I spent much of my day yesterday, in the dreaded ‘leadership’ conversation. As we explored it, I noticed that we are numbed into not noticing that our underlying presupposition for a conversation about leadership is our existing world. I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but that’s not working so well. Even our converations about leadership (which implies moving forward) are grounded in the past of what we already know.
As in all things, all meaning is context dependent – including a conversation about leadership. To progress in any way in an exploration of ‘leadership’ (a nominalization) we must consciously define the context within which we’re considering it. In our existing context (the world as we know it), gender is an issue; age is an issue; education is an issue; experience is an issue; etc. I wonder what happen to all of these if we were to redefine the context? It may well be that all of these limitations would fall away and we would discover that each of us – all of us! – is/are essential to a significantly different world.
The most courageous expression of leadesrship we can be is to live an authentic life – one moment at a time. Those 60-second increments of ‘being’ are more powerful than any protracted, extensive study and/or analysis of how it ‘can be’. Those 60-second increments are also the antichrist to the intergenerational, mind-numbing, coma-inducing mindlessness of cultural conditioning and its accompanying external references and demand for external referencing as a way of life.
The result of awakening to even just one 60-second increment of authentic expression is that we can never go back. That alone will undo decades of cultural conditioning and with that, come new directions… and a new world.
Breathing is good…..
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