Ken Wilber – An Integral Organizational Leadership Seminar

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Fifty participants, a dozen staff and Ken Wilber– all of the makings of a truly unique learning experience as CEOs, coaches, consultants, academics mingled to explore this elusive topic of the application of integral theory and practice to leadership in organizations. Everyone left feeling they had gotten something of value, but some felt the workshop fell short.

The staff and facilitators made sure that we had plenty to think about. The community was given things to think about and experiences that grounded theory by several people. Ken was great in this workshop. He was more focused and grounded than in the workshop a few months ago. I think he was really interested in his audience.

When Ken sat on stage in front of the participants, I had the chance to ask the first question. I pointed out that he had been mentioned earlier in the day as the foremost thinker about leadership. I asked what it was called.

A man or woman who knows more, sees more and provides guidance to others who want to move forward is called Integral Leadership. All of the areas that humans have to deal with have to be touched by the capacity to lead. We need a map. An integral leader makes the map his/her own and embodies it.

Diane Hamilton, a student of Utah’s Gengpo Roshi, led us through a process called Big Mind, which was the highlight of the workshop. This process led to an altered state of consciousness that was stronger than anything this spiritual novice has experienced.

We did a lot of physical activity every day.

Michael Putz, a director at Oracle, did an interesting presentation on innovation, particularly disruptive innovation that can change the course and focus of a company. The presentation was on strategic thinking. I was disappointed in the workshop. Over the last couple of years, Leo has introduced executives to Integral Leadership at Notre Dame. We didn’t learn much about the models he uses or the effective approaches he has learned.

They were the workhorses of the workshop. They presented on how the way we talk can change the way we work, as well as Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey’s work on competing commitments and the four languages from How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work.

Blue, orange, green and yellow were used to structure activities, but their use was stereotypical and lacked the rich perspectives of other models such as Commons’ work on systems of meaning making. One of the dangers of introducing an integral approach is that it tends to put behaviors into boxes and not respect the complexity of individual and context.

One of my critics would say that I would make such a comment because I am green. The first arena of systematic thinking, and green is the first arena of systematic thinking, are flexible, independent, not reliant on social grouping or definition, and are not anti-social. They need freedom of thought and action. The frameworks introduced in this workshop made my critic fall into a trap. The challenge of finding ways of representing and learning from complexity is the cutting edge of integral work.

I was able to interview a number of people. A group of people. Some of them said that the workshop seemed geared at too low a level conceptually with some exceptions. Developing Integral Leadership is in its early stages. This workshop shows how much we have learned and how much more we need to learn.

Here are a few excerpts from the interviews. Linda Brewer was the first interview I did. At the end of the workshop, we did a second interview.

1. Linda Brewer, CEO of Xenon Global, Inc., New York City, focuses on the relationships between an organization and its customers, its vendors and suppliers, the executive team and strategic partnerships, acquisitions and mergers, and the relationship between divisions.

A: What are you interested in?

A: If you are an integral leader you should look at the left side as opposed to the right side as we do a lot in our action focused world.

A: You are talking about communion and agency. Have you had the chance to use your interest in integral theory in your work?

A: It is still a big opportunity to explore in a couple of different ways. It is possible to build relationships with executives in leadership development. In a positive oil company, we bring in different frameworks and management theory to act as a catalyst to push their performance beyond what they thought they could do. We would look at how these would apply in their company after they had done a quick study of these materials. The theory is taken into action. The frameworks are folded into that.

A: Is there a way to apply integral theory in the future?

A: I want to go further. It can be used in one-on-one coaching. You need to move into the context. You need a group of people. A lot of it is related to language. Helping them develop their own language is important. People will adopt a new language very quickly.

2. Rand Stagen, President of Stagen Leadership Institute, Dallas, Texas

A: Are you interested in the work of the firm that does leadership development and consulting?

A: I am fortunate to have a business partner who is one of the facilitators of the IOL workshop. Our interest in integral comes from his study of Wilber. I have been studying Spiral Dynamics for a long time.

$50 to 200 million in revenue is what we have been doing for mid-market companies. The best way to make a sustainable impact on our clients is to teach them what we are doing as consultants. The one-year program is practice based. The program is based on theory. Most of the time, we teach quadrants, levels, lines and other elements to the CEOs of our client companies.

