Greetings:
While this post follows my reading of Jason Smith's, my intent is to offer
a comment that adds more broadly to the conversation about leadership. I
have becoming increasingly interested in this thread as folks provide more
perspectives on the topic. Hopefully, my comments will add to this rich
base.
First, I find it helpful to distinguish between models or ideas that
'describe' something (like leadership) and those which can usefully
generate it. The descriptive stuff is where we are all most experienced
and it is great for 'understanding'. Yet in this time of untold books and
resources about leadership, many of which are best sellers, we find most
organizations and people looking for more. Perhaps, to be a leader, or to
create leadership, is quite another matter and requires models or ideas
that can serve us differently than this descriptive ones do.
If we explore this further, then the place to start might well be to ask
where can we observe leadership? What actually happens when a person is
said to be leading? I suggest that if we are rigourous, what leaders in
organizations do is 'speak' and 'listen'. Leadership occurs in the
conversations that take place among people. To the extent that this is
so, then the access to creating leaders or leadership is found in the
details of that speaking and listening. As such, maybe we can discover
useful distinctions in language that unlock new ways of leading.
For example, in our traditional way of seeing things, we interpret the
world based on our assessments, judgements, and other ways of 'knowing'
that come from our experience. Collectively, this world view (or paradigm
or box or reality) is where we stand in taking action. And in a stable
state, this serves us well. This is the home of effeciency, routine,
predictable improvement, and so on. We act, - in language we make
requests and promises - which in turn provide the experience for another
cycle of assessments, interpretations and updated reality. Since we all
live in this kind of world of actions and assessments, what typically
happens is we stop making the distinction between the world and our view
of the world. It all blends together. We start believing our assessments
as if they were 'the truth'. Much of our education and work experience is
intended to hone our ability to influence others through persuasion,
getting others to accept our interpretations. And any of us who are
successful in life have become so in part because of our ability to master
such techniques.
To continue with the linguistic view of leadership, in most cases leaders
can be observed to do more than make assessments and take action. We can
also see leaders speaking in another way, based not on their experience or
evidence or interpretation of the world, but rather based on 'who they
are' and what they stand for. Leaders who do this make declarations about
what is important to them; they create possibilities; they describe
visions; they shape context. As with the interpretation and action
domain, this is still observable simply as speaking and listening. What
is characteristic of this third domain is that it is generated in the
moment as the person speaks. It is not an extrapolation of the past. In
a sense, it is leading from the future.
This view of leadership is not based on describing personalities,
psychology, or other interpretations of what goes on inside people.
Rather, it is rooted in observable data - the speaking and listening that
occurs as people lead and follow. In practice, this view of leadership
opens up possibilities to observe different things, to notice new
distinctions, and to speak and listen in ways that respect others and
allow the achievement of unprecedented results. The proof of leadership
(for me) is in the results.
Many, maybe all of you, are no doubt familiar with this view of
leadership. Those who want more might want to check out: Selman and
Evered - Coaching and the art of management, in Organizational Dynamics,
1989; or for a more intensive intro: Winograd and Flores, Understanding
Computers and Cognition, Addison Wesley, 1986.
My wish is not to present this view of leadership as a replacement for
others offered in this thread or elsewhere. I make no claim for this
being the truth. Rather, I hope it may provide another way of observing
or thinking about leadership, that hopefully will give access to new
insights or possibilities.
Rick Fullerton
Cdn Centre for Management Development
rwfc@odyssee.net
--Rick Fullerton <rwfc@odyssee.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>