Tectonic Leadership Summit

Presented by Globond International, Inc.

About Tectonic Leaders, June 2009 Summit Summary, & April 2010 Summit Preview
Contact: Larry Rosenberg (larry@globond.com) or Kirstin Myers (kirstin@globond.com)

Tectonic Leadership Is the Answer

The question: What type of leaders do we need to make a difference in our hard-pressed world? Tectonic Leaders are those who address today’s global humanity-and-Earth-threatening problems, by developing innovative, bold ways to understand them, enroll others, and solve them. The poster-person of a Tectonic Leader is President Barack Obama.

Here is the bind that leaders of nations and organizations find themselves, and what they need to move forward:

• Leaders’ problems appear to be unsolvable – large, complex, changing and difficult. They need to find new ideas out there to see and solve these most-challenging problems.
  
• Leaders’ opponents keep a distance, and become more polarized and shrill. They would benefit from meeting with their opponents to find common ground and turn adversaries into allies.


• Many of leaders’ followers flip flop easily and quickly – from lionizing to demonizing them, or simply giving mixed signals. Followers should receive continual communication, care and connection to keep them on board.


• It is lonely at the top. Privileges and handlers surround leaders, giving them little access to new ideas. They would gain from an open forum of diverse people, listening more than speaking, and exposed to innovative ideas.

The purpose of the Tectonic Leadership Summit is to provide a stimulating place for established and emerging leaders to hear new solutions to big problems, speak directly with opponents who want genuine dialogue, and get support from other leaders. Rather than deliver another speech to polite applause, the Summit is where Tectonic Leaders can feel at ease, take in new thoughts, update their strategies, and strengthen their leadership competence.

Background on Tectonic Leadership

Today, the success and even survival of humankind is in jeopardy. Our specie’s impressive progress from hunting to deeper meaning has culminated in global warming, dwindling resources, polarized differences (ethnic, religious, cultural and political), continual wars, and weakening of economic systems and social relationships. Our vaulted progress may well be causing our imminent demise.

So can anything be done? Looking the big issues facing humanity today – all global in scale – it would be easy to feel cynical and hopelessness. But many leaders around the world are instead searching for ways to bridge seemingly impassible ruptures between peoples of differing ideologies, close the growing gap between developed and developing nations, and create sustainable solutions regarding shared natural resources.

Globonders, who themselves are leaders with these issues, requested a forum where those at the forefront of change can be fed with innovative ideas, and tangibly supported in taking action. After discussions about the paradoxes that exist in global challenge, the notion of a leadership summit took shape.

Tectonic Leadership is a metaphor for what is starting to happen in our world, and needs to happen even more.

Tectonic Leaders can be informed by this metaphor: Recognizing how the Earth's tectonic plates interact at their boundaries, understanding the parameters of those boundaries, and appreciate the mighty results. Earthquakes occur as rock elasticity is exceeded, and volcanic eruptions spring from deep tension. These concepts help us comprehend future outcomes. Similarly, human systems can create fault lines and cracks of fear and conflict between groups; until we go beyond our differences, and instead create common intent and commitment to resolve our global challenges.

Attributes of Tectonic Leaders

These are the nine qualities that Tectonic Leaders need to possess:

1. They comprehend the astoundingly changing conditions of the Earth and humanity, with profound catastrophes on the horizon, and the urgent need for transformation strategies and actions.


2. They take 100% responsibility for everything in their lives as having been created by them. They make no excuses, and focus only on results.


3. They are willing to step in the cracks – by taking a 360-degree view of the situation, making themselves vulnerable, and doing things innovatively and boldly.


4. They are always personally transforming – always learning, changing and growing. They are open to new possibilities. They constantly monitor their egos, and be guided by the greater good and their higher selves.


5. They know that they must enroll others. They consider all perceptions as valid, honor every view, and seek to negotiate a win-win situation for all parties. They roll up their sleeves and listen with their hearts and heads.


6. They see the paradox in everything. They use paradoxical thinking to remove the notion of right answers vs. wrong answers. This helps them reverse the distrust, and discover the solutions beyond the paradoxes.


7. They understand that intention creates manifestation. They focus the group on what needs to be created. If they set an intention that is aligned with their belief systems, they know that they can manifest it.


8. They go beyond advocacy and favor acceptance, self-responsibility and negotiation. This involves being open to new ways of resolving conflicts. The solution must involve letting go of control to bring about change.


9. They take bold action. They operate in the real world and the here and now, and devise strategies and implement them systematically and powerfully.

About the First Tectonic Leadership Summit, June 2009

The First Annual Tectonic Leadership Summit, held at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, Washington DC area, June 25-27, 2009, was a groundbreaking event that brought together 30 prominent speakers and enthused participants, including mainly prominent Globonders (members of Globond International, Inc.) and Friends of Globond (mainly the networks of Globonders). Globond (http://www.globond.com/) is a global membership community for Tectonic Leaders, which since 2002 has facilitated its members achieving enhanced reputations, valued relationships, and increased revenues.

The goals of the Summit included:

• Establishing standards for Globond’s members, all Tectonic Leaders, and share them with the world.


