Actualizing Evolutionary Co-Leadership: To Evolve a Creative and Responsible Society

ACTUALIZING

EVOLUTIONARY CO-LEADERSHIP

To Evolve a Creative and Responsible Society

Revised Edition

ALAIN GAUTHIER

A Core Leadership Development Book

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 Alain Gauthier

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To Sylvie, my granddaughter.

May she and tomorrow's other children

be able to actualize and bring together

their unique gifts for the common good.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD: Two dances for a Renaissance

PROLOGUE: Why this book - Why now?

1. OVERVIEW

Why evolutionary?

Why leadership and, in particular, co-leadership?

Why evolve a creative and responsible society?

2. THE EVOLUTIONARY WORLDVIEW

Exterior evolution: the three Big Bangs

Interior evolution: consciousness and culture

Integral evolution: a dialectical process

The evolutionary impulse: co-creating the future

3. FROM PATRIARCHAL LEADERSHIP TO CO-LEADERSHIP

Origin, limitations, and perils of patriarchal leadership

Shift from domination to partnering

The essence of partnering: an archetypal and symbolic exploration

Co-leadership as partnering with self, others, nature, and evolution

Link between quality of leadership and overall quality of life

4. PRACTICING THE INNER DANCE OF CO-LEADERSHIP

Awakening to and working with subtle energies

Collaborating with diverse inner voices and characters

Developing the inner observer or witness

Balancing yin and yang energies in learning and creating

Increasing one's inner capacity as a bridge builder

5. PRACTICING THE EXTERNAL DANCE OF CO-LEADERSHIP

Entering the external dance

Partnering in a team, circle, or network

Co-leading at the organizational level

Treating external stakeholders as partners

Partnering among organizations

Partnering across sectors

Facilitating the co-leadership dance

6. EDUCATING CREATIVE AND RESPONSIBLE CO-LEADERS

Limitations of current leadership development programs

Promises of integral leadership development initiatives

Combining three types of development practices

Transforming the educational system

7. EVOLVING A CREATIVE AND RESPONSIBLE SOCIETY

What is already emerging in the world

New initiatives to catalyze and accelerate evolution

Your role in accelerating evolution

FOREWORD

TWO DANCES FOR A RENAISSANCE

Alain Gauthier has written a short but ambitious book which takes us through the physical and cultural evolution of our World over many millennia - from ancient matriarchy to modern patriarchy - which has produced knowledge, sciences, progress, but also violence.

He helps us to discern the visible but still fragile emergence of partnership, source and driver of a new and indispensable second Renaissance that will only be possible if each one of us learns to dance with the various facets of our true identity, while co-creating and starting a shared choreography.

Alain invites us to discover and build this partnership or evolutionary co-leadership through a journey in the realms of thought and action. He borrows freely from many cultures and traditions. For instance, he connects the ideas of Plato and Teilhard de Chardin to the practice of Taoist Chi Kung - opening new avenues that he has already explored as a scout. He does so by calling on his long and rich experience of practitioner and pioneer of collective intelligence, in close touch with the evolution of companies and other organizations.

This is an inspiring, resourceful book for all of us - educators, entrepreneurs, and other builders of a second Renaissance - who are daily endeavoring to co-create an open, learning, innovative, and sustainable society.

Jacques Chaize

Company Executive; Former President of the Center for Young Executives;

Author: The Quantum Leap - Tools for Managing Companies in the New Economy and The Door of Change Opens from the Inside

PROLOGUE

WHY THIS BOOK - WHY NOW?

Writing this book - after recently celebrating my 74th birthday - has given me a rewarding and enriching opportunity to reflect upon my enthusiasms, commitments, experimentations, trials, and successes - as well as my own evolution over the last 50 years. While acknowledging my deep optimism about the future, I also hold a profound sense of urgency to address our Planet's current and pressing needs.

There have been many occasions for me to experience the challenges, joys, and difficulties of partnership and co-leadership[1] in my family, professional, and social life. I have learned extensively from two marriages and raising my son. Across sectors in several countries, I have spent 25 years facilitating the creation and development of various types of partnerships - in executive teams, corporations, schools, hospitals, development agencies, and foundations. Additionally, I have been personally involved in several professional partnerships. These various experiences have led me to reflect - individually and in groups - on the conditions for true and effective co-leadership to occur for the good of all partners and for those they serve.

Based for 28 years in California - while sharing my time mostly between France and the United States, I am conscious of the influence that these two cultures have had on my personal journey and my worldview. Over the years, I have attempted to combine the best of what each has to offer, while remaining open to the most innovative approaches - whatever the origin. Work assignments in other European countries, as well as Africa, Brazil, and Japan, have also expanded the landscape of my listening, learning, and experimentation.

