to the present moment. If this is new to you, consider trying Loch Kelly’s 5-minute mindfulness hack: What is here, now, when there is no problem to solve?)

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things (Perspectiva, 2021). How privileging left-brain processes in Western science and philosophy may have gotten us into the metacrisis, and how more of a balance with right-brain capacities for context, integration and wholeness would serve the planet at this inflection point.

And: Volume Two – Applications by Polarity Practitioners (HRD Press, 2021). How we can apply polarity wisdom to seemingly intractable social issues. (In a related vein, if you’re a Vermonter check out the engaging new comic book, titled “Freedom and Unity” – a polarity! – after our state motto. The slim volume illustrates how Vermont attempts to navigate the paradox of meeting both individual and statewide needs through its unique blend of democratic processes.)

Dacher Keltner, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (Penguin, 2023). For a summary of the research, listen to Krista Tippett’s interview of Keltner in this On Being episode.

(This photo, shot by Laura Gans, is a close-up of artwork made by Chris Jeffrey using upcycled technical filters that reflect one hue yet project another.)

Deep Curiosity as a Leadership Move in These Times

November 2023

It has become rare to practice deep listening. Instead, we cancel people instead of calling them in (as Loretta Ross says) with accountability, meaning we are more likely to shame, judge, or dehumanize the people we disagree with…This era of incuriosity is literally killing us…If we want to strengthen our relationships rather than rupture them, we have to learn to ask more powerful questions rather than pass judgment. We need to become the kind of people who search for stories rather than positions, and values instead of views. We have to look inside of ourselves, getting curious about our own past and emotions, and not just rely on learning about the world outside of us.

– Scott Shigeoka

Naming what we’re experiencing

We are all struggling with the myriad, objectively depressing challenges of living in These Times.  News of tragedies close to home and far away, the shift from a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) to widespread BANI (brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible) conditions, is taxing our resilience.  Whether we’re leaders of teams, organizations, movements or families – or just the leaders of our own lives – it is extremely tempting to resolve our discomfort by judging people, choosing sides and taking stances, even when we’re aware that we’re being overly simplistic and reductive in the process.  It is likewise tempting to turn away altogether from the onslaught of heartbreaking information in the media and shut down (this might sound in our heads like, “It’s too much, and there’s nothing I can do.”)  Yet, while putting limits on our consumption of news and pacing ourselves is wise for our mental health, ignoring reality and emotionally shutting down altogether is worse.  There is a healthy inward and outward navigation move we can make: getting curious.

The force of deep curiosity

Greater Good Science Center’s curiosity researcher, Scott Shigeoka (co-author of the “Bridging Difference Playbook” and author of his own new volume, Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World; Balance, 2023) offers some fortifying leadership advice.  Shigeoka argues in favor of employing curiosity, and not just the intellectual kind many of us credit ourselves with (“Let me look that up on the internet!”), but what he calls “deep curiosity.”  “This is the kind of curiosity,” he writes,  “that invites us to use it as a force for meaningful connection and transformation.  This is what strengthens our relationships to ourselves and each other.”  His DIVE framework outlines four approaches to accessing our deep curiosity: Detach, Intend, Value, Embrace.

Deep curiosity is an interior act, inside ourselves.  Because “being right and righteous brings social status and power in today’s twisted culture,” Shigeoka suggests starting with detaching from our own ABCs (i.e., assumptions, biases and certainties).  I agree that a magical curiosity hack is to notice our assumptions and test them.  (It’s OK to jump to conclusions – this is what our brains are hard-wired for – but do acknowledge that this is how your mind functions and then make a choice about whether to challenge the truth of your own thoughts.  Personally, I use Jennifer Garvey Berger’s pair self-inquiry questions throughout my day: What do I believe? and How could I be wrong?)  Shigeoka additionally encourages fact-checking our faulty metaperceptions, which are “the ways we think others think about us, and they are often negative and inaccurate —because we can’t read another person’s mind,” so he recommends that we “balance negative metaperceptions with positive ones, and if you’re feeling extra courageous, ask the other person if they’re true or not.”  Another tactic is to actively seek out shared identities and preferences (e.g. foods, pets, hobbies, etc.)  He also urges us to “become an ‘admitter,’” which he describes as publicly “admitting being wrong as an act of intellectual humility that leads to better communication, relationships, leadership, and life satisfaction.”

