Free The Children Org

[Readers' Reactions]

Approaching the Breakpoint every aspect of life and work is undergoing profound change. Transformations taking place within the realm of leadership and power are much as John Naisbitt proclaimed in his book Global Paradox, "The bigger the world economy, the more powerful its smallest players".

Over the course of time, societies have gotten out of joint. The well-being of future generations, starting with our own, hangs in the balance. No one is more aware of the vast imbalances than the smallest players. Them that would be leaders, playing out Alvin Toffler's Power Shift, are breeding rapidly. Perhaps you are among their numbers?

Sir Isaac Newton's third law of motion states that "every action force and reaction force are equal and opposite". Failing economies, dispassionate institutions and collapsing social systems are propelling us into an Age Of Passion. Those passionate action forces which have brought us to the Breakpoint are about to be countered. Forged by the heat of decades of smoldering emotions, like mythological phoenixes emerging up out of ashen piles, new breed leaders applying passionate reaction forces of gifting, reciprocity, compassion and an overall concern for attaining sustainable futures are becoming the catalysts for change.

Expressed in a John Michael Montgomery song is an underlying mentality which separates these new breed leaders from those unlikely to remain beyond the societal breakpoint.

Life's a dance,
     You learn as you go.
Sometimes you lead, and
    Sometimes you follow.

It encourages me to know that even in following, there are ways in which I can still lead.

Leading Societal Change
Seven years back, a conscious decision I made to establish my leadership in societal change, initially conflicted with my perceived self-image of being a die-hard follower. An accounting of my life revealed the many times that I did lead - though not by conventional definitions.

• During my years of technical drafting and illustrating, doing whatever I could to insure my employers' or clients' projects were completed with accuracy and cost efficiency, I displayed those qualities given to servant leaders.
• My three young adult children, who display the highest caliber of gentle moral fiber and compassion, are amongst those voices who will attest to my steward leadership skills.
• My thought leadership skills emerged along with a driven determination to offer up alternatives for world-views that ignore societal bottom-lines and place all of humanity at risk.

Aligning my latent leadership skills to those of the new breed of leaders I found the confidence to take on the challenges of affecting change. Now seven years later, though not considered a stellar success, I am none-the-less a recognized Catalyst 4 Change, serving and stewarding partnerships of fused personal visions, professional missions and community sustainability. That DreamTEAMS International mission statement was intentionally formulated knowing that in taking part in catalysing societal change I would have to sometimes lead and other times follow, learning as I danced. So it will need to be for anyone else passionate about our future well-being.

An Essence Of The New Breed of Leaders
My first recognition for being a new breed leader came a year ago when Tom Heuerman of a More Natural Way invited me to submit something for possible publication in his New Leaders Project. Regretably my Healing Fragmented Communities manifesto was too focussed on leading change from within society rather than from within an existing organization. Therefore, it never made it into his "Twelve Principles for Leaders: From Machine To Human Being" manuscript.

Every month Tom emails out to subscribers, inspiring tales of management leaders learning the new dance of organizational change. Duplicating one such story on my website - Wandering: Spiritual Journeys Into Our Being - was amongst my first virtual efforts of servant leadership.

I had hoped for Tom's direct contribution to this month's article, however as I was just starting to formulate my thought-lines, he emailed me of his inavailabilty. A few day later, the second of Tom's New Leaders series on higher-level leadership arrived in my email. Humble Warriors introduction beautifully enhanced a thought-line. It saved me from struggling to capture an essence of new breed leaders in light of today's realities and tomorrow's challenges.

[N]ew leaders are humble. Humility is not wimpy, is not weakness, is not touchy-feely, and is not the denial of our wants and needs. Humility is not the absence of pride and confidence or the refusal to strive to be better. Humility is not passive or the withdrawal from the affairs of life. Humility is a state of being that comes from the internalization and total acceptance, to the core of our souls, that we are essentially powerless. What aware person (leader or not), in today’s world, can think he or she is in control? With humility we can cease being obstacles to creativity and can align ourselves with the greater natural processes of life. We assume our small and integral roles in the reorganization of life that is now happening.

Children As Leaders
I once heard it said that as soon as you know you have humility, you have lost it. That should not prevent older generations however, from finding the humility needed to accept children into the circles of leadership. Don Tapscott's book Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation presents 4 scenarios likely to be played out in the coming years. The most desirable scenario calls for a greater consideration of children's role in society. After all, aside from emerging technologies being second nature to them, they have the strongest propensity for ignoring the mental and creative restraints experienced by previous generations. The Overriding The Autopilot and Cultural Creativity and Social Innovation articles progressively addressed this latter point insisting that meeting the future challenges before us will take all the creativity we can muster.

(At the time of this writing, Tapscott's www.growingupdigital.com website was undergoing a redesign.)

Amongst the biblical predictions for the end of times - the Breakpoint? - it is written that, "a child shall lead them." Although the phrase is usually taken to refer to a physical messiah, might it not reflect one shift in societal norms that will define a Messianic Era? Heaven knows the many Dot.coms witnessing child leaders sharing the limelight with our more educated and seasoned elders. This article's lead quote would seem to suggest that even our political leaders are frustratingly seeking guidance and direction. If only they learned more to follow our children's lead.

A Servant and Steward Child Leader

The latest update directly from info@freethechildren.com is that "the young people learned that education is the best way to empower children, end the exploitation of children and child labor. Over the past three years these young people have raised money to build 300 schools in the 14 countries of the developing world and shipped more than 40,000 school and health kits to their peers. They have helped to set up alternative income projects for families to [help] free children from child labor. Free The Children continues to be spokespersons for children's rights."

