Leadership and the Future

Talk notes by Viv Thomas

1) Cultural Conditions emerging from the West

What has emerged from the Enlightenment?

• Rationalism
• Individualism
• Instrumentalism

2) Present Cultural Conditions in the West

• Fragmentation
• Discontinuity
• Fluidity
• Contingency
• Image

3) What then is the world leaders have to engage?

• Image dominates substance
• Collage over wholeness
• Assertion of personal power and aloneness
• Global and systemic
• Playful and pragmatic

4) Critical issues for leaders relating to people who have grown up in postmodernity

• Cynicism regarding institutions
• Signnificant shift towards relationship and community
• Insistence on Authenticity
• Reformation of Images of the Self
• Refusal to live in a Greek split world
• Engagement with Christian meta-narrative and individual story