Leadership is much more than just the ability to manage a team according to the goal – performance – success/failure paradigm.
It is a multidimensional reality, rooted in culture and its values, and an emanation of the leader’s inner life.
Our understanding of what leadership is and what it can be stems from decades of interdisciplinary research and practice in academic and business environments. Based on these, we have developed the Integral Leadership Model, founded on the Leadership Triangle.
The Leadership Triangle includes:
1. The stage, or the context in which leadership is realized.
In our research we focus primarily on academia, business and public institutions (governmental and non-governmental). All of these contexts are spaces of interpersonal relationships. Each of them has the potential to become a space of creative interchange and of its participants’ development.
2. The purpose, or the values which leadership serves.
The purpose of leadership varies according to its scene.
In academia, it is the truth, autonomy and the good of academia.
In business, it is economic growth and care for working places.
In the public sphere, it is the common good.
3. The leader.
In all cases, leadership turns out to be an emanation of the leader’s inner life. Therefore, one of the most important resources any leader can access is the awareness of their identity, shaped by culture and rooted in it.
Within and between each of the vertices of the triangle polarities occur. They usually lead to conflict and burnout. However, well managed, polarities can become sources of creative energy.
This is why the leader’s key competences include:
– the ability to manage specific manifestations of polarities (Ben Johnson, polarity management),
– non-anxious presence (Edwin Friedman), a particular attitude towards existing tensions, regardless of their number and intensity,
– awareness of the mission (values) and leadership vocation (for what I serve).
Our model can be adapted to represent different kinds of leadership, depending on their purposes and values.
We support the development of academic, business and public leaders by offering a number of original dedicated programes.