Personal Learning Journal

Contents

What is leadership to me? (before and after)

Thoughts after the first class

Class reflections & reflections on readings/handouts

Assignment #1: Filling the gaps

Assignment #2: Lines of Developments

Assignment #3: Personal integral analysis questions

Overview of Takeaways

Thoughts on the last day of the course

What is leadership to me?

My answer BEFORE: (Sept. 15, 2006)

Leadership is an ability to make a roadmap leading to a right

direction

Leadership is an ability to lead a group of people to get the

work done effectively.

Good leaders are supportive

May use power, force or fear sometimes

Leadership is particially born with, partially learned from

training and practice.

My answer NOW: (Nov. 30, 2006)

Leadership resides in everybody, and it can be developed

Leadership is influencing, a capacity to inspire others to act,

speaking and listening in a way that enables individuals to

act to create future life conditions

Leadership development is about developing ourselves and

developing the cultures and systems in which our leadership

can be played out with others’.

Leadership moves along several lines. Cognitive, emotional,

moral, spiritual, physical, leadership development is about

development in all of these lines.

September 14, 2006

Thoughts after the first class:

Coming back from my first class last night, I could not fell in sleep

as normal, I heard a voice inside of me: “it so won’t be an easy

course for you”. Then another voice said: “try to find the right track

fast, keep up with the pace and do not fall behind, read more, think

more, and learn more, you will gain something”. Of course I know

behind this, there was a concern bugs me. I worry about that my

language problem will affect my how much I can understand and

take away from the course. It won’t like those first year courses

most of which have hard numbers that I could understand well

even if I could not understand all in class.

As I read the 17-page course outline before I enrolled in this class,

the contents drew my attention. It’s so different with those I took in

the first year full time courses, it teaches something that hard to

find in one book.

Anyway, this will be a challenge for me. But beside the contents, I

like the size of the class. I think this will be a high quality course

I’ve ever taken so far. I decided to take it, although it won’t be

easy. But I do feel that challenge made my life meaningful.

September 17, 2006

Reading: An AQAL Perspective on Leadership

I agree that leaders should be effective no matter when and where.

But my first reaction is what does it mean for a leader to be

effective? If as Drucker pointed, doing the right thing, my question

follows would be what are the right things? For certain situation,

people may have different opinions on what is right. For a simple

example, in most cases, sales managers have different opinion

with head of R&D.

What really raise my interest in this article is “AQAL Integral

Theory has been called ‘a framework that makes sense of

everything…’”. Although I have just learned integral leadership

includes five fundamental components: quadrants, lines of

development, levels of complexity, types and states, I don’t quite

understand what is the mechanism, how it works, or how AQAL

integral theory can be applied in the real world situation, what is

the mechanism.

Nowadays, many companies have their own mission statement,

vision statement and shared values. As I understand, by seeing

through four quadrants, effective leaders should be able to

integrate different perspectives into organizations’ mission, vision

and shared values. My another questions is how leaders see

through things from four quadrants. The difficulty for me now is to

understand how to integrate multi perspectives. This is only the

first class, hope I can figure it out with the course going.

I found AQAL might be a useful tool to think from different

perspectives, that it can help me generate a multi-perspective

thinking frame. I hope the rest of course can solve all the problems

I have in this article.

September 19, 2006

The AQAL Matrix Arising in Others

The conducting example at the beginning of the article did make it

easier for me to understand the role of leading when leaders

delegate, support and develop their people.

The word “I-Thou” is new to me. But from the context, I sense it

means from first person to second interaction, while I-it is from first

person to third. I guess I’m right; in I-thou relationship, people

recognize each other as having same things to share, while in I-it

relationship, people are aware of each other as isolated qualities.

For a close example that comes to my mind, love should be an “I-

thou” relationship since it is shared by two persons who see each

other as part of themselves, and they shared the care and cherish

of each other.

Here, a problem arises, how should leaders take perspectives? The

answer is quite simple: leaders should realize both I-thou and I-it

relationships’ existing in the real world, and take both I-thou and I-

it perspectives, otherwise they will miss either subject to subject

interaction or subject to object interaction.

