What is Whole Systems Leadership?
The world is changing, and we can all sense it. This swell of transition feels like it’s coming on more rapidly than anyone could have imagined. We’re all experiencing dissonance within our workplaces, schools, and communities. Some of us may feel our values and belief systems are under attack with a reckoning targeted at our current worldview.
It can be difficult for us to remember that we’re all living in a culture established on methods of thought and paradigms that have their foundations rooted in 17th-century Europe. We’re each imbued with tools that co-create our society. Enlightened ideas, linear and critical thinking are the modus operandi for how we choose to see and analyze the events and changes around us. They are a perspective that served us for the past 600 years. Without these ways of seeing and being in the world, we would never have our modern society. They are also deeply embedded in disconnection and individualism. They very heart of critical thinking is to break the whole down into its individual parts so we may approach an understanding of it. All nature is a segment of the whole to be dissected, labeled, and dominated while humanity sits crowned at the top.
What if I were to tell you that the lens we choose to view the world determines the feedback received about its condition?
We call these methods of thinking the “colonized mind” because they arise directly from the events that culminated in the global European expansion through colonization and the creation of our modern world. Unfortunately, unless trained to understand the complexities that make up our individual and collective perspectives, we’re blind to their effects on our current lives.
How does our paradigm of disconnection influence our participation in co-creating the communities and cultures we’re embedded in? What is our individual accountability to the worldview we inherited or cultivated for ourselves? How would an interconnected worldview influence how we work, live, and advance our organizations?
Add to this our emerging relationship with mobile devices and the algorithms that empower them. We find ourselves arising into an existence that we’re each challenged to comprehend. Suddenly, we’re engulfed in unforeseen chaos of rapid cultural change with no tools to process it. Whole Systems can dramatically help cut through the confusion.
Systems are a way of making meaning out of the world that views the interconnection and interplay of seemingly unrelated events and occurrences. It is a method of perceiving the world around us, developed during the previous century’s fledgling computer revolution to explain the behavior of algorithms and their assumed unrelated outcomes.
In their early work with binary coding, computer scientists at institutions such as MIT and Yale quickly realized that the intended outcome didn’t always provide predicted results. Rather than continuing to employ critical thinking to design the basis for the algorithms that shape our world today, these pioneering thinkers developed methods for perceiving the code that comprehended emergent properties and embraced feedback loops. These pathfinders of algorithmic science needed to see the entire solution as an interconnected web of possibility.
Over the decades, social scientists, biologists, physicists, and business gurus have adopted a systems paradigm in their work. They began to interact with the human algorithms that we co-create every day. The advancement of the worldview lens of systems grew into a greater understanding of our relationship with nature, culture, power structures, and organizational development.
As we enter the 21st century, it is evident that we must incorporate renewed and relevant methods for making meaning of our world. The Whole Systems Leadership program provides the wisdom and tools to help you and your organization learn to flow with the rapid change around us with resilience and balance. Rather than seeing a problem when chaos emerges, you become equipped to proactively interact with feedback loops, cultivate coherence, and implement personal responsibility. You learn a compelling lesson: How you interact with the world begins with how you perceive it.
— — — What Others Are Saying About Whole Systems Leadership — — — -
“We had some real breakthroughs of understanding, and you’ve transformed us.”
- Caryn G. Mathes: President & General Manager KUOW
“The presenters (Gerry and Jeremy) were engaging and interesting, which is hard to do for 6 hours! I absolutely loved this training. Not only did I really enjoy the professional development they provided, but it made me do a deep dive into my inner thoughts.”
- Steve — Human Resource Snohomish County
— — — — — — — — — — -About The Facilitators — — — — — — — — — — —
Dr. Gerry Ebalaroza-Tunnell & Jeremy Tunnell, MA, are trained systems designers from the University of Antioch, Seattle’s Whole Systems Design program. Dr. Gerry Ebalaroza-Tunnell is the Founder, Principal Consultant, and President of Co3 Consulting: Co-Creating Cohesive Communities and host of the Evolution of AloHā Podcast.
Dr. G earned a doctorate from the Department of Transformative Studies and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
She received a Social Science major with an emphasis in Psychology and Anthropology from Washington State University.
Dr. G identifies as a Pacific indigenous scholar, a transformative leader, and a designer of change. Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, now residing in Seattle, WA, she has learned how to walk in the two worlds of Indigenous being and Westernized thought with grace and Aloha.
Dr. G is a certified trainer of the Institute of HeartMath Resilience Advantage Program. She teaches the power of resilience alongside co-creating change.
Jeremy Tunnell is a lead consultant, facilitator, and Operations Director for Co3 Consulting. Jeremy specializes in leadership and business operations consultation with a whole systems perspective. He is an expert in facilitating groups through 21st-century organizational development, the consequences of colonization on our present worldview, resilience conditioning, and guided worldview evolution. His training as a Whole Systems Designer provides a perspective into organizational and social structures through a lens of interconnectedness. With this perspective, Jeremy guides individuals and leaders through the harmful feedback loops that can prevent meaningful success and positive change.
Jeremy & Gerry host the Plowline Podcast, where they engage interesting guests on relevant subjects such as Diversity + Equity + Inclusion & Belonging, Whole Systems Design, Unified Field Physics, and human consciousness, to name a few. Gerry also hosts The Evolution of Aloha Podcast. Please check out the links below for more information about their work.
