Thoughts on leadership

In Sharon Daloz Park's book Leadership Can Be Taught, she describes Harvard's leadership program.

A phrase that caught my eye was this:

In this view, the function of leadership is to mobilize people -- groups, organizations, societies -- to address their toughest problems.

...[to] assist people in moving beyond the edge of familiar patterns into the unknown terrain of greater complexity, new learning, and new behaviors, usually requiring loss, grief, conflict, risk stress, and creativity.

They call for changes of heart and mind- the transformation of long-standing habits and deeply held assumptions and values.

and on page 220

This phase of the imagination process requires wading into the swamp of conflicting passions, forces, values, perspectives, personalities, and factions. It requires also creating a container (time, place, norms of working) in which the conflicts can be orchestrated to become productive. Orchestrating the conflict requires naming the truth and uncovering the work that needs to be done -- however attractive or painful it may be - at a rate that can be borne, and regulating the heat that is being generated. It depends on a practice of presence taht makes it possible to build trust, partnerships, and alliances within the conflicted field and to clarify the purpose and future prospect that make the current anguish and angst worthwhile.

...

There is .. the fire of inspiration that sustains the practice of adaptive leadership. ... They acknowledge that there is something that, as it were, moves them, moves thorugh them, and fires their imagination. .... authentic inspiration arises from a depth of worthy purpose and is the energizing (though often demanding) force that evokes possibility and fuels the capacity to stay the course. Inspiration is the wellspring of courage, arising from a way of seeing -- or seeing through-- that transcends and thus resists solutions that pose as ultimate.

I would suggest that her observations on leadership are correct as far as they go, but they can and should be extended further, to contemplate the result of exercising such leadership. We can, as it were, look at the "fruits" of this endeavor, aside from accomplishing the stated task or mission. Exactly how it is accomplished, at what cost to the future, is pivotal.

The people being led, I would say, need to end up as a stronger community, for this to be true leadership. Accomplishing a goal by fragmenting the community, and reaching one group's needs at the dismaying expense of others is not leadership. When the process is done, people should be bonded closer to each other, for having tackled that problem, and succeeded, together.

And, secondly, the surrounding world needs to end up stronger as well -- the success of the group being motivate cannot have been achieved at the expense of the larger community.

If either the internal or external communities have been harmed, the success is a transient illusion, and only a "success" due to poor bookkeeping. When all that energy has shaken out, and the communities have retaliated for their damage, the success and more will have been removed.

So -- a leader can guide the group to discover solutions that are win-win-win solutions, where all parties feel better off and there is no lasting anger or animosity or damage done "on the side" in some manner that often is swept under the rug.

Much of the above can be modeled as a step in the evolutionary development of the larger Life of humanity on the planet. It is as though Life is attempting to fold its own molecule or shape in a certain way and has run into a snag, building up frustrated pressure in that direction. The task of the group, faciliated by the leader, is to uncover the snags and release them so that the natural forward development of Life can continue.

This model suggests that it is not necessary to create a way for Life to succeed in this improvement in shape -- only necessary to find what is in the way of it and remove that, and, almost always, what is in the way of it is actually ... us, and our habits and legacy patterns. The pressure, guidance, and running to completion are all external, manifesting as "inspiration" beyond our own wisdom.

If we stop here and take this as our tentative model, we see already the conflicts with typical Western corporate culture. Staff in general, and managers in particular, especially MBA's, are not in the habit of wanting to be "closer" to their peers, in terms of endearment, let alone closer to their employees or their subordinate's subordinates. They view themselves and their power as the ability to compete with, defeat, out-maneuver, and get rid of others who would be in the way or who would share credit for victory.

Similarly, corporate missions in Western society are typically to "beat" other corporations, to assume that wealth is finite and "zero sum" and therefore their goal is to acquire as much of it as possible at the expense of anyone and anything in their way.

The contrast could hardly be larger between the legacy model of heroic individual leadership in a zero-sum contest for victory, and externally-inspired group emergent development toward a sustainable future. The first is essentially the discovery and use of "fission" power, and the second is essentially the discovery and use of "fusion" power.