Alpha Lo's
Co-Leadership Model
Alpha Lo, one of the
organizers of a
Gathering of Emerging Leaders of All Ages: Transformational
Activism to Birth a New Paradigm
shares a letter about what he has learned experientially about
co-leadership. You can see that he is describing experiential
group processes which many of us have named from cognitive
conceptual perspectives. What is so fantastic about this is the
young activists are "experiencing" leadership in a
transformative way, hence the name of the workshop,
Gathering of Emerging Leaders of All Ages: Transformational
Activism to Birth a New Paradigm.
September 10-15 at Omega Institute in upper New York state.
HIERARCHICAL LEADERSHIP and
EXPERIENTIAL CO-LEADERSHIP PARADIGMS
This
essay emerged out of a field that has been spun by ancient
indigenous tribes, co-leadership projects around the global, and
the resonant field my friends and I (Alpha Lo) have opened up
into as we work on our emergent projects including our upcoming
“gathering of emerging leaders” (spiritgathering.net)
where we look to embody experiential co-leadership in the spirit
of transformational activism
1.EXAMPLES
2.OBSERVATIONS
3.CONTAINERS
1.EXAMPLES
Hierarchical, plan-based,
and mind-led leadership model : A director directs the music,
telling each musician when they are to play and not.
Experiential Co-leadership
and emergent systems model : A group of musicians improvise
music together, melodies and harmonies streaming forth that no
one has planned before hand, and that there is no director
guiding them how to play together. There is a kind of ‘zone’
musicians can get into where they are really tapping in, and
things really click. It is a kind of higher collective
consciousness state where you tap into something bigger than
yourself. This model requires each musician to really tune into
each other, to really listen. The deeper the listening the more
creative and new original spaces the musicians can venture into
without fear of losing the others in the group.
Hierarchy and plan
leadership model : A festival, where the organizer organizers
the whole lineup and scheduling
Co-leadership and emergent
systems model : At Burning Man anyone can come and build a camp
with a theme there, and run events there according to their own
schedule. The power of the festival comes from the people. And
by tapping into this energy you have many more nets and events
than your normal festival, probably an order of magnitude more.
This is because you don’t just have say 20 organizers that you
might have for a normal festival, you now have something 5000
organizers.
There is still some
‘hierarchical’ leadership of Burning Man, but the
hierarchical leadership is more about facilitating and inspiring
others to lead.
Hierarchical and mind-led
leadership model : Activist organizers plan the time of a march
and how they are going to do it.
An example of experiential
co-leadership model: There was a bunch of people in the Great
Peace march protesting nuclear proliferation. There were people
who wanted to march at their own pace, and people who wanted to
march together. What happened is that everyone was given a
chance to talk for 2 minutes at a mike. As everyone talked they
somehow took into account of what people said before while
saying their own version. After everyone had talked there was
simply this inner knowing from everyone about what the right
decision was without their having to be a vote or anything.
This is an
interesting form of ‘non-voting’ democracy. So you do not need
to even have explicit vote to determine what is the best
decision. People simply know inside what is the best decision.
This is the experiential part of the experiential
co-leadership model. It wasn’t a mind-based decision.
Hierarchy and plan based
leadership model : A director tells how all the dancers
there movements and when they all come in.
Co-leadership and Emergent
systems model : The movements emerge out of the the dancers
listening to each others bodies and to their own. Contact improv
dance is one example of such an emergent system model. In
Contact Improv the rule is that you stay in contact with your
fellow dancer/s at all time. Out of that emerges a dance that no
one has choreographed. Dances that work ‘better’ are those where
the dancers are really listening to each others bodies,
utilizing a kind of psychic somatic intelligence to guide each
other.
Hierarchy Plan based
leadership model : The boss, the board are the ones who ponders
issues, problems, and what direction to take things next
Co-leadership emergent
systems model: In this facilitative process called Open Space
Technology which has been used by numerous big companies to
solve multimillion dollars issues, everyone is called into one
place. It can be a large group of like 100 people. Then whoever
is moved to can come to the middle and write some issue that
they are passionate. There could be say 8 people who write
something. They then go to a place in the room, and whoever is
drawn to that question goes over and starts discussing it. So
you have these 8 clusters forming. When a person wants to leave
a group they are free to, and join another group. This is a
self-organizing process as they is no-predetermined questions,
nor is it predetermined who will write something. What happens
is that it allows the freedom for a lot of very useful
discussions and ideas to evolve. In some sense this becomes a
board meeting where everyone is involved discussing what to do.
This process can often come up with solutions to problems that a
small group of bosses cannot, in part because now it is tapping
into the intelligence of the whole as opposed to a select few.
