evolutionary leadership by Alain Gauthier

1. Evolutionary Co-Leadership
LEARNSHOP
Alain Gauthier

2.
Evolutionary Co-leadership:
The next stage in leadership development?
EBBF Learnshop
May 30, 2015
©Alain Gauthier
Core Leadership Development
www.coreleadership.com

3. Addressing three questions in this learnshop
● Why are new forms of leadership urgently needed?
● What characterizes evolutionary co-leadership?
● What qualities does it require?
● Which integral practices enable its embodiment?
● How to develop it and scale it up?
3

4. 4
From heroic leadership to learning leadership…
Charismatic Visionary
• Articulates a vision
• Passionate
• Unconventional
• Taking a personal risk
• Strong personality
• Charismatic
• Highly motivated to lead
Focused on his role as leader
Learning leader/Architect
• Good listener
• Perseverant
• Thoughtful, systemic thinker
• Experimenting
• Humble
• Paradoxical
• Highly motivated to learn
Focused on building a learning team/
organization
Inspired by Jerry Porras and Jim Collins’ research – Built to Last and Good to Great

5. What new forms of leadership
have you experienced?
● Learning
● Collaborative
● Shared, distributed, rotating
● Complementary, co-creative
● Collective, community
● Collegial, cooperative
● Partnership, co-leadership
5

6. Evolutionary Co-leadership: A new synthesis
or a next stage in leadership development?
6
Individual
heroic
leadership
(thesis)
Collective/
cooperative
leadership
(antithesis)
Evolutionary
co-leadership
(synthesis)
© Alain Gauthier

7.
Polarity Map of
individual/collective leadership (1)
Inspired by Barry Johnson’s Polarity Management - Identifying and
Managing Unsolvable Problems, 1997 and by Allison Conte
Upside
(value)
Downside
(fear)
Individual leadership Collective leadership
Clear way forward
Fast decision making
Clear roles, process,
accountability
Individual initiative
Well-informed decisions
made through widespread
inputs and perspectives
High ownership
Wider leadership base
7

8.
Polarity Map of
individual/collective leadership (2)
Inspired by Barry Johnson’s Polarity Management - Identifying and
Managing Unsolvable Problems, 1997 and by Allison Conte
Upside
(value)
Downside
(fear)
Individual leadership Collective leadership
Clear way forward
Fast decision making
Clear roles, process,
accountability
Individual initiative
Ill-informed decisions made
through limited inputs and
perspectives
Low ownership
Individual attachment to
decision
Well-informed decisions
made through widespread
inputs and perspectives
High ownership
Wider leadership base
Confusion about goals
Slow decision making
Ambiguous roles, process
and accountabilities
Wrong people making
inappropriate decisions
8

9. High-performance team:
A step toward co-leadership
9
Individual
heroic
leadership
(thesis)
Collective/
cooperative
leadership
(antithesis)
Evolutionary
co-leadership
(synthesis)
High-performance/
exceptional team
© Alain Gauthier

10. The Team Performance Curve
Working group
(or single-
leader unit) Potential
team
Pseudo-team
Real (or performing)
team
High-performance
(or extraordinary) team
Performance
Impact
Time required
Source: J. Katzenbach & D. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams, Collins Business Essentials, 2003

11. Evolutionary Co-leadership:
Above and beyond a high-performance team (1)
11
● A High-Performance Team is a small number of people
with complementary skills who are equally committed to
common goals and a working approach – for which they
hold themselves mutually accountable. Its members are
also deeply committed to one another's personal growth
and success. The team outperforms all reasonable
expectations given its membership.
Adapted from J. Katzenbach & D. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams, 2003

12. Evolutionary Co-leadership:
Above and beyond a high-performance team (2)
12
● Evolutionary Co-leadership is practiced among leaders who
regard each other and behave as co-creative and co-responsible
partners in service of the the common good. They assume
flexible, rotating, or joint leadership – according to what is
perceived and required. They feel no personal need to stand out
or to impose their views. Instead, they cultivate the ability to
know or sense what needs to be said or done by contributing
their unique gifts and tapping into collective wisdom.
Inspired by Collective Leadership Institute
● A High-Performance Team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are
equally committed to common goals and a working approach – for which they hold
themselves mutually accountable. Its members are also deeply committed to one
another's personal growth and success. The team outperforms all reasonable
expectations given its membership.

