Irupé Niveyro
Picture yourself as an artist. Imagine your creative process. You begin with a blank piece of paper before you. You visualize your work, then set out to materialize it in colors.
In the mist of your enthusiastic activity, artists walk into your studio and add to the process. They've come to collaborate, to add to your work in a constructive way. They add some strokes, some colors. They might even modify the essence of what you had started with.
How would that make you feel?
Close your eyes and be honest. What you are feeling might approximate your natural or learned tendency for inclusivity and collaboration.
If you were the artist arriving unexpectedly to collaborate on someone else's work, how would that make you feel? And would you take that into account during the collaboration?
This is an observation exercise I undertook some years ago, and it was enlightening for me. I became clearly conscious of the fact that I was not receptive of contributions that did not align with an image or plan I had in mind.
And I was surprised to find people and groups next to me that were happy with the unexpected results! They'd actually enjoyed the different contributions and had the capacity to welcome the differences and build on them with deeply open attitude—with curiosity and eyes filled with wonder.
Their joy was inspiring. Could I develop that capacity too? Could anyone do it? Who would want to do it?
That insight and the questions it sparked burned in me—and opened many more questions and paths. After this experience, I felt an important twist in my approach to work, life, processes, and relationships. It helped me develop a concept I've been elaborating and would like to share in this chapter: inclusive awareness.
As individuals, as teams, as organizations, and as a society, we face challenges that cannot be understood much less solved by any one particular actor working at any level. We're seeing situations that most of us don't want—situations that definitely don't work. And yet there they are. You name it: climate change, terrorism, violence, poverty, depression. Tackling these issues in our everyday work requires help from others.
But most of us have been raised and live in a way that emphasizes individual effort and results over collective action. When we do appeal to concepts like "team" and "teamwork," we think of them as something external, something subsequent to individual actions.
Individuals with different, competing ideas "agree on" a course of action and "add to" each other's ideas, abilities, strengths, etc. We rarely think about beginning with the collective. We think in terms of individual emotions, wills, and intentions, and when we try to shift our thinking . . . well, it gets a bit fuzzy.
Luckily, organizations and communities are starting to open up, looking at situations in a more collaborative way. As a result, they're developing inclusive awareness.
"Inclusive awareness" refers to the capability that surprised me so much: the ability to be open to different contributions and to differences in thought, emotion, or action from the people in one's environment. Applied to leadership, it refers to a leader's ability to creates spaces in which exploration is safe and worthwhile, where different views and perspectives can intersect, where a common purpose is clear, and where collaborative solutions for significant challenges can be built.
It requires not only an open mind, but also an open heart and an open will.
Let's try to clarify a bit.
Generally, we relate to one another at a logical, rational level—the realm of thought and mind. We can be relating with either an "I know that already" prejudice, or from an open attitude of curiosity: "Wow, look at that! I want to know more about it." The second approach is what I'd call having an open mind.
Our feelings and emotions are also part of the way in which we relate.
We might have an attitude of fear or anger related to what we are sharing with someone. Or we might experience a great deal of compassion towards someone or something: "I connect to what you feel. I am OK with it. Thank you for sharing." The second approach is what I'd call having an open heart.
Every once in a while, we reach a state of communion, a place where the relationship stands connected with something larger than us—larger than "me" and larger than "you." We might let that relationship transform us, transform the conversation, and transform the motivations we bring to a project, idea, or work. Often this state and attitude reflect on who we're interacting with, and it in turn transforms them. The results of the interaction are completely innovative and unexpected.[^leadership-blind-spot] The courage to let that communion transform us is what I'd call an open will.
These three shifts in attitude are key to developing inclusive awareness, which enables others to bring their entire selves—their thoughts, their emotions, and their intentions—into a situation. And it is the quality we need to develop in open leaders if we wish to inspire and convene the talent we need in our teams.
So, as a leader (or an artist), why would you adopt inclusive awareness?
If you've experienced the joy of the creating something in an open way, this might be a reason powerful enough to develop inclusive awareness.
This was my case after seeing it in others. In fact, open values such as collaboration, adaptability, or community cannot exist without this base value of inclusivity (see Appendix)
Additionally, though, inclusive awareness can have an enormous impact on the way a team operates, the commitments the team members have, and the outputs the team produces.
Team members that have achieved inclusive awareness are involved deeply in what they do and the organizations they collaborate with; they can express and develop their full potential. This is a differentiator organizations and leaders need to work on as they seek to attract and retain the talent necessary for evolving and surviving these days.
And what about the nature of the work itself? If the success of your project depends on the profound combination of talents committed to its purpose, if the expectations are high, if you don't have a clear path forward or way to solve multiple issues and challenges arising, if you're facing volatility and uncertainty and complexity and ambiguity, then you and your team members will need this capability. Building teams that are more and more agile is becoming necessary for specific projects, and adopting inclusive awareness will enable you to build teams that have a clarity of purpose and the talents needed for that project.
The good news is that, once initiated, inclusive awareness reinforces creative relationships that invite others to develop this same ability.
And a team working on this level of deep collaboration, built on inclusivity as described, will be able to face challenges and find solutions that would otherwise be unimaginable.
Inclusive awareness starts with self-awareness—awareness of who we are, of the projects we choose to lead or join, of our purposes and the talents we possess, and of our needs and our own limits. In other words, awareness of our inner condition as it evolves.
Our inner condition, the internal dimension from which we operate, normally goes unnoticed. Nevertheless, it determines the quality and effectiveness of what we do. If we are to develop inclusive awareness, then we need to identify and observe this inner condition from which we operate, individually and in our teams. Once identified and observed, we can influence and develop it.
Of course, there needs to be an interest, a conviction, or a need for the change (as with any change!). We need discipline, and feedback from the team might be helpful. But primarily we need constant observation of our own self, our thoughts, emotions and reactions.
One method for observing our inner condition lies in the way we listen.
We practice listening about 16 hours every day. Try and observe at what level you are listening during this time:
- Superficial listening: paying attention to what you already know and re-confirming it
- Factual listening: noticing new data that's different from what you expect to see; looking with an "open mind"
- Empathic listening: connecting with the perception of another person, with an emotional connection (an "open heart"); a shift occurs in the inner condition and we are able to see form the another person's eyes
- Generative listening: connecting with our capacity to let go of our original intention and to welcome the best of future possibilities (from who we are and who we want to be), with an "open will"; a new, deep shift occurs in our inner condition and our "self-awareness" becomes more inclusive and can be transformed by what is emerging
Start with an initial assessment of your level of listening during a day and register shifts upward or downward. What attitude or which level of listening are you in most of the time? How do they distribute during your day? Extend your observation over a week. Which level of listening do you need to operate from, given who you are, who you want to be, your purpose, and your current challenges?
Once you start observing the way you listen (your inner condition), you might notice that shifts from one level to another modify your mental state, your present emotions, and what you feel in your body.
Developed and sustained over time, this feeling becomes an inclusive awareness that creates a different environment for your team and enables deep collaboration and successful innovation.