"Taking down the fences between sectors has benefited all parties and increased the chance of sustainable results through community ownership and collaboration"
Philanthropy NZ 2009 conference participant

Access Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges by Otto altScharmer

In the  spirit of Albert Einstein, Otto Scharmer suggests that a new collective leadership capacity is needed to meet the complex social, environmental and economic challenges we face today. According to Scharmer, "we know a great deal about what leaders do and how they do it. But we know very little about the inner place, the source from which they operate."

This inner place is of pivotal importance, as it can have powerful effects on the outcome of any action or decision of a leader's, and it is explored in Scharmer's 'Theory U' model, and its Five Movements.

Successful leadership depends on the quality of attention and intention that people bring to any situation.  Two leaders facing the same circumstances and doing the same thing can bring about completely different outcomes, depending on the inner place from which they each operate. Scharmer explores this inner place in leaders - he calls it the "source" - in the "Theory U" model.  Scharmer says that those who are in touch with this source "experience the future as if it were "wanting to be born."  He calls this "presencing" and says the result often generates "ideas for meeting challenges and for bringing into being an otherwise impossible future."

The journey through Theory U's Five Movements shows how the capacity for presencing can be developed.  It is a journey that also develops the following seven essential leadership capacities:

1. Holding the space of listening to others and to oneself. And listening to what emerges from the collective. Effective listening requires the creation of open space in which others can contribute to the whole.

2. Observing. The capacity to suspend the "voice of judgment" is key to moving from projection to true observation.

3. Sensing. The preparation for the experience at the bottom of the U - presencing - requires the tuning of three instruments: the Open Mind, the Open Heart, and the Open Will. This opening process is not passive but an active "sensing" together as a group.  While an Open Heart allows us to see a situation from the whole, the Open Will enables us to begin to act from the emerging whole.

4. Presencing. The capacity to connect to the deepest source of self and will allows the future to emerge from the whole rather than from a smaller part or special interest group.

5. Crystallizing. When a small group of people commit themselves to the purpose and outcomes of a project, the power of their intention creates an energy field that attracts people, opportunities, and resources that make things happen.

6. Prototyping. Moving down the left side of the U requires the group to open up and deal with the resistance of thought, emotion, and will; moving up the right side requires the integration of thinking, feeling, and will in the context of practical applications and learning by doing.

7. Performing. A prominent violinist once said that he couldn't simply play his violin in Chartres cathedral; he had to "play" the entire space, what he called the "macro violin," in order to do justice to both the space and the music. Likewise, organisations need to perform at this macro level.  They need to convene front-line people who are connected by the same values and are able to engage in a way that allows a multi-stakeholder gathering to shift from debating to co-creating the new.

from Engage, the April 2009 Tamarack newsletter, by Mark Cabaj with Sylvia Cheuy (abridged)

 

Access Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges by Otto Scharmer. Executive summary here. The entire book available at Otto Scharmer's website.