John,
Thank you for your response on leadership. I asked you if you were aware
of Kouzes & Posner's definition.
By and large, I agree with your perspective that leadership resides
everywhere. I agree with Foster's quote which you provided. I do not
understand the terminology "embodied individual". Are you saying a leader
is part of a larger whole? If so, it seems true of necessity.
I have heard Posner speak, and one of his central points was that
leadership is a part of everyone. In fact he had a large group of people
(more or less 600) do an exercise in which each person described a
situation in which they had been a leader. It was quite a dramatic proof
that everyone provides leadership at one time or another, and that
everyone is a follower at other times.
K&P's 5 rules of leadership are, in my view, tantamount to providing
freedom to followers, so the notion of being part of a larger whole is
incorporated. Interestingly, they developed their definition by
collecting information from thousands of diverse people who provided their
views on what leadership was in their experience.
It may be that their view has evolved since you saw Kouzes speak. It may
also be that I am missing something. But it seems there view is very
close to the one you espouse.
For example, Posner has stated that leadership resides everywhere. There
is no correlation between positional power and leadership. It appears to
me, at least that they are suggesting that leaders _enable_. But only
followers will decide exactly how to implement what is enabled.
How is this different from your view?
You said,
>Oh by the way, be careful of what I call, the Leadership "flip-flop"
>game. Many leadership writers, talk a good game about leadership for the
>communal good, but when you tear away the mask, what you find is the only
>person who is bestowing this communal good is the leader, the others are
>just there to receive the goods. I don' t believe that, I believe
>everyone has a right, obligation and actively seeks a sense of meaning to
>their work. this is not something reserved to the elite group called
>leaders.
I think it is true that many people -- including leadership writers --
believe that leadership is somehow determining the communal good, and then
getting buy-in to that particular mental model. This does not seem to
have anything to do with leadership per se, but more with just normal
people having opinions. It does not appear, automatically, to preclude
others having meaningful work, does it? Nor does it prevent others from
having contrary opinions. For example, you espouse a particular opinion
or viewpoint on leadership, specifically, that it is a collaborative
effort. I would characterize you as a leader in that viewpoint. But your
existence does not appear to me to remove meaning from the lives of others
who have contrary perspectives, does it? Or am I misunderstanding what
you are saying? Sorry if I am confused, I am just trying to understand.
I am curious if you would characterize your work as leadership on this
particular topic, and if so, how your work fits into your model.
Particularly how it fits in with your relationship with followers of your
model.
Thanks for your response, I sincerely enjoyed reading it.
--Rol Fessenden
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