For much of modern history, leadership has been framed as the art of intention. Leaders were celebrated for their ability to set clear goals, chart a course, and drive others toward a desired future. Intention carried with it the power of focus, clarity, and force.
But something is shifting. Increasingly, intention alone feels insufficient in the face of complexity, uncertainty, and change. A new kind of leadership is emerging—one that values not just intention but attention.
Where intention points the arrow, attention tunes the instrument. Intention directs action; attention shapes energy. And in our current moment of cultural and systemic transformation, attention is becoming the deeper lever.
Aristotle’s Two Lenses on Becoming
Aristotle gave us four “causes” for understanding why things become what they are. Two of them are particularly relevant here:
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Efficient Cause: the agent that makes something happen (the carpenter who builds the chair).
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Final Cause (Telos): the inherent purpose or end that draws something into becoming (the oak tree already held within the acorn).
For centuries, our culture has leaned heavily on efficient cause as the dominant lens. We explained change by identifying the actor: who did it, who pushed, who made it happen. Leadership, in this frame, became about exerting will and force—an intention-driven paradigm.
But as our understanding of the world has evolved—from mechanistic physics to quantum interconnection, from industrial repetition to adaptive complexity—we’re beginning to rediscover the wisdom of telos. Transformation doesn’t only come from pushing harder. It also comes from aligning with the pull of purpose, from allowing what wants to emerge to unfold through us.
The Old Paradigm: Intention as Efficient Cause
Traditional leadership thrives in environments where outcomes are relatively predictable. Factories, hierarchies, and stable markets rewarded the leader who could set a goal, enforce a plan, and drive efficiency.
In this model, intention functioned as efficient cause: the leader is the agent who brings the result into being. Success was measured by control and execution. Coaching mirrored this approach: clarifying goals, setting milestones, holding accountability.
There is power in this approach—it works in contexts where cause and effect are linear. But it falters in complexity, where the future is not just unknown but unknowable, and where control can quickly become rigidity.
The New Paradigm: Attention as Telos
In today’s interconnected, rapidly evolving systems, leadership is less about force and more about field. The most impactful leaders are not simply those who declare a direction, but those who cultivate attention:
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Presence — grounding themselves and others in the here and now.
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Attunement — sensing subtle shifts and emerging signals.
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Aliveness — noticing where energy flows naturally.
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Invitation — creating conditions where the new can arise.
This is leadership as final cause / telos. The leader is not imposing outcomes, but aligning with what the system, the team, or the individual is already becoming. Attention is the act of listening for that telos, holding the space where it can unfold.
Coaching in the New Paradigm
This shift shows up in coaching, too. Traditional coaching often reflects the intention paradigm: identify the client’s goal, set the plan, provide structure and accountability to achieve it.
Emergence coaching, by contrast, reflects the attention paradigm. Instead of starting with goals, it begins with presence. It listens for aliveness, attends at the edges, honors the void. It helps clients discover not just how to get what they want, but how to align with what their life is already becoming.
In this sense, emergence coaching is a practice of listening for telos—the future that is calling a person forward—not as a fixed destiny, but as a living, emergent orientation.
From Force to Field
The cultural shift we are living through is not the abandonment of intention, but its rebalancing. Intention still matters—it sharpens focus and organizes energy. But without attention, intention risks becoming forcing, rigidity, or burnout.
Attention is the deeper substrate. It tunes us to the field of becoming, allowing us to co-create with the unseen patterns already in motion. It is what transforms leadership from mere management of outcomes into stewardship of transformation.
In other words:
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Intention is efficient cause—the push that makes things happen.
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Attention is telos—the pull that draws us into alignment with what wants to emerge.
The leaders who will guide us forward are those who can hold both—but who know that in a world of complexity, it is attention that opens the doorway to transformation.
We are moving from leaders as architects of intention to leaders as gardeners of attention. From efficient cause to telos. From force to field.
And in this shift lies not just a new way of leading, but a new way of becoming.
