Mark Edwards on leaders and followers

In Part 6 of his dialogue with Russ they explore the lopsided emphasis on leaders in integral theory and practice. And how to balance that with followers, how leaders are also followers and vice versa. This directly relates to a form of logic that depends on the excluded middle (or as Edwards call it, the space between),  a logic that still predominates in AQALingus.

"I would like to explore this topic you bring up of Nicolescu’s logics of the included/excluded middle. These logics can be discussed in a number of ways and the work on holonics of John Mathews (1996) is particularly relevant to these issues. To my mind the idea of an included middle refers to relationships that are non-reductive, i.e. simultaneously holistic and analytic. Such relationships pose the question: How can something be both what it is and what it is not?"

"Non-reductive, holonic leadership is inherently paradoxical and it carries that paradox into the activity of the leader as genuine servant. When we regard a leader as 'The Leader' we get caught in reductive forms of leadership and we fall foul of the logic of the excluded middle. [...] From this perspective Russ, it occurs to me that your wonderful journal might consider ILR to be an acronym for Integral Leadership/Followership Review. Followership is just as important as leadership in governance because every leader is a follower and every follower is a leader."