13. Team discipline is required when…
● The performance challenge cannot be met only
through the sum of individual contributions
● Work products (or outcomes) are in large part
collective and require joint efforts in real time
● Members need to work jointly to integrate
complementary skills and talents
● Leadership roles need to shift among team members,
and an adaptable approach works best
● Mutual accountability is needed in addition to
individual accountability
Source: J. Katzenbach & D. Smith “The Wisdom of Teams”, Collins Business Essentials, 2003

14. Different levels of partnering
● Within self
● With others (team, organization, across
organizations and/or sectors)
● With nature
● With the larger field
● With evolution, with Life (or the Divine)
14

15. What qualities need to be developed to
move toward evolutionary co-leadership?
15

16. Qualities of evolutionary co-leadership
16
I
Relation to self
You and I
Relation to others
All of life
Relation to the whole
Head
Awareness
Clarity
Discernment
Attention
Exploration
Appreciation of
diverse perspectives
Humility
Global interconn-
ectedness
Global vision
Heart
Care/love
Openness
Non-judgmental
In touch with one’s
feelings
Intuition
Empathic listening
Warm and ethical
relationship
Courage
Global compassion
Service
Hara/
body
Presence
Embodied intention
Self-sufficiency
Solidity
Presence to other
Connection at subtle
energy level
Entrainment
Right action informed
by global awareness
and larger energy
field
© Alain Gauthier

17.
Co-leadership consciously integrates and balances:
• reflection and action
• intuition and logic
• body, heart and intellect
• presence and vision
• emotional intelligence and complex thought
• individual creativity and collective intelligence
• experimentation and dissemination
• economic, ecological, social and human goals
17

18. 18
Non-violent communication
Shift from a MAJOR/minor mental model (about
characteristics or viewpoints) …
M
… to an Equivalence mental model
(we are different but have equal intrinsic value and are worthy of each
other’s respect)
E E
m
Adapted from Albert Preira

19. EBBF Values
and Evolutionary co-leadership
● Human nobility
● Service
● Gender equality
● Justice
● Unity
● Moderation
● Sustainability
19

20. EBBF Operational Principles
and Evolutionary co-leadership
● Consultation
● Collaboration
● Accompaniment
● Ever-advancing learning
● New work ethic
● Ethics in business
● A new paradigm of economics
● A learning community
● Responsibility
20

21. 21
Inner and external dances
of evolutionary co-leadership
Inner dance
of partnering
External
dance of
partnering
Personal
practices
Interpersonal &
systemic practices
R
Evolutionary
call
Metasystemic
practices
R
R : reinforcing loops
R

22. 22
Co-leadership development practices
span the four quadrants
Subjective/Invisible Objective/Observable
Individual (I)
Collective (we)
(it)Personal Practices
(its)
Interpersonal
practices
Systemic practices

23. 23
Examples of evolutionary co-leadership practices
Subjective/Invisible Objective/Observable
(I)
(We)
(it)
(its)
Feeling interconnected
Inner dialogue
Trusting life/evolution
Valuing each stages of
development
Staying humble, open
© Alain Gauthier, based on Ken Wilber’s four quadrants

24. 24
Examples of evolutionary co-leadership practices
Subjective/Invisible Objective/Observable
(I)
(We)
(it)
(its)
Feeling interconnected
Inner dialogue
Trusting life/evolution
Valuing each stages of
development
Staying humble, open
Tuning one’s instrument
Sensing, looking, and
listening; deep breathing
Expressing tough love
Willingness to improvise
and experiment
© Alain Gauthier, based on Ken Wilber’s four quadrants

25. 25
Examples of evolutionary co-leadership practices
Subjective/Invisible Objective/Observable
(I)
(We)
(it)
(its)
Feeling interconnected
Inner dialogue
Trusting life/evolution
Valuing each stages of
development
Staying humble, open
Tuning one’s instrument
Sensing, looking, and
listening; deep breathing
Expressing tough love
Willingness to improvise
and experiment
Co-hosting/sacred space
Practicing impersonality
(allowing collective flow)
Co-creating through
generative dialogue
Peer co-development
© Alain Gauthier, based on Ken Wilber’s four quadrants

