[GJM] HIERARCHICAL LEADERSHIP and EXPERIENTIAL CO-LEADERSHIP PARADIGMS

Wed Aug 30 18:11:39 MDT 2006

 Hi Everyone, 

 This popped up in my e-mail today and my immediate thought was:
  Holodynamic and Multi-Dimensional, and I wish I could convey all of 
  the colors that accompanied this thought as it flashed through my mind
  and fireworks went off.  

  What it brought to mind was the writing of Jared Diamond saying that 
  the greatest mistake humanity may have made is choosing the lifestyle
  of the agriculturist rather than that of the "hunter-gatherer".  And how 
  much differently things might have turned out had we chosen the latter.  

  The reason, farming, outside of driving our gas-powered vehicles, is 
   the most destructive activity we do.  (Union of Concerned Scientists -
   Effective Environmental Choices for Consumers). It forces us to till the
   land, re-route water, cut down forests, and pour on the fertilizer, and
then 
   transport the food to the consumer. All of which are non-sustainable.   

   I have also had the opportunity to study the lifestyle of the Kumeyaay 
   Indians here in Southern California who were hunter-gatherers and 
   migrated according to the seasons enjoying a very high quality and
   healthy diet which did no harm to the Earth because they did not till
   the land. Instead they subsisted on berries, acorns, small animals which
   provided meat, e.g., rabbits and squirrels, and occasional wild greens.  
   Sometimes they lived inland and at other times enjoyed the seashore,
   partaking of fish and other seafoods they obtained from patroling the
   coastal waterways in the small boats they built using tar with which to 
   caulk them.  

   They lived a marvelous lifestyle, working about 20 hours a week, until
the
   Mother Church sent the Franciscans over to finish colonializing America
   and bringing European agriculture to this country along with the policy
of
   production of excess for sale first and production for self and community
   second.  

    This was the "beginning of the end" and dammit we're still hell bent on 
   keeping this policy in effect.  

    There is another way, but will we ever learn?  
  . 
Message: 2
   Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 11:50:41 -0700
   From: "Michael" <mindquest at ozemail.com.au>
Subject: HIERARCHICAL  LEADERSHIP and EXPERIENTIAL  CO-LEADERSHIP PARADIGMS

HIERARCHICAL  LEADERSHIP and EXPERIENTIAL  CO-LEADERSHIP PARADIGMS

http://ionsnw.org/communitynews//coleadership.htm

This essay emerged out of a field that has been spun by ancient indigenous
tribes, co-leadership projects around the global, and the resonant field my
friends and I (Alpha Lo) have opened up into as we work on our emergent
projects including our upcoming "gathering of emerging leaders"
(spiritgathering.net) where we look to embody experiential co-leadership in
the spirit of transformational activism

1.EXAMPLES

2.OBSERVATIONS

3.CONTAINERS

1.EXAMPLES

Hierarchical, plan-based, and mind-led leadership model : A director directs
the music, telling each musician when they are to play and not.

Experiential Co-leadership and emergent systems model : A group of musicians
improvise music together, melodies and harmonies streaming forth that no one
has planned before hand, and that there is no director guiding them how to
play together. There is a kind of 'zone' musicians can get into where they
are really tapping in, and things really click. It is a kind of higher
collective consciousness state where you tap into something bigger than
yourself. This model requires each musician to really tune into each other,
to really listen. The deeper the listening the more creative and new
original spaces the musicians can venture into without fear of losing the
others in the group.

Hierarchy and plan leadership model : A festival, where the organizer
organizers the whole lineup and scheduling

Co-leadership and emergent systems model : At Burning Man anyone can come
and build a camp with a theme there, and run events there according to their
own schedule. The power of the festival comes from the people. And by
tapping into this energy you have many more nets and events than your normal
festival, probably an order of magnitude more. This is because you don't
just have say 20 organizers that you might have for a normal festival, you
now have something 5000 organizers.

There is still some 'hierarchical' leadership of  Burning Man, but the
hierarchical leadership is more about facilitating and inspiring others to
lead.

Hierarchical and mind-led leadership model : Activist organizers plan the
time of a march and how they are going to do it.