But I think in reality, I-thou relationship is not as easy as I-it

relationship to be recognized. Leaders tend to treat others as

objects, I would say. The transforming from “I” to “We” is usually

harder for leaders; it needs mutually trust in group to form the

resonance. In real world, the company culture, or shared values

are the results of the resonance. Those are the leaders

responsibility to recognize, to cultivate and to develop.

Even though I have no question on leaders should take multiple

perspectives in the real world practice, a confusion that still

puzzles me is that how leaders decide what approach is right on

the specified situation. Because situations are not always the same

in real life, how could leaders handle this in different

circumstances?

I think the further study of integral theory can provide me more

insights so that I can solve the puzzles.

September 19, 2006

The AQAL Matrix Arising in the organization

The most useful gain from this article for me is that I get deeper

understanding of four quadrants, the integral framework that not

only offer organization leaders insights on the perspectives they

may take, but also make me better understand the four

perspectives, “I”, “We”, “It”, and “Its”.

It sounds like a complex work to inform leaders about their lines

and levels, their team’s lines and levels, and their employees’. How

these lines and levels affect the organization, and how these lines

and levels will affect the strategy making of an organization is a

question, that it still not quite clear for me. I make need some time

to figure out the answer.

Of course, I understand that individual capacity is an important

factor for teams and organizations; that also is an aspect that can

affect whether they will succeed. But when it comes to a team or

an organization, it combines different individuals, who have various

lines and levels. How to decide what are the lines and levels of the

team or the organization only by checking out each individuals’?

By averaging them? I don’t think so? OK, here my confusion is: how

to decide a team’s or an organization’s lines and levels based on

each individuals’?

Thanks to the detailed explanation on three dimensions or

perspectives, “I”, “We”, and “It”，I could better grasp the insights

on how teamwork works.

The article mentions types of teams in the last part. Interestingly, it

reminds me both team-type examples that I’ve worked before.

Because of the culture influence, most of the project teams are

single leader teams structures. Under the culture, this type of team

work more efficiently and more effectively than other types. In

most cases, team members respect leaders decision, they more

likely to be happy if they are given instructions and finish the task

accordingly. On the contrary, under self-managed team approach,

team members more likely loss direction, and also may not trust

other members’ decision because they think they are in the same

level in the team. It’s hard to convince each other. From this point

of view, I agree that using which type of teams should consider the

types of team members, are their skills complementary, for

instance?

September 28, 2006

An Overview of Developmental Stages of Consciousness

The article is quite informative for me. It puts several researches in

one picture, allowing me to leverage certain developmental stages

to others.

I have no question on the developmental stages, i.e. egocentric,

ethnocentric, worldcentric, and kosmocentric stages. The only

thing I may need more time or more reading to understand is Self-

Identity. I guess the reason I was stuck here is because I was trying

to find the comparative levels in the Integral Psychograph, and I

got the relevant information on values, cognitive lines, but not Self-

Identity. That made me lost a little.

Oct. 4, 2006 Class Reflection

Today, we had the first team meeting. It was short, but we came

out with a great name, Team Chemistry. Besides its explicit

meaning, it also implicate our vision to become Alchemist

eventually.

We learned subject and subject in the class. It’s always good to

have time to think, to reflect these concepts from our own

experience. The culture shock, which I experienced twice in my

life, could be a good example of subject and object. The first one is

when I worked in Dubai and Shahjah, UAE for two years about ten

years ago. The second is 4 years ago, when I moved to Canada.

Culture shock occurs when people move to a new environment,

especially to a new culture. Culture shock is a feeling of conflict,

when new and existing feelings conflict each other.

It’s a process like this: at the beginning, I recognize the

differences, and experience the conflicts; I felt excited to new

things, and frustrated with conflicts; gradually, I accept the

differences, and make adjustment to new environment; Eventually,

they overcome the culture shock, accept new opinions and

developed new point of views. This is a process switching from

subject to object.

