Creative Leadership Coaching

Hi Lisa,Thank you for your illuminating pool of insights on the “dominator system” and “dominator paradigm.” I reflected on your comments all week-especially while walking to work over Vancouver’s Cambie Street Bridge. Fear and punishment seem to be the dominant emotions fostered by dominator systems. Orwell’s Oceania-a caricature of the ultimate exploitative and oppressive system-exemplifies [...]

Carman, In re-reading your post, http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2009/06/22/our-house-from-carman-de-voer/ I continue to notice new levels of richness and meaning. Freire describes some of the core insights of Partnership: “Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p.66). Yes, as Freire describes, domination is [...]

In a recent post, Carman de Voer noted the distinction between leadership and management. These two different functions often converge within a particular role, but tend to draw upon different kinds of power. Management is associated with control, which is a highly reputable value and principle in most organizations. The process of management itself has [...]

Interesting article on forms of organization — hierarchal, market, and collaborative .. http://www.heckscher.us/The%20evolving%20nature%20of%20professional%20work.doc

Carman, Thank you, as always, for your post. Your contributions really enrich this forum. The dynamics you describe resonate with what Riane Eisler would call Dominator dynamics, which describe theory x organizations. In a Dominator culture, one is either one up or one down from others. It also invokes the dual-nature you describe (“Who is [...]

Readers and writers who visit this blog are engaging with facinating and powerful questions and ideas. One recent search term that brought someone to this blog was, “the role of the unconscious in organizational transformation.” It raises the topic of the unconscious in both personal, organizational and cultural dynamics and transformation. What do we mean [...]

Hi Carman, I apologize that it has been taking me so long to respond to your thoughtful and insightful posts. I appreciate your ongoing contributions to this endeavor! Thank you (first) for your discussion of cultures of silence. The quote you chose from Charles Davis was a very apt illustration of how we internalize the [...]

Submitted on 2009/05/30 at 8:37am Hi Lisa, Thank you for the opportunity to engage in creative communion–and to make the “unconscious conscious.” I believe it was systems scholar Bela Banathy who said, “the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.” I have begun to question the traditional labor market [employer-employee] nomenclature [...]

Carman De Voer Mais has developed a fresh and insightful PowerPoint presentation on learning organizations. He makes the important point that becoming a learning organization isn’t something that “patched on” to the existing organizational paradigm, but rather a transformation of both the paradigm and the players.  I’m going to try to share that presentation with you [...]

Hi Carman, As always, your posts are both intellectually enriching and poetic. Years ago, Alfonso Montuori and I wrote an essay on how our philosophical paradigm and guiding metaphors have shaped organizations and leadership, and created the blind spots that now limit organizations. A very perceptive reviewer suggested the article would be all the more impactful [...]