Understanding Worldviews to Shift Focus to Collaborative Effort

How can we close social polarization? How can we overcome differences in worldview to focus on what matters whether it is around the boardroom table or valuing nature? How can we bring a unified approach to the big issues, like climate change, that humanity faces?

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

In wandering around the world a few times, no matter where I went I always gained insight into how people processed their world and what shaped interactions. Yes, consciousness has something to do with it, a level of awareness was put into action but rolled altogether the sum was expressed through worldview. The size of the perceived world combined with the beliefs that underpin how events were interpreted, directly shape intention and action.

“Everybody has a worldview, every individual, team, organization, community, and culture. We all have worldviews. Worldviews operate largely in our unawareness, and they influence our relationships, our communication, and conflict, or tension that we might be experiencing without us being aware of it. Worldviews are the lenses through which we each see and experience the world.” — Kathy Jourdain

On a train to London, England more than forty years ago, I met a woman who lived 30 minutes by train outside of London. I had traveled from Canada to Europe to explore London, while she was living her life without ever setting foot in one of the most famous cities in the world. It was fascinating to consider that her world was defined by visits to local shops, gathering places, and family living locally.

Flash forward to 2023 following the disruption of a global pandemic, and the question shifted to what kind of resilience is born out of the familiar. How much tolerance would there be for even a small level of uncertainty? What would be the source of resilience? Would divergent points of view be given airtime? Or would there be pressure to conform to an unspoken behavior pattern?

I took my question to a LinkedIn colleague, Kathy Jourdain, who is fluent in worldview intelligence. Our discussion contains the seeds of NextLevel consciousness which moves from ‘what is in it for me’ progressively to ‘how (and what) can we do together, we cannot achieve alone’. Worldview intelligence is part of self-organizational awareness that…