This slideshow focuses on personal capacities required for leading in a fast changing environment. It is being presented by Christopher Baan. Today’s complex sustainability challenges call for a new generation of leaders and a new paradigm of leadership. Sustainability leaders and change agents need to steer their way through complex change processes in an environment that is characterised by high stakes and high uncertainty. Increasingly, leaders need to be able to facilitate participatory processes and engage a wide variety of stakeholders. In most cases, the sustainability challenge requires engaging people in profound change, an inner shift in people’s values, aspirations and behaviours guided by their mental models, as well as an outer shift in processes, strategies and practices. Sustainability and CSR managers, change agents and facilitators need to be adept at engaging individuals and groups in a collaborative and dialogical manner, unearthing the group’s collective intelligence and assisting employees to gain a whole system perspective. Facilitating this type of transformation depends first on the authentic leadership of the facilitator.

1. Leading yourself in turbulent times
– personal leadership capacities & practice
Authentic leadership for a just, resilient
and thriving world
Christopher Baan
25th April 2012
21st Century Network

3. We live in a period of accelerated and profound change …
… or transformation?

4. We live in a period of accelerated and profound change
‘It is the best of times,
and the worst of
times, the age of
wisdom, and the age of
foolishness.’
(from the opening to A
Tale of Two Cities by
Charles Dickens)

5. THE EARTH

6. IS FULL

7. WBCSD&2009&

8. •
We are collectively creating results nobody wants…habitually
recreating solutions from old way so of thinking…
Collectively, we are
creating results nobody
wants…habitually
recreating solutions
from old ways of
• “We cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
thinking…
Albert Einstein

9. Talking and planning
lead to more of the
same results…
… a different approach
seems to be needed.

10. ”I think there are good
reasons for suggesting that
the modern age
has ended….
… It is as if something
…Today, were crumbling, decaying
many things indicate and exhausting itself –
that we are going through a while something else, still
transitional period, when it indistinct, were arising
seems that something is on the from the rubble.”
way out and something else is
painfully being born. - Vaclav Havel

11. What do you see dying… … and what do you see
emerging around you, in the
world?

12. A few observations
Scharmer&2011&

13. Cynefyn framework

14. COMPLEXITY
EMERGENCE

15. “The greatest danger in times of
turbulence is not the turbulence;
it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
– Peter Drucker, 1980

16. We know a lot about leadership skills & competencies,
strategy and the exterior aspects of leadership
but…
… what is the ‘root’ of our action and inspiration?
… what if the way we show up as a human being is the core of
authentic leadership?
… what if it’s about engaging what already exists in you, with
focus and purpose? What if it’s about nurturing who you really
are?

17. “The success of an
intervention depends on
the interior condition of the
intervener.”
–Bill O’Brien
(former CEO of Hanover
Insurance)
Scharmer&2007&

18. The Blind Spot of Leadership
Results:
What
Process:
How
Source:
Who
Blind Spot: Inner place
from where we operate

20. What if change is not about re-structuring,
re-engineering, or re-organising, but
about re-perceiving – seeing the world
with new eyes?

21. Our brains are overloaded, our multitasking is
draining us….
What if the currency of the new (emerging)
economy is awareness, and the quality of
awareness, that we bring to our work?

22. Bringing your whole self to the
conversation/to work*
Think of a time at work where you had a peak experience;
where you felt fully engaged and working in line with your
*including your good, bad, wise, confused, scared, hopeful self.
values and deepest beliefs.

23. Authentic Leadership
‘Authentic leadership is an ongoing
process of fully inhabiting oneself, one’s
work, and one’s world.’
(ALIA institute)
It is about synchronising your
awareness, intention and action,
your vision and values

24. Authentic leadership
(from last time: Chris Tamdjidi/ ALIA institute)
• In order to develop oneself as a leader, one has to train body, heart
and mind
– Body: Strength, vitality and presence.
– Heart: Passion, Ability to motivate and emotional intelligence
– Mind: Inner peacefulness, Wisdom, clarity of understanding
– INNER PATH as well as ACTIVITY IN THE WORLD
• Congruence of vision and values
– Personal, team, organisation values supporting societal values
– Without vision it is not possible to motivate people – money alone is
not a vision
– Without values one cannot realise the heart of ones vision
• Harmony of being, action and results
– Mindfulness, thoughtfulness and reflection as part of leadership
process
– Ability to take decisions to the benefit of all (people, results)

25. Personal capacities of authentic leadership
Personal leadership capacities are our internal resources that
help us navigate our personal and professional lives with
flexibility and adaptability based upon congruency of mind,
body, spirit and heart.
They are fundamental ‘ways of being’ in the world.
Synthesis of research tools and theories into a model.

26. Personal Leadership Capacities

27. How do you cultivate these capacities?
• Where you place your attention… grows
• Embodiment
• Practice

28. Essential and very useful practices of
change agents (currently practicing)
100%&
90%&
80%&
70%&
60%&
50%&
40%&
30%&
20%&
10%&
0%&
%&Response:&Prac?ce&'Essen?al'&or&'Very&Useful'&in&your&work& %&Repsonse:&Currently&Prac?cing&

29. Closer up: Top 10 practices
% Response: Practice 'Essential' or 'Very Useful' in your work % Repsonse: Currently Practicing
100%
94%
89%
90%
78% 78% 78%78%
80%
70% 67% 67% 67%
61% 61%
60% 56%56% 56% 56%56%
50% 50% 50%50%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Mentor/Circle Meditation Attention to Retreat Spending time Relaxation Mindfulness Reflective Silence Generative
Breath in nature exercises journaling Dialogue

30. ‘Conditions for success’
Conditions of success for developing capacities:
• Personal AND collective practices
• Combination of contemplative, physical and spiritual practice to align body,
mind, spirit
• Quality of attention more important than kind of practice
• Integration in personal AND professional life
Conditions of success for practices:
• Mirroring quality
• Its ‘a container you can’t manipulate’
• Willing to do repetitively

31. Taking it home
Start a practice… something that suits your needs.
What do you yearn for?
What’s inkling in your body?

32. Further resources
http://www.thelotus.info (practice guide, video interviews with thought
leaders, etc)
Practice: the wormhole of transformation
http://www.thelotus.info/fieldnotes
Suggestions for starting a (meditation) practice: see www.susanpiver.com
Noetic Institute: Transformation model:
http://www.noetic.org/research/transformation_model/
Upcoming events
Facilitating transformational change towards sustainability.
www.thelotus.info/what-we-do/workshops-training

33. If you want to become a leader, you
first must become a human being.

34. Questions & Reflections

35. www.thelotus.info
This&work&is&licensed&under&a&Crea?ve&Commons&AQribu?onSNonCommercialSNoDerivs&3.0&Unported&License.&