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Collective virtuosity. The experience of wholeness. Imagine what could happen if our work together was informed by an active role in an exceptional performance by a symphony, choir, band, dance group, or sports team. Making it exceptional is a delicate balance of authenticity, risk, and calibration – of a deep trust in self and in others.

This wholeness is a response to the many ways that are lives can be fragmented and isolating, which is one of the ways that are lives can feel meaningless, because we don’t understand how everything fits together to make our work, and our lives fulfilling.

The twentieth century physicist, David Bohm, described our mechanical view of the world as the virus of fragmentation. “For fragmentation is now very widespread,” he said, “not only throughout society, but also in each individual; and this is leading to a kind of general confusion of the mind, which creates an endless series of problems and interfaces without clarity of perception so seriously as to prevent us from being able to solve most of them …” the notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless confusion and conflict.

Fragmentation is all around us. It’s not that we don’t want to understand more, or to have access to a wider array of information. It’s just that oftentimes we don’t have the time, the energy, or the resources to get more information. So, we do the best we can with what we know or what we can access in the time we have. Over the years, this pattern has influenced much of our lives. Education comes in bits and bytes, in lessons and units. Lists are made so that we can maintain some sense of order in our lives. Projects are broken down into groups of tasks so that individuals know what they are supposed to do. Every book only has a slice of what is available on a subject.

“Our enchantment with fragmentation starts in early childhood. Since our first school days, we learn to break the world apart and disconnect ourselves from it. We memorize isolated facts, read static accounts of history, study abstract theories, and acquire ideas unrelated to our life experience and personal aspirations. Economics is separate from psychology, which is separate from biology, which has little connection with art. We eventually become convinced that knowledge is accumulated bits of information and that learning has little to do with our capacity for effective action, our sense of self, and how we exist in our world.” (Peter Senge, http://www.solonline.org/repository/download/transform.html?item_id=505852)

In response, David Bohm says that “If we hold a view of wholeness, this will enable us to work differently than when we have a view of everything being broken up. The mechanistic view tends to lead to, gives support to fragmentation. That is, we know that our whole is fragmented, and we can see it in nations that are struggling with each other and to all sorts of professional groups and ambitions, and inside of each person are many fragments, different objectives and different purposes fighting each other.”

The Art of Illumination is designed to provide an overarching framework for individuals to deepen their self-trust and for the group to have a common, shared experience based on the unique talents and differences of each individual. It is what The Imagination Lab has labeled collective virtuosity.

Collective virtuosity is a phrase borrowed from The Imagination Lab’s research that shifts the dependency of leadership away from a single individual to each and every member, much like in jazz, symphony, dance, or an improvisation ensemble. It is the experience of wholeness. Though challenging to repeat on a frequent basis, when it is experienced and achieved, all members realize a new level of possibility and each is deeply moved by their contribution to the performance. The group’s performance depends on the individual’s skills, affects the way one calibrates their rehearsals and task performance, in order to again experience collective virtuosity.

In business, if teams and groups can experience collective virtuosity, it is assumed that members will have an emotional memory to draw upon. Knowing what collective virtuosity feels like, and knowing that it is possible, members look at work sessions as rehearsals where freer, more authentic expressions are encouraged, while also being collectively mindful of the group’s performance in that session.

One of the paths to finding collective virtuosity, is the connection between self-trust and trust by others, is through exploring and discovering insights through the following practices:

The Practice of Recognizing
The Practice of Suspending
The Practice of Unfolding
The Practice of Embodying
The Practice of Enacting

These are called practices because they provide the opportunity to work and play in tandem. This means that that while individuals are playing through experimentation, the focus is on real-time work situations, issues, challenges, and opportunities. This contrasts with traditional discrete training events that expect participants to transfer their learning, without any feedback mechanism.

The Art of Illumination is an arts-based action-learning format for individuals to experience the value of applying the five practices. This means that rather than experience learning as a discrete event, learning is structured over days and weeks to give participants an opportunity to become aware of, to experiment with, and apply their newly discovered insights.

The Art of Illumination is designed to provide the opportunity for participants to immerse themselves in the experience of the five practices through doing and reflecting rather than merely listening and reading.

In order for participants to realize the benefits of this experience, The Art of Illumination creates a safe environment so participants can step to the edge of their comfort zone again and again. Each invitation raises the stakes for how individuals: 1) trust themselves based on who they already are, 2) trust in a future that feels unknown, 3) trust in the role of time, 4) trust in the moment of not-knowing, and 5) trust in the collective to shape and experience something common that has “magic.”

When we test trust, we are given an opportunity to face our fears, our cynicism, our judgments, and to explore our dreams and hopes. The most ideal forum for us in which to test trust is when we are given situations to learn about ourselves, then to place ourselves in the company of others.

