I was reflecting on the people within Dave Gray’s School of the Possible and how it reminded me of something Deborah Frieze said in her TED Talk on how change happens within a living system and how there are different roles to be fulfilled in this process (i.e. illuminator, hospice workers, protectors).
But what I just realized as well is that you can actually have multiple people working in the same role, yet they can be achieving it differently from others, as they’re approaching the role from their own disciplinary perspective as well. For example, you could have one person who helps people transition using creativity and another person helping people making the transition using the Hero’s Journey. But both of these people are doing the same thing because the Hero’s Journey embodies the creative process itself (the transitioning between different stages of development and levels of consciousness).
Yet what I realized here, based upon my vertical development knowledge, is that there are different levels of transition going on here as well, as everyone needs to level up where they are at. In effect, employees before would follow and do what they’re told by leaders but now they need to level up to effectively take leadership over their own lives and manage themselves, become a new type of follower. And leaders as well need to level up and become a new type of leader, something paradoxically different from a conventional leader.
What I’m getting at with all of this though is that it’s making me realize there are a myriad of roles to be filled in this web of change that people can fulfill. So just like Deborah said in terms of asking yourself which role are you fulfilling, it also asking yourself at well level are you assisting people make the change as well.
For myself though, it’s evident that my life’s work is not focused in just working in one specific role but instead showing people the web of roles available at different levels in the larger process overall.
