Transforming Relationships
Culture has a strong, albeit indirect influence over how we experience the world and the impact we can have on it – it’s people, environment and processes.
Our personal history and the cultures we live shape our identity. They define what is real and true for us and shape our values and desires. They affect the kind of relationships we have. It becomes our default paradigm. When using machine metaphors we are constraining our thinking and this is blinding us to alternatives that we urgently need to consider.
CONSTRUCTING REALITY
It’s important that as leaders, we are conscious of the neuro-linguistic programming that has shaped our nervous system and left us questioning – Is this what I think? Is this who I am? We can never know the whole of reality because it has been constructed for us. But we have a mind, consciousness, and thoughts. This gives us the ability to observe ourselves in our environment, create our own worldview, make judgements, and construct our own beliefs.
CONNECTING AND COLLABORATING
We create the world through how we participate and what we care about. Most of us care about the health of the system we are part of because it is in our shared interest if we want to survive and thrive. We must share a desire to cooperate to take care of the things we care about.
Our life becomes more complex, the longer we live. It creates more diversity and different perspectives on what we need to secure the health and resilience of the system we all rely on.
What’s needed is a deep sense of connection as human beings and an understanding of what our shared needs are. The hole in the boat may not be at our end, but eventually, we will all sink if we cannot work together to keep it afloat while we fix it.
There is evidence of an emerging pattern of conscious collaboration to share limited resources. But there is also a need for empathy and a willingness to cooperate locally and globally.
CONSTRUCTING A REGENERATIVE PARADIGM
A regenerative paradigm uses a different language, one that adopts living metaphors from an infinitely unfolding world, that is full of possibilities and the capacity to evolve and realise our innate potential.
We naturally seek status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness which brings both threats and opportunities. They determine how we want to live in the world and the type of culture our leadership produces.
For example, the distribution of power, shared beliefs, sources of status, social values and dominant assumptions. What attributes would you want to discourage and reward as a regenerative leader?
This SCARF Model gives us a better understanding of:
How we give ourselves status and self-esteem in our culture
How embracing uncertainty frees us from the myth of control
How to trust our assessments and value the insights gained from life’s surprises.
How to take personal responsibility for your assumptions, assessments, and declarations.
How to look for similarities, anomalies, and differences in situations and our own behaviour
How important authenticity and integrity are for leaders in securing quality relationships
When observing someone’s Way of Being (their language, mood and body) you can gain insights into how they relate to themselves and prefer to deal with others.
THE POWER OF METAPHOR
Metaphors help us to link ideas in new ways so that new knowledge can emerge and be more easily communicated. They pull ideas together. Language is a metaphor if it opens upend meaning. Words are just symbols that we give meaning to. A shared meaning is a powerful way of creating a shared culture.
Many indigenous cultures use symbols, ceremonies, taboos, rituals, and totems that hold the essential knowledge, history and identity of their culture as a living system. They pay homage to something sacred that is internalised in every person in the community, that they respect and serve as being a unifying force, more important than themselves.
What does leadership mean to you? Is it someone who takes care of what you care about? Maybe someone who engages people to get the desired result. Why does the dynamic relationship between oneself and our desire to change need someone else to help us?
Can we not lead ourselves and take responsibility to organise our actions with others to achieve a shared care or concern, just like nature does?
For me, this is a culture based on Life Leadership. It is intuitive, interactive, emergent and self-organising and is continuously regenerating itself.
What metaphors do you use to describe your leadership?
Where did these metaphors come from?
Are these metaphors represented in any physical objects in your home?