How Leaders Can Seed Coherence In A Sea Of Chaos

Forbes

a day ago

We meet the leadership work of our times by finding the practices, communities and evolutionary ... More purposes that create islands of coherence.
We are in the thick of a tipping point time and it is, in a word, messy. While this is a global phenomenon, our American political version is especially theatrical, featuring a President who is tipping democracy toward autocracy, a functioning economy toward recession and a diverse society toward culture war. Political tipping points are just the tip of the spear. According to a recent Global Tipping Points Report, we are crossing several climatic thresholds of irreversible change from Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to coral reefs. The 2024 Living Planet Index reports a 73% decline in wildlife populations across nearly 5500 species, while the 2025 IUCN Redlist identifies more than 47,000 species as threatened with extinction. Adding to the turmoil is the exponential evolution of AI. While opinions vary, some predict AI will tip into generalized intelligence as early as 2026. Already, job displacement from AI is widespread and shows signs of further acceleration.
Never has humanity faced the confluence of so many tipping points that will radically reshape our near-term future and longer-term survival. In facing this sea of chaos, leaders would be right to sense it's pointless to try to put the old order back together again. They could be forgiven their confusion or wanting to wait for calmer seas before setting about their plans. But a sea of chaos is exactly the milieu in which leaders can make a critical difference because so much energy is free floating. Some leaders will use chaos to stoke more greed and fear and enrich themselves, but they won't help the system evolve. But leaders who are more conscious, coherent and connected can be seeds of coherence around which chaos begins to organize into islands of coherence. Enough islands of coherence can evolve the whole system to more coherent consciousness. That is the essential leadership job of our time, so it's worth exploring what that job is and how leaders can step up to it.
We can more deeply understand what the job is through the lens of resonance. To resonate is to vibrate with. It is how energy changes form, from the smallest subatomic wavicle to matter and living systems, to humans, ecosystems and the entire universe. Matter can be regarded as a dense form of energy, and it follows the same principles of resonance. When waves of water come together, for example, they will cancel each other out, interfere with each other or add up to bigger waves. When waves are in sync and add up, we call that coherence.
Resonance is also highly specific, meaning not everything vibrates with everything else. There is a necessary match in the handshake of resonance where each can accept the energy of the other. So, to continue the water example, water waves certainly move other water waves and, if you play loud music near water, small ripples will form as sound waves are in a matching frequency range. But shine higher frequency light waves on water and nothing happens. The specificity of resonance gives us a way to work effectively in complex environments where planning and prediction breaks down because it reveals itself when energies match. So, by simply trying things out, testing ideas, and then sensing what happens, we'll be able to tell if they're resonating with the people or systems around us.
Sometimes we won't sense an immediate effect, even if subtle changes are taking place beneath the surface. Another key aspect of resonance is that energy in a system can build invisibly for a time and then a seemingly small stimulus hits a tipping point where the whole system shifts. The density of matter is particularly good at storing energy, giving rise to surprising tipping points. So, for example, we might accommodate a difficult relationship by storing away a tiny grievance, and then another, and another until—boom!—an argument explodes. Or the earth's great tectonic plates can rub up against each other and build pressure, more pressure, more pressure, until—boom!—an earthquake happens. Likewise, the precipitous fall of democratic institutions we're seeing now is—boom!—the result of grievance and corruption that had been building beneath the surface for some time.
But resonance is not only behind things falling apart. It is also the way a system evolves to higher order. In a world where ordinary systems wind down toward greater disorder (the second law of thermodynamics), Ilya Prigogine was taken by the question of how life keeps winding up. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in dissipative structures—living systems being prime examples—that are far from equilibrium and able to metabolize energy to evolve their order. An oft-quoted summary of his findings speaks to the sea of chaos and the opportunity it presents: 'When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.'
