Dear Organlearners,
Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de> writes:
>"Never allow oneself to become a victim" is quite close to "never
>allow ones creativity to be impaired". From the mouth of Jack
>Welch and in words of At de Lange, it is like stating that the
>relationship between creativity and leadership is that constructive
>creativity is essential to leadership (constructive in the sense of
>"do not create victims").
Greetings Winfried,
Yes, I agree with you. Let me explain why.
I want to create a word to help me communicating my thoughts. The word is
"leaderwork". Leaderwork is the work which ANY leader does, good or bad.
It is very easy, although extremely tiresome, to give an account of
leaderwork. Simply give an account of all what all leaders do.
Leaderwork is the context which contains leadership. Leadership is GOOD
leaderwork. Although all leaders do leaderwork, not all the leaderwork
qualify as leadership. The fraction or ratio of leadership in leaderwork
may vary from close to 0.0 in one leader to close to 1.0 in another
leader. But since it is very difficult to give an account of leadership,
it is practically impossible to determine this fraction or ratio of
leadership to leaderwork for any specific leader.
Why is it so difficult to give an account of leaderhip? Because it
involves qualities (values) of which we have diverse opinions. Why are
there such a diversity of opinions on leadership qualities? Because these
qualities are the result of emergent learning. The more the emergent
learning, the more the qualities which will be recognised and their
respective ordering. Since the emergent learning between people differ
widely, their opinions will also differ, even on leadership.
The most powerful account of leadership which I can think of, is in terms
of creativity. This is indicated by the suffix "ship" which is derived
from the OE "scipen" (to create). But it requires that we should be able
to give an account of creativity. However, can we give a reliable account
of creativity? Here again we have the same diversity in viewpoints as in
leadership.
A fine way to test a particular theory of creativity, is to determine how
much it strengthens our knowledge on leadership. There are a number of
theories already available. Any person can take them one by one and
determine how much they tell that person about leadership. I have done it
on a number of theories. The outcome for the relationship between
creativity and leadership ranged from NOTHING to COMPELLING insights.
In my own theory of "deep creativity" I require not only a clear
connection between creativity and learning, but also, among other things,
between creativity and leadership. In this theory a distiction is made
between the dynamics (content) and mechanics (form) of creativity.
Leaderwork involves the dynamics and mechanics of creativity. But in the
mechanics a further distinction is made between constructive and
destructive creativity. Yes, Winfried, constructive creativity tells us
how to distinguish leadership in leaderwork. Because of your own
advancement in the theory of "deep creativity", you were immediately able
to make this most important connection.
The seven essentialities are the tools to distinguish between constructive
and destructive creativity. The more one or more of the seven
essentialities are impaired, the less constructive the creativity becomes
until it switch over to destructive creativity and then worsens even
further. In my own researches I have found that many bad leaders were
clearly incompetent in at least one essentiality.
For example, mentioning Hitler's work as a leader created a furore on this
list. Hitler's leaderwork was immense -- only a fool will deny it. But the
leadership (constructive creativity) in his leaderwork was minute. Why?
Because especially the essentiality otherness ("quality-variety") was
greatly impaired in him.
It was said that Hitler forced many people to submit to him as a leader.
This is true, but it is only part of the story. Many other people followed
him freely. Why did they follow him? Their otherness was just as impaired
as that of Hitler. Rather than to learn how to live constructively with
otherness, they saw in Hitler's ideology and policy an escape route to
remain ignorant to otherness. But those who Hitler had to force to
submission and who usually had to flee the country not to give in, were
often highly mature in the essentiality otherness. Anyway, your
experiences as a German citizin will help you much better to understand
the devastating influence of a lack of diversity in the national mind.
Let us go from specifics to a general viewpoint. A leader with an ideology
and policy which are seriously impaired in one or more essentialities,
will attract those followers with the same impairing. They will fo for
the "pie in the sky". But that very leader will also repel people,
subjected to the leader, who themselves are highly developed in these
essentialities. Thus the leader will have to force such people to
servitude, causing many of them to resign, flee or actively resist rather
than to give in.
When people object to any leader, examine such objections with extreme
care. They will tell you much about the creativity of the leader,
constructive or destructive, as well as about their own creativity.
Let us consider another leader of some advanced country. I will not
mention any names. The essentiality fruitfulness ("connect- beget") is
seriously impaired in this leader. This leader makes improper connections
where none should have been made while failing to make much needed
effective connections. The majority of people in that country fail to
stand up to the leader's leaderwork while insisting on leadership
(constructive creativity). Most of the other citizins wait for the
leadership to be terminated according to schedule, rather than speaking
out on impaired fruitfulness. As a result that country's ability to
maintain effective connections within itself and throughout the world is
failing increasingly. Yet those followers cannot understand why so few
people in their own country and so many people in the the rest of the
world have so little compassion for their country.
Winfried, my time is up since others want to speak up.
One last comment please on the dynamics of creativity. You also write:
>Leadership is nothing which is real in the world out there. So
>anybody may fill in the meaning which suits best for him. No
>right or wrong here. Full freedom of choice. But I wish to caution
>that such a choice is a creative act. And as such it has
>irreversible consequences. These consequences are
>manifestations in the real world (otherwise the choice wouldn't
>be a creative act).
Up to now we have merely investigated the mechanics of
creativity as it applies to leadership. But what about the dynamics
of creativity?
* Can any person make a certain choice among many possibilities
if that person does not have the free energy to perceive that
choice through to its most distant ramifications?
* Can a person follow a leader with true leadership if that person is
ignorant to the complex outcome of such leadership?
Remember that this free energy is needed to produce entropy and
thus change through chaos and order the mental organisation of
such a person -- something which we call learning. In other words,
can people follow leaders when they care little for learning
themselves? Are they not easily misled subjects?
And what about leaders themselves. How easy is it not to slip back from
leadership into leaderwork devoid of leadership? The higher the fraction
of leadership in leaderwork, the higher the need for free energy to remain
spontaneous in constructive creativity. I have observed in my relatively
short life time many a leader who became deficient in the immense free
energy required for leadership. The result was without exception
disastrous. Organisations, small and gigantic, dying because people,
including leaders, could not distinguish leadership from leaderwork.
>Therefore, although I have to admit that others may choose
>differently, I don't want to accept a term "leadership", which
>doesn't explicitly include the meaning "constructive creativity".
I love your sensitivity to the essentiality sureness.
Thank you very much for challenging the task:
What is relationSHIP between LEADERship and CREATIVITY?
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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