Through an advanced understanding of different worldviews, you can lead the way in this time of increasing globalization and diversity. Each worldview carries with it a specific and definable mental model of how the world works – and how it should be. The Western worldview schools us to look at everything rationally. When faced with a problem, our first instinct is to take it apart and devise the best solution. Working on the assumption that the world is well ordered and rational, there’s not much wrong with this strategy.
But the Western rational worldview is only one worldview. Philosophers and sociologists have identified at least four different worldviews: Western, Eastern, Existentialist, and Religious.
The Western Worldview favors the rational and the power of free will. It stresses individual initiative, getting things done, and tackling challenges on our own. This worldview is not comfortable with uncertainty and irrationality. This explains, perhaps, the appeal to Westerners of tidy plot lines that translate so well to television. It’s comforting to see sixty-minute solutions, easy outs, and resolvable dilemmas. This worldview unfortunately does not encourage us to open our eyes too wide, and does nothing to prepare us for the complex chaos of reality.
Contrast that to the Eastern worldview, which focuses on what is unknowable. It holds that intuition and insight can help us tap into deeper areas of spiritual meaning. It assumes that the unconscious mind has access to deeper and more meaningful insights than those available through rational thinking, and that this non-conscious awareness can be improved through training. In the Eastern worldview, people act under the influence of unseen spiritual forces, and their lives are suffused with this unseen spiritual world. People with this worldview have a deep psychological need for meditation, for quieting the rational mind, for a personal experience of the unknowable. They are also wary of easy solutions to complicated problems.
A third worldview is the Existentialist which teaches that all human experiences are unexplainable and that the only true way to exist to learn to make the most of these experiences, as regards both the family and the world in which we live. This worldview holds that the highest goal is to be authentic to one’s own beliefs, to act on those beliefs, and to create a life built on being true to those beliefs. Existentialist thinkers such as Soren Kierkegaard or Jean-Paul Sartre view human beings as forced to deal with circumstances way outside their control – and having no choice but to find meaning by discovering what’s truly important to each individual. One aspect of this worldview is the idea that what is important to me is not affected by what is important to you. Each must find their path to individual truth.
The fourth worldview, the Religious, holds that knowledge is conferred through faith, and that a kind of mystical power is vested in God or a system of gods. People who follow this philosophy are drawn to prayer and religious experience, and use their beliefs and religious traditions to influence their decisions~People who follow this philosophy are drawn to prayer and religious experience, and use their beliefs and religious traditions to influence their decisions~People living according to this philosophy allow their decisions to be influenced by beliefs and religious traditions, and are drawn to prayer and religious experience}. This worldview confers great power on religious leaders who interpret events in the external world as the manifestation of God’s intent and try to impose their interpretations through religious training and teaching.
All four of these worldviews mingle together in today’s organizations. At one of our client companies, for example, teams of software developers from the U.S., Europe and Asia routinely work together on projects. The four worldviews are present in the team. Communication is the team leader’s forte, but even he falls victim to frustration as the deadlines approach and people start to react differently. “We had one guy praying, another yelling obscenities to the sub-contractors, and another merely chuckling away at the ridiculousness of the situation” he said.
To be an effective leader, you need to find ways to gently manage the contradictions between these worldviews. A broad sense of humor goes a long way. But it’s also important to establish a framework of core values that can provide people a focus and serve as a bridge between different worldviews. Leaders must lead people in hard conversations about the difference between their values and the organization’s core values (the first quantum leap). They must be prepared to teach others how deeply, frustratingly complex the world is. How you decide to navigate and lead through this disparity of convictions is a test of how capable you are of engagement, communication and the building of a high-performing organization.