An example of experiential co-leadership model: There was a bunch of people
in the Great Peace march protesting nuclear proliferation. There were people
who wanted to march at their own pace, and people who wanted to march
together. What happened is that everyone was given a chance to talk for 2
minutes at a mike. As everyone talked they somehow took into account of what
people said before while saying their own version.  After everyone had
talked there was simply this inner knowing from everyone about what the
right decision was without their having to be a vote or anything.

   This is an interesting form of 'non-voting' democracy. So you do not need
to even have explicit vote to determine what is the best decision. People
simply know inside what is the best decision. This is the experiential part 
of the experiential co-leadership model. It wasn't a mind-based decision.

Hierarchy and plan based leadership model  : A director tells how all the
dancers there movements and when they all come in.

Co-leadership and Emergent systems model :  The movements emerge out of the
the dancers listening to each others bodies and to their own. Contact improv
dance is one example of such an emergent system model. In Contact Improv the
rule is that you stay in contact with your fellow dancer/s at all time. Out
of that emerges a dance that no one has choreographed. Dances that work 
better' are those where the dancers are really listening to each others
bodies, utilizing a kind of psychic somatic intelligence to guide each other

Hierarchy Plan based leadership model : The boss, the board are the ones who
ponders issues, problems, and what direction to take things next

Co-leadership emergent systems model: In this facilitative process called
Open Space Technology which has been used by numerous big companies to solve
multimillion dollars issues, everyone is called into one place. It can be a
large group of like 100 people. Then whoever is moved to can come to the
middle and write some issue that they are passionate. There could be say 8
people who write something. They then go to a place in the room, and whoever
is drawn to that question goes over and starts discussing it. So you have
these 8 clusters forming. When a person wants to leave a group they are free
to, and join another group. This is a self-organizing process as they is
no-predetermined questions, nor is it predetermined who will write something
 What happens is that it allows the freedom for a lot of very useful
discussions and ideas to evolve. In some sense this becomes a board meeting
where everyone is involved discussing what to do. This process can often
come up with solutions to problems that a small group of bosses cannot, in
part because now it is tapping into the intelligence of the whole as opposed
to a select few.

Hierarchy Plan based model : The development of the Windows operating system
by Microsoft.

Co-leadership model : Linux is an open source developed program that is now
rivaling Windows. It taps into the power of programmers from all over the
world. Everyone is invited to add to the existing the program. So you have a
huge cadre of programmers essentially volunteering their time to build  a
program. It works because a system as developed to allow programmers who
have never met to work together.

Hierarchy plan based model : A conference who where when everyone talks is
all planned out.

Co-leadership model : People coming together to share and guide each other.
Each person who comes plays a part in how things end up. There are varying
degrees of this. At a Well Being festival in LA, spaces are created for
people to lead workshops in, but people determine for themselves when they
get there when and what they lead.

Open Space Technology discussed above is something that could be tweaked in
format so that it provides a template for how people self-organize into
events and workshops

There is a conference in Wales, where when you come you, and where on the
first day you co-create with others what is going happen at the conference
for the rest of the week.

At Foo camp, an internet developer gathering in Silicon Valley a white board
is put with time and spaces, and people who arrive at the gathering sign up
on the white board to speak.

There is a name for these events where the content is driven by the
participants  is called unconferences

2. OBSERVATIONS about these models:

Hierarchy : Accent is on power
Co-leadership : Accent is on listening

Co-leadership : It requires more tuning in to each other. The musicians
really have to listen to each other. Things emerge out of a listening space.

Hierarchy : The accent is on the will.
Co-leadership : The accent is on the heart. (Not to say that the will is not
also very important, but you could say the will serves the heart)

Hierarchy : Oriented towards achieving results
Co-leadership : Oriented towards the present moment, holding space, entering
resonant spaces, 'expanding' group space, transmuting energies.

Hierarchy : Leader motivates followers to achieve objective.
Co-leadership : Everyone inspires and catalyses everyone else to do their
nature, their passion

Hierarchy : Authority is from the boss.
Co-leadership : Authority is from tapping into spirit which is universally
accessible.

Hierarchy : Accent is on how well someone does a job.
Co-leadership : Accent is on how well people relate to each other

Hierarchy : The intelligence of the system as a whole is concentrated at the
top.
Co-leadership : The intelligence is distributed throughout the whole system.