The rest of the DIVE framework

There are three other approaches to deep curiosity in Shigeoka’s DIVE framework after Detach: Intend, Value and Embrace.  “Intend” is setting an intention to be curious (for example, deliberately choosing a curious mindset ahead of a difficult conversation or potential conflict, etc.) and preparing for what might be a tense situation by setting the stage (e.g., picking a good time in an nondistracting place, and visualizing success).  Another is to “Value” everyone, including ourselves (“To value is to see the inherent and ineffable dignity of all people, including yourself. It is to acknowledge the humanity of every single person, no matter what they’ve done or how you feel about them. Full stop and no exceptions”).  And the last approach is to Embrace what hurts: “Instead of trying to push away discomfort, fear, anxiety, or pain, we can get curious about where they’re coming from and what they have to teach us.” 

From my perspective as a leadership coach, a common denominator among the DIVE deep-curiosity moves is self-compassion.  It seems to me that deep curiosity requires a self-compassionate tone as we navigate the outer events that frighten, sadden, confuse and anger us, and the inner space of self-talk where we metabolize and ideally integrate them.  In other words, it is our transformational presence to ourselves which enables us to offer transformational leadership presence in service of others. 

Other recommended resources

If you’re curious about who Loretta Ross is, see this 2020 profile in the New York Times.  For tips to manage media overload, see this article on managing headline stress from the American Psychological Association.  For practical advice on developing self-compassion in general, I recommend the work of Sharon Salzberg (this “On Being” interview with Salzberg is one of my favorites).  For a quick article running through several strategies specifically for leaders on how to develop self-compassion, check out this piece from Mindful magazine.

Courageous Authenticity and the Future of DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging)

October 2023

You come in and you can do the job. But what’s sitting above and beyond the doing of the job? How do you live in that environment? How do you live as part of that community? Because the workplace IS a community! Having that sense of belonging comes from the level of acceptance of your authentic self.

–Claire D’Abreu-Hayling, Chief Scientific Officer at Sandoz (Leading for Good podcast)

The rub

The Leadership Circle Profile™, a sophisticated 360° leadership assessment tool in which I am certified practitioner, defines one of the competencies for leadership effectiveness – “Courageous Authenticity” – as a measuring leader’s “willingness to take tough stands, bring up the ‘un-discussibles’ (risky issues the group avoids discussing), and openly deal with difficult relationship problems.”  Here lies the rub for many of my leadership coaching clients who identify as women, are BIPOC and/or LGBTQ+, and for my African-American women clients in particular, who frequently face a hard-to-navigate set of specific challenges: how can a leader display courageous authenticity if she is not invited and supported and celebrated for bringing her “whole self” to work to the same degree that most members of the dominant culture in her workplace can typically take for granted? 

The expectation of courageous authenticity is ironic at best and hypocritical at worst in some of the “majority majority” workplace settings where my clients serve as leaders.  How can a BIPOC leader courageously leverage her authenticity at work if there is an unspoken yet consequential requirement to restrict her conduct to other people’s cultural norms?  How can she feel like she can be herself and take tough stands if her organizational community discourages her from even wearing her hair in a way that expresses who she is?  What risky issues that her group is avoiding discussing can she be expected to courageously raise if she already has to “code-switch” her own language and behavior in order to have the conversation in the first place – and, trickier yet, what if freedom of expression is itself the “undiscussible” issue?  (If you’re unfamiliar with the term, code-switching – according to this Harvard Business Review article – is “adjusting one’s style of speech, appearance, behavior, and expression in ways that will optimize the comfort of others in exchange for fair treatment, quality service, and employment opportunities” and “often occurs in spaces where negative stereotypes of black people run counter to what are considered ‘appropriate’ behaviors and norms for a specific environment”).  Courageous authenticity makes more sense as an expectation in workplaces with liberatory structures.

