The Best Developmental Next Step: Integration

On the heels of teaching at the Hold the Standard Summit in Barcelona, Spain last week, I was reflecting on the challenges the students came to address and their road ahead. Without getting too far into the details of the Summit, let’s just say that core to the weekend is an acknowledgement of individual and group evolution. Evolution requires more than just listening to lectures, so as you read this sentence the students of the seminar have developmental work on their plate.

In short, the biggest challenges that individuals, teams, and businesses face are the kinds of the challenges that would require the person or thing with the challenge to become a different, more adapted person/thing to solve them. 

In reviewing the first day of the seminar with the students the following morning, I offered the lowest hanging fruit of their development. It was an effort to give them something specific to do on Monday morning, so to speak. My advice was this:

 The first best place to start is to integrate the parts of you that you’re pretending aren’t there. 

Truly effective evolution is a process of both transcendence and integration. We must “transcend and include” for true adaptation to occur in wholeness. The trouble is that the human psyche loves the idea of “more” and progress, but most of us have parts known and unknown that we’ve poorly integrated. This is especially true of our weaknesses, traumatic experiences, and other areas of avoidance. 

That said, integration can provide a way forward to more capacity and complexity that can serve endless leadership applications. If you identify as a person motivated to grow and don’t know where to start, start by looking to integrate rather than dismiss the parts of you that you don’t like.