Since that fateful day in New Delhi India when he first upstaged the Prime Minister of Canada, Craig has been called upon to advise the leaders of governments and multinational corporations. He has become a regular at the annual Davos Switzerland forum on global economic development. Within a few days of being lead by this 12 year-old, Jean Chretien took the unprecedented step of suggesting that Canada initiate a boycott of rugs made with child labor. Under the plan called Rugmark, manufacturers would put a special label on carpets not produced with child labor. (See 'Canadian Teen Upstages Chretien' for the full story.)

Thought Leaders
I doubt that I can bring to the entrepreneurial mind as much insight on thought leadership as I first did in writing An Evolution of Human Convergences (Seen, Feb. 2001). To ensure a greater clarity however, there is a specific thought-line that I wish to pursue.

One of the most prominent thought leaders of the French Revolution was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The introductory words to his renowned Social Contract treatise hold staggering, modern relevance to that driving counterforce which is leading us into and through the impending Breakpoint.

"Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains."

And what about those "greater natural processes in life" Tom mentioned in his Humble Warriors? They involve IONs - Individuals, Organizations, and Networks - being a part of the whole - not expressly at the center of it. The integrity of those processes breaks down in the absence of that leader/follower interchange. The nature of the Internet and the IONs utilizing it, embrace and replicate these critical natural processes.

Just Who is Following Whom?
Evolving Internet technologies by which we are connecting, are playing empowering roles in redefining our societies. We are becoming more aware of our place in the grander scheme of things. The Internet is strengthening voices that until recently, had few ears to hear what is being said. More importantly, what needs to be said was being heard and acted upon!

An interchange of leader/follower role playing is forever taking place in cyberspaces where members Socratically hash out various aspects of this next evolutionary phase in our human development. These C4C articles are becoming rooted in those interchanges.

Dwayne Cox of CoachUniverse, followed my lead in initiating the C4C Panel listserv. His participation in turn enabled me to serve Dwayne. Making suggestions for corrections to an article that was then under development, he lead me into learning some of the finer points of MS Word. Following Dwayne's C4C interview, he again took the lead to initiate the Champions For Change Panel where he had thought my aspirations for having these articles socially written by anyone wishing to participate might be realized.

A couple of month's later, Denham Grey of Grey Matter invited the members of a listserv of which we both belonged, to play around and experiment in the same open-source environment Dwayne had set up the Champions For Change Panel. In wishing to start co-generating these articles within Champions, I put my hesitations and insecurities aside to follow Denham's lead.

After learning more about using wiki webpages, I invited the same listserv members to consider contributing to the article I was composing. Next thing I knew Denham followed me, emailing his reaction to Overriding The Autopilot. Sending him my thanks, I expressed my desire for putting the Champions page to work. I suggested that given his familiarity with the open-source environment, he might quickly translate the current draft into it. Next thing I knew, there it was - up and ready. Despite his workload, Denham had taken the time to serve my needs. Within a day of having the Cultural Creativity and Social Innovation article set up at the Champions For Change Panel webpage, someone had left behind his reaction to the article. Perhaps by the time you read this, the next article for Globalization will be under way. We hope that you consider joining the dance.

In a recent related development, Flemming Funch, a driving force behind one of the largest, most popular resource websites for cultural creatives, and one of C4C's first personalities to be interviewed, served our needs for having a place to archive and index the C4C articles.

Life's A Dance . . .
Our dancing partners will contantly change. Some will step on our toes, and some will sweep us off our feet. Whether or not we like the music, it will continue to play on as always.

The dynamics of our societies are forever changing. From all reports, they are doing so in ways unfamiliar to us. Apparently, we have little choice but to learn as we go. If your future well-being is of any concern, then like Lee Ann Womack so melodiously invites:

"I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance. Never settle for the path of least resistance . . . when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, dance. I hope you dance."

We too, all hope you will dance - sometimes leading with humility and sometimes following with grace - for our societies do so desperately need to change.

I agree wholeheartedly with the aspect of humility in leaders. Humility allows us to transcend the illusions of having power and control on which our minds and ego have become so fixated. It assumes that the universe is a friendly place, and that if we learn to act in service of life, the universe will use our abilities for the betterment of everyone. Through humility, we gain an orientation of self-transcendence towards life that allows our conscious perception of meaning and value in life to continually deepen. We begin to let go of our attachments to outmoded ideologies, and see life more as it truly is. This new perception reinforces our humility, as we become clearly aware that we of ourselves do nothing; that only through and with others and life does true growth and progress happen.

Humility teaches us that life knows better.

Jonathan Reams: co-founder of the Institute for Transformative Leadership
info@transform.bc.ca

See also:
      Jonathan Reams Interview, or
      Reaction to Vocation: Your Life's Autopilot.

Your current article hits many hot spots I am zealous about. It offers links to some of the bookmarks I treasure most.

However I'm not sure that new leaders are humble; the problem being that they as gods of passion, select when and when not to be humble because leadership must magnetise at the core.

If the leader of a company is passionately in the business of we will be best in the world at providing our customers with X, that leader will need humility in the sense of getting anyone who has relevant skills or customer clues to take the lead and communalise the relevant practice. At the same time that leader has got to be like a god of wrath whenever he sees someone off focus who is leading people astray from the mission. Organisational systems theory shows that human beings are always prone to do so out of egotism, arrogance, short-sightedness or ignorance of who the real customers are.

UK professor David Weir, demonstrated that from the day an organisational system has been put in place, unless leadership relentlessly cares for it, it will start degrading over time due to its potential weakest (human) links. And it is my guess that leadership constantly crusading for one human cause - especially in these revolutionary times of shaping our internet working age - calls for passionate encouragement of sincere work, and a wrath for those who start usurping the cause for their own ends - not humility.

chris macrae - http://www.normanmacrae.com
CBO Association,
Founding Group http://www.egroups.com/group/melnet2

http://For-Legacies-Sake.ca