A two-way journey

Patently unfair as it is, nonetheless for my women clients of color there is often an inner self-acceptance path that needs to be travelled toward more fully owning their complete life experience, validating its voice, and utilizing its strength and confidence before they can openly offer it in environments that may be constantly judging, ignoring and devaluing their leadership.  Part of this path is doing their own work of unraveling the dominant culture’s unconscious biases that they’ve internalized about themselves, other under-represented groups, and the dominant culture.  But – as many of us have recognized at a profoundly deeper level since the movement sparked by George Floyd’s murder in 2020 – the bigger effort to shift toward inclusion and belonging needs to be made across broader systems of oppression, of which workplaces are a microcosm.  The real change in values has to come to BIPOC folks, not from them, even while the energy must be exchanged both ways.

As Claire D’Abreu-Hayling puts it in the latest episode of the Leading for Good podcast, “It’s a two-way journey…[T]here’s an element of self-ownership, self-acceptance and self-belief. But there’s also an element of being in an environment that enables that inclusion…A landscape that’s able to value the diversity in a real sense, that gives you the freedom to be open about who you are.” And by diversity in a “real sense,” she is referring to the “intersectional” or multiple attributes any one person might bring to work, and how all of that multidimensionality must be welcomed and belong.  The opposite, i.e. valuing conformity, excludes whole personhood, inhibits the singular contributions that only authentic individuals can make to teams and organizations, and prevents the kind of promotability of talent that is in everyone’s best interests. For example, D’Abreu-Hayling points out that simply how we socialize can have major impacts on how cultural conformity tips the scales. “The old habit of you socialize either through playing golf, or you go to the pub, say. What if, though – as a female – you have a different way of socializing? Or you’re not available at that timeframe? It means you’re not sitting in that social context! But that’s where some informal discussions and decisions are being made. When you come back to work the next day, you’re finding the conversation’s moved on!”

So where do we go from here?

Organizational psychologist Laura Morgan Roberts also speaks to the idea of freedom at work in a superb new Harvard Business Review article entitled, “Where Does DEI Go from Here?”  Roberts identifies four freedoms that are necessary for everyone to flourish at work: “being our authentic selves, becoming our best selves, occasionally fading into the background, and failing in ways that help us and our teams learn.” She adds, “While everyone can benefit from more freedom at work, these four are unevenly distributed…[F]or many in traditionally marginalized groups — people of color, women, those who are gender nonconforming, people with physical disabilities, and those who are experiencing mental health challenges, for example — the struggle for liberation is contested daily.”

For the purposes of this blog post, I’ll concentrate on the first one, the freedom to be our authentic selves.  Roberts shares D-Abreu-Hayling’s emphasis on the power of workplace cultural affinities and how workers from historically marginalized groups “must expend significant effort on calibrating their authentic selves to fit into their surroundings” (from how they present their names and career history on job applications, to avoiding disclosure of parental status or religion, etc.).  Roberts, too, addresses the cost to individual human well-being in addition to that of the enterprise as a whole when some people and not others are granted the freedom to be their authentic selves at work.  She contends, and I agree, that what people really want is “to bring their real selves to work and pursue opportunities for growth that draw on their strengths.”

Roberts offers a three-pronged approach to supporting the freedom to bring our authentic selves to work: nondiscrimination policies (“know, meet, and, ultimately, surpass antidiscrimination policies set forth by law”); antibias training (“establish programs to overcome biases in hiring, promotion, and work opportunities as well as day-to-day interactions”); and allyship (“encourage allyship through education and relationship building, both within and across identity groups”). The article goes on to flesh out these strategies for supporting this freedom, with real-life case examples. Her recommendations for the other three freedoms are equally compelling. 

Recommended resources

I wrote last month in this blog about intercultural intelligence and the Intercultural Development Inventory^® (IDI^®), which “assesses intercultural competence—the capability to shift cultural perspective and appropriately adapt behavior to cultural differences and commonalities.”  It is an enlightening assessment which, when well debriefed (which mine certainly was), opens up empowering pathways of personal and professional growth that support increasingly meaningful participation in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging efforts.