Building such islands of coherence has become an inspiration and aspiration for consciousness-building, society-improving organizations worldwide, such as the Presencing Institute, the Pocket Project, the HeartMath Institute, the California Institute of Integral Studies and our own Institute for Zen Leadership*. Each has their own way, but the principles of resonance are evident throughout. For example, the HeartMath Institute focuses on establishing personal, inner coherence between heart and brain waves and, from there, establishing group coherence in a meditative practice that spans the globe. The Presencing Institute starts with inner work that brings one into harmony with the earth and others and then brings networks of like-minded change agents together to foster resonance through relationships and collaborations.
From examples like these and the science of resonance, we can distill three guidelines for how leaders can seed and grow islands of coherence in seas of chaos.Find Your Practices
As always, the quality of one's outer work comes from inner work. Being coherent means adding up to one clear signal, rather than acting in confusing, self-defeating ways. That coherence is a physical, energetic property in one's mind-body system. For example, the HeartMath Institute offers research-based practices for bringing the heart and brain waves into coherence. In Zen Leadership we add slow, deep breath regulation from the lower abdomen, i.e., hara. This synchronizes heart-brain coherence within a longer, energizing and centering breath cycle, getting our waves to add up from top to bottom, from talk to walk. Zen training also induces samadhi (i.e., the experience of no separation), giving rise to wisdom and harmony with the larger picture.
Whatever you select, take it into your body and practice it often. Find the practices that resonate with you, so that your thoughts and actions can emanate from a centered, connected, coherent mind-body. We cannot clearly sense the energies around us or generate a strong, coherent signal ourselves if we're incoherent.Find Your Communities
Just as teams are the units of performance in organizations, so communities are the resonant units for developing islands of coherence. Finding the people you resonate with matters, not only for the camaraderie and sense of belonging, but also for the gifts they will pull out of you. Ideas and possibilities will emerge that wouldn't have happened without resonant conversation. Actions and skills will come through you based on seemingly chance encounters, what the community needs or what it must do. The boldness, courage and service of others will stir you as you will stir others. Acting in coherence toward a common purpose, resonance builds, evolving the whole community, as well as its person parts.
Find the communities that resonate with you, whether they're teams united by a common purpose, communities united by a common cause or passion, or communities that share a common place on earth. As you find your communities, let them change you. Engage, listen deeply and contribute sincerely. You're building an island.Find Your Purposes
You may start from purpose and find or build communities from that seed, or you may find yourself drawn to a community and your purpose within it emerges and transforms you. It doesn't matter from which direction we start, purpose becomes clear, not in isolation, but in resonant relationship with life. Put another way, purpose is the name we give to a highly resonant match between the value we add the conditions in which we add it.
From a resonance perspective, we transfer or receive the most energy or clearest signal when frequencies match and amplitude is great. The frequency match means listening to and harmonizing with the frequencies we sense in people and situations. For example, we might match another's breathing or cadence of speech or fall into rhythm as we walk together. Matching goes deep into our brain patterns as well. MRI studies, for example, have shown that when a person is following along in a story another is telling, their two brains literally get on the same wavelength. That synchrony goes away if the listener's attention wanders elsewhere.
Likewise, we can feel for the rhythm of nature and situations, from the crashing of ocean waves to the subtle rhythm of the day, to the rate at which a team can act or a community can be mobilized. By sincerely listening, we search for the match where we can add our voice or value 'on the beat,' with maximum impact.
Once we match the frequency or timing, the island of coherence we're joining or building scales with the amplitude of our ambition. When the ambition is not for our sake, but arises from connection and serves a flourishing future, we needn't shy away from what Jim Collins termed, 'Big Hairy Audacious Goals'. If a goal is well within reach, we might build an island of coherence in its service, but it won't evolve us as people. But if we commit to compelling goals outside our comfort zone and build resonance around such goals (meaning others sense their necessity as well) that stretch many people into new capacities, we are seeding a big, hairy island of coherence that evolves consciousness. We are matching the very process of life.
As tipping points tip and old orders fall away, it's easy to fall into confusion, anger, fear, and grief. In finding our practices we can face into that suffering. In finding our communities, we can build coherent oases in the mess. In stretching into purposes that serve a flourishing future, we can build great islands of coherence that evolve us and our communities in the process. This is the leadership work of our time. May it fully resonate through you.