Special Essential Conversation:
Confronting Our Freedom: Leading a Culture of Chosen Accountability and Belonging
Part One: Wednesday, January 18
7:00-8:15 pm CT US
with Peter Block and Peter Koestenbauam
Part Two: Wednesday, February 1
9:00-10:15 am CT US
with Peter Block
Confronting Our Freedom: Leading a Culture of Chosen Accountability and Belonging
Confronting Our Freedom is about reframing the common practices rising from traditional thinking about management and leadership. Most management theory and practice are about the need for clear constraints to succeed in the world where we work, but this now conventional thinking about managing calls for adaptation when working remotely has become common. Peter Block and Peter Koestenbaum’s newest collaboration is an invitation to freedom. Structuring our world for freedom is the path to collective accountability. It is ultimately a friendly look into how we might reimagine our participation in the working world, analyzing the strategy, execution, and management of philosophers, leaders, and educators.
As seminal and revolutionary thinkers and practitioners, Peter Block and Peter Koestenbaum have rocked our world forever. They have greatly influenced the impelling and compelling work and trajectory that CPL and many organizations practice today.
We were honored to meet Peter K in 2000 as a Conversation Starter at a Bay Area Thought Leader Gathering. "Navigating Organizational Change and Transformation in the 21st Century" was the conversational focus – something we’ve all been keenly interested in as a portal to societal transformation. His organization specializes in “The Leadership Diamond®” -- a program of leadership awareness. It focuses on the power of depth, which leads to emphasizing the power of free will, the ubiquitous presence of polarity and paradox, analyzing the structure of courage, and the critical importance of understanding systems and strategy. Powerful framework!
We were honored to meet Peter B in 2002 as a Conversation Starter at a Bay Area Thought Leader Gathering, again in 2003, 2004 and 2008. Conversations spanned from "Restoration of Our Communities: The Power of Radical Conversations” to “The Structure of Belonging: Community as Relationship, Leadership, Citizenship.”
As we were writing The Art of Convening: Authentic Engagement in Meetings, Gatherings, and Conversations, we utilzed an essay from Peter B’s book Community: The Structure of Belonging.
“Leadership is Convening:” In communal transformation, leadership is about intention, convening, valuing relatedness, and presenting choices. It is not a personality characteristic or a matter of style, and therefore it requires nothing more than what all of us already have. This concept of leadership means that in addition to embracing their own humanity, which is the work of every person, the core task of leaders is to create the conditions for civic or institutional engagement.
https://centerfpl.blogs.com/aoc/Leadershipasconvening.pdf
Peter and Peter’s newest collaboration yielded a powerful framework for reimagining the nature of organizations and the leadership within them.
About the Book
Many management theory and practice resources preach the supposed necessity for clear constraints to succeed in the world of work. According to these sources, guardrails and boundaries are necessary preconditions to guiding and motivating your followers. But what if the conventional thinking became obsolete as soon as the digital transformation and the COVID-19 pandemic upended the way we live and work? What if the path to real accountability lies in more―and not less―freedom of action, for ourselves and the people we lead?
In Confronting Our Freedom, distinguished leadership advisor Peter Block and renowned business philosopher Peter Koestenbaum deliver a fascinating and practical new take on management and leadership. Drawing on recent events in the market and in the world, the authors invite you to reconsider what the concepts of freedom and accountability mean to you in the context of work and business.
You’ll discover how freedom of action, for both managers and employees, is what gives rise to true accountability, both in the workplace and in the community. You’ll reexamine the nature and structure of freedom, including its implications for our own choices and lives, and find ways to shift the focus of your management and leadership style to one that prioritizes accountability. You’ll also find strategies for shifting the illusion of clear roles and expectations to one that’s fully compatible with human-centered organizations.
“In Confronting Our Freedom, Peter provides a radical departure from organizational life as we know it. He invites us to deconstruct long-held practices and ways of being in the workplace that prioritizes control, predictability, and an unhelpful relationship between leader and employee—many of these practices we in Human Resources have created and perpetuated with the best of intentions. After reading Confronting Our Freedom, I am inspired to reimagine how different our workplaces could be when we believe freedom is inherent in every person and accountability is chosen rather than induced. This is a must-read for everyone practicing human resources in today’s workplace.”
―TONYA HARRIS CORNILEUS, PhD, Senior Vice President, Learning & Talent Solutions, The Walt Disney Company
About Peter Block
Peter Block is an author and citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio. He is a partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops designed to build the skills outlined in his books. His books include Flawless Consulting, Stewardship, The Answer to How Is Yes, Community, The Abundant Community, and An Other Kingdom. Peter is a founder of the Common Good Collective, is part of the Common Good Alliance of Greater Cincinnati, and was a member of his local neighborhood council. He serves on the board LivePerson, a provider of online engagement solutions. His work is in the restoration of the common good and creating a world that reclaims our humanity from the onslaught of modernism and development.
About Peter Koestenbauam
PETER KOESTENBAUM, Ph.D., founder and Chairman of PiB and the Koestenbaum Institute, brings leadership philosophy to business people globally. He has been close to business executives and their deepest concerns, sharing with them insights and feelings, new perspectives and more serviceable adaptations.
Peter Koestenbaum is presently active in establishing the Leadership Diamond® globally through the Koestenbaum Institute, headquartered in Stockholm and Los Angeles. Koestenbaum's Leadership Diamond® is a complete program of leadership awareness.
The Leadership Diamond® focuses on the power of depth, which leads to emphasizing the power of free will, the ubiquitous presence of polarity and paradox, analyzing the structure of courage, and the critical importance of understanding systems and strategy. This leadership philosophy leverages the power of negative experiences for clues to breakthroughs. Koestenbaum talks about the development of the leadership mind as the key for achieving business results. And he spends much time on the tough issues of implementation.