As I also mentioned in September, Cultures of Belonging: Building Inclusive Organizations that Last by Alida Miranda-Wolff (Harper Collins, 2022) is an excellent explanation of what constitutes an inclusive organization that is also an accessible step-by-step guide for leaders on how to create and maintain one.  Its recommendations are consistent with the observations from experience that make the D’Abreu-Hayling interview so rich, and they dovetail nicely with the philosophy and foci that Roberts brings to the topic, as well.

The work of some of my Georgetown Leadership Coaching Program colleagues comes to mind.  When it comes to facilitated diversity education and discussion experiences, I wholeheartedly recommend the experiences offered by my esteemed coach friends at ChoicePoints Learning.  To African-American women leaders especially, I recommend Daphne Jefferson’s Dropping the Mask: Connecting Leadership to Identity (New Degree Press, 2020).

Ethical Leadership and Intercultural Intelligence

September 2023

Redefining ethical leadership

Following George Floyd’s 2020 murder and the consequent escalation in racial reckoning in the United States and beyond, my concept of ethical leadership expanded three years ago to include an explicit (rather than implied, as it was previously) commitment to maturing social identity awareness and intercultural intelligence. Large-scale social change starts with each individual self, so I began with a quest to understand what was then a new term to me: antiracism. I learned that becoming an antiracist (see resources note, below) is an aspirational, life-long process to which I am dedicating myself knowing it may never be reached but is worth pursuing earnestly for the sake of living in alignment with my personal integrity. I also discovered that intercultural intelligence, on the other hand, is on a learning curve with specific competencies that help define action steps. And there are some excellent frameworks out there that can support this type of growth.

One of them is the Intercultural Development Inventory^® (IDI^®), which “assesses intercultural competence—the capability to shift cultural perspective and appropriately adapt behavior to cultural differences and commonalities.” It’s an online survey with 50 questions, debriefed by a certified practitioner. When I took it a couple of years ago, my Intercultural Development Inventory results showed that I was (and probably still am) at the Minimization orientation on the continuum, which is “a transitional mindset between the more monocultural orientations of Denial and Polarization and the more intercultural/global worldviews of Acceptance and Adaptation. Minimization highlights commonalities in both human Similarity (basic needs) and Universalism (universal values and principles) that can mask a deeper understanding of cultural differences.” In other words, my mindset is shielding me from certain discomforts with confronting the complexities of difference, and I have a ways to go to become a person with an intercultural/global worldview. Learning to be more comfortable with intercultural discomfort is central to my individual development in this regard (and to becoming a better coach). Moreover I see that, for my leadership coaching clients, developing and maintaining intercultural competence is necessary to nurturing the ethical potency of their executive presence.

How?

How does one learn and grow in this direction? I’m not a trained JEDI (justice, equity, diversity and inclusion) or DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging) expert, but I can speak to how my process was validated and accelerated by the Intercultural Development Plan that continues to blossom from my IDI^® results. Through joining Black-white and other inter-racial conversation forums, reading and taking webinars, organizing my own discussion groups, investigating my multiple identities and privileges through various means – especially by intentionally placing myself in new or distinctly uncomfortable intercultural situations – I am working toward cultivating the mental and somatic intelligence of the next stage, which the IDI^® calls an Acceptance mindset. 

