7/31 – Creativity, Consciousness, and Leadership: Coronavirus and Beyond

Dear readers,

Many thanks for tuning in to the July 2020 issue of ILR. I daresay, we have a great issue to share. The overall theme of this issue is Creativity, Consciousness and Leadership: Coronavirus and Beyond. Most of the articles in this issue address, either directly or indirectly, the following from our Call for Papers.

“How do we ‘do leadership’ in a pandemic? How is humanity to adapt to this new post-normal, VUCA, wicked, and complex reality that we find ourselves in? Coronavirus is only the beginning of an increasing cascade of complex, interlocking, existential threats to life as we know it. Is this an evolutionary moment of punctuated equilibrium, where humanity as a whole evolves from the cocoon we are in? Will the imaginal cells unite and be heard, calling in a new way of being and relating, or is this the beginning of the next dark ages?”

These are not questions to be answered, so much as a guidepost to the pressure and portent of the civilizational scale dangers and opportunities before us. Regenerative solutions to healing the social, environmental, and spiritual wounds wrought by unhealed personal, familial, cultural, and national shadow. Much of this work is done with other people, on a local level, with one’s hands in the dirt, figuratively and literally. Some of it, though, is academic. With that, I give you the July 2020 issue of Integral Leadership Review.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Alfonso Montouri interviews Scott Barry Kauffman, humanist psychologist and recent author of Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization. Scott shares how he came to appreciate Maslow’s work and revivify it for the 21st century, Riffs with Alfonso on science fiction and utopia, and explores the leadership role of the public intellectual today. 

Starting off the feature articles is Sue L. T . McGregor’s Transdisciplinary Logics of Complexity, her third on Nicolescu, following up on her 2011 papers on his axiology and logic. These three papers are a brilliant summary and introduction to Basarab Nicolescu’s transdisciplinarity!

Jaap Geerlof presents Corona-Crisis Exposes the Need for Transformative Leadership. Jaap writes, “The emerging fluid, complex, and networked structure of society necessitates a humble, collaborative leadership…. and a new set of leadership competencies.”

Eugene Pustoshkin presents a fascinating riff on going meta-aware with On Apocalyptic Hyperobjects, Current Riots in our Westworld, and the Integral Meditation Practice to Cultivate Meta-Awareness.

Tracy Cooper, in The Undervalued Creative Thinking Aspect of Criticality in Online Graduate Education, highlights the importance of creative criticality for the long-term potential of creative thinkers in their fields.

In Coronavirus Strain COVID-19 From Multiple Perspectives, Daryl S. Paulson offers a four-quadrant analysis of the pandemic. In doing so, he hopes that the path forward is one where we don’t work to solve the crisis in separated silos but integratively.

R. Mark Bell offers new refinement to the instruments of toxic leadership and followership measurement in Toxic Leadership and Followership Typologies: A Partial Replication Study with Scale Refinement. 

In Business Agility, Michael Morrow-Fox and Maureen Metcalf provide dynamic operating principles for making businesses disruption resistant. 

Dena Michele Rosko presents Pandemia as Limensphere: Placemaking via Collective Validation, Storied Systems Design, & Spiritual Co-Action for a Health System with an Economics of Heritage for All. Dena masterfully weaves a pathway for integral leadership during a global pandemic. 

In What Lyme Disease Patients Teach us About Living in a COVID-19 World, Anna Frost shares how Lime disease patients are “excellent authorities on dealing with a zoonotic disease with many unknowns and uncertainties.” 

Melita Balas Rant presents Evolutionary regularities of the “act of giving” across neo-Piagetian adult development stages and the transformative power of contemplative prayer. She writes that, “since the transition from one stage to another is a very long-term process imbued by a sense of… inner turmoil,” how might contemplative practice of prayer assist during this interim period?

Emerging Scholar Linda Lilian brilliantly debuts on ILR with To Woman or Man Up for Leadership: The Case of the Uganda Parliament, and Self Led Leadership for Self and the Other.

Starting off our Notes from the Field section, co-authors Kurt Johnson, Robert Atkinson, Diane Marie Williams and Deborah Moldow share choice perspectives from the book that offer us hope and emboldened, evolutionary clarity for the future in Our Moment of Choice: A New Book by the Evolutionary Leaders Community Suggests Integral Solutions for an Integral World.

Eugene Pustoshkin shares exciting developments in The Current State of Integral in Russia, including the translated edition of Trump in a Post-Truth World.

In Review of IEC 2020 Online, Tom Habib brings us highlights and shared reflections from the virtual conference. 

Brooke Linn presents a Book Review of Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakeable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness by Rick Hanson.

Finally, for our Leadership Coaching Tip Anouk Brack shares a crystal clear leadership praxis in Leadership, Development – Three Dimensions of Skill, Stage, State.

We also have a couple of announcements. First of all, Natasha and I are very pleased, and beyond grateful to be adding Jeremy Johnson as an Editor at ILR. Without his hard work, this would be the November 2020 issue! Also, if you haven’t already, be sure to signup for the Integral European Conference Newsletter, and get free access to the top 25 talks at the recent Online Integral European Conference!  

Stay safe and be healthy.

Many blessings,

Eric, Natasha, and Jeremy