Today, while we strive to make our world more certain and work faster with digitalization and one-size-fits-all approaches, it’s becoming more volatile and unpredictablethan ever. As we pursue rapid technological shifts, drive economic turbulence, feed geopolitical tensions, and enable public health crises and climate change, the global state of uncertainty seems to be never-ending.
With all of these looming over our heads, ‘not knowing’ how to solve the ever-increasing complexity of issues can seem overwhelming. For business leaders especially, a sense of uncertainty and chaos can seem threatening: “Am I relevant at all? And if so, what for?”However, amidst this ‘not knowing’ lies opportunities for strategic advantage and growth for those with the right level of attention, perception, and capabilities.
Here at Integrative Presence, we offer a holistic framework that empowers business leaders and coaches to not only survive – but to thrive. Through a more holistic awareness, connectedness to underlying contexts and a responsive relatedness, we help leaders and coaches transform this ‘not knowing’ into fuel for fresh thinking, adaptability, and innovation with positive social impact.
The Certainty of Uncertainty: Why Not Knowing is the Normal
It’s no secret that with our contemporary business landscape, we’ve created an atmosphere of volatility and a brittle sense of connectedness with our world. The latter is most easily visible in stadiums in how football clubs and fans mutually disengage and disintegrate in the UK, leaving a detrimental impact on the whole culture of football. Least to speak of the incisive impact on sports performance levels.
The combination of economic, technological, social, political, and environmental forces that we’ve been driving has caused a domino effect of constant uncertainty around ‘relevance, sense of belonging, and purpose’ that seems to have no reprieve. Peter Vaill called this a “permanent white water”, which refers to a turbulent world filled with events and problems that were not meant to arise.
Furthermore, recent major unforeseen and disruptive occurrences, which are called black swan events, have highlighted the fragility of global systems. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic caused severe global repercussions, not just in the healthcare industry, but socially and financially, with some still facing the aftereffects of these today.
These events show us the uncertainty of the future and expose the limitations of conventional leadership models to date, models that haven’t been equipped to handle this recurring white water. The accelerating pace of change across industries has increased the complexity of the business world. These conditions demand a different level of adaptability from leaders: some different intelligence, wisdom, and making sense of what’s going on.
Pitfalls of Conventional Leadership in Times of Not Knowing
In the face of black swan events and being exposed to consistent ‘not knowing’, we’ve seen that conventional leadership models often fall short.
Linear thinking fails: The old command-and-controlmentality, based on linear thinking and traditional hierarchical structures, often struggles to respond aptly and context-based to complex challenges. In a situation where disruptions and uncertainty can be due to many different reasons, the rigid structures of conventional leadership restrict the adaptability intelligence needed.
Digitalization overload: More digitalization may not always be a good thing. The same holds true for information overload in globalized communication. An abundance of digital processes and an influx of data without judgment and discernment may be more of a downfall. In uncertain times, making sense of what digital measures can serve and what not becomes crucial. Without this ability to discern useful digitalization and information, leaders and coaches – even those that engage with mindfulness – often succumb to digitalization and information overload. They are likely to be unable to make informed decisions.
Reactive mindset: In times of stress and uncertainty, leaders and coaches may naturally revert to crisis modeand simply act reactively to incoming situations. The knee-jerk reactions typical of a reactive approach limit the aptitude to foresee opportunities amid ‘not knowing’, limiting the various possibilities within disruption.
Integrative Presence: A Framework to Work with Uncertainty Meaningfully
This unprecedented complexity of our man-made challenges demands a departure from the typically reactive way of attending to and perceiving the world. In response to these typical shortcomings, Integrative Presence emerges as a transformative framework that empowers leaders and coaches to work with uncertainty in a meaningful way.
Integrative Presence is built upon four core principles: non-reactivity, compassion, systems-collaborative thinking, and inner clarity. With our leadership and coaching program, the participants at Integrative Presence aim to cultivate holistic levels of attention and higher sensory perception of reality in the face of ‘not knowing’ what’s happening or what to expect to face. The idea is to foster systems-collaborative leadership based on compassionate thinking to build highly engaged teams and a sense of connectedness toward performance that can feed outcomes that give joy and connect our past, present, and future generations.
Our program also helps participants build their cognitive, emotional, social, and adaptability intelligence. With multiple ways of attending to and perceiving reality, we help enhance participants’ aptitude and ability to navigate uncertainty with grace. The aim is to help participants grow in adaptability and thrive amidst the permanent white water, with strategies that are proven to help them adapt in real-time and embrace ambiguity and complexity meaningfully.
Actionable Steps to Unlock Opportunity in Disruption
With this in mind, what are some actionable steps that leaders – and coaches – both participants in our program can take to unlock opportunities within disruption?
Hone Holistic Attention: Cultivate not just a beginner’s mind to pick up on patterns and unseen possibilities but expand your attention capacity to perceive what may not have been there before – as you first listened or looked. It’s not a matter of time. It’s a matter of attention. Learn to perceive the nuances of any rapidly changing landscape and identify emerging opportunities.
Release attachments: Learn to let go of preconceived notions about how things “should” be done. Learn to attend to and discern what matters. Embracing uncertainty also means releasing attachments to models that no longer serve their original or originally intended purpose, as the world has changed.
Experiment courageously: Courage means having the ‘heart’- in some cultures – or having the guts – in some other cultures – to respond spontaneously to unknown events. Prototyping new ideas without fear of failure can feel disheartening. So having the courage to embrace ‘not knowing’ can be a challenge. The world does not welcome failure, nor does it approve of fear. Learn to experiment and see experimentation as a valuable learning process, fostering a culture where failure is not just a limiting belief but a stepping stone towards innovation.
Collaborate generously:Don’t coach, collaborate. Don’t lead, co-create. Learn to leverage your collective intelligence to co-create beyond coaching skills. In these times of ‘not knowing’, leading through collaboration with your team members is a strategic advantage as today’s generation seems to only respond well to shared leadership and shared coaching approaches.
Start Embracing Chaos with Integrative Presence
In times of ‘not knowing’, leaders and coaches with an Integrative Presence outlook see possibilities where others see only peril. Our framework, with its emphasis on holistic attention, sensory perception, compassion, systems-collaborative thinking, and inner clarity equips leaders and coaches to not only navigate uncertainty but thrive amidst what seems incomprehensible and not known. By grounding themselves in a more holistic awareness, they respond to uncertainty with openness, discernment, and inspiration.
Integrative Presence allows leaders and coaches to rapidly cycle through ‘not knowing’, disruption, anxiety, sense of irrelevance, disengagement, and ambiguity to uncover strategic opportunities for innovation and growth that have the capacity to feed social impact for those that are our children.
Want to find out more about thriving amidst this permanent white water? Reach out here!
References:
- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230203-why-the-world-feels-so-unstable-right-now
- https://kathleenallen.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Strategies-for-working-in-permanent-white-water.pdf
- https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/economics/black-swan-event/
- https://philosophyofcoaching.org/v4i2/03.pdf
- https://www.inc.com/robert-glazer/command-control-leadership-is-dead-heres-whats-taking-its-place.html
- https://www.crises-control.com/blogs/proactive-approach-to-crisis-management/
