Subtle Leadership: How Individual and Collective Consciousness Intertwine to Create Change

As society tackles the root causes of the meta-crisis, the development of our internal dimensions presents deep leverage points for outer change. While the concept of consciousness remains contested and lacks a universally accepted definition, it may be broadly understood to encompass the full spectrum of inner human dimensions. To address the complex challenges of global sustainability, society will need a myriad of leaders with the advanced meaning-making capacities that can be gained through consciousness development. This paper presents a study that explored the relationship between consciousness development and leadership performance, from the perspective of changemakers, to inform the design of developmental techniques that can be available to all. It utilised a form of action research called co-operative inquiry to explore changemakers’ experiences. The paper outlines the key findings and explores one in greater depth, being the effectiveness of subtle leadership for creating the change needed to engage with the complexity of the meta-crisis.