Oct. 11, 2006 Class Reflection

In today’s class, everybody reflected what we learned till now and

what affirmed. It’s a good opportunity for each of us to slow down

and think; it allowed each one of us to look back and recall what

major concepts actually were absorbed, and affirmed. Scheduled

as brief check-in, everybody seemed have more to say. From this

reflection, I can tell that everyone gained from the class. But I

found what was talked most was the AQAL model. Very few talked

lines and levels, or states, etc. For myself, I realize that I still need

to do more readings regarding to understand deeper on these

concepts in integral psychograph.

We had another team meeting today. In about one hour meeting,

we discussed a case and learning projects. Team members shared

a concern about the load of assignments, kind of worried about if

we can manage well to finish all the assignments. Eventually, we

decided not to think too much and start to take action right away.

Oct. 12, 2006

Reading: Introduction to Leadership Capacity

I feel that things getting more complicated now. In precious

lectures, leadership to me is to take multiple perspectives, and to

recognize individual’s strengths, to delegate, to support and to

develop them, to get things done effectively.

In this article, more concepts are introduced, “theory of multiple

intelligences” by Howard Gardner, for instance. It helps me

understand different human intelligence through seven types,

which I learned from somewhere else, but only remember some.

I’m glad that the article provides me an answer to a question that I

had before in the previous learning journals, “how apply lines and

levels in an organization setting?” That is to group individual

capacities into six developmental lines: cognitive, interpersonal,

moral, spiritual and physical.

“… the longer the time perspective the individual is responsible

for, the higher the leadership level, and the more the individual

should be rewarded.” My reaction on this is when a person is

placed in the leader position, he/she might have no enough

capacity to handle the complexity. Does this mean after he or she

had this exposure to the complex situations, he/she made certain

improvements and enhanced the leadership capacity? Does it

make sense? Or some leaders are born as leaders?

October 15, 2006

Reading: Lines and levels references

The article is very informative to me. Following its well-organized

structure, I can easily grab the ideas about the references of levels

in each line. Examples are always good tool that I use to

understand deeper for theories. From the first example of cognitive

line, I caught the picture of a lower level case, that with a low level

of cognitive capacity, Peter failed to sort the information from

those concrete data which he might have no trouble to collect. As a

mid-level manager, he may be capable to create a simple tactical

plan of action in that level, but no in the department level yet.

Therefore, although he's committed and loyal, peter found hard

time to handle the level of capacity higher than he felt comfortable

to deal with.

An old Chinese saying says the same token of levels in lines, I

couldn't remember the exact words, it roughly says that one

should not do things that over his capability. People use this saying

all the time. So it seems a common sense. However, people

sometimes may not follow this common sense, partially because

they have no right judgment on themselves, and partially because

they are in the situation that they cannot control.

My question on the levels is that if it is a good or bad thing to

handle the responsibilities in a higher level. From my view, I think

exposure to more complicated situation and deal with complexity

is necessary and helpful for one to improve to a higher level. My

experience is that I've learned from my experience, I've grew from

each try on more complicated responsibilities, from both successes

and failures. I still remember my first promotion from the first job,

marketing research assistant, dealing with data most of time. The

next position was team leader of a group of export department at

the time. I found it more challenging it allowed me to actually do

something based on the information I got from those data. And

after that position, I was assigned as an area manager in charge of

Southeast Asian region. Export business became one part of my

responsibility. From these and other promotions after those, I

certainly can see my improvement in my capability. Now I say

those gradually adding responsibilities helped me developed my

levels in each lines.

Another question is if there is an end of increasing those levels?

What is the utmost of the complexity; did we see or estimate it? Is

a president of a country or alike the most complicated position?

Oct. 14, 2006

Reading: Integral Psychograph Benchmark

Cognitive: From this perspective I see myself as being medium to

high level(4). As I think back, I can see my movement across the

Cognitive line.

If measured by 1 to 5, I would grade 4 to my ability to view

scenarios in abstract term, and reflect on my own thought

patterns and belief systems.

I am skillful at developing strategic, long terms perspectives.

