The Inner, Intersubjective, and Transpersonal Experience of Presencing

Emerging Collective Leadership for Transforming Higher Education

Abstract

This article explores a collective journey of presencing as an emergent pathway for cultivating collective leadership within higher education. Grounded in a shared inquiry among participants committed to reimagining higher education through more holistic, relational, and presence-based pedagogies, the study examines how presencing functioned as both an ontological and intersubjective process of transformation. Participants engaged in practices aimed at deepening their own capacities for presence across the domains of being, relating, and acting, thereby creating conditions for new forms of collective awareness, relational coherence, and shared vision to emerge. Building upon Theory U while extending beyond its predominantly epistemological orientation, this article draws on dynamic presencing perspectives to investigate the embodied, relational, and transpersonal dimensions of transformative learning and leadership. Particular attention is given to the way deeper attunement to the lived body, heightened intersubjective resonance, and moments of connection to a larger transpersonal source contributed to the emergence of collective leadership capacities. These capacities included expanded self-awareness, a strengthened sense of shared purpose, heart-centred relational engagement, and the co-emergence of actionable vision for transforming pedagogical and leadership practices within higher education. The article suggests that presencing, when engaged as a lived relational and ontological process, offers a powerful developmental pathway for cultivating forms of leadership capable of responding to the complexity, fragmentation, and transitional challenges facing contemporary educational institutions.