Co-creating Mutual Relationships Otto Sharmer, Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and author of Theory U: Leading from the Emerging Future As It Emerges (2016), defines three major divides or disconnections that underpin the systemic imbalance of our time: • • •
our personal and systemic disconnection to the natural world and the capacity of the planet to support human survival; the divide between the individual and community (local and wider) and the growing disparity in social equality and distribution of wealth; the disconnection we feel as individuals between what matters to us and our wellbeing, and the behaviours and values that we enact in our personal and working lives which support a dysfunctional system.
In their book about 21st century leadership competencies, Dancing on the Edge, Graham Leicester and Maureen O’Hara write: “In the operating conditions of the 21st century it is impossible to be competent alone. Competence is a function of culture, which is a function of relationship. This is not only a plea for attention to teamwork, collaboration and other competencies relating to an individual’s performance in group settings. It is a deeper acknowledgement that we create our own lives in a pattern of relationship with other lives, and always have done.”28 Resilience, then, as well as the creative pursuit of designing a better system, is relational. There is acknowledgement in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals that to overcome the complex and interconnected challenges we are faced with to create a stable and equitable society, epitomised by Sharmer’s three major divides, collaboration and partnership across organisations, disciplines and cultures is critical. The evidence for it is clear. The Paris Agreement, the world’s first unanimous global agreement on climate change, reached in December 2015, was forged by new process of “collaborative diplomacy”, demonstrating that it is at the intersection of government, business, civic society and culture that transformative change, and resilience, is achieved. (What has happened since is an unfortunate example of how consistency is required to make new cultures stick and evolve.) Embracing vulnerability was a source of more meaningful and authentic relationships within teams and outside of the workplace amongst several interviewees, and more productive collaborations. It was associated with distributing power, flattening hierarchy, and empowering people to co-create and co-lead the organisation towards a shared vision, rather the vision of a single individual. Relationships with colleagues, board members, audiences, project participants, and people who shared the same passion and interests were a huge source of courage for contributors. By embracing vulnerability, leaders (and remember, leadership isn’t necessarily hierarchical in the cultural sector) made the following possible: Sharing personal challenges – with trusted colleagues or collaborators to help manage the implications better. For example, Jo Verrent (Unlimited) spoke about how telling her team when she was feeling unwell helped them manage their expectations and responses to changes in her behaviour
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Leicester, Graham and Maureen O'Hara. Dancing at the Edge: Competence, Culture and Organisation in the 21st Century. 2012
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