“Leadership development is not about filling a gap but about igniting a field of inspired connection and action”
Feb 4th, 2010 by Chris
The quotation above is from Otto Scharmer, the originator of Theory U – I am finding myself using it all the time. (OK, ‘all the time’ is an exaggeration, that would be silly, I’m finding myself using it a lot)
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‘Igniting fields of inspired connection and action’ is a wonderful summary of how I see the core challenge that faces us. So many people spend so much time not connecting with the people that would be most useful to connect to, not feeling inspired and if they are ‘active’ not necessarily being active in a ‘right’ direction.
Breaking it down into steps – many of us need support to work through who we really need to be connecting to and what the barriers are that we put in our own way that stop us making such connections – that’s a large part of the coaching work I do.
Lynda Gratton writes about the necessary conditions for hot spots of innovation – one of these conditions is ‘unlikely partnerships’. Many, many of the best innovations result from unlikely partnerships – people talking to each other who wouldn’t normally talk to each other about things that matter – that’s where events using large scale methodologies such as World Cafe and Theory U come to the fore, enabling people to see a bigger picture from a wider variety of perspectives, as an enabler of connectivity and a pre-condition for innovation and inspired action.
And many systems and organisations are deeply stuck in their ways of doing things, their ways of looking at things, their ways of being together – that’s where the consultancy comes in, working with people on the inside to create the conditions to move beyond the stuckness and to create the conditions where igniting a field of inspired connection and action can become a possibility.
Otto Scharmer’s original paper of this title is on the link below :
http://www.ottoscharmer.com/docs/articles/2009_FieldBasedLeadDev.pdf
If you’d like to talk about the possibilities of moving from where you are to an ignited field of inspired connection and action, then please do get in touch.