traditional concept of community as a localized experience is giving way
to a social model that looks more like an airport than a village. Perhaps
this partly explains the feelings of futility, alienation, and lack of individual
worth that are said to characterize our time.
As the Information Age and its awesome technology inexorably
transform us into a virtualized society, I believe that even the most
wired—and wireless—among us still experiences the craving for a
sense of personal connectedness. As artificial and virtual communities
become ever more common, our need for a real sense of community
will deepen, not lessen. Ironically, the digital age will demand greater
social competence of us, not less.
The Nobel laureate John Franck once said that he always knew
when he had heard a good idea because of the feeling of terror that
seized him. Good ideas tend to do that—they invite us to a journey of
discovery that can be both fearful and joyful;we may fear the overturning
of our emotional and intellectual apple carts, but at the same time
our deeper wisdom invites us to joyfully explore their possibilities.
Karl Albrecht provides us with a simple but elegant framework for
understanding social intelligence as a set of five primal competencies
for life and leadership: Situational Awareness, Presence, Authenticity,
Clarity, and Empathy. I could expound at length on the role each of
these concepts has played in my understanding of leadership, social
influence, and the workings of human society, but I’ll let him do that, as
he does so well in the following pages.