Hierarchy Plan based model :
The development of the Windows operating system by Microsoft.
Co-leadership model : Linux
is an open source developed program that is now rivaling
Windows. It taps into the power of programmers from all over the
world. Everyone is invited to add to the existing the program.
So you have a huge cadre of programmers essentially volunteering
their time to build a program. It works because a system
as developed to allow programmers who have never met to work
together.
Hierarchy plan based model :
A conference who where when everyone talks is all planned out.
Co-leadership model : People
coming together to share and guide each other. Each person who
comes plays a part in how things end up. There are varying
degrees of this. At a Well Being festival in LA, spaces are
created for people to lead workshops in, but people determine
for themselves when they get there when and what they lead.
Open Space Technology
discussed above is something that could be tweaked in format so
that it provides a template for how people self-organize into
events and workshops
There is a conference in
Wales, where when you come you, and where on the first day you
co-create with others what is going happen at the conference for
the rest of the week.
At Foo camp, an internet
developer gathering in Silicon Valley a white board is put with
time and spaces, and people who arrive at the gathering sign up
on the white board to speak.
There is a name for these
events where the content is driven by the participants is
called unconferences
2. OBSERVATIONS about these
models:
Hierarchy : Accent is on
power
Co-leadership : Accent is on listening
Co-leadership : It requires
more tuning in to each other. The musicians really have to
listen to each other. Things emerge out of a listening space.
Hierarchy : The accent is on
the will.
Co-leadership : The accent is on the heart. (Not to say that the
will is not also very important, but you could say the will
serves the heart)
Hierarchy : Oriented towards
achieving results
Co-leadership : Oriented towards the present moment, holding
space, entering resonant spaces, ‘expanding’ group space,
transmuting energies.
Hierarchy : Leader motivates
followers to achieve objective.
Co-leadership : Everyone inspires and catalyses everyone else to
do their nature, their passion
Hierarchy : Authority is
from the boss.
Co-leadership : Authority is from tapping into spirit which is
universally accessible.
Hierarchy : Accent is on how
well someone does a job.
Co-leadership : Accent is on how well people relate to each
other
Hierarchy : The intelligence
of the system as a whole is concentrated at the top.
Co-leadership : The intelligence is distributed throughout the
whole system.
Hierarchy : Leaders may use
posturing, fear, carrots and other things to influence and
organize events and action.
Co-leadership : Emotionally opening, being authentic opens us
the space for things to reorganize themselves.
3. THE CONTAINER.
PRODUCT and PROCESS
The container in the
hierarchy model is the plan, and to do what the boss says.
The container in the
co-leadership model can be the rules of the facilitative
processes like Non-violent communication, Heart Circles ,
Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space Technology, or World Café.
Each of these processes has certain rules, e.g in Non-violent
Communication the idea is that one uses I statements, and
expresses one emotions and needs. These rules guide the process.
The container is also in some sense how self-aware and
other-aware you are. The more self-aware and other-aware you are
the more the process flows.
The container is in some
sense the self-referential nature of the process.
Self-referential processes, feedback loops allow a system to
readjust itself. So when a group self-reflects on how the
process is working for them, when they self-reflect on their
emotional state, that act itself readjusts the group so that it
is more in alignment. A group doesn’t depend on a boss to
realign it, it does it itself. The intelligence that allows that
to happen is distributed throughout the whole system.
The container in the
co-leadership model is the degree we are in our bodies. This is
because our cells, our meridians, our organs etc all contain
intelligence about everything that is happening. The more we tap
into this, the more aware we become of what is happening, and
the ‘safer’ everything becomes. The more we are able to drop
into our bodies, the more we are able to create an energetic
container that can transmute all sorts of negative energies.
The container is the
co-leadership model is psychic guidance. By opening
up to how spirit wants to guide us, we are constantly guided
away from pitfalls that we do not yet even conceive of. Spirit
constantly is adjusting things so they work together in more
harmonious ways.
The container is our
awareness of our emotions, our anger, our guilt, our sadness,
our jealousies, and how that drives our processes and group
processes. As we increase our awareness of this and our ability
to deal with others emotions, the whole group has created a safe
container for traumas and conflicts that may occur.
The container in the
co-leadership model is also the resonant space that everyone
creates together. Things which look like conflicts in more
superficial spaces do not look like conflicts in deeper, more
resonant spaces.
The container in contact
improv dance can be guidelines about being careful of doing
certain things to different body parts, or tips about how to
listen to one’s partners body. The container is the resonant
space that is created in the dance place. And the container is
the degree that the participants are in their body. The more in
they are in their body the safer the dance becomes.