• Raising their consciousness regarding change, problems and leadership responsibility and conduct.


• Providing them with a common language and practical methods of tectonic leadership.


• Linking them to take action, individually or collectively, to practice tectonic leadership with new projects.

Results of the First Summit

At the Tectonic Leadership Summit in Washington, DC, the participants aligned their intentions, understood who the tectonic leaders were and who they were not, and raised the standard for Globond International to become a powerful global membership community. Speakers from the world over shared their wisdom – in the areas of economic restructuring, personal/professional integrity, health for peak performance, connecting for world change, organizational transformation, media and communications, governmental change, venture capitalism, among others.

The Summit’s participants, Globonders and Friends of Globond, set a new standard as Tectonic Leaders, who are now more able to create opportunities for new projects for world change. Thanks to this Summit, Globond International as a business and social community is becoming a powerful force for the betterment of humanity.

Previewing the Worldwide Tectonic Leadership Summit, April 2010

As a result of the first summit, Globond plans to host the Worldwide Tectonic Leadership Summit, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, Washington DC area, in April 2010.

Added to the goals of the June 2009 Summit are these goals for the April 2010 Summit:

• Gather 300 participants who want to learn and practice tectonic leadership.


• Have a larger group of world leaders, from many sectors and nations, who are committed to positive change through new leadership approaches.


• Set up private conversations between Tectonic Leaderships and their opponents after the Summit, when sets of opponents or potential allies have gone through the Tectonic Leadership process.


• Encourage Tectonic Leaders to work together on solid and world-changing projects that contribute to solutions.

Globond’s Summit will become a vehicle for facilitating face-to-face meetings to create synergy between parties in mutual need or disagreement. A businessperson would participate to form business alliances for marketing innovations. A politician would attend to learn how to disagree with his opponents in a way that allows them to find common ground and both make progress. Globond will work on behalf of participants to arrange and facilitate such meetings of genuine sharing, with win-win goals in mind.

If you are keen on participating in the April 2010 Summit, believe that you are a Tectonic Leader, or are interested in becoming a Globonder or Friend of Globond, contact Larry Rosenberg (larry@globond.com) or Kirstin Myers (kirstin@globond.com). All candidates to be Globonders are assessed according to rigorous criteria and must be referred by someone in Globond and ratified by its Executive Team.

Why Attend a Tectonic Leadership Summit™?

Tectonic Leadership™ and the Summit

Before answering the questions "What is Tectonic Leadership™?" and "Why should one attend a Tectonic Leadership™ Summit™?", we need to briefly assess where we--as human beings--stand today. The success of our species--first in agriculture, then in the development of language, the growth and sophistication of knowledge, the quest for deeper meaning, spirituality, order--has culminated in a world of dwindling resources fed by ever-expanding consumption and exploitation, and almost continual warfare caused by deepening polarization around our differences—ethnic, religious, cultural, political. Ironically, our progress has led to the threat of annihilation.

So what can we do? Looking at any one of the issues facing humanity today--all of them global in scale--it would be easy to slip into feelings of futility, cynicism, despair. But many thought leaders around the world are resisting the seduction of hopelessness and are searching instead for ways to heal seemingly impassible ruptures between peoples of differing ideologies; to bridge the growing gap between developed and developing nations, and create sustainable solutions for the use of our shared natural resources.

Globonders, who themselves are leaders in addressing many of these issues, began a year ago to discuss the need to provide a forum where those at the forefront of change can be fed with ideas--supported and encouraged in what is often a lonely endeavor. After many discussions about the seeming paradox that exists in every global challenge--cutting down on greenhouse gases without disrupting existing and emerging economies; settling land disputes without displacing millions; stimulating economies without sacrificing fiscal discipline--the notion of a leadership summit took shape.

Globonder Samia Bahsoun coined the term Tectonic Leadership™ because she saw a useful metaphor in the way Earth's tectonic plates interact at their boundaries; how understanding the parameters of those boundaries--where earthquakes occur when the natural elasticity of surrounding rock is exceeded, or where compression builds mountains, or tension leads to volcanic eruption and the creation of new crust--can give us an understanding of future outcomes and a reinterpretation of those processes as predictable and non-destructive. So human interactions can similarly create fault systems of fear and hatred between us until we move fearlessly toward our differences, using them instead to create common intent and the commitment to resolve the many global challenges we share.

The Tectonic Leadership™ Summit is a working summit, where participants are introduced to the paradoxical approach to problem solving. Paradoxical thinking is used to remove the notion of right answers vs. wrong answers; good ideologies vs. bad ideologies; to help individuals and nations reverse the distrust that leads to protectionism or warfare. Paradox seen in its original meaning--para: beyond and doxa: common sense or popular opinion--provides a means to liberate the proponents of any given opinion to move from the divisiveness and separateness that comes from advocating one standpoint over another to the freedom that comes from shared responsibility and a new level of leadership.

