Rick, Rol, Rob and Doc et. al,
I am smiling, you are certainly keeping me busy. It is a good thing. I
appreciated your responses, replys and comments. I would like to provide
a single message back which would answer your inquiries and perhaps
putting them all in one message might create some synergy for me as well.
My feeling at this point is that this will be a rather long message,
please bear with me. I will use a person's name to begin a reply back so
it might make it easier to track. Before I do I just want to say that
this is the kind of discussion thread that I think is really important to
put on the table. So while my fingers get tired a bit, it is a pain of
joy.
You might even say that we are doing what Burns would describe as
transformational leadership i.e. "raising one another to higher levels of
motivation and morality" I can't necessarily speak about the morality
part but I do feel this exchange is raising me to a new level.
OK, to the response.
Rob--
Your specific example is well explained and greatly appreciated. It
reminds me of the Chinese proverb which speaks about the ability "to do
without doing".
The quote you gave from Dreher's book is, as I am sure you know, Lao Tzu's
#17, from The Tao Tse Ching,
I believe the entire proverb should be stated, here it is:
The Highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely
aware.
Next comes one whom they love and praise.
Next comes one whom they fear.
Next comes one whom they despise and defy.
When you are lacking in faith,
Others will be unfaithful to you.
The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words.
When his task is accomplished and things have been completed,
All the people say, We Ourselves have achieved It!
Pretty powerful don't you think?
I particularly like the lines "when you are lacking in faith, others will
be unfaithful to you." How about we change the word faithful to the word
trust for a moment. Now lets see what we have. "when you fail to trust,
others will fail to trust you." Sort of reminds me how many of us just
love being micro managed! (Said with tongue in cheek)
I agree wholeheartedly with you that it is about relationships, for me
Leadership is a relationship one of safety, trust, openness and
commitment. In terms of your feeling that you wonder what you should be
doing next, my simple recommendation is you are doing it now, i.e. doing
without doing and perhaps the most forward looking thing you should be
looking at is expanding the number or level of relationships. I would
say, who else could or should be brought into this leadership dynamic?
What other relationships need to be created?
Rol--
Comments on the definition of Kouzes and Posner
Taken from their book "Credibility" Jossey-Bass 1993,
Page One, Chapter One, First Line "Leadership is a reciprocal relationship
between those who choose to lead and those who choose to follow." Line 6,
Same page "If there is no underlying need for the relationship, then there
is no need for leaders".
There you have it and at first glance I would look at that and say, great
I agree. Leadership is a relationship, and there must be a purpose to
their work. Fine, the trouble is that by the time you get to Chapter two
they have fallen back to describing the trait theory of leadership i.e.
Leadership is about a person with a set of describable traits making us
want to follow, leadership, in other words, is about what the leader does.
I am sorry, but this is another case of the leadership "flip-flop" game.
Page 14, Table 1.1 called" Characteristics of Admired Leaders" a survey
constructed to determine what traits are important, interestingly enough
what you find are traits intermingled with values. Traits are not values.
Values are the glue that holds the relationship together, and values
should be shared by all in the leadership dynamic not just something the
leader does. There is a glaring and I mean glaring misunderstanding about
people in a leadership dynamic. I have experienced this first hand. Just
because I trust the leader, doesn't mean I trust the rest of the group nor
does the rest of the group trust me. It is incumbent upon me and you and
the others to foster a healthy relationship among each other as well. So
blindly giving allegiance to the leader because he or she is pretty ok,
doesn't mean that I feel that with the others. The relationship is
multi-directional it is not solely about me and the leader but about all
of us together.
Now to really understand this and to use context as a check on my words,
change the context from a business one, where people are paid money to
follow so to speak, or to allow direction to be accepted to one where a
community issue is at stake. Like safety in a community, or community
policing, now we are not talking about paying anyone, and the situation is
emotionally charged, what kind of real relationships are required to bring
the community into the leadership dynamic? Is this leadership different
from leadership in business? I mean do we have different kinds of
leadership for different days of the week or situation? Sounds like
situational leadership to me?
My feeling is that then leadership becomes an undefinable a whatever we
want it to be it will be, then why are we spending so much money on it to
find it, cultivate it and use it to solve the critical issues of our day?
I mean who cares, if can be anything we want it to be?
To me leadership as a relationship that recognizes a mutual purpose to
cause transforming change transcends any other notion of leadership out
there. OK, I am off the soapbox.
Let me reiterate a quote by Peter Drucker in The Leader of the Future
"page xi . . .the second major lesson is that "leadership personality",
"leadership style" and "leadership traits" do not exist.
