Credit: Kris Krug (kriskrug.com)

Seattle based author and consultant, Peggy Holman, is a leader in the nascent field of social technologies, engaging "whole systems" of people from organizations and communities in creating their own future. She often involves hundreds of people to achieve breakthrough, using design elements from Open Space, the Art of Hosting, Future Search, World Café and other group processes. Peggy's clients include Biogen Idec, Boeing, Microsoft, the National Institute of Corrections, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her beautifully thought provoking book, Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity won the 2011 Nautilus Gold Book Award for Conscious Business/Leadership. The book carries endorsements from Peter Block, Margaret Wheatley, Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky.  Peggy is also author with Tom Devane and Steven Cady of The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems, and is a co-founder of Journalism That Matters. You can find out more about Peggy at her website: www.peggyholman.com.

"Engaging Emergence" represents a theory of social change in which a disruption of some kind (think everything from the restructuring of a department to Hurricane Katrina) leads to people surfacing innovations and naturally focusing on the parts of what needs to be done they are most drawn to. As these parts interact, a new, more complex, and novel system comes into being, one that could not have been predicted from the past system. In this sense, emergence is a natural process of breakthrough

and self-organization, one that can be particularly important to intentionally engage when people face seemingly unsolvable social challenges.

The following excerpt from a chart in Peggy's book identifies some of the differences between emergence and other forms of change:

Changing Notions of Change

Q. Peggy, I know that your work is most frequently devoted to macro-level social challenges and big process interventions that involve many people - sometimes thousands. Is there a related inner process of emergence that individual reflective leaders may go through when they begin to help with these broader social changes?

A. The patterns that I talk about for groups are just as real for individuals. There's a scaling or fractal kind of effect. For example, the role of diversity in larger processes is also about the diversity within ourselves. Anyone who is involved, and especially those who find themselves leading and facilitating, can prepare for their work in a way that will help them show up and operate as the calm in the storm. In turn, this preparation leads to personal growth and their personal emergence even as the larger systems they assist are changing. There are three aspects of a "high leverage attitude" that I use to characterize this personal evolution: embracing mystery, choosing possibility, and following life energy.

Q. Can you say more about each of these three aspects of a useful attitude for engaging emergence? What do they actually mean?

A. To begin with, embracing mystery means being present to the unknown. This isn't about letting go of what you know, but rather using it as information, the ground from which you evolve as you become curious about what's out there. I like the metaphor of bamboo, where strength comes from the ability to adapt. What does it take to be receptive to the unknown? It is always a matter of choice whether to be fearful or curious. For example, I attended an event with Peter Senge in the early 1990's where the room was set up with 120 chairs - in a huge circle. This was a new experience for me. Peter recommended that we speak only when moved, and before speaking to first follow what is happening inside ourselves. That led me right away to notice my own hidden assumptions about others, myself, and the experience at that moment. From there, the most natural choice was to put away any form of advocacy or a win/lose perspective in lieu of going toward something else -- by asking a question. So instead of 'making my point' when another spoke, I found myself asking, "That's an interesting perspective. Can you tell me more?" And that question was not about just getting 'ammunition' for a later comeback; it was about creating a kind of spaciousness in order to generate an even deeper dialogue. The point is that if you are noticing what is going on within yourself and you are not trying to top others, then you don't know where it will come out - and that's exciting. When you embrace the unknown and are focused on creating welcoming space, then what emerges is more likely to serve the intentions of all involved. Emergence happens whether we work with it or not. When we resist or ignore disruptions, what emerges may be far less pleasant. Think about what is happening in Washington DC these days and how strident people are about their fixed positions. Who knows what may ultimately emerge from all that acrimony?

Another aspect is choosing possibility, cultivating curiosity. Traditional leadership is quite declarative: "This is what we are going to do." Asking questions of possibility is more open-ended. It implies that the leader does not have all the answers. Leadership becomes more about asking powerful, possibililty-oriented questions and inviting others to participate in discovering the answers. There's still directionality, but it's not so pre-determined. For example, still thinking of Washington, I'd like to see people convene to talk about the role of government. What's the role of the federal government, of local communities? A friend, who convenes such gatherings, often starts the conversation with the question, "What did it mean to you to be an American when you were 7 years old?" Such questions generate stories, and the stories can form a context for a meaningful dialogue. An example of this happened in Boston some years ago after a shooting at an abortion clinic. The leaders of the prolife and prochoice groups met secretly once a week. They learned something of one another's life stories and that helped them connect and begin to resolve the tensions. Choosing possibility in this way naturally helps us tone down the rhetoric and begins to offer small ways to reach across the most volatile divides.