26. 26
Examples of evolutionary co-leadership practices
Subjective/Invisible Objective/Observable
(I)
(We)
(it)
(its)
Feeling interconnected
Inner dialogue
Trusting life/evolution
Valuing each stages of
development
Staying humble, open
Tuning one’s instrument
Sensing, looking, and
listening; deep breathing
Expressing tough love
Willingness to improvise
and experiment
Co-hosting/sacred space
Practicing impersonality
(allowing collective flow)
Co-creating through
generative dialogue
Peer co-development
High-performance team
Collective U process
System in the room
World café/Open space
Behavioral agreements
Holacracy/sociocracy
© Alain Gauthier, based on Ken Wilber’s four quadrants

27. 27
Personal practices
Engage in individual action inquiry (first-person research)
• Journaling about one’s personal observations,
reflections and learning; auto-biographical writing
• Noticing one’s contradictory desires, and of the
distinction between desires and intentions
• Surfacing and challenging one’s assumptions (using
the ladder of inference, the four-column exercise),
including about leadership

28. 28
Personal practices (2)
Engage in individual action inquiry (1st-person research)
• Deepening one’s intuition and inner knowing
through consciousness practices (e.g. meditation,
nature, martial arts, improvisational theater)
• Seeking coaching/mentoring and role-playing

29. 29
Interpersonal Practices
Engage in collaborative action inquiry (2nd person)
• Practice high-quality advocacy and inquiry, active listening,
reflective and generative dialogue, including in peer groups
• Address conflicts as opportunities to learn
• Work creatively with dilemmas and paradoxes (e.g. using a
polarity map)
• Apply systems thinking archetypes to complex issues in
groups of peers
• Use every meeting or interaction as learning opportunity;
agree upon behavioral norms and evaluate how well they are
respected

30. Systemic practices
● Build a shared vision from the viewpoints of
stakeholders as a lead-in to transformation, using
creative tension
● Form a micro-system with stakeholders’
representatives, practice active listening and co-
designing of prototypes, by calling on collective
wisdom
● Engage peers and other actors of the eco-system in
learning journeys in other cultural contexts
● Connect with other leaders across organizations and
sectors who sense the evolutionary call and are
experimenting with new liberating structures
30

31. 4. How to scale up
evolutionary co-leadership?
31

32. Dissemination of evolutionary co-leadership
32
% of
population
Attitude toward
co-leadership
Resisters
Fence sitters Supporters
Innovators in
co-leadership
Adapted from Rupert Everett’s innovation Curve

33. What groups/organizations/communities
do you know
that are already engaged
in co-leadership practices?
33

34. Possible next steps
● Individual and collective inquiry, experimentation
within own organization/community, feedback, and
sharing
● Identifying, connecting with, learning from and
supporting other evolutionary co-leadership
experiments
● Peer development through communities of practice
34© Alain Gauthier

35. Principles of evolutionary co-leadership
● Remain deeply grounded in the purpose of evolution – not
getting lost in details and difficulties
● Trust the process of evolution – letting go of certainties and
being open, curious, receptive, humble, experimenting, and
courageous
● Embrace complexity – without making it more complex or
more simple than it is, but looking for “simplexity”
● Be moved by the evolutionary call toward perfection in this
imperfect but changing world – without becoming a
perfectionist nor discouraged by the current imperfection
35Adapted from Craig Hamilton

36. Principles of evolutionary co-leadership
(cont’d)
● Explore the way of the future in collaboration with others –
inviting them to become co-leaders who express their own
gifts in synergy
● Be intuitive and et receptive to the surrounding field, by
using all ways of knowing – somatic, emotional, cognitive,
immediate – with discernment
● Listen to the call of the future, while taking together a first
step with confidence
● Commit to play wide, to change the game, staying on the
razor’s edge, crossing a threshold – without listening to self-
limiting beliefs.
36Adapted from Craig Hamilton

37. To learn more and go further
● Read:
Actualizing Evolutionary Co-leadership – Evolving a Creative and Responsible Society by
Alain Gauthier
Evolutionary coaching by Richard Barrett
Evolutionary leadership by Peter Merry
Evolutionaries by Carter Phipps
● Consult: www.coreleadership.com
● Contact: alaingauthier@coredevelopment.com
37

38. 38Available as an eBook at amazon.com