The Art of Regenerative Leadership: Language, Spirit, and Principles

The Art of Regenerative Leadership: Language, Spirit, and Principles Judith A. Sturnick If ever there was a time in American history when whole and integrated leadership, a balance of healthy characteristics, was necessary, that time is now. During the past two decades, we witnessed conscious attempts to create leadership paradigms which spoke about stewardship (Block, 1993); moving people to yes (Fisher and Ury,1981; Block, 2002); partnership and responsibility; circles and "feminine" ways of leading and using power (Hagberg, 1994). Although these are not new ideas, their movement from fringe thinking to more general consciousness was evident. Now, with the occupation of Iraq (I admit to the biased phrase), we are once again in the grip of command and control leadership, dominance, linear thinking, black and white framing of problems and solutions. We are ready to colonize Mars and the Moon, according to the U.S. President, in a race to conquer space. The military-industrial axis (notice how our national leaders and the media have resurrected that word with its heavy freight of twentieth century history) propels the world into a "for us or against us" mentality. And as we are obsessed with terrorists, terrorism and color code travel alerts, virtually everything—from the pulpits to politics to the Patriot Act—is transformed into ersatz priorities ("Leave no child behind," but don't fund the necessities to accomplish this, for example) and pinchbeck democratic processes. The stunning phrase "preemptive war" to define an American right, even obligation, has indeed set leadership, politics, language and values on a ruinous course. What are the arenas where leadership and culture can be revitalized? In my own history of three university and college presidencies (public and private, traditional and non traditional), a stint in Washington, DC, as Vice President and Director of the Office of Women in Higher Education at the American Council on Education, the establishment of my own international business in executive leadership coaching and consulting, my work as a writer and teacher of leadership theory (including leadership and gender), and my experiences facilitating leadership training for developing nations under the auspices of the United Nations, I have consciously struggled with ways to define my own leadership as a force for renewal and transformative change. We need a very different kind of leadership and a powerful language to describe it. Several terms depict what I view as essential components of the contemporary leader: the Leader as 1) Explorer and Journeyer, 2) Creator of Personal and Organizational Coherence, 3) Healer, 4) Mentor-Teacher, and 5) Magus. Because the first point under girds the other four, most of my discussion will focus on that, with the other points touched on only briefly. The Leader as Explorer and Journeyer may be a particularly apt phrase for American leadership—our history is, after all, rich with the language and concepts of westward expansionism, frontier consciousness, the mapping expedition of Lewis and Clark. But I want to use the phrase in an especially transformative way. I am speaking of the leader who intentionally explores the territory within and who understands that the inner journey— including those god-forsaken periodic times of wandering in the wilderness or walking in the desert—never ends. S/he has seen the Shadow with all its implicit terror as well as the Light, and has faced down her own inner darkness. This Education and Culture Spring, 2004 Vol. XX No. 1 THE ART OF REGENERATIVE LEADERSHIP: LANGUAGE, SPIRIT, AND PRINCIPLES 43 knowledge is hard-won. It leaves our psyches bloodied and renewed. Many of us who work with leadership development find that the journey must be undertaken before the map can be created, personally and organizationally. None of our contemporary careening values, paradigms, contexts or realities lends themselves to easy understanding. Complex understanding for a leader (for each of us, for that matter) begins with knowing the complexity within. That archetypal cyclic journey undertaken by the initiate, the leaders-tobe —from the tribe into the wilderness, to confront temptation and/or danger (dragons, Scylla and Charybdis, Satan), the encounter with the wise teacher or god (the Crone of the Woods, Athena, Allah), the consequent epiphany or transformation in the wilderness, and...