The third kind of attitudinal preparation is about following life energy. Life energy is present when there's a lot of emotion likely to be in the room: anger, grief, disappointment, frustration, even joy. When strong feelings appear, moving toward that energy, listening for possibility and stepping in the mystery is a promising way to make the most of disruption. Often the energy is happening around a place where a system is making itself visible. A couple historical examples: the entry of women in the workplace or people of color in positions of power. When discomfort appears, at first we may try to ignore the needed changes or discount them. If the discomfort gets louder we may seek to find a technical fix, and if it gets louder still, our best bet is to focus on culture. Invite the source of the blame into the mix, and prepare to be good hosts. Focus on the quality of the invitation and the quality of the welcome. Get clear about your focus and engage others. Use questions to draw out those who care, to bring their intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and practical selves. Everything matters -- a simple thing like how the chairs are arranged can send powerful messages about who belongs and who does not. I remember the hosts at one such meeting making a point of personally greeting every person as they arrived. The meeting was transformed by that greeting. It was a potent lesson in simple actions.

With Engaging Emergence I did not set out to write a spiritual book, but people have thanked me for that. For myself, preparation to find and be the still point also involves a personal meditation practice. I know that "sitting" helps me get there, equips me to work with the three points for preparation.

Q. How are emotional disruptions best handled, particularly ones where strong emotions such as anger are present?

A. Fairly early on in my work, I experienced a man getting up and walking outside the circle we had formed, and someone went to talk with him. He thought he was having a heart attack, and so we called an ambulance. And then someone who knew him said, "He would have wanted us to continue," and so we did. If I were facilitating today, I would be better at stopping to address and bring into the meeting our human experiences at that moment. We would have more actively used the emotional "disruption" of his sudden illness to help us create the right space to talk about the larger issues we had gathered to explore.

With anger, I always like the counsel of Harrison Owen: conflict and anger ask us to "open even more space." Instead of defending ourselves as a natural reaction, we need to inquire about what's behind the anger. This is truly a moment for compassionate listening. I remember a meeting when I was working for a cellular phone company. A railroad car with equipment in it that belonged to the company was sited on tribal lands for practical reasons -- and it was frequently vandalized. There was a lot of emotion around this issue for the company and for tribal members. When tribal leaders were confronted, they said, "take the locks off the doors". The locks were viewed by tribal youth as a message about lack of respect: "you don't trust us." The solution was simple and counter-intuitive. Thereafter, the car and its contents were left alone, and no further harm was done to the car or equipment.

Q. Traditional forms of leadership based around command and control --perhaps symbolized by those locks and the message they communicated -- seem to be rapidly disintegrating. How does engaging emergence relate to that?

A. Our basic organizing principle has been hierarchy. But in this unsettled time people are quickly shifting toward networks. Recent research suggests that networks are built of hubs and links. Hubs can look like hierarchies - they are places energy consolidates around attractive purposes. Links connect the hubs. Effective leadership is moving toward these two aspects of leadership. Hub leadership is about creating an attractive purpose and a spirit of invitation in such a way that people can determine where they fit in and how they can best contribute. Link leadership is subtler because it brings in information from outside of a hub. I remember one such leader who was part of a group I worked with. At first, he irritated the heck out of me because he kept bringing up points of view that were out of sync with the rest of the group. As I got to know him, I realized that these views were vital for the group, and I began to see him as an ally. On several occasions he ended up saving us from making some very big mistakes precisely because he could link what we were doing as a hub to what was outside us. Being a link leader is not well understood. One key skill is being a compassionate disrupter.

What seems clear is that leadership, whether related to hubs or links, involves taking responsibility for what we love, and any of us can do that. It isn't based on merit and it's quite situational. It often has to do with the capacity to be an attractive, welcoming agent for a vital purpose - with the understanding that the rest is really only an illusion of control. Networks are increasingly the best way of organizing for solving complex, real-world problems together.

Q. What do you believe most links the individual, the person, to the larger emergence of which that person is part?

A. What I see people discovering time and again through my work with large systems is that they as individuals are not alone. There is a deep liberation in finding companionship, partnership, even a sense of family. When people are able to bring their whole selves to a purpose, they become grounded in an emergent sense of true community. They discover that what had seemed most personal to them is precisely what is most universal.