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We live in a time of accelerated change. A time that demands new ways of thinking and acting. Growing global interdependence, sweeping technological innovation, and a host of social and environmental challenges require that we process ever more complex information. Lasting answers to today’s complex problems require holistic solutions; yet the sheer speed of change means that decisions must be made without ample time to analyze relevant factors.
Harvard Professor Robert Kegan warns that we are "in over our heads," as most people have not reached the level of cognitive complexity required to succeed in today's world (In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life).
Within such an environment, institutions must substitute business unusual for business as usual. Examples of paradigm shifts include a movement from:
- waging war to promoting the skills of peace making;
- alleviating poverty to fostering micro-enterprise and other means of promoting shared prosperity;
- conquering nature to supporting ecological balance;
- perpetuating materialism to embracing a focus on meaning and quality of life;
- quality emerging from the best and the brightest to excellence emerging from the wisdom and gifts of everyone;
- cultural imperialism to respectful interdependence;
- winning debates to achieving genuine dialogue;
- rationalism to recognizing the complementary importance of emotional intelligence, intuition, and creativity; and
- command and control hierarchies to coalitions and networks.
The Transformational Leadership Center (TLC) helps leaders, leadership teams, and those who promote their development to thrive in these complex, fast-paced, and challenging times. It also develops ideas, practices, and tools that enable individuals and institutions to acquire the knowledge and behaviors needed to realize the dreams of peace, social justice, shared prosperity, and environmental sustainability.
Theoretical Approach
The theoretical frameworks and methodologies that inform our work are those which:
- support reflective individual and group leadership practice, including self-awareness, cognitive complexity, emotional and narrative intelligence, paradigm vigilance, and vision-driven rather than problem focused theories and models of change;
- foster the creative capacities needed to successfully navigate change, to innovate, and to shift the stories we live to ensure a greater quality of life individually and collectively;
- develop awareness of unconscious processes that determine deeply held values and a sense of calling, but which also, if not made conscious, can lure people into negative, shadowy, counterproductive behaviors;
- demystify the dynamics of change processes and of complex, interdependent systems, groups, organizations, networks and coalitions, and social movements;
- assist leaders in working with, not against, natural processes and people's essential gifts and commitments and in taking a positive, win/win approach in order to more efficiently achieve desired results; and
- develop the capacity for lifelong individual and group learning and of using communication skills to inspire and motivate others.
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