Identity...

There are shock points in our all our lives: those edges which, unexpected, hurtle or nudge us into an awakening about ourselves, others, or/and the world. We come to realise that what we have seen in one way suddenly is seen quite differently, and we wake up to going beyond the boundaries that were previously there within those borders which made us feel safe and secure, to a different sky! This sudden awakening stimulates our nerve ends to come out of their safe places and usual synapsis to poke their tentative tendrils into new possibilities, new questions, and sometimes to panic, confusion, and anxiety, or perhaps, even relief at this new unfolding. The range of emotions shift our senses and the brain scrambles to locate its new meaning. Notice the response: it may even settle into a deep ahhh!

Developmental growth - that is learning that takes place somewhere inside of us in an embodied way - is at times difficult to articulate. It is nonetheless felt within us, and its location, still bounded by the hardened bark of old layers, is pushed open to accommodate an increased capacity for seeing and being more. Perhaps even doing more. I refer to growth here, not to represent the acquisitive, grasping desire to achieve more, accumulate more than someone else, or extract more in the common terms of the material world we live in, but rather, it is that letting go and expansion into an inner place of resonance or of disturbance, where learning happens. This is part of the letting go, of including and transcendent learning, all of which permits us to meet an evolving state and stage of life. The question is really about how we meet these shock points? If the seeds of new ideas and new ways of being, land in fertile soil, where a readiness has been tended by a rich composting of experience and attentive preparation, the stalks of new growth will be visible and strong. If the soil is bleached and barren of nutrients, the shoots will be unsteady, and this, with barely enough spread into a receiving soil, and fall over and die.

The environments and systems in which we work, live or die, thrive or just survive, can be likened to the 'tender-ing' of soil. A further question arises as to the receptivity and agility to withstand shifts in the 'climate' and the 'conditions' both above the soil and in the soil that may or may not, foster that growth. While some plants grow quickly, their dimensions are slim and their ability to last and propagate over lengths of time, to endure and keep regenerating, is different from those whose growth is slower, more consistent, and grounded in a soil that allows the roots to go deep and sturdy. What then of how we work with our fellow persons and our own environments? Do we enable the small shoots of immediate gratification to sprout and move on: is this an endeavour of propagating the many, to serve an immediate goal. It may be useful in that moment but for the diversity of nature/persons, of any richly nutritious organisation, to thrive, it needs to also recognise the inbetweeners and those that are the ones who will grow their roots deeply, in so many textures, to be able to see high and wide and feel deeply connected in its soul/soil.

Such is the developmental nature of our lives: the rich diversity that tends its offerings into a tapestry of difference, not sameness. How can one innovate in an impoverished soil? How can one thrive if the deep roots are not there to foster the growth of others? Diversity and difference is rarely understood as the most fundamental unifying principle with different needs and different tasks. The commonality of it all must be care or all will die.

As we move through our lives we identify with a range of life motives, mindsets, and worldviews. We enter in relationships, cultivate skills and are required to fulfill different tasks at each stage of our growth. Do we set in or do we stay alive to possibility? Change is constant and we move through a events on the outside that may be very different, yet operate from an inside that is primed to stay the same. When we transform our whole being, we see the world through different eyes because we, fundamentally, have been changed in our very inner structure or way of being. This as a purpose for learning in organisations is rare and the know how to do this even rarer.

Leaders who are able to navigate themselves through an environment that is rich in its diversity, its stages of life, and its different types of people while moving towards a vision that is not always simply better or more of the same, requires the cultivation of greater discernment and wisdom capabilities than we have available. While we humans have impacted the world out there in many unconsidered ways, we struggle to embrace the inner movements that are necessary to see beyond what has always been seen and always avoided.

The structure of a organisation needs to invite as much diversity in being as it does in competencies and capabilities of person/s to move beyond a limiting vision. (See future article). A thriving business sees itself in relationship to the edges beyond the organisation, into the world of all of us, where our lives interweave and connect! This envisioning and enacting can happen by chance: or it can be engaged with through intention to surface the potentialities of change and the ensuing tensions that go along with real learning.

While we cannot always anticipate such learning moments, leaders can be intentional about preparing the soil and creating the environments/culture in which all can use their perceptive capabilities to respond to the field in which they exist or live fully. To do this, leaders need to cultivate time to reflect and purposely sit in the branches of big trees where vision of the wider nature of potential is possible. At other times, they need to be getting their hands warmed by the aliveness of a well composted soil, knowing that healthy and responsive roots with enough space to grow and go deep, contribute hugely to the oxygen of the organisation. When unable to cultivate this range of capacities and responsive nimbleness, finding the point of that green bud that touches the blue sky, right at the top edges of the tree, is difficult. And leaders also need to be ready to drop from that place into the earth to act as a nutrient for the next seed. As above, so below.

Dr Paddy Pampallis. (not AI)

Integral U Range Leadership is a process developed by The (Integral Africa) Coaching Centre and utilised as a developmental journey of growth and continuous learning, with IU Coaching as its conversational support.