Warriors for the Human Spirit
We're featuring an article from the summer 2017 edition of Leader to Leader by Margaret Wheatley which is both sobering and inspiring. Wheatley confronts us with the reality that the unpredictable world we live in can be depressing to contemplate and reminds us that we have a choice in how we respond to it. We can courageously and willingly step forward to serve, or we can withdraw into denial and self-protection.
Highlights from the Article
Who do you choose to be for this time?
Are you willing to use whatever power and influence you have to create islands of sanity that evoke and rely on our best human qualities to create, relate, and persevere? Will you consciously and bravely choose to reclaim leadership as a noble profession, one that creates possibility and humaneness in the midst of increasing fear and turmoil?
We can be Warriors for the Human Spirit, leaders willing to defend and support people, leaders who remember and value what humans are capable of creating together.
We can use our sphere of influence, however large or small, to do as Theodore Roosevelt enjoined us: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Leaders can use their power and influence, their insight and compassion, to lead people back to an understanding of who we are as human beings, to create the conditions for our basic human qualities of generosity, contribution, community, and love to be evoked no matter what.
High engagement leadership engages people for a cause they care about, and relies on their hearts and minds to find ways forward to solving their own problems. This is the dynamic of self-organization, life’s wondrous process for creating order without control. People determine their activities and responses from a clear, coherent sense of who the organization is, what it values, and what its intent on accomplishing.
The work of sane leaders is to ensure that the organization, community or team stays open to information and uses that information to make realistic and intelligent responses. But in our cyber speed lives, people can’t help but hunker down as the only means to get through endless tasks and demands. As we speed up everything, we can’t help but descend into orthodoxy and certainty. We do what we’ve always done, using the same perceptual lenses, unable to notice what the environment now demands, what new information is of importance, uninterested in the impact we create through our short-sighted, frantic decisions.
This is where good leadership is needed. Leaders must reclaim the very thing our culture has so casually given away: Time to think together and learn from our experiences. Without question, this is the most critical act of leadership. It is how we restore sanity and possibility to our work within our sphere of influence. It is how we work with the dynamics of living systems and use our intelligence in life-preserving ways as all other species do.
What is sane leadership?
It is the unshakable faith in people’s capacity to be generous, creative, and kind. It is the commitment to create the conditions for these capacities to blossom, protected from the external environment. It is the deep knowing that, even in the most dire circumstances, more becomes possible as people engage together with compassion and discernment, self-determining their best way forward.
Read the full article here.
The Gifted Perspective
We’ve accepted Margaret Wheatley’s call to be Warriors for the Human Spirit. AND, we’re issuing an invitation of our own to all of you …
Create an Inspired Workplace.
Be an #EnlightenedRebel. Join the #3RRevolution.”
We want to partner with you to coach, consult, support, and encourage you through the change process involved in redefining leadership as a collective capacity (not just an individual competency), redesigning your organization as a network (not a hierarchy), and revitalizing your workplace with humanity and purpose.
As Enlightened Rebels, we are driven by the idealistic vision of a better way to work together and encourage rebellion that leads to innovation, reform and ultimately renewal. We have a strong desire for justice, wholeness, and healthy change and are not attached to counter-convention for its own sake.
Will you join us? Contact us today about individual leadership coaching or our Teams That Talk™ coaching approach!
