Engaging

A big issue on my mind over the last week has been whether or not I feel engaged. Am I engaged in the discussions and debate amongst my classmates, and peers, family and friends in other parts of the world. My long list of unanswered emails would suggest not.

Over the last few years I have really shifted from someone who was always up with the news, to someone who deliberately tuned out of mainstream media and didn't pursue opportunities to 'shove it down people's throats' about sustainability. Now though, I feel like all the threads of my thinking, reading and learning have started to come otgether in a way that means I can effectively start to re-engage and have meaningful dialogues with people. I am passionate about the things I am learning about, and am keen to start testing them against the different perspectives and opinions of others in society: if what I am learning here has stood the test of my critical judgement, yet still shone through as remarkably powerful, will it have the same impact on others? Can I succinctly and clearly engage in a dialogue with others to explore these topics and themes? Can I increase not only the awareness of these concerns and potential means of solving the big issues, while at the same time expanding my understanding of others' legitimate perspectives on what matters to them most?
I think I can, and am ready to start....so here you are: if you have a tough question, a tricky topic, or an article that got you fired up; send it through and let's see where we can get with it.

Sun glasses

For anyone who has never worn coloured glasses, I strongly suggest you get some. Let me explain:

I am currently the proud owner of a very expensive pair of 'Rudy Project' sunglasses. They have interchangeable lenses, a dark set, and an orange set. The look a bit silly, but are great for mountain biking, and I'm very grateful to my sister for donating them to me.

It is well and truly autumn up here in Sweden, and every time I go riding I am blown away by how vibrant, warm and amazing all the colours are. Until I peek out from under my sunglasses and realise it is all pretty dull.

Even though I know it is just the glasses, it is still so uplifting! Instead of a little crescent of yellow sun struggling over the horizon in the mornings, I see a sky full of pinks, oranges and reds. The same goes for the fallen leaves that cover the pathways with their fiery oranges and rich reds.

So, I highly recommend getting a pair of rose, orange or yellow glasses and enjoying the wonders of seing with new eyes.

I could extend this idea into some metaphor about how you can change other 'lenses' that filter how you perceive the world and yourself, and quote someone famous...but have some other fun things to go and do!

My small community

My sea kayak trip last weekend was the first weekend where I really didn't get any study done. I really enjoyed the break, and came back with an assignment due, no food in the cupboards, and lots of little chores undone. It was the first time I had felt like that, by 'that' I mean the way I remember always feeling at Univeristy before! Which is really significant.

You see, for years I have been trying to do this and that to be the person I wanted to be. That is, to be more organised, productive, balanced, empathic, fit etc. etc...but never really felt like I was able to pull it off.

Now, here, I feel well on top of my study; am meditating and exercising everyday and doing all these other things that make me feel like I am on top of things. I am not sure exactly why it has all come together so well, but off the top of me head I can probably narrow it down to a few things:

- I do not have to work (for now....talk to me in two months and it may be a different story)
- If I am into something, I can almost guarantee that 5 other people in my class are into it: B&W photography, meditation, mountain-biking, quantum physics and how it informs daily life etc. There is this real community of support and mutual interest that makes it OK to talk about all and do all sorts of things that would be a real effort in any other setting.
- I am in Sweden..i.e. the change allows you to forget all sorts of history and start afresh...though very far from friends and family who really make me very happy.
- I only have one life and community. My 'community' is pretty small and restricted: it is my classmates. This has positives and negatives, but for now it seems fun. There is ample opportunity to 'get away' and some ways to become friends with other people outside our course. I might have to study Swedish harder to make more progress in that respect.
- I am so enthusiastic and engaged in what I am studying that it is ridiculous....

Well, it's good. And it makes me think: how I can make sure I create this sense when I go back to the 'real world'? In what way have I previously prevented other people from being coherent with themselves?

I feel very lucky. Thankyou Swedes, thankyou friends, thankyou all who got me here: whether it be to Sweden, or this far in life.

