As a leader, how often do you stop and think about the quality of the field you are creating in your team, project, organisation? We define leadership in many ways and at the core of it lies our ability to engage the will, heart and qualities of all those participating in the collective endeavour.
Of course part of that leadership role is how we cultivate the connection with the collective endeavour. How we communicate, involve, invite, listen and open the discourse so that everyone can find their place in the work. I’m reminded here of the ubiquitous example of the person sweeping the floor at Cape Canaveral who when asked about their role, said, ‘I’m helping to put a man on the moon’. That ability to see the connection between our part and the unified goal.
Achieving that level of connection is phenomenal and something we, as leaders, can all aspire to. Enabling the fruits of that connection to come forward also means we must be cultivating the field in which people work.
The field can be described as culture. Within it there are the dimensions of psychological safety, matching behaviours and rhetoric as well as persistent and healthy engagement with foundational values and principles that define what it means to be part of this group.
And of course this is where it gets tricky – we are seeking coherence in the field and yet we don’t want it to become a dogmatic, restrictive culture. We want engagement and a true openness to diversity, yet we can’t be so loose that we lose all sense of coherence.
Building coherence in the field is a delicate and advanced practice. One that requires us as leaders to come into the highest possible level of inner coherence that we can – a level of self-confidence and esteem that allows us to be vulnerable, open and accepting of our own ‘not knowing’. Only then can we truly help open the doors that will create a space, a culture, a way of being in the group that is built on open and healthy communication.
In seeking to cultivate the field, the culture, the energetic space within which all team and organisational members can participate, we need to know how to ask good questions, how to listen deeply, create the safety for healthy self-expression and experimentation and, simultaneously hold safe ‘boundaries’ that create the container within which everyone can grow.
Knowing that as that growth occurs we can expand the boundaries even further and watch as greater and higher outcomes become possible.