I am able to set strategic purpose and plan of my team, then

compare and prioritize specific or emergent strategies in

alignment with intent.

If I rate my ability to synthesize reason, context and intuition

by scale of 1 to 5, it would be 3.5 or 4. Comfortableness with

ambiguity and complexity would be the same mark.

I am quite open-mind, and view constructive opposing

opinions as a useful tool to mirror and compare what I see

and think. I also see paradoxical experiences as an

opportunity for deeper understanding.

I am sensitive to the big picture and climate. I am able to

aware of trends and emerging patterns in pharmacy

business, and in business climate in general.

Emotional:

I can clearly aware my specific feelings when they come. I can

accurately gauge my strengths and weaknesses. I can use 5 to

grade these two abilities. When it comes to comfortableness with

uncertainty and chaos, I would rate 3.5. I will give 4 to my ability to

cultivate internal resources to increase my resilience and remain

emotionally flexible under pressure. The overall rate of my

emotional of development would be 4 plus.

Interpersonal:

I can quietly aware other’s feeling, sometimes may be too

sensitive. I have strong sense on how people think by detecting

people’s motion or tone of voice. It is one of my strengths that I am

good at read people’s body language, energy, and general tone of

communication. My colleagues will describe me trustworthy, and

accountable in the area of collaboration. I will rate 5 on these

abilities.

Moral:

I see myself at the medium to high level (4-5).

I can strongly aware of the effect of my actions on others. I have

strong ethic values. At any circumstances, I do not want to do

unethical things. I will feel guilty if I know someone did it. After

years of improvement, I have the ability to avoid unethical

temptations, and say no to individual gain when it is inconsistent

with collective.

Spiritual:

I see myself as Medium (3).

In most of my life I have strong direction and purpose. And I was

trying to align these purpose with my life. Spirituality is joy of life

when you get in contact with your higher consciousness or sour. I

made some major changes in my life, which I somewhat felt lost

sometimes.

Physical:

I have strong intention to keep good condition of my physical

condition. I used to do Taichi to maintain it. Recently, I

encountered overwhelming pressure. I recognize that the high

stress became a factor that affected my performance. It actually

seriously reduced of my mental sharpness and energy level.

Oct. 17, 2006 class reflection

Question:

From the reading I understood that it's important to know level of

line of team or group. My question is how to measure those levels?

Is it like for example, we have 4 members in the team, to measure

the cognitive level, measure each member's level, say get a score,

and get everyone's then find the average? If in that way, does it

reflect the real capability of the team?

The answer to this question: if possible, we can measure the leader

of the group. His levels can be considered as the group’s.

Class reflection Oct. 11, 2006

Case study: Peter's single-, double-, and triple-loop inquiry across

Four territories of experience

Situation is that Peter, a chief Accountant wants to improve his

relationship with his boss, the financial director.

As the described in the case, Peter set up a vision, and makes

strategies, and then took some actions. However, he could not

achieve his vision through his strategy and action.

Regarding the vision, I think it appropriate. But the problem is that

he should figure out clearly what the problem is, communication

problem, or the boss is not satisfied on his performance, or some

other reasons?

The strategy should be based on the actual problem. For instance,

the problem could be there is some misunderstanding between

them and it's getting worse due to lack of communication. In this

case, Peter's strategy might work somehow. As well, his action

plan might help.

However, if the problem is that his boss is unsatisfied about his

work, or questions his skills; his action should be to talk to his boss

about this and to know what exactly his boss expects from him on

his responsibilities. If the problem is that the boss does not like him

because she doesn't like his personality. Then Peter's action should

be to talk to her frequently, and find out what she doesn't like him,

what will make her change her opinion, and if the change possible

or worthy doing.

Reflection

Exercise in improving the quality of action

I find this exercise is interesting and practical that allows me to

think a case in real world work setting.

Incident:

Briefly describe the circumstances surrounding what you are

thinking of.

