The Power of the Centaur: Integral Leadership & the Wisdom of the Body

“What modernity differentiated, post-modernity must integrate.”
-Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology & Spirituality

The first time I met her, Sarah* was a wreck. A mid-level manager for a multi-national corporation, Sarah had just come from a meeting where she had been drawn into a heated argument with a person she supervised. “Tim,” Sarah exclaimed in frustration as we began our coaching session, “emotions are so complicated!”

I couldn’t agree more strongly with Sarah. For better or for worse, leadership is about people, people are emotional, and emotions are complex. Leadership is therefore—by definition—a complicated business, one that does not lend itself to concrete formulas or simple platitudes. From an integral perspective, most modern leadership approaches seek overly simplistic answers in the objective (or right-hand side of the AQAL model) aspects of leadership while ignoring the subjective (left-hand side of AQAL) dimensions of leadership. This belief in simplistic, objective answers to leadership is a flatland fallacy. The fundamental—and rarely acknowledged—problem facing leaders today is that flatland leadership perspectives are stealing enormous profits from us while creating untold damage in our organizations.

Lead Your Organization Out of Flatland …
You cannot solve leadership problems using the same level of consciousness that created those problems. Consequently, the need for integral leadership today is greater than ever. Recent data strongly suggests that flatland perspectives actually hurt your organization’s bottom line. For example, primarily due to current leadership practices, somewhere between 70%-80% of American employees are not emotionally committed to their work, costing the U.S. economy over $360 billion in profits annually. Scale that number up to global economy levels and the results are quite distressing indeed.

… by Becoming a Centaur.
The integral solution for leading your organization out of flatland is straightforward: become a Centaur. Ken Wilber uses the Centaur—the mythic half human/half horse creature—to represent the integration of body and mind. For leaders, becoming a Centaur requires nothing short of personal transformation, because today’s complex global economy demands that leaders move from the rational realm into post-rational levels of consciousness. Centauric leadership is post-rational leadership that transcends and includes rational knowledge in the support of even greater levels of success. (For more on post-rational ways of knowing, see Warneka & Warneka’s The Way of Leading People.)

Fortunately, your starting point for becoming a Centaur is quite easy to find─it is staring back at you in the mirror. The image you see reflected there is an enormously powerful leadership tool that is at your fingertips every moment and costs you absolutely nothing to use. That tool is your body. In my book Leading People the Black Belt Way, I share the secrets of Embodied Leadership Technology (or E.L.T.), an integral strategy for leading organizations out of flatland by tapping into the wisdom of the body. As an integral leadership approach, E.L.T. calls you to embody—that is, to actually live out—the truth that your mind, body, and spirit are an integrated whole. The difference between understanding and embodying a fact is crucial here, that distinction being the same as understanding the lottery and actually winning the lottery. The more you embody yourself as a leader—that is, the more Centauric you become—the more effective you will be as a leader.

Embodied Leadership Technology is an integration of principles from the revolutionary non-violent martial art of Aikido, with recent insights from integral theory and modern leadership science. E.L.T. moves you toward Centauric levels of consciousness by recognizing that your body is your primary leadership tool. Nowhere is your body more important than in the leadership realm of emotional intelligence. Recent research overwhelmingly demonstrates the importance of emotional intelligence for successful leaders … and the centrality of embodied awareness for building your emotional intelligence.

In my work with leaders, I often see dramatic results when they upgrade their E.L.T. Consider Dave, the CEO of a large Midwestern corporation. Dave and I began working together because of issues he was having in controlling his temper. Dave’s anger had landed him in hot water with his board of directors. At home, his wife was threatening to leave him. As we worked together, I taught Dave the principles of E.L.T. Although initially skeptical of what he called my “touchy-feely” approach, Dave soon was seeing the results of E.L.T. in action—and he was sold. By the end of our work together, Dave’s relationship with his board of directors was back on solid ground, and so was his marriage.

