Embodying Presencing Mastery as a Leaderly Way of Being

Abstract

Over the past decades, presencing has gained increasing weight as an approach to address complex societal and organizational challenges. But could presencing be more than a method to gain contextual knowledge? Could it be a path to more profound ways of experiencing the world and our place in it? Embracing the increasing complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity in organizations seems to require not just a different toolset or way of doing, but an entirely different way of being – one that is able to move in sync with our VUCA environment by incorporating the presencing process and disposition in our day-to-day life. What would it mean to develop this form of presencing mastery and embody presencing as a second nature in our leadership, life, and work? What finer aspects of the presencing process and disposition would we need to deeply integrate? Which challenges might we need to grapple with on the journey? And which potential might lie in incorporating presencing mastery as a leaderly way of being? Based on a six-year doctoral action research, this article fleshes out the archetypical inner journey towards presencing mastery. Ongoing cycles of action and reflection with a long-term collaborative inquiry group of organizational leaders have revealed key insights and practices for the process of developing presencing mastery as an embodied way of being. The findings also suggest that in order to incorporate and navigate with a noted degree of presencing mastery, we need to face the inertia of conventional mental models and commit to the costs and growing pains of embracing post-conventional epistemologies and ontologies. Through this ongoing commitment we may come to discover presencing mastery as a powerful way of participating in an unfolding, interconnected world and co-creating generative ways of living and leading in it.