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AAFCS Super Seminar: Using Cutting Edge Leadership Approaches to Transform FCS Practice. Sue L. T. McGregor PhD Professor Mount Saint Vincent University Halifax Nova Scotia Canada Home Economist for over 40 years. CUTTING EDGE LEADERSHIP.
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AAFCS Super Seminar: Using Cutting Edge Leadership Approaches to Transform FCS Practice Sue L. T. McGregor PhD Professor Mount Saint Vincent University Halifax Nova Scotia Canada Home Economist for over 40 years
CUTTING EDGE LEADERSHIP • AAFCS is a professional association for family and consumer scientists and those who practice the profession under other names: home economics, human sciences, human ecology. • The current tagline is Connecting Professionals and Touching Lives. Regarding the latter, “through its leadership… AAFCS touches the lives of its members and FCS professionals enabling them to grow and accomplish more.” • This super seminar is an example of AAFCS’ desire to be on the vanguard of leadership and change.
The Vanguard • A van is the part of a group that is out front, in position to lead an advance (van is short for vanguard) • Vanguard is Middle French for avant(out front) and garde (guard) • A vanguard is the front part of any movement • It also refers to the leaders of an intellectual movement • Being on the vanguard refers to a creative group of leaders who are active in the innovation and application of new concepts, theories, principles, approaches and techniques in a given field
Vanguard Leadership and the Holistic FCS Professional System Vanguard Leadership
Best practice is just a start… • The AAFCS Development Center says: • “As the Association moves forward in its second century, it is committed to providing an outstanding array of research-based sessions through on-site conferences. Future conferences will capitalize on the best practicesof past conferences, while incorporating new ideas and directions that reflect the evolution of the Association and profession.”
Best Practice • Focuses on the now and what is working • Tends to rely on old thinking (received wisdom) • Deals with old problems and delivers tried-and-tested solutions • Reflects accumulated, reusable patterns, components, tools and platforms of practice • People are heavily invested in these successful approaches
Our Best may not be enough • Being the bestnow may not be what we need to be the best in the future…
We need Next Practice, which creates a new practiceSource: http://mikeziemski.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/next-practice-logo.jpg
Best and Next Practice • “What works?” • “What could work better and more powerfully?” • Need outside-the-box, boundary-pushing practice and thinking Best Practice Next Practice
Next PracticeMcGregor, S. L. T. (2012). Next practice innovations in FCS. Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences, 104(1), 46-50. • While fully aware of conventional best practices, next practice aspires to move to new levels, in new directions, in new combinations and new relationships – move outside the comfortable, familiar best-box. • While best practices focus on past innovations, next practices focuses on future innovations • Next practice strives for breakthroughs in thinking and solutions, leading to a new practice (on the vanguard)…
The motivated vanguard • Next practices emerge from a mobilized group of empowered practitioners who are motivated by a compelling purpose; they are the leadership vanguard • They are conscious of the limits of current FCS best practices and are keen to push further, higher, wider, in new directions • These FCS system-aware leaders have a wide field of vision, a lively interest in the overall direction of the profession, and are constantly scanning their environments
I have four vanguard ideas to share with you. What vanguard ideas do you suggest? Break out for five minutes and bring ideas back to the group
Potential of next practices • Next practices are exemplary niche practices that hold promise to become mainstream and can act as beacons and/or inspirations for future transitions (Wals, 2010) http://www.groundswellinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/learning-our-way-out-of-unsustainability.pdf
New and innovative leadership ideas for the FCS vanguard…. • Complexity thinking • Integral thinking • Transdisciplinary thinking • Human Condition
During the seminar, write down any ideas or threads of thinking that you hear repeatedly (e.g., complex)
Complexity Thinking • Complexity thinking, especially Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), is an extension of systems theory and human ecosystem system theory, a best practice with which FCS are very familiar.
Complexity Thinking con’t • A Complex Adaptive System (CAS) consists of parts (agents or people) that form a system (team or group). • That system shows complex behaviour while it keeps adapting to changing environments. • Other examples of a CAS, aside from families, are brains, bee hives, bacteria, immune systems, the Internet, gardens, cities.
Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) • Complex adaptive systems (CAS) are special cases of complex systems. • They are complexin that they are diverse and madeup of multiple interconnected elements and they are adaptivein that they have the capacity to change and learn from experience.