Hierarchy : Leaders may use posturing, fear, carrots and other things to
influence and organize events and action.
Co-leadership : Emotionally opening, being authentic opens us the space for
things to reorganize themselves.

3. THE CONTAINER.     PRODUCT and PROCESS

The container in the hierarchy model is the plan, and to do what the boss
says.

The container in the co-leadership model can be the rules of the
facilitative processes like  Non-violent communication,  Heart Circles ,
Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space Technology, or World Café.  Each of these
processes has certain rules, e.g in Non-violent Communication the idea is
that one uses I statements, and expresses one emotions and needs. These
rules guide the process.  The container is also in some sense how self-aware
and other-aware you are. The more self-aware and other-aware you are the
more the process flows.

The container is in some sense the self-referential nature of the process.
Self-referential processes, feedback loops allow a system to readjust itself
 So when a group self-reflects on how the process is working for them, when
they self-reflect on their emotional state, that act itself readjusts the
group so that it is more in alignment. A group doesn't depend on a boss to
realign it, it does it itself. The intelligence that allows that to happen
is distributed throughout the whole system.

The container in the co-leadership model is  the degree we are in our bodies
 This is because our cells, our meridians, our organs etc all contain
intelligence about everything that is happening. The more we tap into this,
the more aware we become of what is happening, and the 'safer' everything
becomes. The more we are able to drop into our bodies, the more we are able
to create an energetic container that can transmute all sorts of negative
energies.

The container is the co-leadership model  is  psychic guidance. By opening
up to how spirit wants to guide us, we are constantly guided away from
pitfalls that we do not yet even conceive of. Spirit constantly is adjusting
things so they work together in more harmonious ways.

The container is our awareness of our emotions, our anger, our guilt, our
sadness, our jealousies, and how that drives our processes and group
processes. As we increase our awareness of this and our ability to deal with
others emotions, the whole group has created a safe container for traumas
and  conflicts that may occur.

The container in the co-leadership model is also the resonant space that
everyone creates together. Things which look like conflicts in more
superficial spaces do not look like conflicts in deeper, more resonant
spaces.

The container in contact improv dance can be  guidelines about being careful
of doing certain things to different body parts, or tips about how to listen
to one's partners body. The container is the resonant space that is created
in the dance place. And the container is the degree that the participants
are in their body. The more in they are in their body the safer the dance
becomes.

The hierarchy model is focused on end results. The co-leadership model is
focused on the process. When we focus on the process we do not always know
what where will end up. What often happens is that emotions and other
blockages are transmuted in the process, there is a release, a widening of
perspective, it's almost as if the whole group wakes up to a higher level of
consciousness.

The co-leadership model does end up with results - Burning man is an
mind-blowing festival, Improv troupes come up with amazing performances, the
Great Peace March ended up being very successful, its just that you cannot
plan, you cannot know at the start how things will end up.

Alpha Lo, one of the organizers of a Gathering of Emerging Leaders of All
Ages: Transformational Activism to Birth a New Paradigm shares a letter
about what he has learned experientially about co-leadership.

The hierarchy model is based on trying to get results in a fixed 'space'.
The co-leadership emergent systems model is about increasing the 'space', we
expand the heart space, the emotional space, the psychic space. We expand it
through somatic exercises, through heart exercises, through facilitation
techniques

References and links:

"A gathering of emerging leaders"  Transformational activism.

Also    http://www.eomega
org/omega/workshops/68dc36ce52071f328d73ade3556c4a09/

"The cathedral and the bazaar"  by Eric Raymond. The seminal essay about
open source, that explains the idea of how to use the many programmers on
the planet to work together to build software. This essay helped convince
Netscape to open source its browser, which has since evolved to be Mozilla
Firefox.

"Out of control" by Kevin Kelly. A book about collective intelligence

"The tipping point" Michael Gladwell

"The wisdom of crowds" by James Surowiecki

The Co-intelligence Institute

A collective intelligence issue of "What is enlightenment magazine"

"How to host an unconference" Business Week article

Global Consciousness Project

Center for Creative Emergence

Circlecenter

"The cluetrain manifesto"  An essay how conversations drives marketing

Commons based marketing