Evolution's Ghost

Talking about Leadership as spoken about by Erhard ... 

I quoted him as saying, "Leaders do not act from a plan, but plan from their action. The planning is really a conversation which gives other people access to the possibility to which you are committed."  The following is my latest post to a circle of interested systemic thinkers which as a conversation is based on this quote by Erhard:

Apologies for not responding sooner, I was otherwise occupied with a severe health issue which seems to be ebbing with a proper recovery now better each day. So many divergent angles and interpretations, exciting; and all very good observations. I've become accustomed to Erhard speaking with about as rigorous a commitment to revealing the exact distinction desired that I ever recall or know of. However, this one as some have pointed out seem to be taken out of context and in the act some damage has done to what ordinarily one always finds in Werner's work and that is an equal attention given to context. I'm going to take some liberty here to extend some substance for the purposes of this conversation directly into seeing the context for now as a model for leading others. I recall years ago when he firsts began the est training his rather unsophisticated  statement on leadership took the form of: A leader is the guy at the front of the line. So, if you want to be a leader in life, go to the front of the line.

Hard to argue with then but within the context of systems thinking, with such magnificient ideas and notions such as attractors for instance, but otherwise founded on principles we have forged over the years and now come to depend on as matter of fact as part of the quiver of anyone who is seen as a true modern leader of in life. For instance innovation ... going to the front of the line is the act of a bully not an innovator.

The quote for me is a comment about the paradigm of leadership which is possible and emergent today. The first context which appears for me in his quote is that leadership is an ontological reality one must come to terms with first in order to understand the possibilities or as Werner would put it the possibility of possibilities within leadership as it shows up for us in our experience moment to moment and not as collection of notions with correlating data and "science" organized for someone's new attempt at a doctorate. So, it is with Werner that his work and his expression of that work while providing for mastery in the world of phenomena really is focused in the world of ontology.

Peeling away a layer now to say a little about what he seems to be saying ... leadership opens possibilities actively by contextualizing their views of possibiiliteis relative to job at hand by engaging with what is not being listened to in their conversations about what by  default gets to be effective prescriptions but stale and static compositions. Keeping this awareness for its own sake produces an opening in conversation for the SYSTEM (all those involved or desired to be involved) access and be accessed together as a conversation which is an evolution over the notion of someone pointing with everyone else following that given mandate. He's transformed the ACT of leading into a conversation in which everyone's lead is accessible and lightening can strike at any point or moment in time.

Time to take a breath and ponder how much resistance may show up over the suggestion that in the paradigm being presented on leadership, the old sructure of following another is no longer relevant or operational. For myself, I see it as master stroke, resolving so much of the noise and clangor that went along with the real time missions aimed at making systemic change, through managerial input. All that is tranformed in the individual's perception with his being recognized as the real attractor, one that together with the rest ontologically speaking is the systemic underpinning accerssible to leadership and the only one really that counts when thinking about this sytemically.
yes? no? maybe?