Mauricio,
thank you for your question on leadership. It helped me synthesize some
thoughts that have been swirling around for awhile. I also appreciated
the responses you received from John Dentico, Gene Taurman and Scott
Simmerman.
I enjoyed Rost's point of view also, and his ruthless debunking of the
elements of leadership which he felt were inappropriately assigned to the
process of leading. I was only bothered by his advocacy (a personal
problem I have) in prescribing the right way to lead for a future that
hasn't yet occurred. This is a minor problem, though, and probably only
mine.
What has been going around in my head, though, is this idea of "purpose as
the invisible leader." People tend to organize themselves around a mutual
purpose. That purpose is sometimes manifested or embodied in an
individual. A leader. As long as the purpose, the leader and the people
maintain their "relationship to their relationships" they are congruous to
one another.
If either of these variables change in their relationships, then there is
no longer a viable leader role. The purpose may still be present, but
irrelevant to the people now. The leader may still be articulating and
manifesting the purpose, but she is as irrelevant as the purpose is to the
people who now have a different purpose. This is an example, of
course--there are many ways to influence or dissolve this relationship.
One of the phenomena that results from this "relating to relationships"
is when leaders try to continue their role after the relevancy has
disappeared. This can easily generate the "crisis" method of leadership,
which seeks to regenerate the meaningfulness of the old purpose. Indeed,
fears (and its' corollaries--hate, mistrust, bias, prejudice, jealousy,
greed) are the singlemost powerful self-organizing purpose I know of.
It's much less common to see people organize themselves around love,
nonviolence, charity, etc.
My point is that, all of the characteristics notwithstanding, people will
organize themselves first around their purpose. The leader who emerges is
quite definitely in a collaborative (as John shared with us about Rost's
perspectives) relationship with the purpose and the people. When this
relationship disappears, the authentic leader merges back into the group.
Those who continue to proclaim themselves leaders after this event are
something else, instead. Sometimes they are manipulators; or managers; or
governors--and they can emerge as leaders again when the collaborative
"stew" is right again.
-- "Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them." - Dion BourcicaultThresholds--developing critical skills for living organizations Richard C. "Doc" Holloway Olympia, WA ICQ# 10849650 Please visit our new website, still at <http://www.thresholds.com/> <mailto:learnshops@thresholds.com>
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