The Worldview Paradox

Leadership Workshop (10 of 12) – Start with Yourself

Leading at Light Speed is a powerful leadership book for businesses, public agencies, and nonprofits revealing the 10 specific ways an organization must act and behave to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization.

The Worldview Paradox is a concept in Leading at Light Speed described in Chapter 9 along with three other Leadership Paradoxes. Buy the book to read about the other three.

Through an advanced understanding of different worldviews, you can lead the way in this time of increasing globalization and diversity. Each worldview carries with it a specific and definable mental model of how the world works – and how it should be. The Western worldview schools us to look at everything rationally. When we encounter an obstacle, our innate reaction is to analyze the details and formulate a solution. Taking for granted the inherent order and logic of the world, this isn’t such a bad idea.

The Western worldview, which teaches rationality, is only one of many~The Western worldview of rationality is but one of many~The Western worldview, which teaches rationality, is only one of many}. Philosophers and sociologists have identified at least four different worldviews: the Western, the Eastern, the Existentialist, and the Religious.

The Western Worldview believes in logic, rationality and the influence of individual free will. Individual thinking, action and problem solving are hailed as key. This worldview is not comfortable with uncertainty and irrationality. This goes a long way to explaining the appeal that tidy plot lines which are so suited to television hold to Westerners. It’s comforting to see sixty-minute solutions, easy outs, and resolvable dilemmas. This worldview unfortunately does not encourage us to open our eyes too wide, and does nothing to prepare us for the complex chaos of reality.

The Eastern worldview, in contrast, focuses on the unknown. It holds that intuition and insight can help us tap into deeper areas of spiritual meaning. It assumes that the unconscious mind has access to deeper and more meaningful insights than those available through rational thinking, and that this non-conscious awareness can be improved through training. In the Eastern worldview, people act under the influence of unseen spiritual forces, and their lives are suffused with this unseen spiritual world. People with this worldview have a deep psychological need for meditation, for quieting the rational mind, for a personal experience of the unknowable. They are also wary of easy solutions to complicated problems.

A third worldview is the Existentialist, which holds that life, as it is experienced by human beings, is fundamentally unexplainable, but that we owe it to ourselves to make the best of the hand we’re dealt, both in terms of our family and the world into which we are born. This worldview holds that the highest goal is to be authentic to one’s own beliefs, to act on those beliefs, and to create a life built on being true to those beliefs. Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Satre and other such existentialist thinkers hold that human beings are made to live with circumstances beyond their control, and that the only path to true meaning is finding what is important to each individual being. A corollary to this worldview is that what’s important to you has no bearing on what’s important to me. We must each discover our individual truth in our own way.

The fourth worldview, the Religious, holds that knowledge is conferred through faith, and that a kind of mystical power is vested in God or a system of gods. People living according to this philosophy allow their decisions to be influenced by beliefs and religious traditions, and are drawn to prayer and religious experience~People who follow this philosophy are drawn to prayer and religious experience, and use their beliefs and religious traditions to influence their decisions~People living according to this philosophy allow their decisions to be influenced by beliefs and religious traditions, and are drawn to prayer and religious experience}. Religious leaders are powerful within this worldview – any world event is seen as the work of God and they must work to interpret these events through religious teaching and training.

All four of these worldviews mingle together in today’s organizations. At one of our client companies, for example, teams of software developers from the U.S., Europe and Asia routinely work together on projects. Team members have all four worldviews. The team’s manager is a gifted communicator, but even he admits to frustration when deadlines approach and people react in different ways. “One guy was praying, another was cursing our sub-contractors, and a third was laughing at the absurdity of it all,” he said.

A true leader must be able to manage the differences exhibited through these worldviews. A broad sense of humor goes a long way. But it’s also important to establish a framework of core values that can provide people a focus and serve as a bridge between different worldviews. Leaders must lead people in hard conversations about the difference between their values and the organization’s core values (the first quantum leap). They need to be ready to teach other people how truly difficult and complex the world is. How you lead in this gulf between warring convictions will test your abilities to engage, communicate, and build a high-performing organization.

Take this free work survey to discover how well your company measures up to the 10 key practices of high-performing organizations.