leadership

some of the asian philosophy i’ve been studying lately includes organizational leadership, and interestingly the connection of that to some art forms. it was posed to me this summer that practicing flower arranging and zen archery are excellent ways to develop leadership skills.

in ikebana there are three key elements of an arrangement, which we could call heaven, earth, and man. substitute person for man if you prefer gender neutrality.

heaven includes the tallest or most expansive flowers or branches in the arrangement, and represents the potential of experience, the unrealized but expansive vision that is possible in life.

earth includes the smaller flowers that establish a base, closer to the ground, for the arrangement. these represent the situation as it exists today. how we see the world in our current conceptual way.

man/person is then the most colorful highlight of the arrangement, usually midway in height between heaven and earth. these flowers represent our ability to connect the earth principle of seeing how things are now accurately with the expansive potential vision of heaven principle.

so an example arrangement might have some green, full, small plants at the base for earth, some reaching tall flowers for heaven, and a small colorful flower or two in the middle for person principle. and these can also symbolically represent the role of leadership.

leadership in this way could be described as seeing the current situation accurately, having vision and understanding the potential, and then apply the person principle of connecting those two: taking us from our current situation to realize our full potential. common sense yes? if so why do we see so many pundits primarily pushing vision without acknowledging the difficulties of the current situation and so many administrators primarily dealing with the day to day without a vision?

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