9 questions for leadership in life and work

9 questions for leadershipin life and work



9 questions for leadership in life and work Copyright© 2017 Scott Downs & Gerald Doyle



IntroductionWe are passionately curious about howpeople discover what inspires them, andabout how they bring those inspirations tolife.We care about this question for ourselvesand for others we can support on thejourney -  especially for young peoplelaunching out into life and career.The learning and the experience of ourlives have drawn us to nine questions asfoundations for this inquiry.

Our hypothesis is that there are answers tothese questions for every person and forevery community - and that the answersand their relationships are unique to everycase.This little book sets out those questions,and some resources we have found fordelving into them

We invite you to come with us, and share with us, on this journey of exploration.



1 How might we discover a sense of inspiration - individual and/or collective - and bring it to life?Within inspiration, we would include suchdiverse sources as vision, mission, purpose,identity, and intention.How do we discover these things, as thefoundations of personal and organizationalleadership journeys?How do we ground inspiration in history,create a vision of the future, and apply it in thecontexts and containers of our current reality?

There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, aquickening that is translated through youinto action and because there is only one ofyou in all of time, this expression is unique.And if you block it, it will never existthrough any other medium and be lost … Itis your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. ~ Martha Graham dancer and choreographerIf you limit your choices only to what seemspossible or reasonable, you disconnectyourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise. ~ Robert Fritz

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ~ Robert FrostWhen you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. - Paolo CoelhoYou are the sum total of everything you’veever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told,forgot - it’s all there. Everything influenceseach of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive. ~ Maya Angelou

Sources and references for Question 1• Sirajuddin and Willeke, Temenos, A Reliable Vehicle for Organisa- tional Transformation• Temenos+Agility, An Introduction to Influence Maps• Lewitz and Neidhardt, Showing Up• Udall, Riding the Creative Roller Coaster• Udall and Turner, The Way of nowhere• Scharmer, Leading from the Emerging Future• Ray, The Highest Goal• Vision quests: e.g. http://sacredpassage.com/• Williams, The Work You Were Born to Do• Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By• Agile planning - section from A Career Creative Curriculum• Sinek, Start with Why



2 How might we be better at relation- ship and dialogue, one-to-one and in larger groups?Career awakening and leadership seems torequire relationship and dialogue.How might we create the spaces wherepersonal and collective relationships flourish?Where differences are welcomed andcollective intelligence sparks creativity,innovation and individual and collectivelearning?

Great leadership is movement from taking up space to beautifully holding space, spaces that use collective intelligence,creative tension and flow to significantly in-crease productivity and creativity, and there- by the capacity to out-innovate the competition. ~ Nick Udall

There is more than a verbal tiebetween the words common, community,and communication.... Try the experiment of communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to another,especially if it be somewhat complicated,and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing. - ~ John DeweyI have one major rule: Everybody is right.More specifically, everybody — includingme — has some important pieces of truth,and all of those pieces need to be honored,cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. ~ Ken Wilber

Sources and references for Question 2• Udall, Riding the Creative Roller Coaster• Bohm, On Dialogue• Isaacs, Dialogue and The Art of Thinking Together• Scharmer, Theory U• Kofman, Conscious Business• Patterson and Grenny, Crucial Conversations• Stone, Patton and Heen, Difficult Conversations• Hill, Collective Genius• Sawyer, Group Genius, the Creative Power of Collaboration• Lipmanowicz and McCandless, The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures• Peck, A Different Drum• Rees and Sullivan, Clean Language• Rosenberg, Non-Violent Communication• Roland and Rozenthuler, Leading Systemic Dialogue• Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection• Doyle, Downs, Littrell Senior, and Skala, Conversations of Inquiry



3 How might we become more skillful learners, courageously exploring the unknown?Individuals and teams need to learn and grow:journeys of inquiry are the means be whichdeep learning takes place.How might we understand the dynamicsof these journeys, and help our colleagues,teams andorganizations travel them, toemerge with breakthrough insights that leadto important changes?

