When the system loses sight of itself: why polarisation is a leadership problem
Across Western democracies and global institutions, polarisation is accelerating.
In the US, political discourse has collapsed into tribal loyalty and weaponised identity. In the UK, the aftermath of Brexit continues to divide institutions, communities, and generations. In Israel–Palestine, centuries of trauma have hardened into existential binaries.
And inside many of our organisations, the same patterns show up: strategy vs. culture, leadership vs. staff, headquarters vs. local markets.
What we’re facing is not just a social or ideological crisis.
It’s a systemic one.
We are living through a collective breakdown in our ability to see and feel the whole.
The symptom: polarisation is everywhere
Polarisation is not new. But what’s changed is the speed and grip with which it takes hold.
In politics, it creates gridlock, fear-based decision-making, and the erosion of democratic process. In organisations, it shows up as conflict avoidance, over-reliance on hierarchy, or siloed execution. In society, it fosters deepening distrust and decreasing empathy.
We speak different truths. We live in different realities.
And slowly, the field of relationship, the space between us fractures.
The breakdown: whole-system sight has collapsed
In complex systems, the health of the whole depends on the quality of connection between the parts. When that connectivity weakens, when teams stop listening to each other, when leaders dismiss emotional signals as ‘noise’, when groups become locked in fixed identities, the system loses its capacity to sense and respond.
Dialogue dies. Adaptive intelligence decays.
All that’s left is control, fragmentation, and reactivity.
As Iain McGilchrist’s neuroscience reminds us, the left hemisphere of the brain is essential, but dangerous when untethered. Without contact with the right hemisphere’s relational, contextual, and integrative capacities, the left takes over. It categorises. It competes. It turns people into objects.
When our systems operate like that, they stop being alive.
As affective neuroscientists like Jaak Panksepp and Mark Solms have shown, emotion is foundational—not a byproduct of cognition, but its precondition.
Our capacity to think, relate, and respond is grounded in seven core affective systems: SEEKING, CARE, GRIEF, PLAY, FEAR, RAGE, and LUST. These deep, evolutionary emotional states shape not just our behaviour, but our perception itself.
When a system is gripped by FEAR or RAGE, it doesn’t just think defensively, it sees defensively. Its view of reality narrows. Ambiguity becomes threat. The ‘other’ becomes the enemy.
In contrast, when SEEKING, CARE, or PLAY are active, a system becomes open to novelty, learning, connection, and complexity. It can hold paradox. It can host dialogue.
In other words, how a system feels shapes what it perceives, and therefore what it becomes capable of doing with others.
If we want more intelligent systems, we have to start with more regulated, connected, emotionally coherent ones.
The fuel: social media and the multiplication of truths
Into this fragile relational field, social media pours gasoline.
These platforms aren’t just amplifiers of opinion, they’re architecture for fragmentation. They reward extremity. They algorithmically sort us into echo chambers. And they create the illusion of clarity in a world that is anything but simple.
Suddenly, we’re not just facing different perspectives.
We’re facing entirely different realities.
Without shared context, we cannot think together.
Without relationship, we cannot adapt.
The cost: Collective Intelligence breaks down
The result? Our systems, political, organisational, even personal, lose the ability to evolve.
Complexity demands cooperation, coherence, and learning across boundaries. But polarisation makes that impossible. It replaces nuance with narrative. Dialogue with dogma. Trust with certainty.
As Collective Intelligence breaks down, the system becomes brittle: unable to respond wisely to change, unable to access its own potential.
The intelligence is still there. But it’s stuck in silos, frozen in fear, or lost in translation.
An invitation to leadership: rebuild the relational field
This moment demands something different from leaders.
Not bigger plans. Not tighter control.
But the courage to host complexity, to restore the relationships that allow a system to see, feel, and act as one.
Leadership today means:
- Holding paradox without collapsing into either/or thinking
- Naming the invisible patterns of power, identity, and emotion
- Creating space for truth-telling that doesn’t fracture the group
- Rebuilding trust as a strategic capability, not a soft skill
Whether you’re leading a team, a company, or a nation, your task is relational:
To rebuild the connective tissue.
To make dialogue possible again.
To make the system intelligent again.
From fragmentation to whole: unlocking Collective Intelligence
Polarisation isn’t a passing storm. It’s the shadow of systems that can no longer hold themselves together.
But with the right leadership, systemic, relational, human, we can restore the field.
We can evolve, not just react.
We can turn to each other, not on each other.
And in doing so, we can rediscover the most radical form of intelligence we have:
The kind of intelligence that emerges between us.
Transformation starts here…
The future belongs to organisations that unlock the power of Collective Intelligence — feeling, thinking, and acting as one. Are you ready to build that capacity? Start the conversation with us.