tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13617569.post1328351345209797497..comments2024-03-27T02:13:58.088-07:00Comments on Integral Options Cafe: Matthew Kálmán Mezey on "Clumsy Leadership," Cultural Theory, and Developmentwilliam harrymanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06981478282688361274noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13617569.post-92178535703870674702012-09-20T14:09:20.462-07:002012-09-20T14:09:20.462-07:00Hi William,
So gad you liked some of the ideas et...Hi William,<br /><br />So gad you liked some of the ideas etc in my long piece about 'Clumsy'/integral leadership - and thank you so much for finding space for it in your blog. <br /><br />There are a lot of academics and educators around Marcia Baxter Magolda who might well develop a quick and simple Kegan assessment, they might even have already done it. Though I’m not sure they’re so bothered about ‘Self-transforming’ (level 5). Level 4, and transition from 3, is their focus.<br /><br />Despite all my various wounds, idiosyncraces and pessimisms, I’m still an optimist – as you are.<br />I feel just like this too: “My sense is that there are thousands of people in powerful positions who, if they could be shown the importance of greater depth and wider span in their leadership methods, would already be in position to generate considerable change very quickly.”<br /><br />These approaches are so damn unknown right now, that it’s no surprise that there is a lack of change.<br /><br />I think a publication with, say, 10 analyses of social issues, done by 10 different models of plural rationality, could make a big difference – be a real catalyst.<br /><br />There must be so many people – like Taylor, Haidt, me – who are on the look out for good models that make useful patterns of the world out there. OK, we’ve found them, so we’ve a bit further ahead than some. But I suspect many are receptive.<br /><br />I went to an RSA lecture just now – about a new history of power. But it presented a model based around occupational value systems/castes. Pretty much another model of plural ratonalities. Here’s more about it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/23/merchant-soldier-sage-priestland-review<br /><br />Re Haidt and the 16 year gap, I only picked that topic as everyone knows Haidt and everyone trusts him and he clearly described these two turning points in his book for us all – and his experience somehow relates to his opening up to Spiral Dynamics’s ‘Second Tier’ of awareness of plural rationality.<br /><br />What other thought-leader has made such a shift towards Second Tier so public? (I don’t understand why the Integral milieu doesn’t rush to embrace these developments – it so often appears to me to have an attitude of ‘We’ve got the answers for you!’, which I really dislike nowadays. It’s so early pre-conventional, for a start! ;-) ).<br /><br /><br />You say: <br />“[Haidt’s] life is that of an academic and author. Such a life offers much greater opportunity for growth, and time for speculation, than that of a government official or a corporate CEO. Nor do the rest of us who work for a living have the freedom Haidt likely enjoys.”<br />This all makes a lot of sense, but it might actually be diametrically wrong – in ways that are perhaps not very obvious.<br /><br />Haidt told a group of us after his RSA lecture that he’d literally never bumped into a conservative until he was over 40, if I remember correctly.<br />So he wasn’t more open and growing than everyone else – he was in a remarkably closeted and ideologically closed domain, a contemporary US campus.<br /><br />Most people aren’t able to live for decades without ever speaking with a conservative.<br /><br />Also, I was struck by how constricted by his academic discipline he perhaps was – he’s never hear of Prof Robert Kegan, for instance.<br /><br />So, actually, Haidt faces a lot of constraints – fine if he wants to reach and remain at ‘Green’. Very hard work if he wants to reach a post-Green, post-partisan viewpoint. No wonder it took 16 years – much longer than a typical Torbert or Kegan stage shift, surely?<br /><br />You seem to be suggesting he’s a pre-Green conservative (rather than a more complex libertarian?). Hard to really know for sure on that topic. I’m happy to accept his own view that he’s gone from being a left-winger to being a post-partisan moderate. Not least as that is pretty much the same as what happened to me.<br /><br />Best wishes,<br /><br />Matthew<br /><br />(PS BTW, it would really help if you included a little widget on your blog showing new comments, so readers can actually find where the action is, on this blog.)Matthew Kalman Mezeyhttp://www.rsa.org.uknoreply@blogger.com