The Balcony Channel: Leadership by Changing a Group's Channel of Awareness

by Elmer S Soriano

Developing leaders requires not just the buildup of their toolkit or competencies, but  also shifting their Level of Consciousness (O'Brian, 2016; Scharmer 20__). The next challenge is explaining these concepts to an audience that did not have college education. 

I attempted to translate the concepts by likening them to channels on cable TV, pointing out the different units of analyses provided by the different channels.

Channel 1: The Selfie Channel - The percieving the world thru one's own self-centered worldview.
Channel 2: The Discovery/Science Channel - Interpreting the world primarily through science.
Channel 3: The Oprah/Empathy Channel - Interpreting the world through the Other person's worldview
Channel 4: The Balcony/Reality TV Director's Channel - Interpreting the world by observing emergence.


http://www.ottoscharmer.com/sites/default/files/2000_Presencing.pdf
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/27112706/OBRIEN-DISSERTATION-2016.pdf?sequence=1

Leadership, Presencing, and That Thing Called Tadhana

by Elmer S Soriano

"Tadhana" is an old Filipino word that means fate or nature. Recently, the 2014 romatic comedy movie That Thing Called Tadhana made the term fresh and popular again. These days, tadhana connotes recognition of an emerging future and the need to move past old feelings, memories, and prisons (as Scharmer would call them) and operate from an openness to one's highest positive tadhana.

Which makes "tadhana" resemble "presencing". According to Scharmer, presencing means:

"liberating one’s perception from the “prison” of the past and then letting it operate from the field of the future. This means that you literally shift the place from which your perception operates to another vantage point. In practical terms, presencing means that you link yourself in a very real way with your “highest future possibility” and that you let it come into the present. Presencing is always relevant when past-driven reality no longer brings you forward, and when you have the feeling that you have to begin again on a completely new footing in order to progress...I use the presencing approach to facilitate profound innovation and change processes both within companies and across societal systems."

http://www.ottoscharmer.com/sites/default/files/2002_ScharmerInterview_us.pdf

Now it might seem a stretch to liken a theory of social evolution with a romantic comedy theme, but then again, the intention is to popularize the understanding of leadership theories by looking for similar terms in the vernacular. In the movie, the girl struggles to liberate herself from her attachment to her past boyfriend. The boy journeys with her and challenges her to open herself up to the emerging future, instead of clinging to the past.

In societies burdened by class structures, marginalization of the poor, leaders need to similarly invite others to open themselves to get past their history and perhaps even identities anchored on poverty.

The video below shows how a social worker Jo Mateo uses stories to invite poor farmers to work toward a more liberating tadhana narrative. Through her story, she articulates how structural barriers and social exclusion are realities which will perpetuate poverty (choosing karit scenario), and how responding/pursuing a positive tadhana (choosing panulat) allows poor farmers to liberate themselves from poverty, first through their dreams, and then through their daily actions choosing (presencing) to respond to the call of their preferred tadhana.

Image credits: https://presencing.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Screen%20Shot%202013-11-04%20at%203.37.04%20PM.png?itok=38580jfY

Leadership as Ripening and Chunking

by Elmer S Soriano

“Rushing into action, you fail.

Trying to grasp things, you lose them.

Forcing a project to completion,

you ruin what was almost ripe.

Therefore the Master takes action

by letting things take their course.

He remains as calm at the end 

as at the beginning...

He simply reminds people

of who they have always been...” 

― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Lao Tzu seems to have been describing "chunking" and "ripening".

Chunking or chunk formation is a concept from the learning sciences that has wide applicability in the leadership sciences.

What is chunking?
'Chunking' refers to organizing or grouping separate pieces of information together. When information is 'chunked' into groups, you can remember the information easier by remembering the groups as opposed to each piece of information separately. The types of groups can also act as a cue to help you remember what is in each group. 

How to chunk information
There are several ways to chunk information. Chunking techniques include grouping, finding patterns, and organizing. The technique you use to chunk will depend on the information you are chunking. Sometimes more than one technique will be possible but with some practice and insight it will be possible to determine which technique will work best for you.
Source: http://www.skillstoolbox.com/career-and-education-skills/learning-skills/effective-learning-strategies/chunking/

Chunking has something to do with synapses and short-term memory at the neurophysiologic level, and has a lot to do with individual and group cognition from the leadership perspective.

At the group cognition level, Heifetz cites Fisher (1980) on Small Group Dynamics , and uses the term "ripening the issue" as another way of describing the emergent and collective chunking.

An issue is ripe when the urgency to deal with it has been generalized across the system. If only a subgroup or faction cares passionately, but most other groups in the system have other priorities in their mind, then the issue is not yet ripe. Determining ripeness is critical because a strategy of intervention to ripen an issue that is only localized is different from a strategy to deal with a ripe issue that is already generalized. (Heifetz, 2009) 

The Art of Hosting, Deep Dive for Design Thinking, and booksprint are forms of generative dialogue that facilitate the emergence of individual and group chunks within groups. The 1957 movie 12 Angry Men is an excellent learning resource for learning the emergent dynamics of chunking and ripening.

Sources:

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World by Ronald Abadian Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, Martin Linsky p.126

http://thenewagemovement.com/main/wp-content/uploads/Heifetz.NotesOnGroupDynamics.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxLHWgQ0cHk
Fisher, R. Aubrey, Small Group Decision Making, 2nd Edition,   McGraw‐Hill 1980
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