We can ask why is it that we collectively create results that no one wants - particularly with some of our biggest global challanges like terrorism, climate change, financial crunch or youth unemployment. Leaders can begin by deepening their listening through four levels.
Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer at MIT have set out a journey to bring leaders to the new awareness that is key to making their institutions fit for today’s biggest challenges. Leaders can begin this by expanding their listening through four levels.
They call the first level of listening "downloading". This is centred on your own habit: listening for confirmation of what you already agree with, trapping you in your existing views and behaviours.
Level two is listening for the facts, and level three is listening with empathy towards the feelings of the people involved.
The ultimate listening at level four is called "presencing". In this your attention moves from "me" to "we" and time seems to slow down as you become connected to a wider sphere, as when a sports team is in the zone or jazz ensemble finds its groove. From here a new reality can come into being.
Our listening journey begins when we stop "downloading", and move the "beam of our attention" to immerse ourselves through the levels to the places of most potential. For this it is necessary to leave the centre of your world (your office, your team) and travel to the periphery of the system to find out what matters to other people more intimately involved in the problem.
After listening, there follows a second phase of quiet inner reflection, to allow a new knowing to emerge, in response to questions such as: What wants to emerge here? How can we become part of the story of the future, rather than holding onto the story of the past?
A third phase begins to address the future through "doing": preferably in small, speedy and spontaneous tests that generate feedback from stakeholders and allow you to evolve an idea.
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When our problems are deep, painful and repeating this so-called “Journey of the U” is a kind of inversion of the solution-based approach leaders usually bring, to pull on everyone’s deeper resources and offer a better way forward. It lines up with an approach we have been exploring in the last couple of years with client teams to “shift the system”.
In coming postings I want to bring you a couple of examples to see what this journey might entail in practice.
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