Leadership, Presencing, and That Thing Called Tadhana

by Elmer S Soriano

"Tadhana" is an old Filipino word that means fate or nature. Recently, the 2014 romatic comedy movie That Thing Called Tadhana made the term fresh and popular again. These days, tadhana connotes recognition of an emerging future and the need to move past old feelings, memories, and prisons (as Scharmer would call them) and operate from an openness to one's highest positive tadhana.

Which makes "tadhana" resemble "presencing". According to Scharmer, presencing means:

"liberating one’s perception from the “prison” of the past and then letting it operate from the field of the future. This means that you literally shift the place from which your perception operates to another vantage point. In practical terms, presencing means that you link yourself in a very real way with your “highest future possibility” and that you let it come into the present. Presencing is always relevant when past-driven reality no longer brings you forward, and when you have the feeling that you have to begin again on a completely new footing in order to progress...I use the presencing approach to facilitate profound innovation and change processes both within companies and across societal systems."

http://www.ottoscharmer.com/sites/default/files/2002_ScharmerInterview_us.pdf

Now it might seem a stretch to liken a theory of social evolution with a romantic comedy theme, but then again, the intention is to popularize the understanding of leadership theories by looking for similar terms in the vernacular. In the movie, the girl struggles to liberate herself from her attachment to her past boyfriend. The boy journeys with her and challenges her to open herself up to the emerging future, instead of clinging to the past.

In societies burdened by class structures, marginalization of the poor, leaders need to similarly invite others to open themselves to get past their history and perhaps even identities anchored on poverty.

The video below shows how a social worker Jo Mateo uses stories to invite poor farmers to work toward a more liberating tadhana narrative. Through her story, she articulates how structural barriers and social exclusion are realities which will perpetuate poverty (choosing karit scenario), and how responding/pursuing a positive tadhana (choosing panulat) allows poor farmers to liberate themselves from poverty, first through their dreams, and then through their daily actions choosing (presencing) to respond to the call of their preferred tadhana.

Image credits: https://presencing.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Screen%20Shot%202013-11-04%20at%203.37.04%20PM.png?itok=38580jfY