Why are CAS complex? • they have both stabilizing and reinforcing feedback loops (stay on track and change direction), • there are both multiple and opposing causes per each effect, • there are time delays between cause and effect, • they exhibit the property of emergence, and • there are MANY relationships, both known and unknown, which make the CAS unpredictable and complicated.
Complexity Thinking con’t • Complexity theory introduces a new set of assumptionsthat can underpin FCS vanguard leadership initiatives (next practices): • complexity • emergence • adaptation • change and evolution • nonequilibrium • chaos (order is emerging, just unpredictably) • tensions (holding things together as they emerge) • patterns and networks • holistic, synergistic interconnections and relations among individual and aggregate agents.
Complexity thinking con’t • In CAS, people are never just observers. Their presence alone influences the system. They can influence the other agents, relationships, environments, boundaries. • Complexity theory proposes that in a CAS, the agents constantly (a) act, (b) act with and (c) react to what other agents are (not) doing. • The overall behaviour of the complex adaptive system is the result of a huge number of decisions made every moment by many, diverse individualagents, acting on local information, with global impact, changing as they accumulate lived experiences.
Complexity thinking con’t • Especially relevant to FCS vanguard leaders, complexity thinking lets us presume that a self-organizing family system (self-directed, regroups, reorganizes) increases in complexity without being guided or managed from an outside source. • Families can become self-determining and empowered.
Complexity thinking fini • It helps us assume that people canself-organize (reorganize and regroup) and can change their approach to life and living • Note that anything that is not constrained will self-organize. This fact means FCS practitioners have to help families become self-directed, instead of remaining dependent. • Families (CAS) need to be free to act to address human problems, not be constrained. They need to find their me-power (become empowered).
Me power (empower) meansmembers of a complex adaptive system are free to act independently, to self-organize and to adapt and change. • Source http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_uISeCrSwfp0/TJNhC1xToZI/AAAAAAAAAFI/23dj4Fsxmrk/s1600/junglewomanhologram3.jpg
Integrated versus integralMcGregor, S. L. T. (2010). Integral leadership and practice: Beyond holistic integration in FCS. Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences, 102(1), 49-57. • Integrated means balance, equilibrium and harmony – minimize tension and reduce chaos • Integral means emergent, non-equilibrium, balance forming; respects healthy tensions that hold things together as they evolve and emerge – these tensions provide order in the chaos Integrated Integral
Differences between integrated and integral fini Strives for: • certainty • order • sureness Places a lot of emphasis on harmony within systems Strives for uniformity of similar things Leads to a constrained sense of reality Respects: • uncertainty • disorder • insecurity Respects the creative, dynamic and evolving nature of human and natural processes Strives for a sense of unity in differences (emphasizes unity as much as diversity) Leads to a fuller sense of reality. Integrated Integral
INTEGRAL THINKING: an approach that respects awareness, consciousness and the melding of many perspectives to attain a more holistic, comprehensive picture of reality. FCS have long called themselves holistic (best practice). This next practice builds on that. • An integral vision assumes people will try to touch all bases, try to respect and learn from many perspectives as they problem solve life’s dilemmas. • I use Ken Wilber’s approach to integral thinking, called AQAL – all quadrants, all levels. • He uses a four-celled matrix to illustrate his integral approach. There are four quadrants to his theory and many, many levels. Today, I focus on the quadrants.
Four integral quadrants http://www.tanasaler.com/
Ken Wilber’s integral approach to life • These four perspectives of life stem from the (a) inner self, (b) the physical self, (c) the community, and (d) the collection of world systems. Wilber refers to these as the integral (whole) approach to life. • It is imperative that people learn to find the patterns that connect all of these four elements instead of falling back on what is comfortable and standing in just one quadrant. Indeed, standing in one quadrant results in an imbalanced, flat, one-dimensional approach to life, living, and leading.
Avoidonequadrantism Avoid viewing human problems from just one perspective, one part of the whole: • IT -the scientific, physical body, Western medicine • WE-morality, collectively shared norms • I - inner-self, artful self-expression • ITS - web of life, complex, global systems
The integral lens on complex problems • Leaving out any of these quadrants yields an incomplete picture of reality. Too much is missed, compromising one’s ability to deal with the complexity of life. • A main assumption of integral thinking is that as soon as people begin looking through the integral lens, everything has the potential to come into focus. Once that lens turns and clicks, people gain clarity and are able to make better decisions for the future.
