Margaret Wheatley is a writer, speaker and leadership expert. She points to an intriguing paradox in the first Gulf War. US Army protocol directed army tanks to travel in groups of three with the third tank being the Command and Control vehicle. The irony was that while they had developed new sophisticated tanks that could travel at speeds of 50 miles an hour, they hadn’t updated the Command and Control vehicle. So it was still putting along at 20 miles an hour. Several times the newer tanks sped off across the desert leaving the Command and Control vehicle in the dust. Leading from behind is one thing, but leading from under a cloud of dust is less than effective.

This is what Wheatley has to say about the Gulf War irony:

“For me, this is a familiar image—people in the organization ready and willing to do good work, wanting to contribute their ideas, ready to take responsibility, and leaders holding them back, insisting that they wait for decisions or instructions.  The result is dispirited employees and leaders wondering why no one takes responsibility or gets engaged anymore.  In these troubled, uncertain times, we don't need more command and control; we need better means to engage everyone's intelligence in solving challenges and crises as they arise.”

This morning I ask the questions: “Who are our models for effective integral leadership? Who are the leaders that have effectively engaged and empowered a movement of impassioned supporters?” I will point to Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King as integral leaders. I will suggest to you that all of them were extremely effective and powerful leaders for their day, but suggest also that we beware of applying their exact leadership styles directly into our contexts.

Perhaps the best way to define Integral Leadership would be that it takes a comprehensive approach to people and organizations. It approaches situations from as many perspectives as possible, both individual and collective, both interior and exterior. It both fosters health where people are, and also invites people to develop to new and more inclusive mindsets of care and consciousness. It is interested in meaning and values as well as organizational structure and profit.

I will explore current models of integral business leadership where profit is not the only bottom line. Ultimately I will implore you to be integral leaders who live contextually and passionately and I call our community to be a place where everybody’s intelligence is engaged to solve the range of crises that arise.

Models of Integral Leadership

Jesus:

Let us consider Jesus as an integral leader. He was certainly a remarkable leader. For his day he was a revolutionary leader. Take for example the story of his interaction of the woman caught in adultery. It seems that this woman had been literally caught in the act by the religious bureaucracy, the first century equivalent of the Classis. They all believed, Jesus included, that she had behaved immorally. The scribes placed her in the ultimate position of humiliation, front and centre in the temple court where Jesus was teaching. They demanded that she be stoned according to the requirements of Torah. Of course it appears that their question was just as much an attempt to trick Jesus into betraying his tradition as it was an attempt to have the woman pay for her crime.

The response of Jesus was both fascinating and brilliant. Before he responded at all, he bought himself some time to reflect on how his answer would impact all those involved. He knelt down, maybe just pretending to write in the dirt. We can only imagine that he was reflecting on what he would say or how he would resolve this situation. Maybe he also spent some moments going deep inside his own psyche to determine his own intention in this situation.

Eventually he stood up and directed his response to the religious leaders first and made them aware of their hypocrisy. They each departed one by one, and he was left alone with the woman. His response to her was effectively that she might know in her heart what damage had been done, not because it was wrong in the eyes of her arresters, nor even in his eyes, but because she knew herself what was destructive and constructive.

How was this integral leadership? First, he seemed to understand the broad range of factors at play, the interplay of personal, social and religious factors. Second, Jesus had both transcended and included his tradition. He had not betrayed the letter of the law, but had transcended it by pointing to the spirit of the law that is written on the hearts of those who know and identify with the tradition. His response was quite brilliant.

At other times, Jesus used humor to shift the power dynamic of his day. He used parables to invite people to draw their own conclusions. He was active and forceful at times, and at other times he was receptive and practiced non-action. He offered a model of adaptive leadership. Perhaps what marked Jesus leadership as most strikingly integral was his ability to see beyond self and other as he put himself in the shoes of the other and felt what they were feeling, therefore knowing what they needed. This is one way to explain his death on a cross. While some would understand it as an act of penal substitution for the sins of humanity, others would see it as modeling self-sacrificial leadership. Others still might see it as an act that transcended self and other as separate entities. All interpretations are partially true. They are each using different language to describe a similar truth.

