The Syntropic Steward Leader — bearing guard, holding the integrity, being the exemplar

Leadership…ah…there are books and books on leadership. What can I add?

In Syntropic World we speak of, teach and live the Steward Leader as our leadership model.

To bear guard over something worth guarding. To hold the space for what is emerging.

Our closest metaphor is to parent, to bring forth.

A Syntropic Steward Leader has several primary responsibilities.

1. First and foremost, to protect with fierce love the Pattern Integrity of the Source Idea — the idea that the enterprise is bringing into form and life. Any violation of the Pattern Integrity and we have set a course that will take us on a path of enterprise erosion.

We know this experience. We know when a business opens and the Pattern Integrity is clear in all areas. There is a sense of ‘rightness’. Nothing feels out of place. Step into the enterprise space and there is coherence, alignment. How the people creating the enterprise respond to customers, how they enact service, all in harmony and aligned. It feels complete, whole.

Go back to the same enterprise months or years later, and we can feel, sense and experience if the Pattern Integrity has been violated. Corners cut. Cost savings now primary. Standards different. Peeling paint. Low-cost ingredients. Unhappy people.

From the business owner’s perspective, this might have felt necessary. To make ends meet, or to make as much profit as possible.

From a Syntropic Enterprise perspective, we would ask, “How can we continue without violating the Pattern Integrity?” Or, “How can we thrive whilst we maintain the Pattern Integrity under any conditions?” In our asking, answers might come. In my experience, they always come, often from unexpected places, and dressed in disguise. Regularly just-in-time.

2. To attune to the inner ecology of the enterprise and its health and opportunity for synergy, making adjustments as needed. Like a gardener, the Syntropic Steward Leader tends to the conditions in which the enterprise is creating and bringing to life the purpose of the enterprise. Fine-tuning indicates the ecology is in good shape. At the same time, the Steward Leader is not afraid of major tune-ups on the rare occasions they might be required. Any tune-up is always in partnership with the Pattern Integrity of the Source Idea.

3. Attuning to the larger external ecology in which the enterprise exists. The geopolitics, environment, culture and economy, at the local, community and global level.

At all times the Syntropic Steward Leader is in deep communion with the Source Idea and its Pattern Integrity and the relationship to the inner and outer ecologies of the enterprise. They are never separate.

4. Holding the harmonic balance of the polarities of the enterprise. Ensuring that there is not too much positive charge, too much niceness, too much consensus, too much reflexive agreement. Too much positive and we are going to stagnate. Simultaneously, that there is not too much negative charge — gossip, backstabbing, blame, failure to take responsibility, to be accountable, to resist continually growing and developing, are not acceptable.

Polarities include diversity of thought, origins, backgrounds, skills, gender.

5. Investing in upgrading their own skills and capacities — emotional, cognitive, physical, intellectual, communication, perspective taking, and encouraging others to do the same. We all get to grow up as we grow our enterprise, deliberately, by design.

6. Being the exemplar. Never expecting others to model what you do not. Being willing to be held to account by your team, by the enterprise, by the community that is touched by the enterprise. Never beyond reproach. Never allowed to separate from the ground of the enterprise, the soil of its beginnings.

7. To create the ecology in which human synergy is the day-to-day occurrence, not the exception. To know, without doubt, that brilliance comes from people working together synergistically. To willingly and humbly stand aside as others speak, act, synergise. A Syntropic Steward Leader will stand aside as the people shine.

To live as a Steward Leader is to know the act of holding, gestation, atunement, partnering, Kairos time. There is no forcing. No exploitation. No imposition of form over the Source Idea.

There is an ability to hold clear, strong, inviolate boundaries. To be fierce in protection. To love. To dance with emergence. To trust that if the Source Idea and its Pattern Integrity are aligned to the evolutionary purpose, the very next step will emerge and with it the capacity to provision.

A Syntropic Steward Leader works with the principles of Syntropy, leaving everything better. Including themselves for their leadership.

In a world invested in entropic, destructive, exploitative practices, a Syntropic Enterprise is the Oasis we yearn for.