Developing a Worldview

If you want to be a great leader, you need to develop a worldview. You might think you don't have one—but you probably do. It's just implicit rather than explicitly articulated.

A worldview is a belief system that answers big, philosophical questions about life and existence. It's what guides our choices and how we orient ourselves in life. 

Understanding how to articulate and share your worldview with others can be a powerful tool for creating meaning in an organization. 

This came to light for me after I exited a travel company I’d started in the mid 2010s and spent a year studying theology and the psychology of religion.

When running the company, I hadn’t thought much about the deeper meaning behind our trips. But after learning about the study of worldviews, I realized that there were a number of core beliefs implicit in the experiences we offered:

• We believed in prioritizing life experiences over accumulating possessions.
• We believed in learning about oneself and human nature by coming into contact with people from other backgrounds and cultures.
• We believed in the importance of approaching work and projects from a place of intrinsic motivation.
• We believed that one should avoid the “deferred life plan”—that life is short, and one shouldn’t put off for the future what one really wants to do in life.

We never explicitly stated these things, but we could have—and doing so probably would have offered a greater sense of meaning to our participants, and given us a compass and greater sense of purpose as we built out the business.

Much like the bird at the front of the “V” makes flying easier for the rest of the flock, leaders who intentionally articulate and share meaning make it easier for everyone else in an organization to find meaning for themselves.

If leaders fail to do this work, members will either project their own meanings onto the organization or will fail to mark it as meaningful altogether. As an organization grows and new members no longer get facetime with the founder, this problem only gets worse.

In this piece, I’ll explore the basics of worldviews and ways to apply them in organizations. By the end, you'll have a better understanding of how to become a great leader by intentionally sharing meaning with others.

(Credit: Noire Photography / Unsplash)

Worldview basics

“Worldview” as an idea was originally theorized by Immanuel Kant as a super-category that could include both religion and non-religious ways of viewing the world. The concept has been further developed in the past few decades by religious studies scholar Ann Taves and several others, defining worldviews by the Big Questions that they answer. 

These questions relate to six core domains within philosophy: ontology, cosmology, epistemology, axiology, praxeology, and eschatology*. They can be used to analyze many belief systems, from Christianity to Marxism, and can also be used to help articulate the core beliefs implicit in an organization.

Let’s look at each of these domains and the questions they explore:

• Ontology—what exists? (Gods, the natural world)
• Cosmology—how did we get here? (origin stories, secular history)
• Epistemology—how do we know what is true? (science, sacred texts)
• Axiology—what is the good worth striving for? (values, morals)
• Praxeology—how should we act to reach our goals? (practices, behaviors)
• Eschatology—how do we understand death and our own mortality? (afterlife, “YOLO”)

While religions offer explicit answers to these questions, we have implicit answers to these questions, revealed through our choices and behavior. When a worldview is implicit rather than explicit, researchers call it a “way of life.”

For example, if someone's goal is to become a scientist, their ontology may include a belief in the natural world, their cosmology may be based on the principles of evolution, and their epistemology may prioritize the scientific method for determining truth. 

As a leader, it can be helpful to explicitly articulate your worldview and understand the implicit beliefs of those you are trying to lead, so you can connect with your team on a deeper level and create a shared understanding of the world around you.

Of course, it's important to remember that everyone's beliefs are unique, and there is no one "right" answer to the Big Questions. The goal of understanding worldviews is not to impose your own beliefs on others, but to gain a deeper understanding of what motivates and drives people, and to use that knowledge to connect and collaborate more effectively through shared meaning-making.

Let’s look at how to think about articulating answers to each of the Big Questions as a leader along with some concrete examples:

Ontology—what is more real for us than others?

We all live our lives in ways that privilege some aspects of existence over others. Thinking about ontology as an organization means reflecting on what does and doesn’t exist in your slice of the world.

For example, given that many Americans never leave the country, my choice to start a travel company can be thought of as an ontological statement: the rest of the world exists.

We could have intentionally leaned into this as part of our company story, contrasting the day-to-day existence of someone in New York or San Francisco with that of the traveler. The message: a person’s world literally expands through meeting new people and having new cultural experiences.

To reflect on your organization’s ontology, ask yourself:

• What do we believe exists that others ignore?
• What is more real for us than others?

Cosmology—how do we connect to history?

People find meaning in connecting their lives to something larger than themselves. One way to do this as an organization is to intentionally tie your work to historical trends that transcend your current context.