Leadership Development

Even in pragmatic settings like corporate leadership workshops or activism retreats, Premature Coherence is a common trap. A team eager for unity might, under time pressure, leap to a consensus action plan or a shiny new vision statement while deeper disagreements or uncertainties are politely ignored. Facilitators may guide participants to articulate a “shared purpose” by the end of a weekend, checking the box for alignment. But often this rushed harmony is the “harmony” of a graveyard – quiet not because true understanding has been achieved, but because dissonant voices have been stifled. The workshop yields a neat slogan and a round of applause, yet afterward little changes in practice. Underneath the banner of oneness or mission accomplished, unresolved tensions simmer. The organization has collapsed a complex web of needs and perspectives into a single simplified story (“We're all on the same page now”), gaining short-term comfort at the expense of long-term resilience. It's that over-tightened spring: the more authentic complexity is compressed, the more pressure builds. When reality intrudes – as it inevitably will – the faux coherence can snap, sometimes with greater force because of all that was held down. True transformation, by contrast, requires allowing complexity to inform the process at every step, messy or not.