One source of information and practice is in my coaching relationships, where I am learning how to reflect on, anticipate and co-create psychologically safer spaces for sharing social identities in supportive exchanges with my clients. I proactively engage with racial, cis/heteronormative, generational, sexist, ableist, ageist, size/height, neurodiverse, religious, economic, educational, political and other identity dynamics between me and my clients with as much skillfulness as I can muster, because coach-client relationships are not neutral and systemic power differences are damaging when ignored. So for example, after sufficient safety and rapport have been established, if it hasn’t already come up organically between me and my client, I might inquire about where their various intersectional identities fit in – or not – with the dominant social groups at their workplaces. I might get curious about “What is it like to be a Black man/Filipina woman/gay/Sikh/Boomer/first-generation Haitian immigrant/using a wheelchair/etc. in your organization?” or ask, “As I consider my identities and limited knowledge and experience, I wonder what is it important to you for me to understand about your experience as a Latina lesbian/growing up poor/being a combat veteran/wearing a hijab/belonging to Gen Z/raised in Taiwanese culture/living with depression/being the first in your family to go to college/etc. in order for me to support you effectively as your leadership coach?” From another angle, sometimes I might offer to share my own perspective from lived experience to find out whether it’s welcome: “Would it be useful to have one anecdotal white/petite female/former lawyer/Gen X etc. person’s ‘take’ on the dynamic you’re describing?” These strategies, coming from compassion and “not knowing,” are not a solution but they are a start.

The power of self-observation

As a human in all the places I show up personally and professionally, I consistently practice self-observing primal body-based responses to difference, especially race, in order to uncover my unconscious biases. My overall commitment is to be a learner, ally and upstander, even though I sometimes fall down. Fears get in my way: fear of causing other people harm, fear of finding out what I don’t want to face, fear of appearing stupid, fear of not being liked. It’s painful to hurt people, make mistakes and fail: to catch myself or to be called out for expressing racist or other discriminatory assumptions, to commit micro-aggressions or cultural appropriations from unconscious bias, and then to figure out how to properly own my behavior’s impact and apologize without simultaneously burdening the individual I harmed. Yet, one of my privileges is that my social identities automatically grant me more room than many other people are given in our culture to make the choice to fail forward, so I am strengthening my courage to hold myself accountable. 

Diversity acceptance, inside and out

It’s complicated, how the process of being a white, educated, upper-middle-class, able, hetero, cis-gender woman “doing my work” is so interior, as well as how the resources I devote to it are another form of privilege, and also how easily it can become a self-serving trap. (Posting to this blog today, I’m self-consciously monitoring how much of what I’m writing may or may not be “virtue signaling.”) That said, coming to recognize my own identities’ diversity seems necessary to the health of my JEDI learning process and movement toward an Acceptance mindset (and maybe someday Adaptation). I notice that granting an opening to self-acceptance and self-compassion on the inside spirals outwardly and extends to others. When we open up to our wholeness in this way, we see that each of us is an ecosystem that needs diversity to thrive, just as in the rest of the natural world and the global human systems with which we are interdependent. Like social change, social healing – too – starts with self.

Additional resources

For some quick antiracism definitions, resources and action steps, see the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture’s webpage on being antiracist.  For a more fulsome exploration of antiracism, I recommend Ibram X. Kendi’s books, starting with How to Be an Antiracist (One World, 2019) and the deeper dive of his Be Antiracist journal (One World, 2020). 

For a superb explanation of what constitutes an inclusive organization that is also an accessible step-by-step guide for leaders on how to create and maintain one, see Cultures of Belonging: Building Inclusive Organizations that Last by Alida Miranda-Wolff (Harper Collins, 2022). (Many thanks to a long-time client who has been super-effective at building an inclusive organization for mailing me a copy of this book!)

When it comes to facilitated racial discussion and education experiences, I wholeheartedly recommend the experiences offered by my esteemed coach colleagues at ChoicePoints Learning. An excellent, thought-provoking presentation by Steve Galloway (a ChoicePoints partner) and Shelley Metz-Galloway I attended in person last week inspired me to offer my personal journey with the IDI^® here in the Leadership Library this month.

On a note closely related to intercultural intelligence and leadership, I highly recommend the upcoming “Collective Trauma Summit 2023: Creating a Global Healing Movement” with Thomas Hubl (and over 60 other speakers), running from September 26 through October 4, 2023.  Free registration here.

