Beginning Conversations

Integral Leadership  Integral leadership explores the nature of leadership and calls attention to not only "where and how" leadership approaches might be best applied but also to "reframe the very foundation of the perspectives we use to explore" (Forman & Ross, 2013, location 174, 3841). In other words, current leadership paradigms qualify practice with empirical efficacy and even describe the contexts within which such efficacy is experienced but do not adequately consider the limitations of perspective. Leadership, "needs a perspective with sufficient depth and breadth to allow a broader view of the complexity in which we now find ourselves" ( Forman & Ross, 2013, location 174, 3841) Perspective "informs what we see, what we pay attention to, and what interpretations we make of what we see...we are not as neutral as we sometimes imagine ourselves to be" (Forman & Ross, 2013, location 408 of 3841). Forman, J. P., & Ross, L. A. (...

  Conservation of Resources Steven E. Hobfall Individuals hold on to the things that are central to their perceived wellbeing and safety. O bjects, personal characteristics, conditions, or energies when “threatened, lost,[or] believed to be unstable" are recognized as having value and are perceived to be of value. W hen "individuals and groups cannot set a path to the fostering and protection of [these] resources through their joint effort” stress is experienced (Hobfoll, 2001, p. 342); w hen such conditions persist, the "stress resistance" within the individual or the group is compromised. Furthermore, a  persistent loss of resources contributes to further loss of resources, enabling a cyclical process referred to as a loss spiral, leaving individuals and groups even more vulnerable (Hobfoll, 1998). In such times of loss, individuals and groups take great effort to adapt in ways to conserve and utilize available resources . If such adaptation is successful, there ...

The article: Trauma-Informed Integral Leadership: Leading School Communities with a Systems-Aware Approach (Greig, Bailey, Abbot, & Brunzell, 2021). Keywords: Trauma-informed leadership, school leadership, whole school change, systems-aware leadership, integral theory, school community Trauma-Informed and Systems Aware Approach Trauma-informed Leadership provides a framework for leaders to understand how their roles might support a community in a time of trauma. A systems-aware approach positions leaders within the systems to recognize how systems influence experience. In other words, trauma-informed leadership directs immediate attention towards immediate needs and a systems-aware approach directs attention towards  sources of support through existing structural relationships. Greig, Bailey, Abbot, & Brunzell (2021) examined how the tenets of Trauma-informed leadership and Systems-theory leadership inform how leaders support individuals within the system during a...

Conservation of Resources An interesting title for a theory that I've come to learn is associated with crisis management.  Bajaba et al., (2021) interject Hobfoll's (1989) theory as a means to explain how particular managers recognize and are able to adjust resources that create conditions necessary in a time of crisis. These resources are not limited to physical assets. These resources include personality traits and skills of individuals within the organization that advantage opportunity and overcome challenges in times of crisis: traits and skills that become invaluable resources in times of stress. "COR theory, a motivational theory introduced by Hobfoll (1989), defines resources as "those objects, personal characteristics, conditions, or energies that are valued by the individual or that serve as a means for the attainment of these objects, personal characteristics, conditions, or energies" (Bajaba et al., citing Hobfoll, 1989, 2021, p. 3);  The authors prese...

Over the years, I have entrenched myself in anything and everything that diverts attention towards the agency of the individual. Bandura's contribution of Social Cognitive Theory to theorists and practioners made immediate sense to me-- the ways in which this theory explain the origins of efficacy, self-efficacy, of explanation: mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasions, and physiological and affective states have been written, cited, and integrated into countless conversations and into countless papers.  But in all of my travels over the past twenty years- since my first attempt at a doctoral defense to this most recent attempt to which you are a witness- I had given so little attention to the final of origins: physiological and affective states . And, then, to be introduced to an additional source in a paper recently read to Maddux' (2009) additional source of self-efficacy, imaginal experiences, in "The power of believing you can," my current sta...

Below, I summarize Scharmer's theory as it relates to my area of interest. In my current thinking, I see a connection between Scharmer's  Fields with the way in which Wilber's quadrants evolve and interact. William Isaacs and Otto Scharmer speak to reframing our collective paradigm of leadership as a "generative dialogue" as a means to examine the beliefs and assumptions driving current mental models and how these mental models shape paradigms of leadership (Forman & Ross, 2013, location 173 of 3841). Otto Scharmer (2008) describes successful leadership as dependent on two behaviors a leader brings to a situation: attention and intention. The origins of each,  source dimension,  is the 'inner place' from which "effective leadership and social action come into being" (p. 52). This dimension is further articulated through what Scharmer refers to as  field structures of attention . Each field is characterized by different ways of operating:  Thi...

  Late October: October 10, 2021: Keywords Crisis, School leadership, Self-efficacy, Collective efficacy, Collective leadership, Integral theory My interest: e xploring how the conditions of a community are optimized in times of crisis. My assumption is that collective efficacy mediates optimization. My interest is how leadership influences. My hope-in-contribution is exposing how Integral Theory might shape how come to understand the construct of Leadership in Praxis in times of crisis.   October 6, 2021: This is the world of One Taste, with no inside and no outside, no subject and no object, no in here versus other there, without means, without path and without goal. And this, As Ramana said, is the Final Truth. - Ken Wilber Wilber opens his book,  One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality  with, You could not discover the limits of the soul, even if you traveled every path in order to do so; such is the depth of its meaning. - Heraclitus I read th...

  The beginnings of a reflection that I am posting and yet hoping no one actually reads. It is a sandbox of all sandboxes. In my head, I can feel connections that I cannot see: contours are a blur. I need time. I need time to deliberate.  This post is written from a place of a presuming state; that there is an assumption on the part of the writer of the reader to have confidence that the writer's understanding of what is shared is stronger than what is written. It is equally assumed by the writer that this is not so. This paradox, of sorts, makes for great grounding if one is willing to step and to equally misstep.  Graduate School: 1993-1995 I entered the world of education at a time of 'pure' constructivism. Or, as a professor once shared, a belief that learning is nothing more than throwing a pig in mud and asking it to learn by rolling. At the time I was less challenged by the idea of constructivism and more challenged by its interpretation of theory to practice....

  Logos and Leadership Logos develops a connotative sense of a recognition of real it y for what reality truly is ; deepened understanding of the rational principle underlying reality.  LINK Over the years, over the past 20 years, I have often thought of an overheard simple exchange that changed how I think about the world. This exchange came at the end of a communal sitting with the Dali Lama in Chennai, India.  After an hour of engaging with the audience, the Dali Lama opened the floor for questions. I recall none but one. A participant asked, “What frightens you the most about the potential for the next Dali Lama not to be identified prior to your death?” In the milliseconds between the question and his response, I anticipated his response. This, however, was not his response.  His response was immediate. He spoke with sincerity as he described what would be his greatest concern, the loss of the language of his faith. He went on to describe that it was a language ...

What does it mean? vs What does it do?  The construct of a holarchy is new to me. A hierarchy without an absolute floor and ceiling, top or bottom. This idea invites visualization. In each quadrant a developmental progression with relationships of value assigned by need and contextualized among four territories. The spaces defined by source, internal or external and sense of self, individual or collective. Each important but relatively so. Each understood: interior by interpretation and exterior by observation. These juxtapositions are distanced by relative degree and call attention to the intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social-ized complexity this model represents. This seems awesome and without clear conclusion, yet when one removes its two dimensional nature and imposes on it three dimensional contours-- significance-as-experienced and -defined by the phenomena-- one can see how it offers value in making sense with judgment. It is interesting to me that the progression o...