The weather is heading south...

I always think the birds I see in the sky are migrating south, which may be they are. But I know for sure that the sun has headed that way...

Last week the temperature really dropped in the mornings, and this was a good trigger to make sure I enjoyed the weekends before it got too cold and miserable. I ended up going sea-kayaking with Kyle, Dan and Kate to a nearby island where we camped overnight. The next morning was absolutely beautiful, though freezing if you weren't basking in the sun. Hopefully a few of my photos turn out.

It really is an amazing little town and region, and must be about the best place in Sweden to be out on the water. By paddling around a bit, I suddenly became aware of the large number of waterfront homes spread around the town. It seemed like everyone had a boat ramp to compliment their understated cottages. And they are nice cottages/houses: everyone seems wealthy enough (Volvos, sheds full of kayaks and lawnmower's), but it is all very 'lagom'. That is, in Swedish: 'not too much, not too little, just right' and definitely not overdone.

The layout of the city really is quite different to any regional town I've seen in Australia. I'm sure the 'European Spatial Planning' students at our University could explain it better, but...
- There is real mix of innner 'city' living, large apartment blocks, waterfront homes, rural cottages and satellite villages.
- There is excellent public transport and bike paths absolutely everywhere. I (a committed on-road rider back home) have almost no reason to leave the safety of the bike lanes wherever I want to ride.
- The land-uses are really mixed: there is a municipal incinerator next to the supermarket, there are industrial sites close to houses, mountain bike and ski trails 100m from the University.
- Big businesses are located here: Vodafone Sweden, the urban planning department for the whole of Sweden, the Swedish Navy. I have been told this is the result of concious efforts to decentralise these sorts of functions adn industries.
- And apparently there is room for 50, 000 people in a massive bomb shelter under the centre of the city: something to do with it being (past and currently) the centre for Sweden's naval fleet. I will have to check it out sometime!

My opinion of Karlskrona may change though: it looks like we really have dropped into something like Autumn or Winter scaring away the beautiful weather that has dominated so far. I am now having to take my lights with me whenever I cycle in the morning or late afternoon, and my ears and legs are starting to get quite frozen if I don't do something to protect them. It could get really ugly if it starts to get wet and slushy...but I hope for the best. At least the pool I swim at is indoor and warm : )

And, we recently discovered the AWESOME indoor rock-climbing gym that had been hiding under our noses for the past 2 months. So, there are plenty of options to stay fit and sane through the darker, colder months

What does Leadership mean to me?

Hi. Below is something I wrote yesterday, and submitted as part of my course. It is only marked for completion: which proably left the door open for me to take it a bit further than if I had to guess what the markers were looking for!

I read all the required and suggested readings, and a few books, and wrote a well-structured, logical draft...all about a week before this was due. Then, I felt it was too much information, and that I needed to leave it for a while and get out...but didn't do so. Instead I took it back to thinking about all my past experiences. Then, when it came to pull it together, this is what came out. After feeling a bit stupid about it yesterday, I re-read it today and thought 'stupid or not, it is how I'm thinking/feeling at the moment, so what more can I do'.

Excuse the lack of references. I am going to have a break, then revisit this topic and distill this essay into something that is really useful and can help guide me everyday....

What does Leadership mean to me?

This essay has been written with a few caveats (Appendix 1). I have stated these because although I may be tempted to think my understandings of leadership are universally applicable (from sporting teams to global politics); the reality is my thoughts are probably very context-specific.

My understanding of leadership can be summarised as a belief that I should do my best. Do my best to develop and conduct myself for the greatest benefit of the whole. That is, I ‘(you) must be the change you want to see in the world’ (Gandhi), to act ‘as if’ I am the world. This approach necessitates I understand that ‘I’ am not separate from the whole, must widen my circle of compassion, and consciously feel the deep interconnection and interdependence of the whole of nature.