Leadership, Innocence and Artificial Intelligence (Narrow Way III)

August 2023

Toxic versus liberating innocence

In my last two blog posts I’ve been exploring the leadership path of the “narrow way” (or tao in Chinese) and the clear voice of leadership “innocence.” From my perspective as an executive coach, when a leader is traveling the narrow way, her awareness is on the razor’s edge of not-knowing that threads between her inner and outer worlds. By not-knowing, I do not mean ignorance or lack of experience or an absence of suffering. (Especially I do not mean the lie at the heart of toxic obliviousness that, for example, the writer James Baldwin referred to as “white innocence” in the U.S. racial context. Terrifyingly, this dynamic impressed the Nazis: “America’s knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence in the wake of mass death struck Hitler as an example to be emulated,” writes Alex Ross.) Instead, by not-knowing I mean a condition of openness to the continuous opportunity for renewal, narrative reframing, and refreshment offered by the radical uncertainty in every moment. 

The freedom to start over right now

Every second, there is a chance – an invitation, really – for a blank page on which to start anything over or anew. (Tiokasin Ghosthorse, whose eloquence initially inspired my interest in innocence, says there’s “medicine” in the fact that “every moment is innocent, and…you can say it clears the slate.”) A leader who understands this is potent, because the truth of existence – i.e. that we control precisely nothing – patiently waits for us to muster the courage to relinquish the harmful illusion that “power over” (even power over something as benign-seeming as our calendars, for example) equals safety. The liberation offered by innocent consciousness is on the flip side of this control-security delusion, but letting go of perceived safety in order to get there is incredibly hard for obvious reasons. It’s scary, and requires deep humility as well as a willingness to slow down and allow for enough disruption of our own mind’s chatter to see “control” for the egoic distraction – the addiction – that it is. (I’m being seduced by my mind’s compulsive, self-serving natterings as I write these words…)

We all have our well-wired identity attachments, and when we can make room inside ourselves for seeing them as the mere stories they are, we miraculously become more expansive in our presence with others in our outer environments. (If you are having trouble naming your attachments, think of something you believe it’s important to be “right” about and see what comes up.) So, the shift move is a loosening or softening into a freedom from the pathological expectations we put on ourselves to know or to do or to win, and towards a freedom to discern: to use compassion, curiosity, foresight, and wise innocence in a back-and-forth kind of dance with what’s unfolding through us and around us.

The question your work answers

In this regard, the narrow way of not-knowing lives on the thin line between walking the outward path of navigating our tangible world, while simultaneously surrendering inwardly to the path itself. In my opinion as a leadership development consultant, to be able to make both moves – or rather, to find what it is in yourself that is big enough to unite the inner and outer horizons – is the ultimate expression of leadership (and life) purpose. When we take the time to reflect on our presence to not-knowing as a source of change energy, some things make more sense in retrospect. For example, many of us who have had the privilege of choosing our careers can find the roots of our professions in our childhood experiences: we can trace our work interests back to curious questions about something we did not know as kid, which – it turns out – may indeed be unknowable entirely, or else we wouldn’t still be pursuing it.

What question is the world asking that your work answers? (That your life answers?) When do you first remember encountering this question? In what ways was a version of this question a formative one, either express or implied, in your very early years?

AI (artificial intelligence – or artificial innocence?)

I find artificial intelligence to be a fascinating phenomenon that I’m currently neither “for” nor “against.” Upon bringing innocent consciousness to the subject, I’m not even convinced there is such a thing as artificial intelligence, in the sense that we living beings and machines are both made of the exact same elements of stardust-plus-mysterious-processes. When humans design and make machines that have intelligence, and which perhaps may someday develop superintelligence, aren’t those machines genuine evolutionary extensions of humanity – regardless of whether they eventually “surpass” us and/or destroy us? (Is not the Tao the source of everything in the cosmos, and does it not flow through all things?) That said, of course I’m interested in how AI is already thoroughly monetized by humans and used to manipulate social and economic behavior, particularly by extracting complicity from other humans. For years, data-mining algorithms have been shifting global markets, politics and employment environments, and of course this influence will only grow. I would note that, just in the realms of leadership and leadership coaching, there are tasks that AI already does as well as people, if not better. (See this piece in Forbes about “AI-informed leadership,” and this study showing that – when it comes to helping people to reach goals – AI coaches were as effective as human coaches against two control groups, suggesting “AI could replace human coaches who use simplistic, model-based coaching approaches.”)

