Wisdom is Integral to Leadership

I imagine a world in which wisdom is integral to leadership.

So that the decisions we make consider long-range implications, and come from a place of experience, knowledge and good judgement.

If we made decisions with a broader range of our intelligences, not just our mental cognition, wise choices would be the natural result.

When wisdom informs our acts of leadership, we open ourselves to dramatically different outcomes, ones that preserve the experience of the past while we forge our way into the future.

Today, short-term gain seems to be the foundation of many of the decisions made by government and even more so in business. Short sighted resource extraction has resulted in significant environmental problems such as air pollution and climate change, not to mention habitat destruction and mass extinction.

The non-renewable nature of these resources has implications for industries dependent on resources such as coal, petroleum. With the rate of extraction or use of resources such as water and timber it can seem as though the supply will never run out but without considering the ecological processes that allow for these resources to be available on a renewable basis we run the risk of causing harm to the systems that enable life to exist on earth.

Today business decision are primarily made by analysis or mental intellect. Our buying decisions are primarily made with our hearts intelligence.  Governing policy decisions are made by political influence and vested interests.

If wisdom was integral to leadership, then our society would make better choices, valuing a range of intelligences, and thinking long term. Our businesses would look and feel different, with wise leadership and decision making. We would experience being governed in whole new ways. We might experience more voices being heard, more interests being considered, which could result in more time getting on with life and creating new ways of being on this planet.

Can you imagine?