Now bring your mind now closer to home. Ten years ago this community was caught red handed in what the Classis considered to be theological adultery. In this case it was the local media that provided the humiliating forum for the trial. The way many of you responded was a model of effective integral leadership. You transcended the paradigm of judgment that was part of the Reformed tradition and followed your collective heart. You became independent, in spirit more than anything else. Your structure, your rituals, your form retained the valued qualities of the Reformed heritage. In effect you both included and transcended your Reformed tradition. Your higher purpose, to invite all people to join you in this common humanity, was your motivation. You had continued a journey of broadening out your sphere of concern and consciousness to include all people no matter what their religious background, no matter what their sexuality, no matter what. It was your integral leadership in the face of the Classis challenge that inspired us to move here and join you in the next steps of your journey.

Mahatma Gandhi:

So many of the great leaders in history have displayed this type of inclusive leadership. Consider the astonishing leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. As well as steering India to independence, Gandhi brought together people of Muslim and Hindu faiths at a time when they were intent on tearing each other apart. There is a scene in the 1982 movie, “Gandhi”, that illustrates his contextualized and integral leadership. In this scene Gandhi is in the middle of a hunger strike. His colleagues, desperate to end Gandhi’s fatal protest, had brought some citizens to convince Gandhi that they had give up on their war. The scene begins with them laying down their weapons before Gandhi. One of these traumatized Hindu citizens cries out that he is going to hell because he had killed a baby in response to the Muslims killing his own child. Gandhi says to him, “I know a way out of hell. Take a child the same age as your own who has lost his parents and make this child your own. Only make sure it is a Muslim child and make sure you raise him as a Muslim.”

What a wonderful example of integral leadership in action. He shifted the dynamics, and caused the person to go deep within their own humanity to find a way out of hell. Like Jesus he had the ability to enter into the pain of the other person and to transcend differences such as religious orientation for a higher purpose.

Martin Luther King:

Martin Luther King operated out of a similar mode. His last sermon, given on the eve of his assassination, was entitled “I've seen the promised land”. In this sermon he spoke about dangerous unselfishness.

“Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.”

King achieved something quite astonishing with his public presence. He had located the racial struggle as the concern of all Americans. It was the future of the nation that was at stake. How could anyone not find inspiration in that? King successfully brought enough Americans to a realization of the pain of racial injustice that change was inevitable. He succeeded in locating the pain of African Americas as the pain of all Americans. In this sense he had transcended the distinction between self and other.

Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus and so many others have been models of courageous, effective, impassioned, integral leadership.

Current Trends in Integral Leadership

The question now is whether their models can be applied directly into our contexts.

Each of the examples I have given were models of strict non-violence. Each claimed that violence is a descending spiral promoting the very thing they seek to destroy. Each claimed that hate cannot drive out hate and that only love can achieve victory over hate.

The problem is that only in some situations, in countries with Western enlightenment values such as the US and Britain, has non-violent opposition been particularly effective. In other situations, such as Nazi Germany, violence seems to have been necessary to achieve a greater good. In these situations having love and non-violence in our hearts, but enacting necessary violence in the real world is the balance that may be the only antidote to a violent regime. There will no doubt be different opinions about that.

The point is that just because Gandhi and King enacted successful non-violent protest movements in their contexts, doesn’t mean that non-violence will be successful in every situation. Integral leadership will require a range of modes in response to a range of situations. In every situation it will have love in its heart and in every situation it will seek to transcend self and other.

Recent reading as well as hearing business leaders at the conference last week has offered me a new challenge. It seems that there are a number of current business models and leaders who are pursuing leadership with heart. They are inviting their companies and colleagues to explore a triple bottom line: people, planet and profit. They are beginning to see the interconnectedness of organizations, the people who make up organizations, the values that are shared, the practices that grow out of these values, and the environment that holds the whole endeavor in balance.

