Ed,
Well said and Thanks for your comments.
Let me say a couple of things here. You are right, we need to train
leaders to use different talents. Facilitation, Collaboration, Consensus
Building, Influence Relationships, Building Alliances and Trust. Let us
spend time and money doing this. These are the tools for the 21st Century
Leader. Along with this organizations and people must understand that
there is a convergence of one's own sense of purpose with the
organization's/team/community sense of purpose. But I wonder how many
people have worked as hard on building a sense of purpose as opposed to
mere goals.
Purpose is the fabric upon which the goals are sewn. Hold it up, stand
back, and you have the vision. In the learning organization community,
there is much a do about shared vision. Emphasis the shared part, not
yours, not mine but we together.
Ron Heifitz (please excuse the spelling I think it is wrong) of Harvard,
says "to do leadership alone, is tantamount to committing suicide". I
agree, the 21st century beckons us to reform and renew our sense of
community. It is a daunting job. It will be complex, hard, it will bring
great angst. But I believe in that old adage, A GROUP OF COMMITTED PEOPLE
IS AN AWESOME FORCE.
Even so it is does not mean we have to give our individuality up either.
On the contrary, it is our own uniqueness which brings a diverse set of
talents, a diverse way of looking through the lens which provides a rich
decisional environment from which creative approaches can be constructed.
It also fulfills what Joseph Campbell and Victor Frankl write is at the
center of our sense of being. We should I believe heed their advice, it
is fruitless to search for the meaning of life, but instead engage life
because it is about the experience of being alive. Said another way, it
is not what life means to me, but how I engage life to be fulfilled.
Hence my pronouncement that leadership is more about doing than being.
Ahhh, purpose at its most passionate moment. Experiencing life is not
reserved for an elite group of leaders, it belongs to all of us. The
leader of the 21st Century will know this and work to facilitate the
leadership process and craft the environment where leadership and learning
can flourish at all levels of an organization. But of course, this is an
ancient Idea.
The Tao Tse Ching #17 "the highest type of rules is one who's presence the
people are barely aware."
But talking about the paradigm shift and living the paradigm is also hard
work and one that takes great resolve. We must act in accordance with
that which we want to make a reality.
Look forward to more thoughts
John Dentico
Avatar Leadership Simulations
"Making the Leadership Experience Real"
www.leadsimm.comm
--"John P. Dentico" <jdentico@adnc.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>