Learning about artificial intelligence is causing me to marvel anew at what AI is mirroring back to us about what our human being-ness is by virtue of what AI is not (yet). Based on my understanding, neither the artificial narrow intelligence we have now (ANI that can complete specific tasks, like ChatGPT) nor future artificial general intelligence (AGI with human-level cognitive capabilities, which so far remains an aspirational technology) are projected – for the time being – to offer the following characteristics central to being a transformational human presence: empathizing, bearing witness, imagining, surprising one’s self, grieving, intuiting, sensing into group energy, playing, deriving meaning from the passage of time, surrendering knowledge to innocence in order to midwife something emergent, and taking existential risks based on moral or spiritual belief (e.g. for the sake of whom or what would an AI risk annihilation? for the sake of whom or what would you risk your life?).

Additional resources

To further understand James Baldwin’s heart-achingly prescient 1963 reflections on “white innocence,” see the first essay in The Fire Next Time (the volume I have is published by Vintage, 1992) and other of his writings.

For a superb explanation of the AI challenges and opportunities over which the Hollywood writers and actors are striking – a foreshadowing of the kinds of AI-sparked societal questions that will soon be more directly affecting all of us – see Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s recent op ed in the Washington Post. 

For lively discussion and inquiry about developing not-knowing and other distinctly human capacities, consider joining my fall workshop, “Cosmic Mischief: Evolving the Spirit of Leadership.” Designed to be a spacious and playful exploration for leaders and coaches, this 6-week online course offers companionship on the journey of becoming a transformational human presence. There is both a scientific and a spiritually artistic basis for the transformative potential of our presence amidst “cosmic mischief,” the fluctuating energy with which we co-create reality. On a practical level, one of the questions provoked by the power of our presence is: What becomes possible if who we are in the cosmic mischief of any given moment actually determines the future that emerges? Through readings as well as individual, small-group and full-group activities, we will noodle on the implications of this question together. “Cosmic Mischief” meets weekly on Wednesday evenings from 6:30 to 8 p.m. ET, starting on September 6 and running through October 18 (skipping October 11). The registration fee is $500 or pay-what-you can. Deadline: Friday, September 1^st. All course materials included. Please e-mail me with questions or to register, at susan@susanpalmerconsulting.com.

The Clear Voice of the Narrow Way (Narrow Way, Part II)

July 2023

Can you cleanse your inner vision

until you see nothing but the light?

Can you love people and lead them

without imposing your will?

Can you deal with the most vital matters

by letting events take their course?

— Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching (trans. Stephen Mitchell, Harper, 1988)

Where the inner meets the outer

In last month’s post on The Narrow Way of Leadership, I described a “narrow way” of leading “on the razor’s edge of not-knowing.” By not-knowing, I mean an openness to the continual opportunity for renewal and narrative reframing that springs from the radical uncertainty in every moment. In Zen it’s usually called “beginner’s mind,” but in recent months (thanks to a podcast with Tiokasin Ghosthorse introducing the notion, reinforced by the philosophy of yamabushi monks I encountered on Mt. Haguro in Japan), I have adopted the word “innocence.” It more accurately reflects – in Western, English-language terms – the vulnerability, vastness and potency of this type of awareness in the leadership context. 

To be clear, innocence does not equate to lack of knowledge, expertise or political acumen. It is not without guilt, shame, corruption or wrong-doing. Quite the opposite. As a product of grappling increasingly honestly with our brokenness, disillusionment, losses and anguish, the journey of returning home to our innate innocence forges the kind of leadership wisdom that only comes from a dismantling type of unvarnished self-knowledge. Innocence spirals inwardly and outwardly at the same time; the “innocent leader” walks the truth of her experience on the spiraling line between inner presence to herself and presence to her outer dealings.

What are some real-life applications of “innocence” for leaders?

