A Leadership Plague Is Upon Us
It’s a plague. Leaders (or wannabes) whose hold on power depends on fear and ignorance have a vested interest in making sure that followers remain fearful and ignorant. That is how the plague takes hold and spreads. If any leader (or wannabe) attempts an appeal to fear and ignorance, run! Fast! Far! (Unless, of course, you too have some vested interest in fear and ignorance, and so want to be infected.)
I’m not mentioning names here. This is far bigger than she is; she is merely a highly visible carrier (and I don’t need Googled blog hits enough to risk infection myself). This plague is spread by a few politicians, and by certain news organizations, web sites, blogs, and even religious institutions.
Four Towering Conclusions About Leadership
All of the experience, thinking, testing and probing, interviewing, research, discussion, and observation that spawned my understanding of leadership also yielded four conclusions that tower over every other piece of knowledge.
The first towering conclusion is that people commit to other people, so anyone who wishes to lead, to win the commitment of others in order to create change, must become the kind of person who attracts commitment. It is more than a matter of learning skills or competencies. It is a matter of living a life. As one leader told me, “How wonderful would it be if you were known through your life as ‘Honest Abe’? How much could you do? Wouldn’t that be amazing, to have that reputation?”
Ask
In a recent note on Facebook, Jodee Bock wrote, “ASK is a great acronym to remind you to ask for what you want. Ask and it is given; Seek and you will find; Knock and the door will be opened for you. Ask, Seek, Knock. Each of those words reminds us to take action in the direction of our dreams!”
Jodee’s note reminded me of a story I have told many times. It seems worth repeating now.
How Human Organizations Become Inhuman
To be human is to be imperfect. To be human is to be vulnerable. Humanity is denied when organizations encourage norms requiring that we relinquish our imperfection and our vulnerability, and require instead that we bring only our competitive nature, our striving, and the pretense of perfection and invulnerability within their doors. They then become inhuman. They become not “human organizations” but “organizations of humans.”
A friend told a Native American shaman that he was in the business of “bringing spirit into the workplace.” The shaman shook his head, “That is impossible,” he said. “You cannot bring spirit into a workplace because it is always there. It may be suffering, but it is always there.”
“What you do makes me cry at night.”
Have we gotten the message? It was sent in 1992. The messenger was a thirteen year old Canadian girl, Severn Suzuki. The setting was the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Let Severn speak for herself; no further comment from me…
(6.49 minutes)
Link to Video at YouTube
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Come To The Bigger Small Talk Summit And Genius Workshop
Jodee Bock has opened registration for the third annual two-day Bigger Small Talk Summit, June 16-17, 2009, in Fargo.
Day one allows the people who attend to set the agenda based on their own passions and interests, and to engage in dialogue that is deeper than every-day conversation. Day two is a guided experience, which I will lead, based on my book, Is Your Genius At Work?
See details and/or register HERE and come share in this wonderful event.
Commitment to Other’s Success
The most effective teams are populated by people who commit to one another’s success. That is not simply an opinion or an observation, but is born out by my own research on teamwork. The research studied twenty-eight factors that were believed to influence team effectiveness. Two of those factors stood out as the most important. The first, commitment to a common purpose, seemed obvious. The second, commitment to one another’s success, was a surprise. When I showed the research to the CEO of a public utility, he asked, “So what am I to do with all the self-centered megalomaniacs in my management hierarchy?” I had no ready answer. Hire a psychotherapist maybe?
Obama, McCain and the American Shadow
In April 2002 Deepak Chopra spoke to the Mobius Leadership Forum at the Harvard Business School. He said that leaders who fail to become aware of their role as symbolic of the soul of a community will not be able to lead effectively. When leaders turn bad, said Chopra, it is probably the result of shadow energies–the dark side of the soul. This side of the soul is ignored at peril.
Shadow energies defeat us by, in Chopra’s words,”…countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision.” We must see the shadow energies, recognize them, and say No! to them. Just as you and I must say No! to our personal shadow impulses, a nation must say No! to whatever shadow impulses it harbors.
