Rethinking Leadership - Again

Leadership – I’m finding that I don’t like that word. It seems to suggest, or the baggage it carries, is that this is someone’s job – to lead. Actually, it is everyone’s one job, to step up and offer their wisdom, in the moment it is needed. The thought that it is someone else’s job, is part of the problem, IMO. What I love about Brian Stout’s article is the range and complexity he is trying to encompass. He calls the visionary leader is one who: instills belonging and connection, someone who uses influence as a motivating force for co-creation, someone who understands that true power is relational, He sees it as “an individual capacity enacted in a collective context,” as a form of relational interdependence. That interdependence means that ‘unlocking gifts’ is a core aspect of this form of leadership, but doing it “in service to the whole.” Brian would say that leaders define the why and then everyone co-creates the path. I was excited when he said, “This is what I think Miki Kashtan was getting at when she observed: The deepest form of human wisdom is mutual influencing.” And influencing, in his view, is about story telling that shapes the problem and suggests an imaginative solution that others can co-create. Then he ties it altogether with accountability, accountability to the whole.
 
I find this exploration refreshing. After 35 years of thinking about leadership, I stopped looking at people, and instead looked at nature. Gaia is amazing. This about it, nature WORKS, and it is getting better and better at creating life. Life – living things, are becoming more complex, new forms are being created (faster?) as we discover bacteria that eat plastic, oil, nuclear waste, and more. How does this happen? Who’s in charge? Where’s the “leadership?”
 
I’ve come to understand that world-making comes from self-making, there are no ‘leaders’ as we are used to using that term. Let me explain how I see the world, and then I’ll touch on why our current civilization doesn’t seem to work that way, and what we might do about it.
 
What struck me most about Brian’s article is the close relationship between his expression of relational interdependence and autopoiesis, self-making, as described in systems thinking by Fritjof Capra and Maturana and Varela. The wonder, for me, is that the whole world is composed of living things, there is nothing without sentience. By composed, I mean that there is nothing else, nothing, else! Each living thing is responding to the experience of the other living things it encounters. That encounter requires a decision – good for me or bad for me? That choice shapes the response from the others, which informs.. and so it goes. This is exactly what happens in leadership, but often the leaders are unaware, and that unawareness means that there is often a mismatch between with is said and what is done. This is a fatal flaw in leaders.
 
If the mutual influencing is the core of what happens in the world, (and it is), then clearly everything in interdependent. Leaders often fail to truly understand this. Nothing stands on its own, everything responds and is responded to by everything else, and this is one huge stimulation for innovation, AND for the lack of innovation. Context is everything. All actions create the conditions that life responds to, either deciding it is good for me, or it is not good for me, and acting on that decision. A fundamental question for leaders is, are your actions good for your employees? If no, how can you expect your employee’s actions to be good for the company?
 
Of the 16 ‘values’ I’ve identified by talking to scientists, poets, indigenous folks and systems thinkers, at least 10 have to do with the relationship between life forms. LIFE is relational! Humans seem to keep trying to make it transactional, but doing so misses the point that LIFE loves life! It misses the point that LIFE wants to keep life going, to make It better, more creative, more complex, to keep it thriving. Humans seem to be hell bent on making it simpler, more stable, more repetitive, less surprising, less dynamic, and more controlled. Leadership styles follow suit. Traditional leadership, called Command and Control, is certainly in the latter mode. What I hear Brian calling for is leadership that falls in the former, LIFE enhancing mode.
 
For leaders to make this shift, the measure of success that utilizes money will need to shift to a form of evaluation that sees thriving as a measure of success. That means that we will have to open up to the truth held in subjective, even personal evaluation, instead of clinging to the ‘objective’ measure of money that is external to lived experience. This is not a small ask, as leaders will need to trust themselves as well as others. Trust has been rather elusive in the leadership game for decades, as explored by Stephen M.R. Covey in The Speed of Trust.
 
Brian’s focus on relational, interdependence, on influence and unlocking gifts, seems to fit right in with how the rest of the world works. Isn’t it magical to think about all the other life forms in and around us influencing each other and in doing so unlocking the latent gifts each holds that lead to evolution? I get chills just thinking about it. Do the leaders you know get excited about the new and unusual actions employees might be taking as they interact with each other and customers? Or, does that new and unusual behavior make them crazy? How flexible are our organizations? How willing to change and learn? What ever happened to the ‘learning organization?’ We seemed to have slipped back into control in a search for certainty, instead of leaning into the change that true diversity brings.
 
Decades ago, we realized that control and standardization work well in an unchanging world. What we didn’t realize then was how changing the world really is. Given the collapse of so many of our systems given our unwillingness to change, and the pressure that a now very rapidly changing environment is placing on our current business and leadership models, perhaps now is the time to face these changes with open arms and a curious leadership style that will allow for an interdependent approach to be devised between business and the rest of life. We have been seeking to have life conform to business, but shifting that, to have business conform to the needs of LIFE, might just make the sift not only more interesting, but even possible.
 
Trust in such a changing environment requires experience, lots of experience, and deep trust in both oneself, and in LIFE as well. Experience comes with age, but that only happens with self-reflection and an openness to learn, not every older person has these characteristics. Because people learn at different rates and pay attention to different things, only some people will have the discernment to see a path forward in turbulent times. Perhaps if we could see leadership as a job, instead of a character trait, that might lighten the load for those who take it on? This dilemma is not going away, Brian, keep it up!