Eyes to See, Ears to Hear...

There is no replacement for human wisdom at the heart of leadership

We don’t know how to measure this, teach this, or ensure it

Human judgment, which is subjective, is not measurable nor objectifiable. We are not sure how learnable it is. One can grow in wisdom, based on training and experience, and learned principles, but at the end of the day we can’t say what it is, nor if it is attainable by all. It is always partial. It is always a matter of estimation. The individual must somehow pick it up, whatever it is. We are familiar with IQ, social and communication skills, emotional intelligence, and multiple intelligences. There is a term ‘organizational intelligence’ thrown around, but this refers more to the learned knowledge inside an organization, not an ability to discern.

The organizational reality is a web of subjective observations, narratives, decisions, and modes of action. Even in the end, in the aftermath, even then we can’t truly measure what was right or wrong. There is such a thing as intelligence for the art of leadership, management, discernment, judgment, wisdom, and discernment. These are inseparable from quality leadership. We know statistics that the majority of people in management positions are not good at management. Leadership includes a variety of skills, relevant to the particular context. Besides common traits such as professional proficiency and ability for multitasking, despite these, one cannot function effectively without wisdom, etc.

The psychologist Jordan Peterson emphasizes insights from religion, mythology, and other ancient traditions, to view the world and life as a balance or mix of chaos and order dynamics. Chaos is change, revision, creativity. Order is structure, institutions, conservation. He wrote a book on principles of order for living amidst chaos, then he wrote a follow-up book about principles of chaos for living amidst order. But chaos and order are both the subject of both books, and they are intertwined always, and that is the point. The dynamics of chaos and order are definitely relevant to leadership and organizations, and at the heart of all is discernment.

Peterson shows how Babylonian and Egyptian mythology portray the legendary hero, which is a younger god, who fights and beats the corrupt old gods, but he does so in alignment with the authentic and good original principles of that order of gods. In other words, he wages war, which is chaos, to produce change, but is worthy of causing this chaos, considering the awful price paid by him and others, because he understands the original or greater and better order of things, he appreciates the order and traditions. He is a revolutionary, but it is restorative change, essentially, not only renewal. What is the common trait of the younger revolutionary god, the agent of change? Not courage and calling if you will, but vision, eyesight, discernment. In the deepest psychological and philosophically meaningful sense of leading change, he tells us, is the ability to see and discern.

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