Remember Sarah? Here are five E.L.T. tips you can draw from Sarah’s experience that will help you unlock the power of your Centaur:

1. Develop a Mindful Curiosity.
Take a hint from world-famous scientists and become mindfully curious about what is going on around you. Deeply rooted in the martial arts tradition, mindfulness is a strategy designed to increase your awareness. Practice mindful curiosity by paying attention to what happens to you when you lead—mentally, emotionally, and physically. Do you hold your breath? How tight are your shoulders right now? What happens to your toes when you sit through your third meeting of the day?

For example, as Sarah and I deconstructed how she had been drawn into the argument, I encouraged her to attend more deeply to how she had responded physically, mentally and emotionally to the argument. Through mindful curiosity, Sarah was able to uncover a deeply rooted belief of hers that was, as we discovered in subsequent sessions, actively interfering with her job performance at several levels.

2. Take Up a Physical Practice.
Fortunately for her, Sarah had been practicing yoga for several years, which gave us a well of experience from which to draw upon during our coaching sessions. Yoga, Aikido, T’ai Chi, dance, and other body-oriented disciplines can go a long way toward upgrading your E.L.T. Even running or walking—when done mindfully—can be powerful leadership training tools. Not practicing anything yet? Draw on your body’s wisdom by enrolling in whatever physical practice arouses your curiosity. Already practicing? Set specific goals for yourself in order to deepen your practice.

3. Attend to Your Breathing.
When we revisited the argument, Sarah realized she had been holding her breath. Proper breathing is the royal road to embodied awareness. When encountering problems, most of us—like Sarah was doing—breathe in shallow ways, which decreases our oxygen intake. Breathing deeply in the face of problems increases oxygen levels in your body, which in turn helps you function better as a leader. You can practice breathing through meditation, breathing exercises, swimming, Aikido, and other physical activities.

4. Expand Your Emotional Intelligence.
When I invited Sarah to breathe more deeply, she experienced a flood of emotions. When difficult emotions arise, poor leaders close themselves off in denial, decreasing their emotional intelligence. Effective leaders like Sarah build their emotional intelligence by staying aware of their emotional states. By using a coach to talk through the various emotions she experienced in the argument, Sarah was stepping closer to Centauric consciousness by improving her ability to contain powerful emotions.

5. Get Coached!
Sarah was wise because she understood that leadership, like E.L.T., is first and foremost a relational process. Centauric leadership skills must be learned in relationship. None of us can step up to post-rational leadership levels without the help of others. Sarah and Dave worked with me. I have my own coaches and teachers. Find yours. Seek out a skilled coach, therapist or mentor who can show you how to harness your Centauric power. Your investment will pay off as you sail to new heights as a leader!

The Bottom Line
Like Sarah and Dave, most leaders today have fallen prey to flatland perspectives and, as a result, fail to tap into the power of the Centaur. By coherently organizing the greatest number of truths out of the greatest number of valid leadership sources, integral leadership offers you a fresh and exciting new alternative to dominant flatland leadership paradigms. When you focus on your embodied existence in an integral manner—by attending to your breathing as you meet with your direct reports or noticing the tension in your stomach the next time conflicts arise in your organization—you will have made significant strides toward becoming a Centaur. By increasing your embodied awareness, you will be leading your organization—and collectively, our world—out of flatland. In the end, the responsibility rests with leaders like Sarah and Dave─and like you and me—to lead the way into Centauric body/mind integration. The Kosmos demands no less.

* Names and other identifying information have been changed.

About the Author: Tim Warneka is an integral coach, consultant and keynote speaker living near Cleveland, Ohio. The author of Leading People the Black Belt Way: Conquering the Five Core Problems Facing Leaders Today, and Healing Katrina: Volunteering in Post-Hurricane Mississippi, and co-author (with Patrick Warneka) of The Way of Leading People: Unlocking Your Integral Leadership Skills with the Tao Te Ching, Warneka holds a black belt in the revolutionary non-violent Japanese martial art of Aikido, the principles of which he uses in all aspects of his work. Visit Tim on-line at: www.timwarneka.com. The author would like to thank his colleague Angela Nicolosi for her gracious and insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

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