There are one-day quarterly workshops and a self-directed curriculum for the quarter. If they don’t submit a weekly report on Mondays, they will be kicked out of the program. A lot of people are kicked out. We are only interested in working with people who excel. High potentials are what we work with. The majority of America’s managers wouldn’t connect with our program or approach. It is only for the best. Discipline is required when we change behavior and get results.

A: What is the message?

A: The message to Orange is higher performance, more focus, make more money, get more leverage, be more aligned, beat your competitors. Money is the message.

The delivery includes emotional intelligence development, alignment, and more clarity around vision. There is a lot on innovation in Orange.

3. Marianne Colter who was with SAP America, a company that provides packages of integrated software for clients, Probably 70% of the Fortune 1000 are running their software.

A: How do you transition from system implementation and sales to being involved in Ken Wilbur and Integral Leadership Development? What is that connection?

A: I jumped while I was in Portland. Ken was at the end of the bookshelf in the airport bookstore. A brief history of everything. . I said I wanted to know everything. This looks interesting.

It was the most theoretical thing I have ever read. We don’t read theory very much when I was an English teacher. You can’t get into theory when you’re in English. I am reading a lot of theoretical stuff, but I really like it. This was cool.

A: There is this really interesting looking place in Chicago where you said I have to get away from this place for a week or something. What did you see?

A: When I heard about the workshops, something said, This is where your heart is. This is where you want to be. This is what you should do.

A: Trainers taking workshops out into the world has been talked about by people at the Integral University. Would you like to do that?

A: They want people to learn from the ground up. I learn from the ground up. What is the big picture? I need to go down into the nuts and bolts to build it back up. That is how I learn.

Different people have different learning styles. What time does someone have to dedicate to adapting training materials to how people learn best? It has been five years since I got my arms around it. I didn’t go from zero to five, but now I feel confident talking about it and coming to a seminar. A year ago, I would say, Oh, I don’t know enough to go to the seminar and I think people who weren’t really grounded in the theories coming to something like this would be completely lost.

4. Gunnar Nilsson is President of Human Bandwidth Incorporated in Chicago.

A: What kind of work do you do?

A: I am an executive coach, a consultant or a thought partner, and then I do some spiritual work. I work with Fortune 500 companies and the top tier of executives, sometimes individuals, sometimes the entire team.

A: Have you had a chance to finish the workshop on Integral Organizational Leadership? Did any significant things come up for you?

A: I told my wife that I found missing puzzle pieces. Most of the puzzles I have been working on have at least one piece that is missing. The integral nature of the universe, work and business that deepened this week is that I have found more complete solutions. A lot of the puzzle pieces have shown up for me.

A: What could be an example?

A: I always look at a balanced perspective when working with people. It is like a teeter-totter when it comes to a balanced perspective. The four quadrants represent more than just balance.

5. Barry Weiss- at the time of interview he was a vice president with Exult, Inc., a business process outsourcing company with a focus on H.R. administrative and transactional work. As of October 1, 2004, Exult merged with Hewitt Associates, which is a larger firm in the same business, and Barry is a senior executive with Hewitt.

A: How did you get to attend the workshop?

It appealed to me because our company is merging with a bigger company. We do a lot of benefits administration outsourcing and H.R. consulting, so I thought I would find some helpful tools for working on the executive team integration and transition to come to this conference. Brother Wayne Teasdale, a catholic monk and mystic, is a common friend of Ken and I have met him a couple of times. I am curious to see if Ken and his group have found a way to put theory into practice.

A: What did you discover?

A: I would have thought they were closer than they are. It was very exciting.

What do you think is the most useful thing you found here?

A: I will answer that in two different ways. One is professional and the other is personal. I sat with a bunch of impressions about how we could be doing our integration better after today’s session on integral change and the difference between an adaptive change and a technical change. Even though I am an executive, I have taken a three-year sabbatical from being in leadership positions. I didn’t want to have any direct reports. I help us get new deals done on a project basis. I put some things aside for a while because I felt like I needed a break from leading.

A: What do you think will happen to your leadership as a result of this experience?

