Teal is a color which represents higher consciousness and the beginning of spiritual awakening. It was popularized by Frédéric Laloux in his ground-breaking book “Reinventing Organizations”, in which he profiled 12 purpose-driven organizations that achieved miraculous financial success while offering their people growth opportunities, decision making authorities and great joy at work. The reason is that these organizations were led by high conscious leaders.
Consciousness, the result of spiritual development, increases through seven common stages. It is easily identifiable through our behaviors, as an individual, an organization, or a society. Briefly, the pattern of each stage can be described (labeled by colors) as:
- Magenta – conformity-driven, focuses on stability and safety, fear of change, or diplomatic. Example: a submissive person, or a great follower.
- Red – ego-centric, impulsive, curious, and exploratory, family-oriented, corruption, and dictator-like. Example: street gangs or a protective big brother.
- Amber – order, strictly rule-based, hierarchies, perfectionist, focused, and critical. Example: military or swiss product quality.
- Orange – materialistic, entrepreneurial, result-driven, hard work, vanity, action-oriented, and burn-out. Example: personal achievement, Wall Street, plastic surgery, or LV bags.
- Green – consensus-driven, equality, community, sharing, healing, emotions, abstract, and creative. Example: non-profit, artistic creation, or humanitarian.
- Teal – big picture thinking, intuitive, at ease with uncertainty and complexity, inclusive and independent thinkers. Example: Apple design or Marianne Williamson
- Turquoise – visionaries at the societal level, leadership, heroic, reform, and outside of box thinking. Example: Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King
Our consciousness directly affects how we think and behave in every situation in life. Therefore, a leader’s consciousness level determines how s/he leads a nation, an organization, a community, a team, or a family.
The lower consciousness we have, the more selfish, controlling, manipulative we behave, the more external powers we seek, and the more complicated our solutions to problems are. The higher consciousness we have, the more likely we can achieve success in relationships and in business effortlessly, and the more we can find power and joy from within.
As Laloux’s book mentioned, there are three breakthroughs at Teal level of consciousness:
Self-Management– Individuals have psychologically transitioned from adolescence to adulthood, which means they are no longer the mere products of social conditioning. They have independent thinking. They know who they are, what they want, what makes them unique, and what kind of environment brings out the best in them.
They seek no permission to be their authentic self and they take responsibility for their own actions. In other words, they have learned to be in charge of their own lives.
Wholeness– Individuals recognize, accept, and embrace the fact that we have four dimensions as human beings – physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. Our social taboo on discussing emotions and spirits, the foundation of our existence, has been detrimental to our well-being and humanity at large. Teal, with a big picture perspective, recognizes this.
Leaders who operate from the Teal level of consciousness bring resources, both visible and invisible, to create businesses or communities centered on human beings and achieve exponentially better results with less effort and great joy in the process.
Evolutionary Purpose– Unlike previous stages of consciousness, Teal defines purpose beyond shareholder values to include social impact and all stakeholders. With earlier stages of development, the dominating belief is “either-or”. One must sacrifice one in order to have another, which is limiting.
At the Teal consciousness level, it is believed that we can have high profit, less work, more fun for everyone involved. The purposes of businesses, the environment, and every stakeholder CAN be in harmony and MUST be in harmony in order to achieve the next level of success.
Teal Village is created to guide and to support its members on a journey of increased consciousness, so they are ready to build high conscious businesses and communities.