Integral Ubuntu Leadership

Passmore Musungwa Matupire

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317115359
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The four worlds as we know them today, the North, West, South and East, are out of balance. The West and the North generally dominate on a global scale while the South and the East lag behind. This also happens at individual, societal and organisational levels. It is clear that there is a need to change the way we lead our organisations in business and the way we think about leading in politics. Here is a comprehensive exploration of the Integral Leadership challenges of the twenty-first century.

The author combines the African philosophy of Ubuntu or humanness, the cornerstone of African thought and life, with the concept of Integral Leadership, with particular reference to Lessem and Schieffer's combining, in their 2010 book Integral Research and Innovation, of nature and community, culture and spirituality, science and technology, and politics and economies. This connectedness in the new paradigm of wholeness and relatedness goes beyond the relationships of human beings alone and involves experiences with nature and community.

Leadership is viewed from an indigenous and exogenous perspective, bringing together a newly Integral approach, which will also introduce industry ecology and knowledge ecology as an evolution of the Ubuntu philosophy. The author offers a unique forum through which to commit to paper the operationalisation of the Integral Ubuntu Leadership model in catalysing development efforts and in CARE-ing for communities and societies.

Part 1

Introduction

1An introduction to Integral Ubuntu Leadership

Utungamiriri Uzere

Chapter 1 storyline

I have a passion for leadership development such that this has become a calling as well as a focus area for further exploration and development. The burning desire for me is to make a huge difference in peoples’ lives at the individual, organisational and societal levels. This desire is fuelled by what I articulated in my doctoral research work as lack of Integral Leadership, Utungamiriri Uzere, not only at the business level but at the political level in Africa. Regrettably, the African continent remains poor and underdeveloped in spite of its vast natural resources. The challenges caused by the imbalances in this world have reached crisis point, and transformation and collaborative effort from all those interested in Integral development are called for in order for them to be addressed.

In this book’s introductory chapter I allude to a world in crisis, with violence which leads to refugee crises, corruption and the suffering of people. I also briefly introduce some of the underlying themes found in the book, such as Integrality, the four worlds, the GENE (Grounding, Emergence, Navigation, Effecting), the Ubuntu philosophy, and the 4Cs and CARE concepts. The 4Cs stands for Call (inner and outer), Context (transcultural, transformational, transdisciplinary, transpersonal), Co-Creation (science and society) and Contribution (individual and collective) (Lessem and Schieffer, 2015).

The book is structured and contextualised along the 4Cs model. Integral Ubuntu Leadership, then, is the innovation I came up with together with my co-researchers as our Contribution to knowledge and, if the ideas are applied in business as well as in politics, will help in alleviating some of the imbalances in this world in mutation, a world on fire.

I am because we are. And since we are, therefore I am.

John Mbiti (1969)

1.1 Introduction: the crisis of our time at the local and global levels

This book is a further articulation of the Integral Green Zimbabwe journey (Mamukwa et al., 2014), the focus of attention being on the research and development that I, as one of the Integral developers, carried out on the burning issue of Integral Leadership. The book is an account of the fascinating research journey experience that was contextualised following the rhythm of the 4Cs, which stands for Call, Context, Co-Creation and Contribution and the parallel rhythm of CARE, which stands for Community activation, Awakening consciousness (catalysation), Research-to-innovation and Embodiment (Education). These concepts are defined under Section 1.6 of this introductory chapter.

The research journey continues today through a collective process of holistic development (PHD) whereby, together with all those with an interest in Integral research and development, locally, regionally and internationally, we catalyse individual, organisational, communal and societal transformation. To that end, the Pundutso Centre for Integral Development, of which I am a founder Trustee, and which has evolved from a co-operative inquiry (CI) group during my doctoral research work, will play a vital role in sustaining the Integral development impulse from Zimbabwe.

Pundutso, which means advancement or transformation, was the creation of three doctoral candidates, namely Elizabeth Mamukwa, energised by the burning issue of Integral knowledge, Joshua Chinyuku, addressing Integral ecology, and myself, energised by Integral Leadership. We came together to form the collaborative CI group and each one of us as the team of three co-researchers used Pundutso as the external CI group which fulfilled the think tank role for our three transformation projects.

I begin in this chapter with a clarification of the core concepts underlying the book, such as Integrality, the four worlds concept, the Ubuntu philosophy and the 4Cs and CARE concepts.

Suffice it to mention that an important aspect of the realisation of the above quote from the Kenyan philosopher and theologian John Mbiti, ‘I am because we are. And since we are, therefore I am’, in a general sense, is that in this world, we are interconnected human beings. What a joy each day would bring if people lived a life characterised by ‘humanness’, or what the Xhosa in South Africa call Ubuntu. In Zimbabwe, my home country, we refer to this in the Shona language as Unhu.

This connectedness in the new paradigm of wholeness and relatedness goes beyond relationships of human beings alone and involves experiences with nature and community and other human systems, as we will appreciate in this book’s story. Satish Kumar, a former Jain monk, peace activist, ecologist and founder of Schumacher College in the UK (Kumar, 2013) calls this relationship, which involves a caring for the soil, soul and society, ‘a new trinity of our time’. Put differently, he posits that there is a need for a new consciousness that protects the earth rather than just exploiting it for human benefit only. In addition, people need to be so enlightened that they are able to live in harmony with themselves and to care for society. When this happens no child in our universe will starve for lack of food.

In such a CARE-ing world, systems are more holistic in their outlook and benevolence is prevalent among the players in the ecosystems.