A: I had acquired three aspects before this. One was doing leadership of men’s retreats. Even though I was giving a lot to the men who came to it, I wasn’t getting much more out of it. I have been on sabbatical for a while.

I have done a Buddhist practice for a few years, informally, and the past three and a half years formally in a Tibetan Buddhist lineage with my wife. That experience is congruent with the break from leadership. I have to understand what it means to become a student in a formal way and find some antidotes for my arrogance.

Before I joined Exalt, I was on the management committee of a firm and was involved in building a 90 lawyer practice group.

I have a way to pull all of those together. The Jungian perspective and Buddhism can complement each other. It has given me a view on how I can better integrate all of that into a leadership role.

6. Kathy Callahan is the Deputy Regional Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency in New York. She is the senior career person in the office and a political appointee.

A: How did you learn about the workshop?

A: After September 11th, I was temporarily acting as the senior executive in charge of the EPA’s response to the disaster and became very engaged in that and the concerns and controversy that occurred afterwards. I worked for six months, seven days a week, and 14 hours a day for the next two years. I changed my career path because of it.

People from all over the country came to help us. In the midst of all the chaos and uncertainty, one person came and had a very contemplative atmosphere about him. He sent me a note and a reading list when he came back. No Boundary was written by Ken Wilber. Ken’s book was the most powerful one on the list. I opened up to the idea of non-dual thinking and read everything I could get my hands on by Ken.

Last November, my political boss offered me an opportunity to take on this new role as deputy regional administrator and she said, I want you to think about something that you can do for yourself, for your own life. I don’t care what it is, a trip, a special assignment, but something for you. It seemed like a gift from heaven when I couldn’t make it to the workshops in the spring, but I was able to make it to this one.

A: What were you hoping to find here?

A: I wanted to find a way to broaden my experience from a personal one to one that I could incorporate in my organization. I have to find a new place to live if I want to stay at EPA. I want to leave EPA in the best shape I can with leadership for the future that will allow them to be free to help with our environment, but also help them grapple with being within government and those constraints.

A: What do you think will help you along that path?

A: There is a group of people who are in the same situation. They have learned that searching is not what it is about, but that it can lead you to a special place, and that you can make very, very meaningful contributions. A Big Mind is the other thing I have found.

A: Wasn’t that an amazing experience?

A: It’s hard to describe.

A: I don’t know what to say about the smile on your face.

A: It was great. I found parts of me that I hadn’t consciously focused on and were able to be in community with each other. Even though I have to be a self and go on as a person, I am in a community with a bigger mind that takes me away from that.

A: Do you think you can use some of the things you have encountered here in your life or in your job?

A: I can see some places in the EPA where I can make a difference. I can look at the people who we are dealing with outside the agency and within the agency with more of an acknowledgement of their complexity and honor them more and, in that way, also get better progress and response from them.

7. Laurel Ross is from Seattle, Washington. She is the Escalation Manager for Developer Support at Microsoft.

A: How did you attend this workshop?

A: Four years ago, I met a woman in Seattle who is an executive coach. I was not happy at Microsoft. I was positioned for disaster, not for success or thought, how can I make this work for me? The company is world-class. Why can’t I do this? I paid out of my own pocket for executive coaching because I was deeply committed. It was either that or a tummy tuck, so I decided to do something that would last longer and be more meaningful to me.

Suzanne Anderson is an integral coach. She was friends with Ken’s wife. I studied integral practices with her for six months. I knew where I was. I sat in a circle of 12 women who were practicing and exploring what it was to be uniquely female in Integral Leadership. There are some differences between women’s leadership.

A: What has been most important to you?

A: It was validation of what I had been practicing. The center of gravity is now yellow. I don’t think I owned that. I have a tendency to diminish myself, reduce myself and self criticize. There are no more excuses and the acceptance and owning of the fact that I am in a center of gravity is very empowering. I am in.

A: How will this experience affect your leadership when you return to Microsoft?

A: There are many practical applications of the work that I have good ideas for.

A: Is there an example of one?

A: Yes. Today’s conversation was about adaptive change versus disruptive change. adaptive change work is what I have been doing in one-on-one’s with my employees. We do disruptive change as a group. Our team has become so high performance now and so high functioning that we actually lead the way for other people to make changes in the organization, because we implement things and are innovators and drivers of disruptive change. I want to give them that name. I want to give individuals a half step to the next level of development by giving them specific ideas about where they are in their development.