Dictionary definitions of leadership refer back to ‘lead’ (v). Key words and ideas associated with lead include to: show the way by going in advance, guide the behaviour of, induce, direct, inspire, take the principle role, be first and be ahead. These definitions highlight the concept’s importance in creating the shift from unsustainability to sustainability. This shift can be described as a ‘transformation’ – in this case, perhaps the most significant change in the way we think and act in the history of this civilisation. Such a huge shift needs people to act consciously, deliberately and truthfully to create the required momentum.

In approaching this topic, I decided to review my past experiences and how they have informed my understanding of leadership and where I may have acted in a way that lead to shifts or changes. Thinking back, I recalled specific situations in which I felt like I had been a leader, and try to deduce what exactly I had done[1]. Similarly, I could recall when I felt like I was not behaving like a leader[2]. Some of these previous situations were accompanied by strong emotions which induced deep learning (Level 3 in Appendix 1) either immediately or during periods of reflection later on.
As well as my previous experiences, particular people I have met through my life have impressed me with their leadership characteristics[3]. And, when thinking about specific people in the public domain, who I recognised as leaders, another set of characteristics came to mind[4]. When you make enough of them, these long lists of characteristics feel superficial: feel like I am trying to distill an experience of a whole person, or a situation rich with emotion, detail and context down to a few words. At the same time, if I can’t name these characteristics and qualities…are they real?

Sometimes I think there is a sort of perception paradox that affects what I recognise as leadership qualities in myself and others: I can only see it when I know it; and I can only know it when I have seen it. As with other learning too, so the ability to name what leaderships is becomes useful way to extend my intellectual understanding of leadership. Exploring ideas about leadership attunes and sensitizes me to ideas and characteristics that I can ‘try’ or ‘practice’ in the future, or may help me to make more sense of my past experience. This sort of thinking can help understand how I can best work to empower others to be their best: by helping them interpret their experiences, and helping create the space for them to ‘try’ and ‘practice’.

For my learning about leadership to occur in this way, the ability to observe the reality ‘as it is, and not how I would like it to be’ is critical. Filtering new experiences through the lens of new, and a pre-occupation with ‘naming’ can prevent the real, deep learning. A sharpened, objective-as-possible mind and high level of awareness about myself, the group, the environment: the whole, at any/every point in time is key to developing those deeper understandings (Level 3 in Appendix 1). My journey towards a heightened awareness and the learning that flows from it, has had some critical stages accompanied by strong emotions.

An example is my shift from someone who was deeply concerned, hopelessly upset, and ultimately disempowered about the state of the world; to someone who began to understand the power I had and the contribution I made to the perpetuation of the very system that I didn’t like (and could make to the future that I wanted). This and other periods of increased awareness were often accompanied by a kind of ‘flow’ and ‘oneness’. It is this state which I always seek to practice and re-create; and the one in which I think I can be the best leader, in any given context.

Even if this sense of flow is there, it is still critical to have the tools and names to interpret my experiences and be aware of the range of ways in which I can act. From my own readings, I have ideas about leadership characteristics I intellectually understand (Level 2 in Appendix 1), and can therefore try to use when interpreting my experiences[5]. Some of the required and suggested readings explored ideas of leadership that resonated strongly with me: introducing new perspectives immediately helped me interpret experiences, as well as reconfirming past learnings that I need to continue practicing[6][7].

Conversations and shared experiences with my peers have been essential to turn a few of these intellectual understandings into deeper understandings based on direct personal experience (Level 3 in Appendix 1)[8]. It is at this deeper level of experience at which I want to understand these concepts of leadership.

I think I have started to develop and deeply understand many of the qualities described in the course readings, e.g. facilitating; deeply listening; suspending judgment; designing processes; effectively working with interconnectedness, complexity, systems and the whole; and ability to co-create functional groups with shared visions. I aim to improve my ability to: coach (improve my competence), be decisive (in those moments when a path forward is revealed, or someone has to take the leap to explore the unknown), deal with and remember details, be oriented towards action/tasks, be persistent, and importantly, to not take myself too seriously! Developing these abilities will take time, and experience. Continuing to consciously seeking challenges, create the opportunity to practice and leave the space to reflect, discuss and evaluate will accelerate this learning.

