Next Generation GPS for the Soul

Take out your cell phone, type or speak “Wild Ginger Thai, Denver, CO” into your GPS, and immediately, several detailed routes will be laid out for you.   We take it for granted that we can now navigate our way to almost any physical location on the earth, with ease. What was unimaginable to our grandparents… is now second nature to us.   We are witnessing our collective innovative genius at work.

Yet while we can map a route to a little known Thai restaurant halfway across the world, why is it so difficult for us all to navigate the current waves of geo-eco-political change? Has our technological genius outstripped our own ability to evolve our collective wisdom?

More and more often, I find my visionary executive and mid-level clients wrestling with the best ways to help facilitate the movement of their own organizations and systems into a new future. Many bring the same questions to our coaching sessions:

“Should we stay engaged from inside the system and help it to evolve from within… Or should we leave it to create what we know is possible for the larger system, from the outside, using a fresh canvas?” “Is there a hybrid approach?”

 “How do we help the system to enter into a dialogue about the future, when our  shareholders or senior leaders are still invested in keeping the old system going, no matter the cost?”

“If we stay, how do we do so… and continue to act from our own integrity?”  “If we leave, how can we be sure we are not simply running away?”

“When we speak our truth within the system, how do we do so without making the other wrong?”

I believe there are some basic practices that will support Visionaries who find themselves within a system that is on the brink of evolution. I offer four here as a start.

1. Be Present. For visionaries operating from within the system, those who can see and sense the world that lives beyond our current horizon line, it is not always easy to stay present to what is here right now, and to stay in relationship with those who cannot see beyond the horizon. And yet, the gift of your Vision is all the more powerful when you can stop seeing the present/what is dying, as the “enemy” to be avoided at all cost.
2. Fear or Purpose? Learn to distinguish between your own voice of fear (of being trapped in the old), and the Voice of Purpose that is calling you into the new. The Voice of Safety was not designed to open up new possibilities.
3. Stay Open to the “Data in the System.” Just as butterflies are formed out of the black goo of the cocooned caterpillar, through the emerging guidance of dormant “imaginal cells” …the code for the new era’s GPS is hidden in the old.   Even in radical transformation, the voices, diverse perspectives, opportunities and challenges of the system that is dying… contain the seeds of the new.
4. Power of Partnership. We are leaving the era of the leader as Hero… and entering an increasingly collaborative, collective, partnership-driven approach to business and leadership. Find your tribe; those who “get” what you are saying, and can support you in holding the Vision. And then stay open to those whose diverse and challenging viewpoints will enhance and grow your perspective. None of us can do this alone.

As we all try to navigate this territory at the Edge of everything we thought we knew, this edge where the old and the new collide, where old answers don’t work anymore… let’s listen to (and for) the voice of wisdom within us, and around us. And lets honor the vulnerability and courage it takes to keep moving forward with confidence toward the infinite possibilities that we will create together, even while the old systems are hitting up against the inherent limits of their own design.

(Image from Boston Globe)

Peggy McAllister is chief mischief maker, ceo, and executive coach with INTENTIONAL LEADERSHIP LLC... supporting leaders and their teams as we all navigate together this crazy, exciting, and game changing time with as much wisdom, humor, creativity and commitment as we can.