honouring our wisdom lineages, and their diverse ways of knowing and being

the wisdom tree, roots, trunk, and canopy, and why naming the traditions a program draws from is part of systems leadership

every program carries a wisdom lineage: a set of traditions, disciplines, and ways of knowing that shape how it thinks and what it values. in this session, we made ours visible to both honour and respect that our thinking on systems leadership stands on the shoulders of giants.

as we shared our wisdom tree, we identified its three components. the roots of knowledge we draw from draw widely: applied systems thinking, social learning, critical systems heuristics and boundary critique, social innovation, co-design, visual communication, Indigenous wisdom, spiritual practice, Buddhism, decolonization, the art of hosting, the circle way, process oriented psychology/process work, theory u.

the trunk as our space of practice and integration, where wisdom drawn from the roots is channelled and made strong through practice. to consciously integrate our learning we offer both frameworks and application, we share different ways of being, but also enact them together, we reflect deeply, try things out in context and repeat, to practice as a verb. alongside this we recognize integration as not only doing, but being. this is why mindfulness and qi gong sit inside our program design as conscious ontological commitments. how we know, how we sense, how we settle and move our bodies. these are not separate from systems leadership. they are expressions of it.

the canopy is what becomes possible when the roots are tended and the trunk holds. the canopy is seasonal and renewing, it grows into existence when wisdom is practiced and embedded. here we see the canopy as one's unique contributions as a systems leader and living the practice through being, doing, knowing, relating, thinking and perceiving and growing wisdom as you wayfind and ride the waves of the systems we live in.

a wisdom tree grows slowly. what lineages are you drawing from, and have you named them?