The hierarchy model is
focused on end results. The co-leadership model is focused on
the process. When we focus on the process we do not always know
what where will end up. What often happens is that emotions and
other blockages are transmuted in the process, there is a
release, a widening of perspective, it’s almost as if the whole
group wakes up to a higher level of consciousness.
The co-leadership model does
end up with results – Burning man is an mind-blowing festival,
Improv troupes come up with amazing performances, the Great
Peace March ended up being very successful, its just that you
cannot plan, you cannot know at the start how things will end
up.
The hierarchy model is based
on trying to get results in a fixed ‘space’. The co-leadership
emergent systems model is about increasing the ‘space’, we
expand the heart space, the emotional space, the psychic space.
We expand it through somatic exercises, through heart exercises,
through facilitation techniques.
MY HISTORY
These ideas about
co-leadership have been spinning in parallel in many places and
amongst many groups. The following is a little of my own
personal story of involvement with these existential
co-leadership paradigms –
In physics graduate
school I was very intrigued with complex systems, how they seem
to allow behavior to emerge out of the interactions of many
particles. A field of many particles could under some
circumstances seem to exhibit coordinated behavior on large
scales. These ideas were discussed in different physics
paradigms like self-organized criticality, resonance,
scale-invariance, phase transitions, chaos theory, complex
systems theory, cellular automata, and artificial life.
In 2005 I stumbled across
and became part of a whole tribe of amazing young people doing
transformation work through body exercises, chanting, dance,
emotional healing, drumming, ….. There was something
extraordinary about the way we all related, and seemed to be
able to transform. We were falling into these amazing group
fields that just left us going “Wow”. You could tangibly feel
the magic in the room.
At the end of 2005 I
stumbled across a place called CircleCenter where I ended up
living which was this combined gathering/workshop space, healing
rooms, networking hub, shop, community house. It was founded by
Matthew Edwards. When he first opened it he had an empty space
and waited for people to come with their passions, their ideas
and their visions. He allowed people to self-organize in it. The
idea was to create containers that allowed for vacuums and space
so that things could then emerge out of it. And there was a lot
of heart energy here, people cared. And somehow this love was
what was holding things together. It was the container and the
organizing principle.
In December I was up in Mt
Shasta and ended up at this beautiful 3 story wood house in
Shasta. I was under the assumption that one of my friend’s was
still renting the place, and so I could stay there while he was
out of town. However 4 new people had come. I knew one of them
and was welcome to stay. They were turning into the house into
community house. I was told to treat the house as if it was my
house. Others who came were told the same thing. Now when
someone says something like this it is a more of a politeness
thing. But here it was something more. You could stay there at
night. You could eat anything out of the fridge. And you began
to sense things and help clean, and get food. You could then
invite others to come to the place and stay there. The place was
warm and inviting. It was an amazing how quickly you began to
feel as you belonged. The whole thing was self-organizational.
It was like being part of this powerful vortex. There was no
plan for who would pay the rent, no plan for who buys the food,
who does chores. But the rent would be paid like magic each
month, often in really unexpected ways, like one guys student
loan came in, and he decided he would pay for the whole houses
rent that month. The place was communal, everyone chipped in.
We organized a community
activation and water ritual day up in Shasta. The event was put
together in 2 weeks and had probably 150 people show up. It
happened in a very organic way. So many people have been part of
the vortex of the DreamLodge that there was quite a community
built up. So by simply asking ourselves and friends we very
quickly built a whole lineup of events and people to take roles
to make the day workout. The marketing was very organic because
with so many people part of the DreamLodge, simply by telling
our friends, and using some email lists we got a lot of
the community there. Everyone chipped in different ways to make
the day work without necessarily a lot of these tasks being
assigned by everyone. Somehow things worked because there was a
distributed intelligence with everyone being able to talk to
others who could reorient themselves to solve problems as they
arose.
While at Circlecenter we
would have groups and circles gather for a variety of purposes.
