What is Integral, and Why does it Matter?

Ken Wilber’s integral framework is a leading edge model influencing thought and practice leaders in countries around the world.  In a broad range of academic and professional disciplines - from medicine to education, from sustainability to politics – the integral approach is being adopted by many as a paradigmatic map to guide thinking and practice, research and evidence-gathering. The growing global success of the integral approach lies in its capacity to address the full complexity of human experience in an increasingly complex world. 

Integral means “comprehensive, inclusive, balanced … not leaving anything out.” In health promotion and community development, not leaving anything out means paying attention to all of the factors that influence health, well-being and healthy development, and all of the ways that they can be fostered. It means paying attention to the whole person in the whole community: to individuals (both interior and exterior experiences), to the systems and structures in which we carry out our activities, and to the culture within which we live our day-to-day lives.

The Interconnectedness of Self, System and Culture

The integral approach recognizes that our actions and behaviours are a direct reflection of our mental models: values, beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, spiritual connectedness, motivation, self-awareness and self-knowledge. In addition, an integral map demonstrates the interconnections between individual experience, and the cultural and systemic dimensions of organizational and community life.

By taking each of these perspectives into account we are able to increase our effectiveness and maximize our potential in all dimensions of human experience. Take organizational development, for example. Most organizations recognize the importance of building exterior assets, but often neglect the inner dynamics of asset building. An integral approach recognizes the essential part that each plays in a healthy and dynamic organization. 

Inviting new ways of seeing and being, the integral approach enhances organizational and community capacity to generate higher levels of health, well-being and healthy development.

Evolving Mind, Evolving Assets

It’s no secret. The human mind continues to evolve. The ways we experience life, and the ways we make sense of those experiences, continue to grow and change as we grow and change. With new thinking comes new practice. New practices are accompanied by new cultural assumptions, and new ways to organize ourselves – in our personal lives, our work lives, our community lives. Our evolving minds are our greatest asset, and our greatest organizational potential.

Research shows that human development proceeds through a series of stages that begin at birth and continue throughout the lifespan. For example, Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan identifies five stages: impulsive, egocentric, conformist, autonomous and integral. Each evolving stage of development brings us new experience, new thinking, new values, and new meaning – even while we retain the important foundations acquired in each of the earlier stages of our development.

This is familiar. We see minds unfold as we watch our children grow. And we see minds unfold in the adults around us, as people continue to reach toward their fullest potential. Each leap in development reveals a new mindstage – a unique way of knowing, feeling, valuing and making sense of life and the world around us. Each emerging mindstage reveals new perspectives, new insights, new solutions and new resources.

Knowledge of human development – or “developmental intelligence” – is an essential asset for leaders, practitioners, policy makers, and social innovators. Developmental intelligence equips change-makers and capacity-builders with potent tools for charting forward-reaching change initiatives, and for navigating complexity and conflict with precision, wisdom and grace.

The Benefits of an Integral Approach

  • More information, more effective tools, more effective strategies
  • Multiple and intersecting perspectives on the factors that shape a problem or a potential
  • Navigate complexity – acknowledge interconnected influences
  • Map the whole system, and connections between each part of the system
  • Identify knowledge and action gaps, patterns and potholes
  • Enhance communication and learning across organizations, and across sectors
  • Enhance collaboration by developing common language & concepts, goals & objectives
  • Identify levers for effective change
  • Reflective responses to changing issues & conditions
  • Learning is transferable across sectors and issues 
  • Deepen insight into people and their needs, motivators, capacities and preferences
  • Access untapped resources by cultivating human potential
  • Address issues at multiple levels of scale: individual, family, neighbourhood, community, region, province or state, country, globally
  • A comprehensive capacity building approach: individuals, teams, organizations, communities