Just in the last couple of weeks, I’ve worked with several executive coaching clients who are in the midst of essential conversations about how they or others will be treated in particular workplace relationships. All are high-heat situations of systemic or structural communication breakdowns that require intervention in order to (1) restore transparency and – ideally – (2) create conditions under which harm can be generatively addressed and professionalism repaired. These conversations involve making declarations, which in the leadership context are statements that interrupt the present to change the future. In the specific examples I’m thinking of, the declarations might be about drawing boundaries on behavior, such as: “This is unacceptable in our organization,” “Stop,” “When X happens, I feel unseen by you,” “What is needed now is…” or “The opportunity from here forward is…”

There is innocence in truth. We can recognize the innocence of a truth by its clarity (and how clearly it comes out of our mouth when we say it). When a leader is standing in the truth of her experience, and voicing it authentically from that place, the declaration is unassailable (no one can persuasively retort, “that’s not the way you feel,” for instance). There is also innocence in the consciousness of a leader who walks the narrow way of the in-and-out spiral; it is less egoic, more curious and listens more deeply.  This awareness (which Otto Scharmer, founder of MIT’s Presencing Institute, refer to as “open heart, open mind, open will”) holds an interior space for the leader’s truth, as well as an exterior space that makes room for whatever new truth may come in the wake of a declaration – which may be an even bigger truth.

Of course, speaking our truth – especially an unwelcome truth to certain types of power – can be extremely challenging and is often scary, for good reason. Sometimes it is only worth it when the risk of not saying anything at all is greater than the risk of letting the truth go unspoken. While innocence itself is neither hard nor soft, it can demand a vulnerability from us as leaders that tests our fortitude and our commitment. And voicing truth is a somatic experience: we must feel grounded in our body as well as in our heart and mind if we are to stay meaningfully connected to our animating emotions of anger, sadness or fear and still move forward with courageous action. Audre Lorde, at the Second Sex Conference in 1979, famously observed: “When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision – then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

The power of presence

In addition to being physically centered, the precise words we use in our declarations are crucial; “words create worlds” is one of the classic principles of Appreciative Inquiry theory. (In my experience, it’s smart to play on the paradox that simplicity conveys complexity best.) The third and perhaps most magical feature of innocence is its aforementioned open state of consciousness: it is a not-knowing in the ambiguity of the moment, which is actually what allows us to voice our truth in the first place and then “let the chips fall where they may.” That said, innocence is not naivete, and the savvy leader’s presence – her bodily, language, emotional and spiritual focus – affects what becomes possible as a result of her intervention. In practical terms, the tonal quality of attention with which a leader makes a declaration (or does anything else, for that matter) determines the range of what can potentially unfold within, around, through and beyond her. In other words, the eyes through which the leader chooses to see a situation – eyes of compassion, resentment, love, retribution, curiosity, control, generosity, disappointment, gratitude, blame or trust, etc. – determines the future that emerges. 

If promoting transparency and creating conditions for the possibility of professional relationship repair are purposes of the leader’s declaration, these would inform her presence and the tonal quality of her attention. A self-coaching question to start with might be: With what eyes do I choose to see this situation?

Additional resources

In a pinch, the “15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership” (scroll down here to find the handout) can be very supportive of a leader’s reflection on the narrow way’s clear voice. 

For more about declarations and other leadership “speech acts,” see Chalmers Brothers and Vinay Kumar’s Language and the Pursuit of Leadership Excellence (New Possibilities, 2015). For a how-to book on using Appreciative Inquiry in essential conversations, see Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres’s Conversations Worth Having (Berrett-Koehler, 2018). For BIPOC and women leaders exploring their authentic leadership voice, I recommend Daphne Jefferson’s Dropping the Mask: Connecting Leadership to Identity (New Degree, 2020). Two other excellent leadership books that cover this territory beautifully – but with very different styles and emphases – are Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead (Random House, 2019), and Jennifer Garvey Berger and Carolyn Coughlin’s Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead (Stanford, 2022).

Ink brushwork by Satsuki Kakuo in the Hojo at Ryōan-ji (“Temple of the Dragon at Peace”), Kyoto, Japan.
Photo: Susan Palmer, 2023.