Mastering Leadership

Chapter 12 Integral Leadership: Built for Complexity, Designed for Transformation

If you want to be whole,

   let yourself become partial.

—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching¹

Bob: Several years ago, my Uncle Tom was dying. His brother, my Uncle Dick, went to visit him daily. On one visit on a particularly bad day, Tom said, “Dick, dying is not for sissies.”

Transformation is not for sissies, either. It is a big deal. It is a death–resurrection process if we see it through—if we go full circle.

The Hero/Heroine's journey does not stop with Creative Mind. The transformation from Creative Mind to Integral Mind is yet another metamorphosis, ushering in a higher-order consciousness that can go well beyond the limits of the Creative Mind. Transformation is the process by which we are remade, over and over, into Integral and Unitive leaders.

The Integral Mind is built for complexity, designed for leading change within complex systems amid volatile, ambiguous, and rapidly changing environments. By the time leaders evolve to the Integral Stage, their leadership is likely to be extraordinarily effective, if not masterful (see Figure 12.1). One leader who was measured at the Integral Mind in the Stage of Development study told us about an incident that happened when he was president of a large healthcare system. He mentioned that every time he took on a new position or department, outcomes improved dramatically: operating room efficiencies increased dramatically, costs fell, patient outcomes improved, ...