The company I work for is doing business from providing

immigration services to big companies to recruiting workers

internationally for these corporation clients. To help with solving

labor shortage problem, the company has been bringing in skilled

workers from Europe, Middle East and low skilled workers from

Mexico. Facing to the increasing demand, the company intents to

explore China market for more experienced skilled workers. I was

hired basically for this purpose.

What are your goals or intentions?

To recruit qualified skilled workers from that market to meet our

clients' need

What strategies have you been pursuing?

To build up a recruiting network and database in six big provinces

in China so that once we have requirements from our clients, we

can start recruiting in that market right away.

What action have you taken?

Contact some of my old friends and coworkers. Because I worked

in this labor services field before, I have colleagues and friends still

work on international staffing area, that is finding overseas work

placements for people intent to work overseas. To use their

capacity to establish relationship with some Chinese agent

company in certain region which my contacts can reach.

Besides connecting old relationship, I'm also planning to reach

some bigger companies who are qualified and interested in

working with us in recruiting in other provinces what my contacts

cannot reach.

Pay a visit to the companies who are willing to recruiting us, and

decide which ones we are going to eventually work with, and

discuss and clarify what we really want, what the requirements

would be to make sure things will go in right direction.

Class reflection Oct. 19, 2006:

In the class, Nicole raise a question that I had the same when I

interpreting the integral graph, that is whether it is necessary that

if one’s one line is in a certain level, the others would be in the

same level? As I mentioned in my learning journal, I think those

levels are not necessarily related.

To this question, Dr. Sloane gave his idea that helps to grab some

clues; there are positive correlations between any two levels of

lines among the whole set. However, they are not necessarily

positively related. One example between cognitive and physical

lines may explain in some degree; generally speaking, if one had

higher education, he/she would have more income, and he/she

would pay more attention to other intelligence, fitness, other

personal training, for instance. These would help in building level in

physical line.

On the way to home, I found that another question is still on; say,

following the above question, if cognitive level is high, and physical

level is low, where is the complexity level? What color it would be?

Oct. 18 Class reflection

In class, Sloane introduced Heuristic Self-Search Inquiry (HSSI)

process. Rich provided a situation that is perfect for class to start

with using HHIS system. He recently had trouble with his new boss,

that he got confused with the boss's attitude toward his work

performance, which he believed there was nothing wrong with his

side. He's going to meet with her soon.

What is going on inside you when you here the story?

I would quickly assess the story and think whether I had the same

situation in my experience, and how did I handle this, and if it is a

win-win situation or win–lose one.

I found I still need to know more information about the

circumstance. For example, is she new to the company or old

person just got promoted. If she's promoted from the company,

Rich should know her personalities to some extent. Is she qualified

to be a supervisor? What did other peers feel about this boss?

In this win-lose situation, how can they collaborate? The question

people should consider in this situation is what in common and

what is the linkage?

The next step of the HHSI system is to think about what if you are

in the same situation. This role-play step is very helpful for the

action learner in the way of getting information outside of

organization. It also provides the opportunity to the ??? group

member to think in the shoes of the action learner. And the

process of generating the suggestion is the process of thinking

solution for team members.

The describe of the situation and asking and clarifying process

should be repeat at least twice according to the HSSI.

In the role-play step, I was thinking if I was in the same situation, I

would be very upset. And first I would doubt my own ability and my

performance in the project. Once I found that it's not about my

performance, I would be frustrated because, clearly, this indicates

that the boss looks down on you. Under this circumstance, I would

give myself some time to figure out why she would do this to me.

Certainly, better communication would help. I would find some

chance to talk to her and find out it's the problem in her side or in

between of us. Anyway, I would not take any action before I figure

out what the problem is. I'll leave myself some time to observe.

Oct. 27, 2006

Reading Integral Organizational Steering – An Introduction

In the organizational steering framework, awareness is the leader’s

ability to assess organizational current performance, which in most

of cases is related to some desired future conditions. Leaders will

compare current conditions to target performance, and make

decisions.

From my personal experience, most leaders do well to aware

Lower Right quadrant on organizational infrastructure, processes,

procedures and systems and Lower Right quadrant on organization

culture, shared values, beliefs and shared expectations. However,

leaders are sometimes do not seriously consider individual

capacities and intelligences seen in Upper Left quadrant and

behavior and applied skills and competencies represented in Lower

Right quadrant.

