The Elephant in the Room

Chapter 4 The practice – and consequences – of mindful avoidance

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357063-6

This is the true cost of blindness: as long as it feels safer to do and say nothing, as long as keeping the peace feels more benign, abuse can continue.

– Margaret Heffernan

Wilful blindness

In the book Presence, written by four scholars of organizational learning and change – Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers – ‘presence’ is described as the first step on the path leading away from old, recurring patterns and actions. Thus, presence is both an important initiator and an essential aspect of transformation and change. That message is perfectly in line with some of the key messages in the present book. Presence