Integral Voices

Convening The Dialogic Commons

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Trust, Fractals and Learning: Exploring the Practice of Transformative Leadership

Monica Sharma and Aftab Omer in Conversation

What makes leaders trustworthy? How can cultural and system transformation be scaled? How do transformative leaders serve by engaging worldviews? In this conversation between Monica Sharma and Aftab Omer they identify some of the capabilities required for transformative leaders to systemically engage the fragilities and possibilities of our time.

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Meet the Speakers

Aftab Omer

Aftab Omer, Ph.D. is the president of Meridian University which offers degree and professional programs globally, emphasizing the power of transformative learning.

He is a sociologist, psychologist, developmentalist, and futurist. Raised in Pakistan, India, Hawaii, and Turkey, he was educated at the universities of M.I.T, Harvard and Brandeis. His publications have addressed the topics of transformative learning, dialogic capability, developmental power, cultural leadership, civil society, generative entrepreneurship, and the power of imagination.

Aftab’s advising work focuses on team development and on leveraging the creative potentials of conflict, diversity, and complexity. Formerly the president of the Council for Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychologies, he is a Fellow of the International Futures Forum and the World Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Meet the Speakers

Monica Sharma

Monica Sharma is a physician and epidemiologist, who spent 22 years at the United Nations with a focus on developing leaders In many countries around the world. Her book, Radical Transformative Leadership, admired by authors like Peter Senge and Daniel Goleman offers a coherent model for practitioners of transformative leadership. In the midst of the interlocking and cascading crises that people around the world are enduring, Monica‘s work is of critical importance.

All Episodes

Panel Conversation

1:22:15

Another World is Possible: Unlearning and the World We CreateHanno Burmester's soon-to-be-published book by Perspectiva Press, Unlearn: A Compass for Radical Transformation, offers a doorway into understanding the role of 'unlearning' in transformative change and transformative leadership.Learn More

Thomas Steininger and Aftab Omer

1:00:39

It is Our Care that Creates New Worlds: Dialogic Capability Amidst Cultural CrisisCan we respond to the multi-dimensional crises of our time with a different kind of speaking and listening? Can we protect and preserve the great storehouse of ideas, stories and practices embedded in human cultures?Learn More

Peter Senge and Aftab Omer

1:00:45

Freedom is a Simple Word: Allowing Another to be a Legitimate OtherWhat is the true nature of inner freedom? How do we recognize the legitimacy of the other? How do destiny and humility relate to leadership?Learn More

Panel Conversation

1:29:21

Nurturing Our Humanity: Reuniting Care and EconomicsWhat are the enabling conditions for reuniting care and economics? Are these also the conditions for the birth of an ecological civilization? Can we get real about markets and what the social wealth economic indicators are that promote real thinking about the human future?Learn More

Nina Simons and Aftab Omer

1:08:27

Revisioning Entrepreneurship: Generativity, Indigeneity and the FeminineIn this expansive and heartful conversation, Nina Simons and Aftab Omer explore the shadows and possibilities of entrepreneurship. Holding a vision of local interdependence and generative globalization, they discuss how transformative innovation gathers social, technological and cultural dimensions in ways that regenerate the commons.Learn More

Thomas Hubl and Aftab Omer

1:14:10

Listening to the Voice of the Field: The Great Conductor and the Black HoleIn this wide-ranging and emergent conversation, Thomas Hubl and Aftab Omer explore collective trauma, social healing, and the ways in which scientific inquiry and mystical understanding inform the challenging work of collective trauma practitioners. Aftab and Thomas share their reflections on related themes including the COVID-19 pandemic, collective presencing, the intimate internet, and the power of creative surrender.Learn More