As part of framework, lines and levels help leaders to determine the level of the

organization itself, and the level of industry and marketplace, and even the macro

economic environment. It helps enhance leaders awareness of current situation and

“feel” the future conditions.

State of mind of leader and

individual workers in the

organization

Measurable state of health,

fatigue or capability of a

person’s body

State of collective morale of an

organization’s culture

State of the physical

infrastructure or electronic

information technology systems

Oct. 31, 2006

Handout: States audit worksheet

Do I know what makes me cry and what makes angry? Yes. It’s not

difficult for me to describe my feelings when I experience intense

emotions. But sometimes I may deny experiencing the emotions of

love, fear, anger or pleasure because of conscious awareness of

such emotions. I sometimes feign pleasure to cover up

unhappiness. I mess up sad, low-mood, and hungry sometimes, so

I mix those feelings together as hunger. Then I feel better by

eating.

According to the performance states summary on X/Y Axis, people

experience the following feelings, which fall in four quadrants,

high/low energy unresourceful and high/low energy resourceful

I usually sit in front of my husband, and talk to him when I

experience some intensive emotions, such as when I am excited,

pleased, enthusiastic, embarrassed, bored, sad, frightened, or

confused. I find talking to him about my feelings helps me probe

myself, and identify my emotions. Now I know that this is the

process of consciously identifying my emotional states.

What I should frame my action on emotion states is that after each

time I identified my states, I should practice using those emotions

that make me feel good about myself over those that are self-

destructive. I think experiencing better emotions can improve

learning potential, intelligence, job performance, interpersonal

relationships as well as physical health. And more important, I

believe that by clarifying and identifying the emotional experiences

that really make me feel good inside, I can better determine what I

really want or desire as important in my life.

Nov. 4, 2006

Reading: The Harder They Fall

In the article, the author asks an important question: why so many

leaders, not only in business but also in politics, religion and

media, with a history of ability and adeptness could fall into folly so

quickly and deeply once at the top? I agree with the author that

the culture encourages the notion that good leaders must break

the rules. Increasingly, leaders believe that the limits of ordinary

mortals don’t apply to them. He sees the pattern of the dynamic

derives from the ways in which leaders be chosen.

Leaders are “forced” to abandon prudence, caution and restraint.

The higher a leader raises, the greater pressure and fewer winners.

These leaders, the winners, are required to be very aggressive in

taking risks, that brings leaders a “Winner wants all” mind set.

Suggestions to leaders to remain their feet on the ground while

they are at the top are:

Keep your life simple, remain humble and "awfully ordinary."

Acknowledge your mistakes

Test feedback from others for its reality

Pay attention to details

Reflect more, not less

Nov. 5, 2006

Reading: Skillful Means Reference Guide on

worldviews/Mindsets

A worldview is a way of describing the universe and life. A given

worldview is “a set of beliefs that includes limiting statements and

assumptions regarding what exists and what does not, what

objects or experiences are good or bad”.

People see world with many different views because they

developed different mindset. It is interesting that when people are

presented with a larger perspective that identifies different ways to

understand the self and their world, there will be various opinions.

Nowadays, there is increasingly possibility of opening that people

see the world differently.

From my observation, people are more interested in the system

that they had their very own real experience on. They are more

likely to assume that there may be some legitimacy to what seems

to be next. Then they explore how to get there. And then they

make change, adapt and final get to the next level. Certainly,

before get there, we need recognize, affirming where are we.

There are different ways to affirm people in different level. For

example, at Amber, we affirm their sense of tradition, security,

loyalty, truth, moral, and things of that nature. To next level,

Orange, Ambor thinkers should strike a shift and change, and align

with their development model. Orange thinkers, for example, has

developed an achiever’s mindset, can usually reflect on their own

life and the way they’ve moved up. From this, they can develop

more capacities and grow into more complex individuals.

