By
Leadership is a word that holds great yearning. We wait for it. We wish for it. We study it and keep our fingers crossed that it comes our way. But good leadership in twenty-five years won't be different from what it is right now, or from what it was 2,500 years ago. It is right in front of us, ready for us to see. There is an ordinary quality to it. Leadership is ours when we choose to practice it. Though the activity of leadership may not be easy, its essence is simple and pure. Leadership is about being present.
Being present involves seeing deeply into things as they are, becoming adept at reading complex contexts, and developing an instinct for when and how to raise difficult questions. Especially when our attention is directed to public life, being present requires "inner work"—reflective space to cultivate equanimity in the midst of competing demands, and to keep distractions at bay. Inner work allows us to hone an instinct for when to go against the grain, how to pace the turbulence, and how to defy expectations in healthy ways that build adaptive capacity in groups, institutions, and social systems. This is sobering work, yet there is also great freedom in learning to take this kind of responsibility.
Who could possibly know what our circumstances will be in twenty-five years? Life is giving us constant clues right now about how we must adapt. But I do have hunches about what we may face a quarter- century from now.
I believe that the truth of our interdependence will no longer be avoidable. We will encounter increasing complexity in every direction. Daily life will continually confront us with difficult issues of diversity and value conflicts. And the principles and practices of sustainability will no longer be the purview of a few. Sustainability will be the core necessity and context of life for all of us.
So, what we will need are people who can exercise unglamorous, garden-variety leadership in multiple directions to help us reexamine our values, learn new habits, and find new ways of doing business.
Leadership can help us do these things by fostering collective learning. Skillful leadership mobilizes people to learn their way to the next stage of adaptation. The learning process itself, which is inherently improvisational and experiential, builds the self-reliance and resilience of the group. Leadership calls us to common purpose so we can create what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks calls "fellowships of joint responsibility." In dealing with differences, the leadership art is to become an excellent "border crosser," to help all of us simultaneously become more fully who we are, and at the same time, build a bigger "we."
Leadership can also help by teaching us to dive into the difficult. Leadership is about learning to work productively with value conflicts, and to see them as central resources in the problem-solving process. It requires much patience and courage. The art of leadership is cutting through complexity in order to locate what is simple, clear, integrative, and unifying.
Finally, leadership can help us find satisfaction and staying power in "just doing the work." We are all being called to practice interdependence, to commit ourselves to something far larger than our individual lives. If we accept the call and engage in the practice and pay attention, we are bound to cultivate insight along the way. And if we develop a little wisdom, it will come from the ordinary, daily quality of our common commitment. Although this leadership work is urgent and uncertain, it may bring us the hopeful joy that comes from living in "the homeland of interwoven pronouns," as Mexican poet Octavio Paz called it—the place "where I am you are us."