In terms of leadership existing everywhere I would say it this way
everyone has the potential to be part of a leadership dynamic. But if
people are just going about their daily business, they are probably not
doing leadership. I believe it must have a focus, mutual purpose, shared
vision and common goals about the change they intend to make.
Your next paragraph snipped out
"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."
First four lines I agree with.
No, others who might have differing opinions are welcome, this is not
group think. That is what makes the relationship vital and alive, the
diversity of opinions. The sharing of ideas and the engagement in a
dialogue not a raw debate. I hope that this is coming through in my
actions on here, I admit I am passionate about what I believe but I do try
my best to live the paradigm I espouse as best as any human can, with mine
or any others inherent human limitations. It is the use of influence not
coercion that we are trying to effect. Influence is presenting my
opinion, knowledge, or information in such a way that it invites critique.
I must be open to that, as I expect others to be. But in the end it is
your choice as to whether or not you have accepted what I have said as
having any relevance or truth. The choice is yours.
Would I characterize my work on this topic as leadership, I guess I could
say that if I thought that my contribution would transform your or any
other's understanding or opinion. My depiction of leadership, sort of an
artistic rendering as opposed to a definition, is on my web page first
page, or usually called the splash page.
(<http://www.leadsimm.com/>www.leadsimm.com)
If you have the mind to go there, download it, and ask yourself this, do I
fit into the picture which I myself have created? By the way Rol, I do
not look at you as a follower, but as a collaborator or partner in a more
artistic sense. Artistic in the sense that we are creating something
greater, where the whole of this discussion is greater than the sum of the
parts.
Whew, what a message, I had to stop to have breakfast if I go much longer,
it will be lunch time.
Ok
Rick is next
Here is Rick's question and comments for others:
So... The question seems to be what is the role, importance, and method of
operation of leadership in a learning organization? In a learning
organization, leadership would not be hierarchical, not support
bureaucracy, and not be imposed unilaterally. So, what would it look like?
...Rick
OK Rick
Leadership to me looks like the graphic on my web page,
Simply stated Rick, Collaborative Leadership is a new mental model of
leadership which supports the principles or tenets of the learning
organization. It supports the notion of everyone being part of the
knowledge creation, dissemination and use process described by DiBella and
Nevis, in "How Organizations Learn" because it is an inclusionary model.
Collaborative Leadership, CL for short, is a multi-directional leadership
process and again agrees with the need for multi-directionality of
learning in organizations. It states in clear and precise terms, the need
for safety, trust (openness as well) and commitment from all in the
relationship so that sharing of knowledge will be unhindered by fear or
the absence of any one of the listed items above. But more than anything
else, it provides a sense of meaning to those who are engaged with life in
the daily work.
In other words, It is not what life means to me, but it is how I choose to
engage life to be or to feel alive. The previous sentence was born out of
the work of Joseph Campbell in the Power of Myth and Viktor Frankl in
"Man's Search for Meaning"
Here is the Frankl quote:
page 85 of the paper back
. . .it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what
life expected from us. . .Our answer must consist, not in talk and
meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately
means taking the responsibility of find the right answer to its problems
and to fulfill the task which it constantly set for each individual."
A popular dividing line in terms of leadership is captured in the
following question.
Is leadership more about being than doing? Frankl and Campbell would
probably support the notion that it is more about doing, at least I think,
from the idea that it is about engagement with life.
My point is simply this, every single day people come to work looking for
the experience of being alive, of following their bliss, of being part of
something special. We stand at the dawn of the 21st Century, with an
immense opportunity to provide all who would be part or our organizational
experience the opportunity to be more involved with their lives, to make a
difference, and to really be part of something special. The Learning
organization provides a philosophical perspective to organizations which
lays the ground work for this to occur. However, setting the learning
organization into a context where the hierarchy is absolute and supreme,
because this is what the opinion or declaration of what strong leadership
is all about, is like trying to run an Apple Program on a exclusively
Windows Based Machine.
Sorry it just won't boot up.
CL provides a shift of mind wherein, leadership in about what people do
together. CL and the learning organization are like two batteries in two
battery flashlight, they are mutually supportive and the power source for
the organization of the future.
Wow, that is all for now, I think I owe Doc and answer, that is to follow.
Well from one who views himself as the village heretic in the global
village, I bid you good day.
JD
John P. Dentico
Avatar Leadership Simulations
P.O. Box 6305
San Diego, CA 92166-0305
619-300-3080 Ph
619-523-3068 Fax
www.leadsimm.com
--"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>