Peter Senge, Margaret Wheatley, Ken Wilber, systems thinking, Barry Johnson’s Polarity Management (based here in Grand Rapids), the Integral model and so many other current initiatives are inviting businesses to explore a spiritual center. Peter Senge is proposing that we see business not primarily as a machine for producing money, primarily, but as a human community. To use the Integral language, they are encouraging a four- quadrant model that links 1) spirit or consciousness, 2)core values, 3)best practices and 4)strong infrastructure as the ingredients of a healthy leader and organization.

The most recent edition of the magazine, “What Is Enlightenment?”, is devoted to this very concern. It documents the emergence within the United Nations of a values-based group called “The Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns”. This group is researching areas such as consciousness, values, ethics and prayer/ meditation to build all international relations around a shared values system. Get hold of the magazine and read story after story of companies attempting a shift in perspective.

Howard Bloom and others are speaking about Messianic Capitalism as a means of redistributing wealth. They distinguish between creative capitalism and criminal capitalism. They are calling board rooms and CEOs to compassionate leadership, to an aware leadership, to deep empathy. Whatever your opinions about the merits of capitalism, this is good news. Some capitalist leaders are looking to instill values and spirit into the systems of the West. Some companies are looking for the inherent unity of all things.

Enron and other ethical tragedies remind us that business leadership can go wrong when there is a lack of emotional or moral intelligence or when one leader operates in isolation from the good of the whole. Companies that pursue only profit as a bottom line are caught red handed in a form of cultural adultery. What will lead to a shift in perspective? An awareness of the interrelatedness of all people and all things would be a great place to start.

Hopeful Signs- Integral Lives

The positive stories are an inspiration; the negative stories are a challenge. There is hope all around us.

So let me bring this right back home and conclude. Some of you are involved in businesses, large and small. Be integral leaders of spirit and consider yourselves part of the healing of our planet. See your leadership not just as what you do, nor even how you do it. Take some time to go deep inside your own psyche to grow in your understanding of your own intention. Consider your group or company as a human community. Nurture core values. Build spirit in the team.

The same applies with whatever you do as a profession. Some of you are teachers and shaping the broad minds of the next generation. Consider yourselves integral leaders. Reflect not just on what you do, nor the classroom processes but examine your own intention. Some of you are leading families and modeling how to live and lead in a connected way. Whatever you do, consider yourselves integral leaders.

Here in our independent community, if Meg Wheatley is right, we are modeling the very hopeful paradigm of the future. Forget a revolution in the Reformed Church, or in the Anglican Church. Let them get on with what they have to do. Our challenge is to get on with the task of being integral leaders in a spirited, independent community. We hold before us the inspiration of our integral founder, Jesus. We hold before us the vision of a healed world and know that we can make a difference. We will make a difference as we each bring our competencies, and intelligences, and take responsibility for the future. We make a difference when we act with love always in our heart, but also with a willingness to create and change according to the times. We can face any challenge with that connected approach.

Let me leave you with the story of Tex Gunning, the President of Unilever Bestfoods Asia. Unilever is placing the nutritional needs of children in Asia right at the heart of it’s business mission. What an example for other companies who may do some good in the world, but only as a secondary concern! Unilever is making compassionate activism part of its core business. Where did Tex Gunning’s motivation come from? He explains it like this, “The core insight about great leadership and companies comes down to service. We as individuals should entirely integrate our personal lives and our search for meaning with our business lives.”

So it will be for us, as we integrate our personal lives with our professional lives, our search for meaning and our religious convictions.

A vision of unity. A vision of a changed world. A vision that begins right here, in our hearts, in our personal lives as we live out the oneness of all things, all people, all religions, all systems, all reality. An integral vision and we are the integral leaders.