Presencing
Some years ago I came across an interesting theory of a professor at MIT called Claus Otto Scharmer. Since I started this blog I always wanted to point it out. Now already one year passed since he published his book based on years of research including many interviews with leaders from all continents: Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges.
I have to admit that I am absolutely impressed by his forward thinking approach. Just the title “Leading from the Future as it Emerges” and the core element of his theory, Presencing: “Letting the inner knowing emerge” feels to me like a ground-breaking, eye-opening approach to start solving some of the worlds most prevalent problems by educating the leaders for the coming decades of this century in any organization or institution.
He writes in the executive review on the Theory U webpage that I will use here as I do not count on describing it any better in my own words (also the Graphic inserted is borrowed from there): “We are blind to the source dimension from which effective leadership and social action come into being. 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. And it is this source that “ Theory U” attempts to explore.”
In this article about Theory U that I invite you all to read he is referring to Albert Einstein who “famously noted that problems cannot be resolved by the same level of consciousness that created them.” And Scharmer continues: “If we address our 21st-century challenges with reactive mind-sets that mostly reflect the realities of the 19th and 20th centuries, we will increase frustration, cynicism, and anger.” To really address the systemic root issues of our problems he suggests a new Social Technology, consisting of seven essential leadership capacities: Holding the space of listening, Observing, Sensing, Presencing, Crystallizing, Prototyping, Performing which he lays out in any of the sources linked above. He starts very simply with listening and lists 4 levels of it: downloading, factual, empathic, generative... somewhere in his article there is a subtitle: “Slowing down to Understand” which best describes where most of us are at and where we should go...
I think this is enough to make you curious, there are more materials on the web at Ottoscharmer.com. There is also the Presencing Institute. I am always looking myself for ways to use any of the elements in my daily life and work. And I am coming back to a path that some may pursue after looking more deeply into Theory U, something I already mentioned while writing about Jim Collins' Level 5 Leadership and this is Meditation. A technique still regarded as strange by many in our western world but definitely used by some Asian leaders (although it is also practiced in Christian religions). We are at the essence here to solve some of the “Human Challenges” we are currently facing not only at a corporate level... This may lead us to connect more to our inner being and... no fundamental change without any fundamental transformation of Self!
Posted at
11:17PM May 08, 2008
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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