In their presentation at the 18th Annual Pegasus Conference, Peter Senge and Betty Sue Flowers spoke about leadership and the role that story and myth play in guiding leaders. Leadership, they argued, is about the future, the story that is created and communicated.
Oftentimes, leaders don’t think that they can alter the story. Senge and Flowers, however, disagree. At every moment, they argued, we have the power to create a new story. In fact, the ability to do this is an essential leadership trait. They suggested that one way to create a compelling storyline is to develop plots based on a “purpose to learn,” as opposed to “victim-based” plots.
The way in which we create and organize our lives is completely a function of the stories we possess. Likewise, the way in which organizations create their structures and cultures is a function of the story they possess. To this end, Senge and Flowers suggested that our challenges seem overwhelming because we do not have a powerful story that tells us who we are in this emerging era of interconnectedness, health, and well-being. We are operating with stories based in past eras, which aren’t aligned with the emerging ecological era.
Citing Thomas Berry’s The Universe Story, Senge pointed out that as individuals and as a society, we are caught between the stories of the past era and that of the new. Recognizing this can be terrifying. We hamper our movement into a new era by struggling to protect the existing status quo, the existing story. We will never be able to move forward unless we distinguish the story we are currently in.
A New Story–Living Systems
Senge spoke about the limitations of operating within the democratic-scientific and economic myths, primarily operating as though we are machines that must maintain control. He stated that in order to excel in the ecological era, we must understand and practice the principles of living systems. Within living systems, evolution is irreversible toward commonality and interconnection. When mapping the evolution of consciousness, we must return to mythical origins in order to unleash imaginative power.
We are in a precious moment in time with a limited window, entering an era in which the story has never been told. To move forward, we must be prepared to let go; we must shed the deep-seeded idea that as a species we are special and that everything is a resource for our use; we must also shed the concept of Original Sin, that as a species we are not whole and need external forces to complete us.
A New Story–Expanding Who We Are
In his Jeff Lee Award speech at the AIHCE conference, John Henshaw, the former assistant secretary of labor for Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA), spoke of the need to impact safety and health in the supply chain. As EHS professionals, we must “expand who we are”; the ways in which we’ve approached EHS management in the past are no match for the complexities of the global economy.
© Redinger EHS, Inc. (2010)