During some of the groups that happened there I noticed that my
friend Liza Behrendt would do some interesting things in the
group that I didn’t quite understand. She had some way of
holographically tuning into the group and then being able to say
things at certain times in the group that would be able to
readjust the group so that it worked better. She could help lead
people gently to look at the hidden emotions, underlying agendas
in the field. I asked her if she could perhaps talk to us about
it in a group setting. She gave the impression that it wasn’t
the easiest thing to explain what happened. She discussed this
with her friend Carmen who studied with her Organizational
Transformation at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
They looked at facilitation processes and how group fields
changed and stuff like that. Matthew, Liza, Carmen, and another
friend Vidya came together one night to have a little group
where we went through some of the group processes. I had talked
to different members of the group about what the intention that
night was it was told them different things. And so when Liza
got there she was somewhat frustrated and gave voice to that and
how if she wanted to go home. What was interesting was that we
had a space that actually allowed the expression of that in a
safe way. And people were willing to emotionally support and
hold space for her while that happened. As we self-reflected on
the process the group energy seemed to drop into this deeper
space, and everyone became softer. I in turn who sometimes
find some things hard to express , shared how I was frustrated
and a little angry that someone was frustrated. What happened
was there was an element of authenticity that created this
amazing space. During the meeting it was expressed it was nice
to have more somatic contact, and we went into movement and
touch space which seemed to add a holographic relaxation and
ahhness to the group. At the end of the meeting I was in a kind
of bliss because I felt like I had seen some kind of process
that was amazing – it opened up everything to something bigger.
There were intentions of mine of using the group to solve some
of issues with an event we were organizing, and somehow
organically that issue was solved as well as all these other
issues. It was like some energetic was reorganizing many things
on many levels to work together. And it felt like we had entered
into a zone. Somehow the authenticity of emotional sharing, the
self-reflection on the processes that was happening in the group
and the self-organizing aspects of the flow allowed something to
‘open up’. And somehow this opening up had in turn allowed many
things to reorganize on a level where we didn’t have to
explicitly discuss them as in a normal head-based meeting. It
was in fact not quite easy to put a finger on what had happened.
But something had. And it was so much more enjoyable than your
normal meeting which is so cognitively focused. This one was
healing, integrative, somatic, loving, alchemical and
transformative. Things can be pushed forward in meetings by
posturing, or strategizing or using fear tactics. In this case
things are accomplished by opening up, being authentic, and
trusting in the process.
I am currently working with
James O’Dea the President of The Institute of Noetic Sciences and
Matthew Edwards on organizing this
Gathering of Emerging Leaders of All Ages: Transformational
Activism to Birth a New Paradigm
this upcoming Sept 10-15 at the Omega Institute in Rheinbeck ,NY
and as it happens I am discovering the importance of first
creating a resonant space so that when we discuss things we do
not go into overly head space. The idea is to spin a deep vortex
and then allow other people to come into it. And the vortex, the
resonant space reorganizes people so that they can work better.
It does the work of what traditional cognitive processes would
do. To create this resonant space we will do work on the
somatic, the emotional, the psychic and spiritual levels. The
idea is that individuals and groups can come to the gathering.
If you come as a group that has a project it wants to carry out
together then the will be facilitated process for bringing
groups together. You will facilitated to undergo this
multidimensional work together you bond at deep levels. This
deep level is itself an organizing principle for the project. It
shifts things around that you are not even cognitively aware of.
As we work on putting
together this gathering we are sensing different ways to allow
us to bring others into the organizing process so that they too
become part of the movement and a leader themselves. So the
question is how to empower those who are coming in to do what
they would like to do. The idea is that those coming in will
also have a place at the gathering to share their gift in some
way, which could possibly involve leading a workshop, or
organizing some ritual, circle, demonstration there, possibly in
coordination with some others. Some people have felt
uncomfortable with this different paradigm, wanting a boss,
wanting more structure. And some of my friends who I discuss
with , are like how does this system work. So partly as a result
of these discussions this essay emerged. Its written by me on
some level, but on some level it is a condensing out of the
group field that we are creating as we create this gathering. In
the spirit of co-leadership I am interested in exploring how
this document can become more open-sourced, more wiki-fied (wikipedia
is a collaborative encyclopedia on the internet), how others can
contribute to the essay, perhaps with personal comments that can
be added to the document. As we organize this Gathering of
emerging leaders the rules themselves for how it is to be
organized are themselves evolving and changing as new people
come into the mix. This new person could well be you who are
reading this.
References and links:
“A gathering of
emerging leaders” Transformational activism.
Also
http://www.eomega.org/omega/workshops/68dc36ce52071f328d73ade3556c4a09/
“The cathedral and the
bazaar” by Eric Raymond. The seminal essay about open
source, that explains the idea of how to use the many
programmers on the planet to work together to build software.
This essay helped convince Netscape to open source its browser,
which has since evolved to be Mozilla Firefox.
“Out of control” by Kevin
Kelly. A book about collective intelligence
“The tipping point” Michael
Gladwell
“The wisdom of crowds” by
James Surowiecki
The Co-intelligence
Institute
A collective intelligence
issue of “What is enlightenment magazine”
“How to host an unconference” Business Week article
Global
Consciousness Project
Center for Creative
Emergence
Circlecenter
“The cluetrain manifesto”
An essay how conversations drives marketing
Commons based marketing
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