Solutions that emerge and evolve through this process do not rapidly dissolve into variations of the original problem, because all stake-holders have been heard; blame has been replaced by accountability and powerlessness by ownership. Tectonic Leaders™ are freed from stand-offs and progress is made. This methodology is an invigorating, life-giving process in stark contrast to the Pyrrhic victories of the powerful over the weak, the wealthy over the poor.

http://tectonicleadershipsummit.ning.com

To get an invitation to the summit or to learn about sponsorship opportunities, please write to kirstin@globond.com.

SLATE.COM gives the reason behind Globond's Tectonic Leadership Summit!

SLATE.COM gives the reason behind Globond's Tectonic Leadership Summit!

Globond prides ourselves on having Serendipity, Synergy and Synchronicity as the 3 main drivers for our business. Today we found another validation of that model when we went for our daily reading on www.slate.com and found the following article by Daniel Gross: "Davos Man, Confused... Why the world's economic leaders blame the catastrophe on the system instead of on themselves." The entire article is a must-read for Globonders (http://www.slate.com/id/2210081/). Gross discusses this year's World Economic Forum, where the world's "great men and women" traditionally gather once a year to discuss and solve the world's biggest problems. Gross says that this year the elephant in the room is the global meltdown and simultaneous failure of so many systems and sectors. Somehow, though, he comments, the WEF attendees, used to "imposing themselves on history" are not wanting to discuss their role in the crisis. He says, "Success is the work of Great Men and Great Women, while failure can be pinned on the system."

The serendipity is that we had just picked Slate.com as our choice of media partner for the Tectonic Leadership Summit to be held for the first time in DC this April. The synergy is that Gross wrote this article without even knowing anything (yet) about what Globond is working on: The issue we have been discussing is the dysfunctional pattern in which we routinely hold up individual leaders as superstars and/or monsters, lionized one day as the solution to the world's problems, and demonized the next when things don't work out as planned. We then replace them with the next super leader. The root issue is far deeper than one of accountability.

In fact, Globond has learned from our own deep thinkers that great leaders need to learn that their biggest responsibilities are to empower those under them and to embrace the paradoxes. Furthermore, leaders need to understand that they do not have to shoulder all of the responsibility themselves, and that they too can sometimes be followers, learners, listeners. In fact, yesterday I listened to a presentation at the Boston CEO Club given by Alan Gregerman, CEO of Ventureworks and a successful author. He told us that rubber boots were first invented by the Mayans 900 years before an American inventor figured it out and commercialized them. Likewise, Indians in the Brazilian Amazon were swimming the freestyle stroke thousands of years before the Europeans "caught on" and learned it....before that, they only knew how to do the breast stroke. Gregerman's point is that the solutions were there all along but were overlooked by the so-called powerful.

In fact, the solutions to many of our current problems are all around us but our leaders, for the most part, are not looking or listening. They are too busy trying to figure it out for themselves. And getting sick in the process. Oprah Winfrey, God's gift to so many people, for example, is out of shape and depressed because there is no "Oprah" for her: the people who solve her problems are paid by her to do so. Oprah should have a shoulder to cry on and be able to just be a real person, but we put her on this pedestal too high for her to jump down.

Going back to the serendipity, last week I happened upon Slate.com's Change-o-meter after someone connected to me on LinkedIn and asked us what we thought of it. Change-0-Meter turned out to be the daily score that Slate's Chris Williams and others give to the Obama Administration for how much change they are actually doing rather than discussing. I had stopped reading Slate but now realized that Slate is not drinking the Kool-Aid and is the most objective, savvy, sage voice out there right now. They are keeping it real and keeping it honest. And it dawned on me that Slate and its sister companies Washington Post and Newsweek would be the perfect media partners for our summit.. Today Daniel Gross's article articulates what it is Globond wants to accomplish in those three days, and then on a regular basis.

The Tectonic Leadership Summit will be the place where people used to having answers will go to ask the questions. Rather than getting paid huge sums to speak, they will be the paying attendees. The answers to the big questions will be provided by Globonders, people from all over the world and every walk of life, who have been working on these problems and questions for decades. One is a Brazilian Amazonian Chief; another is a Kenyan Masaai Warrior; a third is a tennis coach and author in LA who taught tennis to Oprah Winfrey. Still another is a Lebanese woman born in Senegal who was a pioneer in telecom and is now one of the world's foremost authorities on fiber optics but who is also into Physics and Philosophy and especially paradox. And we have others from a variety of cultures and backgrounds but each one is a different piece of the puzzle we have decided to call Tectonic Leadership. Tectonic Leadership means Benevolent Intent (Etsko Schuitema), Stepping Into the Crack (Samia Bahsoun), "eating the Zebra alive" (Yusuf Ole Petenya) and using the "precision principle" (Al Secunda). It is "The Me I Couldn't See"TM (Elyce Monet)And many other ideas woven together into a methodology and set of strategies that will allow these great men and women attendees to go back out into the world as an army of Tectonic Leaders to fight the good fight and have a normal life at the same time. Alongside President Obama who is in fact a Tectonic Leader already. Most of all, however, Tectonic Leadership means getting out of the trap we are all in which divides the speakers from the listeners, the learners from the teachers.

One Tectonic Leader is too young and too besieged at the moment to even realize that she is one. Her name is Masuda Sultan and to read her memoir:

By Daniel Gross