Replying to LO26734 --
Ken Friedman's comments some days ago gave me cause to provide a note of
clarification.
Ken noted Joe Rost's model of leadership. I want to comment here since
Joe was my mentor, my dissertation chair and I was his last doctoral
student.
Much of Joe's work is an extension, if you will, of James MacGregor Burns'
work in Leadership. I consider, best left for others to say yeah or ney,
my work to be an extension of Joe's work in the area of, what Joe now also
calls Collaborative Leadership. We use this term because it bespeaks the
essential notion of the model of leadership. Joe and I both see that
leadership is contained in the dynamic of people together in an influence
relationship. Let me say this again a different way. In the industrial
paradigm, when one spoke of leadership, they were really talking about one
person, the leader. The leader was the sole active force, or member or
player, call it what you will, in the leadership dynamic. The job of the
followers was just that, to follow. In the postindustrial model, or shall
we say now the collaborative model this is not true. Leadership, that
intangible thing, is contained in the invisible bonds of the people
together. That is why intangible "glue" like safety, trust, honesty,
truth, integrity become so important.
The leader still exists but his or her job is more about helping to create
an environment where people come to do their best work everyday. It is
also where the leader's job is to initiate and facilitate the relationship
of leadership.
Let me make a couple of more points. This is an anti-elitist notion of
leadership, leadership can be done by anyone who simply chooses to act and
who can work to create the environment of which I spoke of earlier. It is
also founded on the notion that one does not repeat does not have to reach
some transcendental level of perfected knowledge and fulfillment in order
to do leadership. Just go do it!!!
Interestingly enough, this paradigm of leadership is much and I mean much
more congruent with the world we live in today, where knowledge and the
knowledge worker is at the forefront of the economy. I mean come on we
use Laser QA engineers to build cars today as well. While we talk a lot
about influence, this new paradigm allows for an interesting
transformation to something called confluence. The confluence of ideas
and effort rather than the influence simply of one.
I want to thank Ken for noting this model in his message and for giving me
a chance to clarify, once again, the notion of leadership which is more
congruent with the world we live in today.
It is also a model which truly can power the learning organization as
well.
Thanks for your time
John D
John P. Dentico, Ed. D.
LeadSimm
Connecting Leadership With Reality: Democracy at Work!
P.O. Box 6305
San Diego, CA 92166-0305
Ph. 619-300-3080 Office
Fax. 619-523-3068
www.leadsimm.com
leadsimm@earthlink.net
--"John P. Dentico, Ed. D." <jdentico@adnc.com>
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