Leading Through Field Awareness

“Which One Is Right?”

Years ago, Roger James and I were facilitating a conversation with the board of a local business. We had given them seven different definitions of leadership, drawn from respected scholars and practitioners.

One board member looked increasingly frustrated. Finally, he interrupted.

“Which one is right? They’re all different.”

For a moment, I didn’t know how to answer.

Not because I lacked an answer, but because the question itself revealed something important. It reflected a way of seeing the world that many of us inherit without realizing it: the assumption that for every important question there must be one correct definition, one best model, one right answer.

Yet leadership refuses to stay inside these boundaries.

As historian and political scientist James MacGregor Burns famously observed, leadership is “the most observed and least understood phenomenon on earth.”

Perhaps that is because leadership is not a thing. It is a living field.

Rather than asking which definition was correct, we hoped the board would ask a different question:

Which understanding of leadership most resonates with your experience—and why?

Evolving Views of “Leadership”

For much of the last century, Western leadership theory has steadily expanded its view of what leadership is.

We began with the “Great Man” theory, believing leaders were born rather than made. We moved toward situational leadership, learning that context matters. Then came transactional leadership, emphasizing exchanges between leaders and followers, followed by transformational leadership, which recognized that leaders help people become more than they thought possible.

Eventually we arrived at systems thinking and complexity science, discovering that organizations are less like machines and more like living ecosystems.

And yet something still was missing. 

What if leadership is not simply about individuals or even systems? What if it is about the invisible fields that give rise to both?

Peter Senge described leadership as “deeply personal and inherently collective…It does depend on [leaders]…their personal commitment to their own cultivation…and, on the other hand, it doesn’t depend on them. It’s an inherently collective phenomenon.”

I appreciate this paradox because it points toward something Alan Briskin and I explore throughout Space Is Not Empty.

Personal AND Relational

Leadership is indeed deeply personal. It begins within us.

Our bodies are constantly sensing. Our emotions are continually informing us. Our thoughts organize experience. Our intuitions often perceive patterns before our rational minds can explain them. 

Every leader brings this inner landscape into every meeting, every conversation, every decision.

But none of us leads from the inside alone. Leadership is also profoundly relational. The moment we enter a room, we also enter a relational field. Every organization has one. Its relational field includes colleagues, suppliers, and customers. 

Beyond these organizational fields lie still larger ones: economic uncertainty, political polarization, cultural narratives, ecological realities, and the communities in which organizations are embedded. These, too, become part of leadership.

And beyond even these lies the larger field of nature itself. The rhythms of living systems. The intelligence of ecosystems. The profound interconnectedness of a universe that is anything but empty.

Leaders are never acting alone. They are always participating in multiple, overlapping fields that both influence them and are influenced by them.

Leadership, then, is never simply one person influencing others. It is participation within multiple living fields. This is why self-cultivation is necessary but not sufficient.

Necessary—but Not Sufficient

Knowing yourself is essential. Can you recognize your assumptions before they become conclusions? Can you notice the confirmation biases quietly shaping your perception? Can you regulate your emotions well enough to respond intentionally rather than react impulsively? Can you remain curious when certainty would be easier?

These capacities matter because awareness always precedes choice.

Yet field awareness asks even more of us.

It invites us to become aware not only of ourselves but also of the invisible dynamics unfolding around us. What is happening in this room that no one is saying aloud? What possibilities are quietly trying to emerge? What is trust growing? Where is fear constricting the conversation? What patterns have become so familiar that everyone assumes they are simply “the way thing are”?

These are not questions that can be answered by simply analyzing organizational charts and individual performance. They require another way of knowing.

Leading through field awareness means learning to participate consciously in three interconnected dimensions:

• the field within yourself,

• the relational fields surrounding you, and

• the intuitive wisdom emerging in the interconnectedness of the universe.

This is a fundamentally different way of leading than simply managing the pieces and parts of an organization.

“Withnessing”

Embodied Life School founder Russell Delman offers a beautiful word for this practice: withnessing. This means remaining fully present within your experience while simultaneously observing it. You are participating and witnessing at the same time.

You notice your own reactions without become captive to them. You sense the emotional climate without being swept away by it. You recognize that you are not standing outside the system looking in. You are part of the field you hope to understand.

This changes leadership profoundly. You do not simply influence organizations through pronouncements, decisions, or actions. You influence through the quality of your presence.

Presence includes your attention and awareness, emotional regulation, capacity to listen deeply, along with your commitment to remain open when circumstances prod you to become defensive. Finally, it involves the courage to speak honestly without diminishing another person’s dignity. 

Beyond Systems Thinking

When Geary Rummler and Alan Brache helped organizations think differently by encouraging leaders to focus on the “white space” between boxes on the organizational chart. Instead of concentrating only on departments or individuals, they highlighted the importance of processes that connected them. 

It was an important advance.

Systems thinking took us further by recognizing that everyone contributes to creating organizational outcomes.

Field awareness extends that evolution one more step. It reminds us that the spaces between people are not empty. They are alive with information, emotion, memory, expectation—AND with possibility.

Leading Through Field Awareness

This is why I think of leadership as cultivating fields, NOT only or primarily as directing people or managing systems. It means learning to perceive and consciously influence the invisible yet dynamic fields that shape individuals, relationships, organizations, communities, and the larger world.

Leadership becomes less about control and more about participation. It is less about having the answers and more about learning to perceive what is already present but often unseen.

One simple way to think about leading through field awareness is this:

You are not leading empty space. You are leading spaces already filled with information, energy, relationships, memory, and possibility.

This naturally raises an important question for all of us:

How do we accurately perceive the fields we are already part of?

Learning to do so is one of the essential practices of self-cultivation. It enables leaders to become more fully present, more discerning, and ultimately more capable of serving the well-being of the whole.

There Is No One Right Definition

So how would I answer the board member today?

I would smile. Then I would say, “There is no single right definition of leadership because leadership is alive. It changes as people change. It changes as relationships change. It changes as the larger fields surrounding us continue to evolve.” 

The deeper question is not, “Which definition is correct?” 

The deeper question is “How to cultivate an awareness, a presence to meet each moment with what it needs to move forward?” 

Leading through fields is a practice of learning to perceive—and consciously influence—the living fields that shape us all.