Enrollment and the Journey of Possibility

Potential. Possibility. Enrollment.

These are the very stuff of collaborative leadership.

Potential is the latent power and capacity to grow and make something manifest in the future. 

The saying “the children are our future” is true because of their potential. Parents and educators cultivate children’s talents, their latent potential, because of the promise of possibility, because of what can be.

If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye, which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?

—Søren Kierkegaard

In the following diagram, the red dot represents the pupil of an eye, the arrows a 360° orbit of possibilities:

The Eye of Possibility

Possibility breathes life into hope. Possibility allows the imagination to play and vision to be born. Yet without enrollment, leaders can’t fulfill the promise of potential and possibility.  Without enrolling the hearts of people, their soul force of character, courage, and integrity, leaders can become, as apostle Paul said in Corinthians 13:1-2, “as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.”

Understandably, we often relate enrollment to signing up for a class or matriculating in college. But as suggested two sentences ago, enrollment for leadership means much more. Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, authors of the classic work The Art of Possibility, further explain: “Enrolling is not about forcing, cajoling, tricking, bargaining, pressuring, or guilt-tripping. Enrollment is the art and practice of generating a spark of possibility for others to share.”  [Emphasis in the original]

Leaders enroll people with potential on a journey of possibility. When people enroll in a noble purpose, their passion and commitment ignite. Such enrollment fulfills a need to belong to a larger cause. These are the preliminary steps for collective intelligence — or what jazz pianist and leading creativity researcher Keith Sawyer calls “group genius” — to swing into action.