Original Source
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Review: A Double Bill with Peter Senge, et al.:

Society for Organizational Learning's Foundation of Leadership Program & Presencing
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by Roumiana Gotseva-Yordanova

I was fortunate to attend the Society for Organizational Learning's Foundations of Leadership program, facilitated by Peter Senge and Robert Hanig in May this year, which started me off on a transformational sequence through the summer. Followed by Presence (Peter Senge, Otto C. Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers, SoL, March 2004), this double bill in personal and collective purposefulness and connectedness has been inspiring, insightful, and, I'd venture to say, life-changing.
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Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers, SoL, March 2004

I'm tempted to say that Presence is one of the most compelling books I've read in quite a while, but that's just me. Without doubt, its impact was compounded by having experienced the Leadership workshop discussed below.
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To place it in the context of familiar language, the book explores issues such as synchronicity as it relates to individual commitment, and flow as a group phenomenon. Based on more than 150 interviews with leaders in all walks of life, the book merges these accounts with a process of making sense of them and of the individual experiences of the four authors - a process that took place between November 2000 and April 2002.
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It starts with a fundamental question: "What would it take to shift the whole?" It furthers the theory of deep collective learning, which `"starts with learning to see, moves on to opening a new awareness of what is emerging and our part in it, and finally leads to action that spontaneously serves and is supported by a larger whole." The book concludes with a section that locates this deeper learning within a framework of "a more integrative science, spirituality, and practice of leadership."
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The Theory of U:

"Sensing and actualizing new realities prior to their emerging"

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1. Sensing: The capacity to suspend, the courage to see freshly, seeing from the whole, seeing with the heart. Quieting the mind. Avoiding knee-jerk reactions to problems, distancing yourself from the problem. Redirecting attention.
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2. Presencing: Into the silence, reaching a state of clarity to what is emerging, an inner knowing that is quite the opposite of decision-making. "What to do just becomes obvious". Presencing is seeing from the deepest source and becoming a vehicle for that source. "When we suspend and redirect attention, perception starts to arise from within the living process of the whole". "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" - at the bottom of the U lies a sort of inner gate which requires us to drop the baggage we've acquired on our journey: letting go and letting come.
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3. Realizing: Moving up the U is about the creative process, bringing something new into reality. This comes from a source that is deeper than the rational mind. "If you have to think in the martial arts, you're dead," says Brian Arthur. In the words of another interviewee: "It's almost as if I'm watching myself in action. I'm both engaged and simultaneously detached. When that happens, I know there will be magic". As a final note, my only concern with Presence and the Theory of U is with the idea of `a future' that wants to emerge, reminiscent of the grand narratives of a not-too-distant past. At times referred to as "sensing and actualizing new realities prior to their emerging", `a future', in the singular, connotes a degree of determinism combined with an external (cosmic) locus of evolutionary logic which counters much of the social constructivist thinking that appears to be an integral part of the theoretical framework. And this is how I understand the book: a cornucopia of discourses, from romantic `deep interiors' - the home of vision and passion and spirit, to interrelated mind and world (`the implicate order'), a touch of ancient mysticism, a revision of systems thinking with its underlying limitations in relation to large system complexity, a modernist sensibility of human intentionality and choice, to the social construction of our realities through language. The narrative however is sincere, hopeful, and warmly intimate - we, too, are sitting in the study of Otto's home on Maple Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, listening in on the conversations, drawing upon the same thematic resources that seem to illuminate the issue at hand. One might argue that the skillful blending of (at times conflicting) discourses is not accidental; indeed, it can be considered strategic, for regardless of one's beliefs, one would likely find an anchor in Presence to justify and rationalize the need for a major shift in today's world. Something most definitely needs to change, and it doesn't matter where we come from as long as we connect at this intersection.
   
   

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Foundations for Leadership

The three-day workshop in Cambridge, MA, started with a discussion on the principles of participation: the realization that alignment in the group is something already there that one evokes in a deep way because people care about similar things. All one has to do is bring it out. When people stick to the principles of being present, being open, being engaged and being responsible, they tend to naturally align with one another. In the three short days that followed, our group experienced an intellectual and spiritual journey that taught us the deep meaning of those principles, illuminated through meditative exercises and small group work, and interspersed with anecdotes that became wonderfully alive through the empathetic storytelling of our gifted facilitators.
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Reconvening at the final session in a circle, with our hopes fully exposed, masks down and vulnerabilities out in the open, ending thoughts and impressions were offered. Looking back now, they added up to nothing less than the larger Principles of Participation as they apply to life itself. And that, in my book, is what true leadership is about. Peter Senge is quick to mention early on that the workshop is about expanding and fine-tuning our understanding of various ideas, making subtle distinctions and cultivating new ways of behaving rather than about new content. All the content employed has already been covered in The Fifth Discipline. The value of the program is in helping attendees internalize the insights generated by studying the ideas of the learning organization; i.e. with the `how' of learning and change, which is all about practice. In his words, "The single biggest flaw in failed efforts is a lack of an ongoing commitment to practice."
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After spending the bulk of our time learning practices to enhance our innate learning capabilities, and having articulated, developed, shared, and embodied our personal visions, the program ends with a surprising and hopeful distinction. There are two ways to think about visions; two general orientations: the first is best described in terms of ownership and protectiveness - "your" vision. The second is where you belong to your vision - you are the custodian or channel for the vision that is larger than yourself. For most of us, the distinction proved crucial during the meditative exercise that followed - people seem naturally inclined to aspire to visions they believe are shared by others, and to serve in their attainment. Importantly, cultivating a capacity for relationship and an appreciation of the greatness in others helps us understand how our most powerful `personal' visions are actually quite universal.
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I'd seriously recommend the Foundations of Leadership program to everyone interested in exploring and practicing the disciplines of organizational learning in depth, and generally to anyone feeling the pull of a certain preferred future and the tug of constraining beliefs. What Peter Senge and Robert Hanig achieve in such a short span of time most certainly takes months and years for people to resolve on their own, if ever. I went away with a sense of heightened self-awareness, the `permission' to dream, purposeful and deeply connected with others in the most abstract.