What is your highest and deepest intention—as a leader, as a member of an organization or community, as a family member, as a friend?

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And how does that intention shape your attention? To what, and to whom, do you give your heed?

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The root of intention comes from the Old French entendre or intendre—to direct one’s attention. In modern French, it primarily means “to hear.” The root of attention, also from Old French (attencion), means to give heed to, to stretch toward.

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Intention and attention are inseparable. What you intend directs what you notice, what you amplify, and ultimately, what you help bring into being.

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Joanna Macy—scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and ecology—offers this grounding insight:
“We can’t know how things will unfold. What we can do is make a choice about what we’d like to have happen, and then put ourselves fully behind that possibility.”

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My own deepest intention is to help engender a field—an environment of energy and relationship—that invites people to bring forth the best in themselves. A field where learning, compassion, and collaboration naturally arise in service of the whole.

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Living One’s Intention

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In challenging moments, how do you stay true to your intention?

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A key lies in your attention—where you place it, what you stretch toward, what you choose to notice and nourish.

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Dag Hammarskjöld, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, posed a stark and timeless question:
“Do you create? Or destroy? That’s for your ordeal-by-fire to answer.”

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This question lives at the intersection of intention and attention.

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Our intentions can guide us from a narrow focus on individual interests toward a wider commitment to collective well-being—from silos to shared purpose, from fragmentation to wholeness.

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We are never outside a field. Even when alone, we are embedded in a social and relational space. An intention that serves the collective ultimately serves the individual as well.

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As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

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A Network of Mutuality

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This network of mutuality—the living field we share—means that our intentions and our attention do not stop with us. They ripple outward.

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Like a pebble dropped into a pond, each intention, each act of attention, shapes the field.

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So the question remains: Do we create, or do we destroy?

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Consider a simple, everyday setting: a meeting.

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What is your intention when you walk into the room? Be honest. Is it to look good, to impress, to be seen as knowledgeable or right?

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If so, your attention will likely turn inward—toward how you are being perceived, whether others are agreeing, whether your voice carries weight.

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But if your intention is to contribute to the group’s capacity—to help people think together, to address what truly matters—your attention shifts.

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You begin to listen more deeply.
You reflect back what you hear.
You notice what is not being said.
You sense tone, patterns, and energy in the conversation.

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And you speak in ways that invite the field to open:
“I’m wondering if the real issue might be this… What do others think?”

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Shaping Fields

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Through your intention and your attention, you are always participating in shaping a field—personal, relational, organizational.

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You can help create fields that are open, generative, and life-giving.
Or you can contribute to fields that are closed, fragmented, and depleting.

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The choice is rarely dramatic. It is made moment by moment—through what you intend, and where you place your attention.

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Given the complexity of the challenges facing leaders, organizations, and communities today, it is worth your time—and your attention—to ask:

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What are my deepest intentions?
And what kind of field am I helping to create?