A: Is there anything else that you took from the workshop that was more powerful for you?

A: All the wonderful people have connections with the wonderful people. I feel like I’m part of a larger community.

A: Do you want to add anything else?

A: I think you are cute.

I blushed and mumbled something.

8. Oliver Triebel is from West Germany and has recently returned to McKinsey after heading up management development for Bertelsmann for several years.

A: Did you hear about the workshop and decide it was the right thing to do?

A: I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

A: Did you know what you wanted to gain from it?

A: I was curious. I thought I would learn more theory and get a list of things to do, as well as an analytical tool kit and a couple of books.

A: When you came to this workshop, what were you looking for?

A: I had expectations for several things. I wanted to finish up my work before I start my new job next week. It felt like the right thing to do to get away for a week and make plans for the future.

I wanted to bring spiral dynamics and the quadrants into the business world, get some tools or diagnostic stuff, and have a case study about how or what someone had done with this in real life, in a business application. Give me some better understanding of the levels of the quadrants and some analytical tools to design interventions for people who are on these levels.

Some of the things we have seen seem to be light, not precise. We are mixing a green person with a green organization. When do people become an organization? What is the average of green, orange and blue people? An orange organization? How do you evaluate the middle ground? I wanted a definition that was really precise.

A: Because of the different levels of development in the lines, individuals and organizations are really constellations of colors. Is it important for you to be able to make more refined distinctions?

A: Yes. How do I get between departments? One is blue and the other is orange. In business, this is a problem for individuals and groups of people. Is the group more than the individual? How does that fit into the theory of levels of consciousness? Is that its own line? I have a lot of questions. The good news is that there is room for my own contributions in the future, but I missed a certain level of rigor that I am used to.

A: Do you know how to apply this in your work when you get started?

A: There are a couple of ideas. One idea is that the levels and the quadrants will help me to better understand certain client situations, because I will always be in the role of someone who has to bring in the left quadrants. This is part of my job. The clients want me to look at the right side of the H.R. processes, intellectual capital, knowledge management role, which is the left side.

Having a framework that will allow me to argue to fellow consultants and to clients-look, you’re missing something here and my team and I can contribute. Step two is designing interventions for groups of people that are at a certain level of consciousness. It will help me to design better stuff if we do a few workshops with clients to train them in a new strategy. I am committed to using integral thinking whenever I need it.

9. Linda Brewer- second interview.

A: You just finished a four and a half day workshop. What brought you to this experience?

A: I wanted to pull a bunch of things together. I had to pull some things into alignment because things weren’t in sync. Being here in person made a huge difference in my understanding.

I was getting a lot of this stuff. I used it occasionally in the business world. I didn’t know how much I was using. I think I can pull a lot of those pieces together in two different ways. One is in my business life and the other is in my personal life. This work gives me a lot of tools to use in business, one on one relationships, conversation with individuals, and also in the design of group-to-group relationships.

A: What were the highlights for you?

A: I think I was about halfway through and things started popping in my head. I went through a lot of learning. Big Mind was large. It was important to walk through in two ways; first, just personally to walk through and get in deeper and deeper and second, to experience it as a process with a lot of trust and volunteering. That was amazing.

A: Shifting focus from the right side to the left side was one of the things that came out of the business model work. Are you moving to the left side?

A: I have always done that, but I think I have a different voice around it now. I feel safer having those conversations with executives who are retiring or going through huge career shifts because I have always lightly touched and danced away. I have always been hesitant to talk about it, but now I feel like I can do it in a way that is safe for them and me. To look at the emotional, spiritual, physical and how they are going to design their lives differently, we can have a conversation about how they are going to incorporate spirituality into what they do.

A: Is there anything else you would like to say about the workshop?

A: Three things are important. You get a very solid understanding of the business context. The seeds, the early stages of tools that you can actually see how to use both on the personal and business side, are so definitely related. The experience of spending time with Ken, the great synthesizer, watching how he thinks, how he works, and how he pulls from all these different levels is three. It’s a great example to hold in my head what I want to be.