Be patient toward all that is unsolved inyour heart and try to love the questionsthemselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a veryforeign tongue. Do not now seek the an- swers, which cannot be given youbecause you would not be able to livethem. And the point is, to live everything.Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, livealong some distant day into the answer. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Sources and references for Question 3• Udall, Riding the Creative Roller Coaster• Scharmer, Theory U• Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces• Vision quest material, e.g. http://sacredpassage.com/• Mayer, The People’s Scrum



4 How might we learn to discover and step into a range of healthy leader- ship stances and attitudes?Many leadership practices focus on the lead-er’s qualities and capabilities.How are we to understand the range of thesestances, states and qualities of mind, whetherfavorable or destructive, and how they relateto each other?What is the leader’s frame of reference forthese qualities?

Walking through the world creativelyrequires multiple perspectives because it’sin the weave that innovation happens. Thisquality of consciousness recognises thatwe do not understand what we see; ratherwe see what we understand. The world can only therefore be subjective. Masteryrequires us to enquire consciously into this subjectivity, to realise that we have been conditioned to look through our consciousness and not at it. ~ Nick Udall

Sources and references for Question 4• Udall, Riding the Creative Roller Coaster• Udall and Turner, The Way of nowhere• Barry, Shadow Work• Siegel, MindSight• Moore and Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover



5 As we consider our careers going forward, how might we develop greater maturity and self-awareness?Recent writing about leadership has oftenfocused on different levels of leadership orcultural) awareness, maturity and/orconsciousness.Although definitions of the various frame-works of maturity levels seem to provokegreat debate, how are we as leaders tounderstand the progression of awareness: arethere more and less mature ways for leadersto view their challenges, their opportunities,their mental models, their owndevelopmental paths and those of theirorganizations?

Where all the previous stages[of leadership maturity] had operated outof a sense of lack, scarcity, and deficiency,this new level—which various researchers began calling “integrated,”“integral,”“autonomous,” “second tier,” “inclusive,” “systemic”—acted out of a sense of radical abundance, as if it wereoverflowing with goodness, truth,and beauty. It was as if somebody put abillion dollars in its psychological account,and all it wanted to do was share it, so full it was. ~ Frederic Laloux

Sources and references for Question 5• Laloux, Reinventing Organisations• Scharmer, Leading from the Emerging Future• Udall, Riding the Creative Roller Coaster• Torbert, Action Inquiry• Kegan and Lahey, Immunity to Change



6 How might we, as emerging leaders, learn to understand and work with the complexity of human systems?Much conventional leadership thinkingimplicitly treats leadership challenges asprocesses that can be optimized, andorganizations as if they were machines thatcan be tuned. More advanced leadershipthinking tends to see organizations throughthe metaphors of living organisms andcomplex adaptive systems, where leadershipinterventions have complex, unpredictableresults.What meaning do leadership perspectivesmake of these insights and how are theyincorporated in leadership development?

Systems thinking is “contextual,” which is the opposite of analytical thinking.Analysis means taking something apart inorder to understand it; systems thinkingmeans putting it into the context of a larger whole. ~ Fritjof Capra

Sources and references for Question 6• Senge, The Fifth Discipline• Capra and Luisi, The Systems View of Life• Roland and Rozenthuler, Leading Systemic Dialogue• Whittington, Coaching and Systemic Constellations• Cohen, I Carry Your Heart in My Heart



7 How might we learn to understand and work with the full range of human capacity?Conventional leadership approaches usuallyfocus on the rational and the cognitive,helping leaders think and reason their way totheir leadership strategies.A more holistic approach recognizes thathuman beings are integrated wholes, wherethe distinction of body and mind becomesillusory.How can leaders learn to recognize andliberate the emotional, intuitive, andembodied intelligence in themselves, theircolleagues and their organizations?

A few centuries of listening to the head and more or less ignoring the wisdom of thebody have produced a world that makessense to the head but bewilders the noblephysical being that’s hiding beneath our business suits. ~ David Pearl People with high levels of personal mastery...cannot afford to choosebetween reason and intuition, or head andheart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg or see with one eye. ~ Peter M. Senge

Sources and references for Question 7• Kofman, Conscious Business• Goleman, Emotional Intelligence• Bessel Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score• Gendlin, Focusing• Abram, the Spell of the Sensuous• Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh• Strozzi-Heckler, The Art of Somatic Coaching• Servan-Schreiber, The Instinct to Heal• McLaren, The Language of Emotions



8 How might we become “makers” - people who regularly create beautiful and useful things and experiences?How can leaders step into becoming “makers”- creators of beautiful, elegant objects,systems, products, services, experiences -works of “art.”How can we step into life and work as a formof creative expression and service, inspired byan ethos of design - and support and encour-age others to do the same?

