Position Purple’s ‘Leadership of the New Kind’

A letter towards launching the leadership program

 

This is a first communication before sending out more details about the leadership program we’re soon to launch.  Currently the program is shaping up to be a full and very exciting proposition that will include two international in-person seminars with indoor and outdoor training, online meetings and distribution of written materials.  It will also include personal coaching and a few local face to face meetings.  The intention is to create an international group, with representatives from a few countries, who will go through this process together.

But before sharing the details, we wanted to share with you some of the reasons that caused the initiation of this program in the first place, so that you can begin to see the storyline that led to this program.  Therefore, please refer to the next part of this letter as a philosophical interlude, and then we’ll get more practical again.

A Philosophical Interlude – Thinking of Global Challenges:

If someone asked you: ‘What are the main challenges that the human race is facing today?’ what would your answer be?  You can take a minute to think about it if you wish, before you continue reading. 

While individual answers may differ, there is somewhat of a consensus among many experts in relation to this question. You can, in fact, google it yourself and see what is listed on the web.  For example, the ‘Millennium Project’ provides a list of 15 such challenges. ‘Sustainable development and climate change’ as its number 1, ‘Clean Water’ as its second main challenge, and ‘Population and Resources’ as its third.   Down the list you will find items such as ‘Democratization’, ‘Rich-Poor Gap’, ‘Education and Learning’, ‘Peace and Conflict’ and more.

But if someone would ask a bit of a different question:  ‘What stops the human race from getting its act together so that it can deal with these challenges?’

Or to put this question in different words:  ‘Is there anything that stands in the way of people that prevents them from getting the point – something that’s holding people back, or even dumbing them down to the point of not being able to muster together their powers and intelligence?’

If someone would have asked this question, then the answer would be much more concise than 15 items.  In relation to this question, my choice of answer would have pointed to a failure of leadership in one of its core traditional functions – that of providing cohesion between people (and to be clear – this is even before we get to where leadership needs to move on to, or to why it needs to be approached in a new way – we will get to these points in future communications). To follow are the two main issues where this problem can be seen.

The main two points of fracture:

If we are to make such a short list (just 2 main points) – to exemplify what is holding back humans from getting their act together, then it must be something that causes a fracturing, or split, at such a deep level that it is strong enough to hinder communication and understanding and actually render people less intelligent; it must be something that cuts through the very core of the fabric of human society. Indeed, these two issues are exactly this type of matters.

Issue no. 1 – The Perception Gap of Gender Function

This point goes beyond just improving the status of women, or granting equal pay and equal opportunity – although these are important manifestations of the needed change.  This begins at the subconscious level to do with how women and men view their own gender and how they view the other.  It is about the willingness (or unwillingness) to lean into the other gender’s point of view and reality.  If a man, for example, is locked into only his point of view, and that causes him to have disrespect in himself towards women, or if in his mind, he’s putting women down; then he is going to block himself from a certain kind of natural intelligence that could have been available to him.  The same applies to groups of people; if a whole society (or team or group or nation) carries this pattern in their psyche, then this whole group is going to be limited in their access to intelligence.   On the other hand, every group that will genuinely work at bridging this understanding gap, is going to benefit greatly, if just for the increased ‘perception resources’ that becomes available.  What is being suggested here is big, because it is not just about ‘the war between the sexes’, but it suggests a fracture that exists in each individual’s mind, unless they have decided to consciously do something about it.

(You might be wondering at this point how this is to do with leadership, but we’ll get to it right after the next point)

Issue no. 2 – Being Locked into a Group Perception

This is the second strongest divider and fracturing agent. While it is very natural for people to group and team up together, the danger is that this can result in alienating oneself from another group and as a result to block oneself from another group’s point of view.  Ask yourself if you belong to any team – can you think also from another team’s point of view?  Or, with being born in one country or nation – do you have access to another culture’s point of view?  All sane people understand that they are not individually the lone owners of truth; no one is, and that communicating with others is a source of inter-fertilization.   Yet, groups of people – like individuals – have become over time – years, centuries or millennia – the custodians of certain sets of perceptions; of certain ways of thinking and unique types of intelligence – much like every individual is different from the other.  Being locked into one group’s perception might deprive one from access to a treasure trove of intelligence that is available – that’s in the light case – and in the worst case, to want to destroy the other group or culture, or to dominate it, rather than appreciate the beauty in the diversity.