The reality on the ground is that things work differently. There are intense challenges and hence I refer to this phase as a crisis of our time, during which we witness the plague of considerable imbalances at individual, societal and organisational levels. There is religious and political violence, corruption, conflict, strife and so many imbalances. Little wonder we have crises everywhere, be it Europe’s migrant crisis, the 2014 West African ebola outbreaks, the South Sudan conflict of 2013, the droughts in Central America and in Somalia, the Nepal earthquake or the global economic and financial crises.

The imbalances exist between cities, where secondary production takes place, as compared to the countryside, where there is primary production. The restoration of the balance between city and rural life is perhaps one of the greatest challenges facing humanity throughout the world. There seems to be no answer to unemployment evils and the mass migration of people into cities until such time as the standard of rural life is uplifted. These imbalances are evident at the local level in my own country, Zimbabwe, between black and white people and between rural and urban dwellers within an economy that has gone through turbulence for most of the period since gaining political independence in 1980.

The imbalances remain in spite of the country being endowed with abundant mineral deposits, vast tracts of arable land, and varied flora and fauna. The comfort I have is that, as demonstrated by the outstanding work of researchers as narrated in the Integral Green Zimbabwe book (Mamukwa et al., 2014), where I also made a chapter contribution and shared my research efforts, the burning issues of our time can be addressed with satisfactory results.

At the global level we are also reminded of the United States of America’s housing crisis of 2006 and 2007 and the ongoing Euro-zone and world financial crises which started in 2008.

Senge (1990), rightly explains the crisis by saying that through our actions, we all contribute to these problems, even though the normal tendency is for people to say the problems are created by someone ‘out there’. This view is often taken because while we learn best from experience, we rarely experience the consequences of most of our decisions. The core learning for many people is that today’s problems come from what were yesterday’s solutions (Senge, 1990).

The direction being taken not only in Zimbabwe but throughout the world is destructive to nature, to people, at both the local and the global levels and may lead to worldwide environmental and social collapse. Scharmer and Kaufer (2013), two German authors, called this situation an age of disruption, coming from three divides – the ecological, socio-economic and spiritual or inner divides – altogether creating results that nobody wants. The disruption emanates from a disconnect between the self and nature, between the self and others, and even between self and self. The current system has, according to Scharmer and Kaufer (2013), eight systemic disconnects or bubbles due to the intellectual bankruptcy of mainstream economic thought. So, one may ask, where do we go from here?

To put it bluntly there is massive institutional and leadership failure, and this is why this book considers the burning issue of leadership failure (Utungamiriri hunokundikana) at the political and business levels, which I addressed in the research I carried out (Matupire, 2014). The lack of Integral Leadership (Utungamiriri Uzere) lies at the heart of political and business leadership problems in Africa. It is this burning desire to seek innovative and transformative solutions to leadership problems that motivated me to document some of the research findings and to continue, on an ongoing basis and in a collaborative spirit, with the research efforts through a process of holistic development.

Where does this take us to? For Scharmer and Kaufer (2013), what is needed today is the kind of leadership that will move from ego-system to eco-system awareness. Scharmer (2009), in his ‘theory U’, posits that this entails leadership having open minds with the capacity to suspend old habits of thought and open hearts with the capacity to empathise, as well as seeing situations through the eyes of others. In addition, there is a need for leadership with open will, which is the capacity to let go of the old and allow the new to come in. He called this state ‘presencing’, which is a blended word combining ‘sensing’ (feeling the future possibility) and ‘presence’ (the state of being in the present moment). In other words, ‘presencing’ means to sense and act from one’s highest future potential (Scharmer, 2009).

One way of achieving this conscientisation is to embark on what Pundutso has dubbed ‘Ubuntu circles’, which are forums for the sharing of collective wisdom on Integral concepts with a view to facilitating the process of holistic development and taking the Integral Green Zimbabwe (IGZ) journey on with full ‘CARE’. At the same time mutual support is accorded to those on the PhD journey as we exploit links and collaborative efforts with regional and international Integral movements.

From our research work at ART Holdings Limited, one of the manufacturing companies quoted on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, and the efforts made by an internal CI group, Dare re Utungamiriri (Leadership Forum), as well as the work of the then external CI group, Pundutso (Transformation or Advancement), our Contribution coming out of the research work, in the spirit of co-sensing and Co-Creation and guided by the Ubuntu-Unhu-Botho philosophy, was a new African Integral Leadership model (Utungamiriri Uzere). This represents leadership that is pleasing and in all respects strives to be complete. The model we came up with together with our co-researchers and co-subjects, as reflected in Chapter 9, is our own Contribution towards leading from the emerging future.

As has already been mentioned, Pundutso is now a Centre for Integral Development in Zimbabwe which will continue to evolve as the ecosystem of Integral developers grows locally, regionally and internationally. Integral Ubuntu Leadership, which is the focus area in this book, will be an essential catalyst in order for the collective efforts to come to fruition. It is a perspective that reveals the full natural and cultural, technological and economic, and political realities in our time.

In order to appreciate a view of Integral Ubuntu Leadership from this broad perspective, it may be helpful to define the underlying concepts behind the book’s title, beginning with an understanding of what ‘Integral’ means in the context of leadership, enterprises and the world at large.

1.2 The Integral concept and the Integral worlds

An ‘integral’ part is something that is essential for the completion of the whole. If you are an integral part of the team, it means that the team cannot function well without you. Integrality therefore denotes the state of being complete or necessary. In the case of leadership as a phenomenon, Integral Leader...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of contents
• List of figures
• About the author
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Part 1 Introduction
• Part 2 The Call: Equipped for leadership calling
• Part 3 The Context: Uncovering imbalances in a world on fire
• Part 4 Co-Creation: Towards Integral Ubuntu Leadership
• Part 5 Contribution: Integral Ubuntu Leadership (Utungamiriri Uzere)
• Part 6 Wrapping up the journey
• Index