Ultimately, the goal of the Art of Illumination is to give participants new ways for sensing and redirecting their personal and professional lives, to develop capabilities to be more adaptive and agile in today’s ever-changing world while positively affecting personal morale and business productivity.

Intention

Over the course of the event series, participants enhance the leadership competencies of self-knowledge, understanding of others, dealing with ambiguity, and innovation. The series is designed for participants to discover and renew the core of their personal leadership.

At the end of the event series, participants enhance their leadership capabilities to:

Be open and trusting with others without defensiveness or filters
Pick up on the positions, intentions, and needs of others with sensitivity
Rely on both intuition and information when shifting gears and coping with change
Build upon one’s own and other’s ideas to promote the best interests of what is at stake

Participants will affect their leadership capabilities by:

Exploring one of the following practices through a related art-based experiential activity

The Practice of Recognizing
The Practice of Suspending
The Practice of Unfolding
The Practice of Embodying
The Practice of Enacting

Reflecting in one’s personal notebook about the application of leadership capabilities to immediate personal or professional challenges, opportunities or situations
Participating in an group activity that tests the leadership capability in seeking to find ‘the collective’s voice”
Sharing in their notebooks, in small-group report-outs, or large-group discussions about a change in their personal leadership with others
Recognizing the connection between their personal passions and the collective’s voice
Expressing a positive difference in their ability to find what is common with others

Competency Descriptions

Self Knowledge
Knows personal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and limits in order to be open and trusting with others across many different types of situations without defensiveness or filters, as much as possible.

Understanding Others
Is tolerant of people and processes; listens and checks before acting; tries to understand the people before making judgments and acting; waits for others to catch up before acting; picks up on individuals’ sensibilities in terms of positions, intentions, and needs; what they value and what is motivating.

Dealing with Ambiguity
Demonstrates flexibility and resilience; Is open to and can cope with change, easily shifting gears, relying on both intuition and the information, the past, the present, and the future; comfortably handles risk and uncertainty; is very flexible and adaptable when facing challenging situations; combines seeming opposites like compassion and directness; when acting differently, communicates why; balances conflicting demands in creative ways.

Innovation Management
Is good at stewarding creative ideas from the intangible to tangible; discerns privately and collectively about which ideas to act on; knows how to build upon their or another’s idea to promote the best interests of what is at stake; easily sees connections among previously unrelated and diverse ideas and/or resources; experiments and will try almost anything to find the best action based on constraint, risk and opportunity; quickly grasps the essence and the underlying structure of anything.

Notes:

Every day we have the resources to use words and images. Sometimes a word is not enough to convey what you want. So, you add a picture. And, chances are that at some point when you’ve added a picture you struggled to find another way, because one picture wasn’t enough. Because of the tools we have at our disposal, our thinking becomes constrained, trying to function with what we have, a small screen, a mouse and a bunch of buttons.

There are many ways to see things more coherently, schedules, charts, spreadsheets, word documents, the Internet, illustrations, maps, and many other ways, but each has their limitation because of the nature of their capacity to visualize thinking. Seldom can we easily put them together.

Our ability to work together, collaborate, tackle challenges, and pursue significant opportunities greatly depends on the relationship between the trust we have in ourselves and the trust we have in others. Everything we do in our life depends on this very simple interaction. When it works, these interactions are joyful and fulfilling. When it misses, it is frustrating, exasperating, and sometimes even painful.

In its simplicity, an individual’s self-trust affects how another person trusts them. When an individual exhibits self-confidence and self-assurance in their personal interests, direction and aspirations, then others will have more trust in them. Explicit and perceived expectations are shaped based on this relationship between self-trust and trust by others. When we step back and consider an aggregate of individuals who each have their own degree of self-trust and are each perceived with a different level of trust by every other individual in the group, we begin to get a grasp of the complexity of performance and morale at both the individual and group level.

The attention given to this delicate balance between the individual and group is left to managers by default, at other times it is anointed, given or inherited. Individuals have responsibility for their personal development. Group meetings focus on project direction, schedule, and performance. Team-building events happen occasionally. Seldom does a project team or group renew or reexamine their interpersonal relationships as the work advances over the weeks and months.

In business, if teams and groups can experience collective virtuosity, it is assumed that members will have an emotional memory to draw upon. Knowing what collective virtuosity feels like, and knowing that it is possible, members look at work sessions as rehearsals where freer, more authentic expressions are encouraged, while also being collectively mindful of the group’s performance in that session.