I believe that whatever the leadership qualities I try to develop, I must always maintain a solid grounding in kindness, compassion, empathic joy and equanimity. Through my experiences in this course, I have increased my understanding of the role of all of these, especially empathic joy. Being deeply happy because of someone else achievement or leadership has reduced my sense of competition and attachment in a situation where everyone is explicitly trying to be a leader: whether as a servant, director, coach, delegator or supporter / facilitator.

My understanding the link between my personal development and my role of a leader in the development of any system or group is based on an appreciation of the fundamental delusion of self, and the interconnectedness of all things. There is a positive, supporting relationship between meeting my own needs and furthering my own development and move towards sustainability, and co-creating the awareness, opportunity, capacity and reality within others in the same system. If I believe that I can be part of creating the new reality, then that allows others to be empowered; when I understand that I cannot do it on my own, and am humble, then so others understand that they too need each other to co-create their desired future.

Appendix 1
Assumptions and context:
- I come from Western Australia, am 27 years old, have enjoyed a good education, and have actively participate in many aspects of my communities and Australian society. I’ve volunteered on sustainability issues (practical and political), and worked in retail, food, as an eco-tours guide and with an NGO as an environmental professional. I have never worked directly for a large corporation or bureaucracy; have limited business or financial experience; and have a very limited understanding of other cultures’ perspectives on leaders and leadership.
- In this essay, I have continued to describe myself in a way that assumes ‘I’ as separate from the whole, and that ’I’ as an autonomous individual can ‘do something to act upon the external world’. I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with expressing things in these terms, and need to explore how to express it in another way. I think this is an important part of understanding leadership..
- My understanding of my own knowledge is it can be considered at three levels: 1) wisdom gained by listening to others, 2) intellectual, analytical understanding, and 3) wisdom based on direct personal experience. This essay primarily reflects my type 3 knowledge, but refers to other things that I understand at levels 1 and 2.

Footnotes
[1] I was a leader when I: listened deeply; raised concerns or questions in a way that created space for joint exploration of the issues; acted in a way that did not reflect a belief that I was separate from the group, yet took responsibility for my own thoughts, emotions and actions; when my efforts or behaviour encouraged others to be their best; and, where was respectful.
[2] I was not being a leader when I was: acting and thinking only of myself and my own ego; indecisive; incompetent; mis-represented the reality of the situation; and, assumed too much.
[3] Some of the characteristics they displayed were: discipline; patience; respect; commitment; trust; being primarily concerned with empowering others (and wanting to ‘push power down and out to the edges’), competence, humility, and being comfortable with an extended sense of their personal responsibility.
[4] These people showed: a drive to lead by example, the ability to let hand over decision-making power to their constituents, a desire to stand up for what they believed in, a capacity for self-relfection, no interest in taking credit for achievements of a group, the ability to recognized and help others ‘unwrap’ their potential (Muirhead, 2002), and being comfortable with learning from their mistakes.
[5] Such as: a strong sense of ethical or moral foundation, heightened awareness about self and group, thinking long-term, being responsible, courage and spirit, imagination and the ability to create, appreciation for uniqueness and diversity (of cultures, roles, styles), decisiveness, and being comfortable with paradox and mystery.
[6] For example: Senge(), Senge (), Brown and Isaacs (), Kahane (), Kofman and Senge (), and Waldron (2005), Jaworski ()
[7] My earlier personal development plans are headed with the words: Wisdom; Humility; Determination; Balance and Flexibility; Impermanence; Love; Interdependence; the moment; Quality; Sufficient; Habits; Awareness; Responsibility; Purity; and being Strategic
[8] The conversations and interactions gave me a deeper sense of: how important context is, and the how much it is possible to learn from every little action or situation; trust as a requirement for ongoing dialogue, respect and engagement (whether on an individual or group basis); the power in consciously aligning actions with one clear purpose or statement; the power in consciously envisioning the future, and the past (to learn from mistakes), some of the key characteristics of great, public figures that may be relevant to spreading the message and building support for sustainability (e.g. humility, allowing people to empathise with them, sharing their humanity); and recognising that we really do re-create the world everyday, and therefore how powerful it is when you can allow people to be empowered and believe that they can create a new world.

