In an age saturated with information, many leaders are not suffering from a lack of knowledge, but from a deeper disconnection: a loss of contact with how knowing itself arises. Otto Scharmer’s notion of presencing and Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s biology of knowing converge on a profound insight: we do not first think and then act; we participate in life, and knowing emerges through that participation.
We explore how presencing can be understood not merely as a leadership practice, but as a biological and relational capacity rooted in how living systems bring forth a world.
From Downloading to Presencing
In Theory U, Otto Scharmer describes four levels of listening and knowing:
• Downloading (re-enacting past patterns)
• Seeing (suspending judgment)
• Sensing (connecting with the whole)
• Presencing (connecting to the source of one’s highest future possibility)
Presencing is often described phenomenologically: slowing down, letting go, listening with the heart, and allowing the future to emerge. Yet this raises a deeper question: how is such knowing possible at all?
To answer this, we turn to Maturana and Varela.
The Biology of Knowing: Life as Cognition
Maturana and Varela made a radical claim:
“Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition.”
— Maturana & Varela, The Tree of Knowledge
In their view, cognition is not the representation of an objective world “out there.” Instead, knowing is the activity of a living system maintaining coherence with its environment.
Three core ideas are essential:
1. Autopoiesis: Self-Producing Life
Living systems are autopoietic. They continuously produce and maintain themselves. Knowing arises not from external input alone, but from how the system responds according to its structure.
We do not “receive” reality; we enact it.
2. Structural Coupling
Over time, organisms and environments become mutually shaped. What we can perceive, feel, or know is constrained and enabled by this ongoing coupling.
This means:
• There is no detached observer.
• All knowing is relational and embodied.
3. “All Doing Is Knowing”
For Maturana and Varela, cognition is not something the brain does alone. It is something the whole organism does in interaction with its world.
Knowing is lived, enacted, and bodily.
Presencing as a Biological Capacity
Seen through this lens, presencing is not a mystical add-on to leadership. It is a refinement of an already-existing biological capacity: the ability of a living system to reorganize itself in response to emerging conditions.
Presencing involves:
• Suspending habitual structural couplings (letting go of fixed interpretations)
• Increasing sensitivity to relational signals (sensing the system)
• Allowing new coherence to emerge (letting come)
In biological terms, presencing is a moment of heightened openness to structural transformation.
Letting Go: Disrupting Automatic Knowing
Much of what Scharmer calls “downloading” corresponds to what Maturana would describe as structurally determined behavior. We act not because reality demands it, but because our structure allows only certain responses.
Presencing interrupts this automaticity.
By slowing down and becoming aware of our bodily, emotional, and relational patterns, we create a space where:
• Old distinctions loosen
• New perceptions become possible
• Alternative actions can arise
This is not the mind overriding biology. It is biology becoming aware of itself.
Letting Come: Bringing Forth a New World
Maturana famously argued that:
“The world everyone sees is not the world, but a world, which we bring forth with others.”
Presencing aligns with this view. When leaders presencing together:
• They are not discovering a pre-existing future
• They are co-creating a new domain of meaning and action
The future emerges not from prediction, but from collective coherence.
Implications for Leadership and Learning
When presencing is grounded in the biology of knowing, several shifts follow:
Leadership becomes biological, not heroic: Leadership is less about control and more about cultivating conditions for healthy relational dynamics.
Learning becomes embodied and relational: Transformation does not occur through insight alone, but through changes in ways of being and relating.
Ethics emerges from care, not rules: Maturana insisted that ethics arises from recognizing the legitimacy of the other. Presencing deepens this recognition at a felt level.
Presencing as Remembering Life
Ultimately, presencing is not about becoming something new. It is about remembering how life already knows.
Before concepts, before strategies, before identities, there is a living system sensing, responding, and bringing forth a world in relationship.
To presence is to return to that source.
References
• Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1987). The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Shambhala.
• Maturana, H. R. (1988). Ontology of Observing.
• Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind. MIT Press.
• Scharmer, O. (2009). Theory U. Berrett-Koehler.
• Scharmer, O., & Käufer, K. (2013). Leading from the Emerging Future. Berrett-Koehler.