One of the paths to finding collective virtuosity, the connection between self-trust and trust by others, is through exploring and discovering insights through the following practices:

The Practice of Recognizing
The Practice of Suspending
The Practice of Unfolding
The Practice of Embodying
The Practice of Enacting

These are called WorkPlay practices because they provide the opportunity to work and play in tandem. This means that that while individuals are playing through experimentation, the focus is on real-time work situations, issues, challenges, and opportunities. This contrasts with traditional discrete training events that expect participants to transfer their learning, without any feedback mechanism.

The Art of Illumination is an arts-based action-learning format for individuals to experience the value of applying the WorkPlay practices. This means that rather than experience learning as a discrete event, learning is structured over days and weeks to give participants an opportunity to become aware of, to experiment with, and apply their newly discovered insights.

The Art of Illumination is designed to provide the opportunity for participants to immerse themselves in the experience of the six practices through doing and reflecting rather than merely listening and reading.

In order for participants to realize the benefits of this experience, The Art of Illumination creates a safe environment so participants can step to the edge of their comfort zone again and again. Each invitation raises the stakes for how individuals: 1) trust themselves based on who they already are, 2) trust in a future that feels unknown, 3) trust in the role of time, 4) trust in the moment of not-knowing, and 5) trust in the collective to shape and experience something common that has “magic.”

When we test trust, we are given an opportunity to face our fears, our cynicism, our judgments, and to explore our dreams and hopes. The most ideal forum for us in which to test trust is when we are given situations to learn about ourselves, then to place ourselves in the company of others.

Ultimately, the goal of the Art of Illumination is to give participants new ways for sensing and redirecting their personal and professional lives, to develop capabilities to be more adaptive and agile in today’s ever-changing world while positively affecting personal morale and business productivity.

How much of your calendar and email has distracted you from using your inner resources in your day-to-day work? And, you can’t just step out to do yoga or meditate, can you?

More importantly, what is the lost opportunity to you, or even to your colleagues, or to your Company? What about stress? More significantly, what about how your work stress is affecting your personal health? What about moments of satisfaction and fulfillment?

The Art of Illumination is designed for participants to discover and renew the core of their personal leadership by exploring capabilities to:
- Be open and trusting with others without defensiveness or filters
- Pick up on the positions, intentions, and needs of others with sensitivity
- Rely on both intuition and information when shifting gears and coping with change
- Build upon their and other's ideas to promote the best interests of what is at stake

Our ability to work together, collaborate, tackle challenges, and pursue significant opportunities greatly depends on the relationship between the trust we have in ourselves and the trust we have in others. Everything we do in our life depends on this very simple interaction. When it works, these interactions are joyful and fulfilling. When it misses, it can be uncomfortable, frustrating, or exasperating.

In its simplicity, an individual’s self-trust affects how another person trusts them. When an individual exhibits self-confidence and self-assurance in their personal interests, direction and aspirations, then that individual may tend to towards having more trust in them. When an individual is uncertain or confused about their abilities or contributions, then this may be why it is difficult for that person to trust another person.

When we step back and consider an aggregate of individuals who each have their own degree of self-trust and are each perceived with a different level of trust by every other individual in the group, we begin to get a grasp of the complexity of performance and morale at both the individual and group level.

The responsibility for this delicate balance between the individual and his or her group is left to the manager by default. Individuals have responsibility for their personal development. Group meetings focus on project direction, schedule, and performance. Team-building events happen occasionally. Seldom does a project team or group renew or reexamine their interpersonal relationships as the work advances over the weeks and months.

The Art of Illumination is designed to provide an overarching framework for individuals to deepen their self-trust and for the group to have a common, shared experience based on the unique talents and differences of each individual. It is what The Imagination Lab has labeled collective virtuosity.

What motivates us in our work? The list is simple. Doing good work, being on a project that is important or significant, feeling like I’ve contributed, that I’ve made a difference, and getting a simple recognition from a peer, boss or customer.

How often do we feel motivated in our work? At it’s best every day. Or at the other extreme, maybe once a year.

How many lunches have you not had time for? What about exercise? Ever have the feeling that during the last 10 minutes (or maybe even soon) of your meeting that your mind is already pre-occupied with the next meeting? Do you go to bed restless, thinking about everything that a list of tasks that need to get done, or maybe there is one situation that you can’t stop thinking about, because of the stakes involved?

What’s driving your performance? Your schedule? Your email? Your goals? What about that voice within you? You know the one, the one that whispers to you when you’re in a conversation with a slightly different opinion, one that can sometimes remain silent until you’re talking to a confidant. What about that eureka moment, when you get an idea for something, related to something important at work, but quite unrelated to what you were doing when you got the idea. What about the one that speaks to you when you’re relaxing or you’re in the shower; the one that clearly outlines the one or two thoughts that will be important to consider. Is this inner voice connected to your performance? Are you consciously drawing on these inner resources to contribute to your performance at work?

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