Stand in all four quadrants • From an integral stance, the goal of FCS vanguard leaders would be to help people problem solve in such a way that: mind (I), matter (IT), meaning (WE) and the web of life (ITS) are all taken into account, or at least be aware that while acting in one quadrant, the other three realities exist.
Integral thinking • The intent is to teach people to be as comprehensive, inclusive, and caring as possible, striving for deep clarity of their situation and the wider context. • Rather than excluding points of view, people would strive to adopt all views that are useful for dealing with their current dilemma and do so by looking for things they would otherwise ignore. • A complex world requires a complex lens on the world in order to be as inclusive as possible; that is the promise of the next practice called the integral approach.
Intent of integral thinking (Fini) : • To be as comprehensive, inclusive and caring as possible while striving for deep, luminous clarity of the situation. • To scan all four elements to gain integral insights (self, science, the collective, and the web-of-life systems) • There is no right or wrong. There is a place for everything. • MAJOR ISSUE is “how much complexity is needed to adequately understand the situation from a holistic, integral perspective?”
TRANSDISCIPLINARITY • FCS leaders are all familiar with the idea that the profession is interdisciplinary. This means we work with and draw from other disciplines, within the university system. • Solving today’s complex problems necessitates taking down the boundaries among many disciplines and between the university system and the rest of the world. • Transdisciplinarity is the name for this next practice approach to leading. It lets us solve the problems of the world faced by all of humanity (much more than helping individuals or family units solve their specific problems).
Trans means zigzagging back and forth, crisscrossing, border crossing, going beyond borders, transcending. The focus is on complexissues, such as pollution or hunger, both within and beyond disciplinary boundaries, with the possibility of integrating new perspectives (integral thinking) Image source: http://www.hent.org/transdisciplinary.htm Civil Society
1. New knowledge required to solve complex human problems • emergent and complex, focused on moral obligations and on shared, joint responsibly for the world and each other. • Rather than just facts and information, people would be taught to value evolving relationships and to look for patterns of likeminded or divergent thinking. • In this context, everything is in-formation, changing due to the synergy (energy) created when people jointly problem solve or ponder the nuances and complexities of the 21st century. The complex TD knowledge that is created is alive, dynamic, forever changing, never static, due to intellectual fusion.
2. A new concept of reality • What counts as reality would expand from just one discipline to include many levels of reality (within and beyond disciplines): economic, political, historical, social, ecological, spiritual, cultural and aesthetic spheres of life. Knowledge and perspectives from all of these spheres is needed to address today’s complexity. • Solutions to these complex problems are best solved by a meeting of the minds in the space created when crossing the borders (trans) between these many spheres of reality.
TD Reality con’t • In the midst of the tensions inherent in dealing with complex issues along these many levels of reality, order and new insights are always emerging. Instead of understanding chaos as disorder, FCS would teach people that chaos is order emerging, just not predictably. • A new respect would be gained for fluctuations, unpredictability, uncertainties and disturbances, appreciating that novel solutions to modern day dilemmas (multilemmas) will emerge from the chaos (integral thinking – integration of many perspectives).
3. New logic of problem solving • Instead of exclusive logic, TD uses inclusive logic (the logic of the included middle). The space between things is fertile, alive, in flux and deeply dynamic. It is within these intellectual, inclusive spaces that people meet, engage, share perspectives, values, feelings, information and develop relationships. • New TD knowledge perks up and emerges, and falls back on people as embodied knowledge. Energy is created from people bouncing ideas off of each other (intellectual fusion). People learn to accept that others have valuable perspectives, which, once heard, can potentially be integrated into new embodied, emergent, complex TD knowledge
4. Role of values when addressing humanity’s complex problems • Different world views and value orientations held by people from many different levels of reality may cause conflict, resulting in power struggles. The complexity of today’s problems requires partnerships and knowledge sharing among experts from different academic disciplines (natural, social and human) and from members of civil society. They must be able to talk to each other. • The constellation of values at play during the solution of these human problems must be respected, managed and led, because every utterance will be value-laden.