Now Back to Leadership

So how is it all connected with leadership? Well, it should have been part of the function of leadership to bridge gaps and expand perception, because better cohesion, better understanding, enhances a group’s intelligence and capability, but the old maxim of ‘divide and rule’ is rooted so deeply in the psyche, that many people who occupy leadership positions don’t really function as leaders, but fall into the trap of being controllers or managers.  When people do that, they don’t bother anymore with bridging gaps, or making an effort to understand another’s point of view, but rather add to the fracturing of perception – not only in relation to the two points mentioned above, but also to other areas of life (the two issues mentioned above is but the main two examples of fractured perception, but there is more).

Here is a short story to illustrate this:

A few years ago I was driving with a ten year old child on the way to school when I noticed that the child was preoccupied with some thoughts. The evening before, she happened to watch on the TV a few speeches given by leaders of states at the UN summit in New-York City.  Besides the fact that all of them were men, something in the antagonistic way they spoke caught her attention and obviously bothered her.  She wanted to ask a question:

‘What does a person need to learn or study before they can become a Prime Minister or a President?’  This was her question.  Obviously, she was going to school, so such a question seemed natural.

She was very surprised when I told her that there are no prerequisites or specific qualifications required – at least as far as education is concerned, but when she spoke next, it was my turn to be surprised.

‘I think that before someone can become a leader of a country, they should take a year and participate in a course that teaches them about all other countries’ she said.  ‘Otherwise, how can they lead their own country?’

The child intuitively touched upon something quite profound:  that one cannot lead without elevating their perception to a level higher than what they deal in.  But what she also felt was that something was not quite right about the antagonism that came through the speakers.

An important notation: This kind of fracturing does not happen only at the level of state leaders; it happens in business organizations, it happens in local communities and it can happen in schools – down to the level of the teacher in the classroom.

So what do we want to see in Leadership of the New Kind?

As a first step, we want to shift the idea of leadership from the notion of control and power, to a notion that for the time being we will call: ‘Commitment to Development’. We want to see leadership that is concerned with a bridging of gaps and with expansion of intelligence rather than being concerned with the management of people – but this is just the beginning.  Down the road, we envision a real evolution in the function of leadership, translated into a new set of behaviors and tools of leadership of a new kind.

BECAUSE THE WORLD HAS CHANGED, BUT LEADERSHIP DID NOT

We shall discuss more of this in later communications, so that these ideas become more concrete and specific as we go on, but in the meantime – let’s go back to some practicalities.

Back to being more practical:

The prerequisites for participating in this program:

These four simple points are for you to consider and see if you can say yes to them.

  1. To be courageous enough to consider the world’s biggest problems, but humble enough to apply it in one’s own small (or big) pond first.
  2. To be able to apply principles of the ‘new school’ leadership in some field of application – the idea being that the program is not designed to end up as an intellectual exercise, but should provide tools for experimentation. As far as we – the team – are concerned, every participant can apply it in any type of field that they choose (Business, Education, Parenting, hobby group, community project or any other field), but commitment to application is important.
  3. Some availability to travel and communicate internationally – although most of the work will be done locally or online, participation in the first in-person seminar is required.
  4. Willingness to participate in something that is partly experimental and open ended by design; where indoor and outdoor training will be used, and where each participant will be part of the happening in an active way.

And that means that it will be up to all of us to turn it into the best leadership program possible.

 

In about a week, we will follow up with more details about the program: providing a possible location for the first in-person seminar; some details about the content, timing and agenda; introduce you to some of the people on the team and discuss next steps.   At this point we don’t ask you to commit, but we would be grateful to hear back from you – to make sure that you’ve received this email and see if you want to consider participating in this program and if you would want to receive our next communication with more details about the program.

With warm regards and looking forward to hearing from you,

Rafi – and on behalf of the team