Communityship and Peace:
And, just like that it happened....I had been waiting years to find the missing piece to Be Peace For Peace. I was certain there was an overaraching concept that would be inclusive, but not limited to, Ubuntu. Then a few weeks ago, on a completely unrelated Zoom call, someone mentioned Communityship; and I knew in an instant that I had what I needed to bring this work formally to the global community. So, what is Communityship? Well, it is a work in progress in terms of a definition but Henry Mintzberg introducted the topic as early as 2009. He states that although Communityship is not a word in the English language, it should be - "to stand between individual leadership on one side and collective citizenship on the other". He goes on to state that he believes that "we should never use the word 'leadership' without also discussing communityship". In his summary he states that "we would do well, therefore, to see both these forces as working together in a socially responsible way to get past the insularity that exists in many organizations.. A healthy society balances leadership, communityship, and citizenship." https://hbr.org/2009/07/rebuilding-companies-as-communities
So, taking this concept and applying it to Peace and Peace Leadership (Be Peace For Peace); I envision the following:
Communityship being defined as an integral inclusive process with fair and equal representation of all community members, who are recognized as leaders, for the purposes of citizen and community flourishing. The framework consists of both Being Peace and Doing Peace (Be Peace For Peace) and is applicable across sectors and cultures. The tenets of Ubuntu such as recognition of our interconnectedness, employing compassion and forgiveness, and treating others with dignity (there are many more) will be infused at both the Being Peace and Doing Peace levels. The Being Peace Levels include: Self Awareness (being peaceful and aware), Self Mastery (mastery of being peaceful and aware), Relational Awareness (applying being peaceful and aware to at least one other), Relational Mastery (mastery of being peaceful and aware with others), infusing Attitudes, Behaviors, and Thoughts that support Be Peace For Peace and the ultimate outcome is Peace (Being Peace and Doing Peace) for the purposes of a flourishing community, comprised of flourishing, peaceful citizens.
An additional way to conceptualize Communityship and Peace Leadership is to look at the Integral Model offered by McIntyreMiller and Green, https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/education_articles/85/. Giving a nod to Ken Wilber, they offer the following "Wilber’s integral theory All Quadrants, All Levels, All Lines (AQAL) Model offered a perspective that allows
one to place the complexities of leading and living in peace into a single framework. The AQAL Model, built
as a square with four quadrants, provides four distinct yet inter-related representations of the human
condition. Two quadrants, at the left, represent the interior conditions. The quadrants at the right are the
corresponding exterior representations. The top quadrants also relate to the individual level of the
framework. On the bottom, time is the collective expression.
The top left quadrant is known as the I– Quadrant and is characterized by individual interior experience.
How we perceive the world from our subjective realm of experience is mapped in this section of the AQAL
model. At the bottom left is the WE–Quadrant. While it also corresponds to interior experience, it is linked
to community and the collective nature of human interactions. How we operate and give meaning to the
groups closest to us are represented by this quadrant. The top right, known at the IT-Quadrant,
corresponds to an individual level of experience from a more objective perspective. It is the province of
theory, conceptual models, and behaviors. The quadrant shows how we describe and categorize our
experience. Finally, the bottom right is the exterior-collective level. Known as the ITS-Quadrant, it is the
location of our orientation to systems, larger macro processes, and our collective relationship to the
environment (Integral Naked, “Introduction to Integral Theory and Practice”)."
Applying this model to Peace Leadership, they state: "When AQAL is applied to peace leadership, the four quadrants of practice and experience are revealed.
The first is the practice of inner-work represented in the I-Quadrant. The nature of this quadrant calls
leaders to begin with an examination of their readiness to engage peace by determining the degree to
which they embody peace themselves. The WE-Quadrant is characterized by a collective engagement
oriented towards peace. It is experienced in the nature of community interactions, and relationships in the
community. The IT-Quadrant in peace leadership is the theories, behaviors, and practices that provide
visible evidence of peace in action at the individual level. When these actions move to the collective,
whereby systems of interaction are engaged and societal structures are challenged, the ITS-Quadrant of
peace leadership is brought into view. Though mapped as distinct elements, each process in peace
leadership is a part of a nested and interwoven whole. The AQAL model provides a way to hold the whole
in consciousness and study the practices needed to bring forward just action."
Thus, if we view the way forward to Peace as looking at Peace through the lens of Communityship and Leadership, we may be able to provide support to a global community that is becoming increasingly violent even in the face of more peace initiataives. This perspective looks at what we desire for a global community and assuming that is peace and flourishing, it then further indicates that we need to incorporate our own attitudes/thoughts and behaviors with collective expression.
This will be developed further and I hope it will be a useful guidpost for global peace leadership initiatives! May Humanity, as it was conceptualized by Mandela, prevail!