Transformation

I am being way slacker than I should be with this blog, but I think that way of prioritising things has shown up in my marks - I'm doing pretty well!

I felt confident about the basic ideas that have been introduced in this class, and just the last couple of weeks have had the time to go a little bit deeper. The group dynamics, and powerful personal learning experiences have all combined to mean there are a lot of spun out people walking around. I am having minor reveleations every second day as I start to see the way I relate to others, the relationships in the class, the nature of the sustainability challenge, and even the nature of reality, through new eyes.

Before I go into that more, a minor aside for some context. I have had a few 'revelations' during my life. All of varying magnitudes, and some of them repeatedly as I forget the amazing idea I had just a short time earlier. Then, when I sit down to write it down...find that I had already written it down three months ago. I told someone in my class about this, they suggested I 'reflect on that'. Hmmm. I might not have reflected much, but it did spur me on to update my 'learning journal' more often. Maybe I'll post that on here someday.

More context. Through my practice of Vipassana and my own life experience, I think there are a few different levels of understanding:1) wisdom gained by listening to others, 2) intellectual, analytical understanding, and 3) wisdom based on direct personal experience. The last one is what I want, where you have floods of strong emotions accompanying this deep learning that becomes part of your being, not just an idea in your head.

So, I have been having a few of these deep learning experiences lately, and love it. Well, love it most of the time. A diagram I found a while back helps explain why, although I love learning, it is not always fun: http://www.sustainablesonoma.org/keyconcepts/transformation.html To really deeply learn, often you have to let go. Really let go. And get dizzy and disorientated. Especially when you start getting into the fundamental interconnectedness of everything, questioning the existence of an 'independent self' and trying to think how that relates to what you do everyday.

This sort of thinking has been sparked by a week or so that we spent on 'leadership'. I read way too many articles, and much of what we were given to read spoke about the types of things I already aspired to practice and model. Lots of it was not about military-style leadership, or leadership in different contexts - thanks to Rick Finney for his assumption-exploding email on that topic. Most were more about how to have honest dialogue, meaningful conversations, servant leadership etc.

And, lots of it was bringing in quite a few ideas about recent learnings in many fields of science (esp physics and complexity), how we perceive ouselves in systems (society, organisation, universe), and relate them to the most effective way to bring about a 'transformation' - exactly what is required to shift from unsustainability to sustainability. For the easiest introduction to some of these ideas, I can recommend watching http://www.whatthebleep.com/, reading some of Fritjof Capra's books http://www.fritjofcapra.net/, or sitting quietly for a long time http://www.dhamma.org/ (This has been the best way for me to understand this stuff at 'Level 3' - see above). Actually a few people in my class are on a bit of a spiritual journey at the moment - taking on 'Ramadan' a month of fasting during daylight hours.

Revisiting many of my ideas and understanding new concepts has really helped my own personal awareness, strengthened my meditation practice, and allowed me to re-imagine my role in groups and in this class. It also opens me up to even more and deeper learning.

See my leadership essay for where I was at with this stuff yesterday: next blog.

Bravo!

Contact details in Sweden

So you can write me postcards, call and text me etc:

Rum 86, Minervavägen 22B
Karlskrona, Sweden
371-41

Mobile phone: +46 708 86 66 98

I'll be checking the post box every day, and should be checking my email everyday too now.