This is precisely the time when artists go towork. There is no time for despair, no placefor self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.I know the world is bruised and bleeding,and though it is important not to ignore itspain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaoscontains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art. ~ Toni Morrison, quoted by Maria PopovaArt isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, andpersonal. Andgreat art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.An artist is someone who uses bravery, in- sight, creativity, and boldness tochallengethe status quo. And an artist takes it personally. ~ Seth Godin

Sources and references for Question 8• May, In Search of Elegance• Martin, Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Com- petitive Advantage• Udall, Riding the Creative Rollercoaster• Godin, What To Do When It’s Your Turn• Brown, Change by Design• Burnett and Evans, Designing Your Life: Build a Life That Works for You



9 How might we hold and encourage journeys of personal and systemic transformation?There’s a lot of talk about transformation inleadership work, but transformation fromwhat? to what? And following what path?How do leaders inspire, design, enable andsupport these transformations, and help tohold the containers that (might) make thempossible?

If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery Sources and references for Question 9• Sirajuddin and Willeke, Temenos, A Reliable Vehicle for Organisational Transformation• Udall, Riding the Creative Rollercoaster• Scharmer, Leading from the Emerging Future

EpilogueWe would love to engage with you to helpyou discover your own unique answeres tothese questions on your own.we do this work with young people movingout into new chapters in life and work...... with people of all ages moving to newstages...... and with organisations and communitiesseeking to discover collective inspirationand bring it to life.we’d love to co-create with you.if you agree, please get in [email protected] [email protected]

From ScottI have had the privilege of spending thelast ten years working with some of themost progressive thinkers and coaches inthe modern leadership space. From thisexperience, I have seen that the leadershipprograms I most admire offer a range ofapproaches, practices and techniques foradvancing the leadership journey. It’s anintriguing challenge to think about how di-verse streams of insight can be connectedand brought into relationship.My own reflections, based on my contactwith great leadership teachers and cata-lysts and on my reading and study in thespace more generally, are that the bestleadership work gravitates around thesenine important questions. [email protected]

From JerryI have spent the last ten years at IllinoisTech working with an amazing set of col-leagues - faculty, staff, students, and alum-ni - to participate in and launch initiativeswith the Chicago Public Schools, The CityColleges of Chicago, the Caribbean StudentInitiative, the IIT Jusoor Syrian studentinitiative and the llinois Tech Global Lead-ers Program (formerly the IIT Boeing Schol-ars Academy). Over the years, my thinkinghas been altered and shifted by communityorganizers and activists who have thoughtdeeply about capacity building, developinghuman capabilities, and issues related toinclusion, diversity and community.. [email protected]

We sometimes hear people speak about “being world-class” and“winning.”Usually these ideas turn out to be about individual achievement andbeing better than others. Instead, we invite you to be the creativegenius you were meant to be, to create projects, teams andcommunities - including organizations and companies - that allow youand others to realize their creative potential. If you do that, we believethe ‘success’ will be there for everyone. We invite you to help manyothers to be the creative geniuses they were meant to be. It’s not aboutcomparison, being better than someone else, or winning in that sense.It’s about being the best you can be and helping many others do thesame. That’s what “winning’ really means to us.Our hope is that, in a small way, these 9 Questions of A Creative CareerCurriculum will help us all as we undertake those journeys of discovery.Scott Downs, a former banker, management consultant and entrepre-neur now works to call forward great leaders and great organizationson the basis of great cultures. He is an Associate of the TrustTemenosLeadership Academy.Jerry Doyle is Vice Provost for Student Access, Success and Diversityinitiatives at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He leads teams thatcreate ideas, relationships, and collaborative partnerships to strengthenlong-term sustainable enrollment pathways to higher education, and tosupport students and alumni in their career paths through and beyondgraduation.