Foresight

Foresight is the lead in leadership. As leaders, we are expected to have a better sense of what is coming than those we lead. We use our past experiences and current realities to determine pathways to move forward. However, it is more than just reacting to external circumstances. Through deep reflection and connectedness to self and others we can change realities for others. During this time of learning on foresight, be bold, identifying and addressing the ways both you and your organization may be stuck and try to focus in on your emerging future.

Each day, answer the following questions in your time of individual reflection:

• In what areas personally am I seeing a possible emerging future? What is that emerging future?

• In what areas organizationally am I seeing a possible emerging future? What is that emerging future?

• For both of these instances of emerging futures, what steps can I take today to move into the emerging future I am seeing?

Take some time to identify an area either personally or professionally where you feel stuck. As a mentoring pair, take joint times silence followed by discussion to see if you can make any headway into an emerging future. Know that it may not come quickly, but through times of self and doing reflection, clarity could possibly begin to emerge.

Question’s for group discussion:

• In what ways were you able to begin identifying a possible emerging future either professionally or personally during your periods of individual reflection?

• In your time with your mentor, were you able to make headway in an area where you felt “stuck”?

• In what ways have you seen some of the other servant leader practices come into play when it comes to foresight? Are there other practices that have helped provide a vision of a possible emerging future?

After exploring this practice, here are outcomes we would like to see established in participants:

• Participants will have the ability to identify areas in which they are experiencing “Stuckness” and will have clarity on how to explore an emerging future.

• Participants will have an understanding that foresight is more than just reaction to external circumstances, but that realities can be changed through a shifting of internal awareness of self and future.

• Participants will Identify and practice pathfinding-foresight and its applications as the central ethic of the Servant-leader philosophy.