Furthermore, twenty years of personal practices - such as meditation, chi kung, action inquiry, and nature retreats - have made me more keenly aware of the importance of the inner dance. This inner dance reveals many facets of my Being, and becomes a prerequisite for successfully entering the "external dance[2]" - which is required for true partnership or co-leadership.

Finally, my discovery of the sacred dimension of this co-creative partnership dance - through reading, travels, new encounters, workshops, and reflections - has been a key factor in committing to write this book. I have experienced this book's conception over the last seven years as an opportunity to explore the roots of my own longing for true partnership or true union with others - at the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level - and to share my insights and questions with readers, hopefully making a significant contribution to the evolution of the leadership field.

The inner and outer dance can be an inspiring, free, and voluntary activity. We can choose to experience joy and wholeness in searching for our evolving idea of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Evolutionary co-leadership is a dance that engages all levels of our being - body, heart, mind, and spirit - in the service of becoming. In my experience, this dance of life increases consciousness - inviting deep knowing, compassion, wisdom, and inspiration.

My purpose in writing this book is to examine and illustrate how embodied evolutionary co-leadership can catalyze the emergence of a creative and responsible society - where each member feels both authorship and accountability for evolution. I first emphasize individual awareness and the surrender of one's sense of separateness, which enable a person to partner with others and with life itself. I then investigate the conditions and practices for this to occur. The shadow side of individual and collective egos is also addressed, as it is an integral part of the evolutionary process.

A pessimistic climate seems to be prevalent in most of the world today - given the economic, social, and environmental conditions that are uncertain and have been deteriorating over the years. I deeply believe that evolutionary co-leadership offers us the possibility to address the underlying root causes of these circumstances while encouraging us to actualize a more positive future. As my French colleague Myriam Orazzo says, It is through somber days that one must keep an open mind and find again one's aptitude to move forward with others and fight the spirit of discouragement - which says that everything will be identical or worse tomorrow. However, we first need to acknowledge that the current multiple crises we face are largely the interconnected consequences of the prevailing but largely unquestioned development paradigm - based for decades on exponential material growth.

This book is intended mostly for agents of transformation who seek to give a wider context to their actions in these times of profound transition. Whatever their formal or informal role may be, they wish to contribute to the evolution of their family, organization, community, and society - by rediscovering their own wholeness and by working in partnership with others, nature, and life itself. My main motivation is to invite the reader into an exploration of the inherently transforming nature of evolutionary co-leadership - which engages all our senses, energies, and gifts.

Using the metaphor of a human being as a tree, I deeply believe that to explore how partners can be connected through their roots (their being) is at least as important as to discover how their branches and fruits[3] (their know-how) can interact and complement themselves in action. Practicing evolutionary co-leadership offers us the opportunity to contribute our unique talents, while experiencing the profound unity, diversity, and potential synergy of the collective.

I aspire in these pages to clarify what can be named, while calling forth the deep sense that is beyond words and that acknowledges the mystery of life. When needed, I will refer to various concepts and models that helped me personally to widen or transform my perspective. My goal is to arrive at an elegant simplicity - or simplexity - on the other side of complexity, and to point through words, diagrams, and suggested practices to that which is inherently subtle and difficult to express.

In Chapter 1, I propose initial definitions of the terms used in the title and subtitle of the book, and underline the importance of the joint emergence of co-leadership, co-creation, and co-responsibility at this time in the evolution of humanity - within the context of the entire living world. In chapter 2, I explore three dimensions of evolution - exterior, interior and integral - and examine the nature of the evolutionary impulse that lies deep within each of us. Chapter 3 underscores what is at stake in shifting from an individualistic and patriarchal leadership to a partnership with oneself, others, nature, and evolution itself.

In Chapter 4, I focus on the practice of the inner dance of partnering and in Chapter 5, on the practice of the external dance of co-leadership at ever wider and more complex levels - based on my personal experience. In Chapter 6, I examine how a transformation of the educational system - including leadership development - would help foster more co-creative and responsible students/ leaders and have multiplying effects on the rest of society. Chapter 7 illustrates some aspects of the emergence of a co-creative and co-responsible society, as well as a few initiatives that can be taken to accelerate the current evolution - before inviting the reader to ask oneself: How can I contribute to co-evolution by making the best use of my unique gifts and talents?

Although this book has been conceived as a whole, where each part serves as a foundation for the following ones, the reader who is particularly interested in the external dance of co-leadership and its practices can refer directly to Chapters 5, 6, and 7, after having read through Chapter 1 for an overview of the content and Chapter 3 for a better understanding of the shift involved.

To facilitate the reading of this book, I am taking the liberty of using alternatively he or his and she or her rather than he/she or his/her.

This book is published in an eBook format, as my intention is to make it accessible internationally in an environmentally friendly way. I also consider this version as a work in progress. The content will