I see myself an orange thinker. I value success, excellence,

opportunity, competence, and these are falling in orange set. Also,

I am achievement-oriented, scientific and rational.

Nov. 12, 2006 Class reflection

Handout: Types: Archetypal patterns of the Masculine and

Feminine

Two of the most dominant archetypes within us are Feminine and

masculine, they are not gender specific. Although certain qualities

and attributes have been associated over millennia with men and

others with women, they are characteristics and qualities that can

be developed in both. These have to do with our social behavior

and social issues of order, authority, leadership and morality. I find

that no matter China, where I born and grow up, and Canada,

where I have just moved to people live in a culture that has given

overwhelming prevalence to the masculine value and to mind and

has neglected many aspects of feminine value, which is the

deepest in human heart. As with every archetype, the qualities of

the masculine and feminine can be used for positive or negative

affect. Negativity in the archetypes occurs when an archetype is

either too active or too passive. I think the most difficult task

awaiting us, both man and women, is the transformation of

archetypal patterns.

Nov. 11, 2006 Class reflection

This is the first time that I seriously think about shadow in my

personality. We are all born into the world with some personalities,

of our own." As babies, we can be however we are, and behave

whatever we want. Gradually, we learn that some ways of being

are okay, and that other ways of being are not. We learn that, in

order to be good people, or in order to get respect or love, we must

repress parts of ourselves. I see these parts of us our shadows.

We do things that we think good, and not do thing we think not.

But actually, when we choose to do a behaviour on purpose, we

can also choose to not do it on purpose. When we are able to do

so, that means we are able to use the power of our shadow, we

control shadow rather than shadow controls us. When we learn to

control shadow, I would say, we integral our shadow. Anything we

think we aren't is in shadow for us. If I think I’m not jealous, then

jealousness is my shadow. I think to integrate our shadow, we need

to admit it and play it pretendingly. It will be safe because we do it

inside of us.

Major takeaways:

AQAL Model: It can be used to enhance the leader’s lenses by

providing a framework to eliminate over-emphases and blind spots,

and allowing him or her to see more of the landscape than

previous partial approaches.

Four quadrants : All four quadrants are real, are important,

essential for understanding your world. Integral Theory holds

that all four quadrants are indispensable. The more we can

consciously include the four quadrants in our perspective,

the more whole, balanced, healthy, comprehensive, and

effective our actions will be.

Lines of development and levels of complexity : all quadrants

have multiple lines of development, and all lines have levels

of development.

States = Energy : A state is basically an energy level that is

attained temporarily. Once you have unlimited access to a

state of consciousness, then it is a developmental level.

Types = Masculine and feminine principles

Shadow : Know your shadow and control it

Action Inquiry : Action inquiry works primarily from the inside-

out. Action inquiry begins because we experience some sort

of gap between what we wish to do and what we are able to

do. The awareness of this gap can lead to the development

of a clear intent to accomplish something beyond our current

capacity.

Skillful Means

Further considerations:

If all four quadrants are relevant to all situations and life

experiences, we need to attend not just to the personal side of

development (UL & UR), but also culture and systems (LL & LR). I

think what we also should pay attention to is the relationship

among the quadrants. If each of quadrants has the stage of

development, the relationship also should have level of

development. Is it necessary to look at the stage of development?

Can we use the same way to measure the relationship? I have no

clear clue on this. But I may have chance to figure it out through

my life experience later on.

Thoughts after the course:

At the beginning I thought it’s too early for me to take this course, I

was not ready for this level, but then I found I may think the other

way: the earlier I take this course, the earlier I could pay attention

to the way I think, take act, and transform. It definitely will help on

my learning process in the rest of my MBA courses.

The perspectives, insights I learned from the course are very

helpful to me on analyzing my situation and question many of my

beginning assumptions. It helped me see people’s different

perspectives and utilize this knowledge to develop creative

approaches that incorporated those differences.

Even though my skills are still very limited, the ability to look at my

own actions and see how I was part of the problem and my

occasional ability to practice emotional has being developed. I’m

feeling increasingly good about myself.