This disarmingly simple question was asked as part of the feedback from the Authentic Leadership Cafe held in Dublin on April 29th – 2009 and it occurred to me that the 100 people in the room would probably have 100 different answers !

(Firstly, in case you are interested, the ‘harvest’ / written output from the Authentic Leadership Cafe can be downloaded here )

My answer to this question is different from what it would have been a few months ago and probably different from what it will be in a few months time, but anyway – I’ll try and make what sense I can of the way I’m thinking at the moment.

One way of looking at our non-sustainability as a species is that we have got ourselves attached to a dominant culture / system that pursues happiness through the acquisition of more and more things just as quickly as we possibly can, in spite of all the evidence that happiness doesn’t actually work like that and that in our pursuit of it, we are increasing mental illness, undermining families, fragmenting communities and trashing the environment.  Some people would suggest that the problems of sustainability are actually, at heart, problems of trying to fill a spiritual vacuum.

The challenge is to work out how we might get from our current non-sustainability to a better way of being.  Changing light bulbs and eating organically may help a little bit, particularly if they start to get people to think about some of the deeper issues.  But to enable deeper change it will take networks of people to speak up and model more far-reaching alternatives that address our fundamental human needs and desires and move us into a longer-term orientation.

The more far-reaching alternatives will pay greater attention to explicit values and our connectedness with our spiritual selves, the people around us and our environment.  Nobody will have all the answers; we will co-create and learn as we go and do our best to stay ‘in balance’ – it will be more like surfers making adjustments to stay on a wave, than something driven by what we might regard as a conventional strategic plan.

What will make the difference is our facing up to the full reality of the issues, each of us finding our best contributions, and paying attention to the ways in which we network and learn together.  Not everyone will move at the same pace.  Sometimes it will seem like we’re not moving at all and then at other times there will be dramatic tipping points.

I believe it is likely that people of relatively high levels of personal development and understandings of how human beings change  (in so far as these things can be measured) will join up with people with relatively high levels of ecological appreciation (and yes it is possible that there could be some overlap already !!) and in this joining up we will find the routes to the system change / paradigm shift / transformation we need.  I think there are signs of this happening.

Many of us are too much in silos – i.e. we are pursuing personal development without sufficient regard to the state of the planet or we are pursuing solutions to environmental problems without sufficient attention to why humans behave the way they do.  Linking up people in these respective fields is one of the ingredients in the mix we need.

A lot of the work that most interests me is finding the fertile spaces in which this joining up can happen.

The Authentic Leadership Cafe was an exploration to find out who is out there, what are they thinking and what might happen if some of them started joining up ? – It is only a beginning of a process.  Fortunately, there appears to be lots of imagination around as to what the next steps might be.

If you would like to make this a conversation rather than just a statement, feel very welcome !