Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to all of you.
Part 6. Blending leadership with personality.
In part 3 we have observed that the prime "one-to-many-mapping" of
leadership is that of the leader connecting effectively with all kinds of
followers. It is often called interpersonal skill. It is now time to delve
deeper into what has to flow along this "one-to-many-mapping" so that all
followers can benefit from it and rejoice in such benefits.
Personality is for me the formedness of the WHOLE person in body and
spirit. The notion that personalities can be classified according to a few
parameters defining a matrix (table) hints to the immense complexity of
this formedness rather than taking it fully into account . This notion
often also gives rise to the mental model that personality is fixed.
However, a persons personality can meander in such a classification scheme
through authentic learning. Such learning is essential to develop the
complex personality which leadership requires.
Leadership is neither a secret nor a gift, but something which can be
learned by many. Despite this learning, leadership often fails because the
personality of the leader could not cope with the actual demands of
leadership. It is the personality of the leader which has to flow along
the "one-to-many-mapping" of leadership. It is the complex formedness of
the extraordinary personality which will catalyse the followers to develop
their own personalities in a well formed manner. This catalysis is often
called in managerial science spearheading, coaching, facilitating or
mentoring. It is what I have referred to in part 1 as teachership.
The more complex that which has to be transformed, the more often the
catalyst becomes essential. The personalties of most followers are complex
enough to require regularly the catalysis of leadership. That is why every
organisation, minute or massive, and any division within an organisation
need leaders. Those leaders need well-formed personality as well as
leadership.
Leadership have to operate from within personality of the leader as its
context and not the other way around. Think of leadership as a tree and
personality as its environment. A fertile environment will let the tree
grow rather than a growing tree making an infertile environment fertile. A
tree growing in an environment with barely enough fertility will soon
deplete that fertility. Likewise the burden of leadership will soon
exhaust a barely sufficient personality of the leader to a dull shadow of
its former self. Consequently the leader will have to care for his/her
personality as much as for his/her leadership.
Leaders ought to guide followers to develop their own personalities as
much as they guide them to proceed from followers to leaders. Such a
personality will not develop when the follower has become a leader. It has
to develop in advance so as to sponsor and sustain the forthcoming
leadership.
We live in a world which is changing. These changes are caused by nature
and humankind within it. Unfortunately, the impairing of the 7Es have a
devastating influence on most of the changes caused by humans. For
example, considered impaired wholeness during changes. These changes will
lead among humans to increased fragmentation rather than increasing
wholes. Likewise impaired otherness will lead to increased conformation
rather than increasing diversity.
Leaders will have to contemplate these impaired 7Es and their devastating
outcomes. For example, if wholeness is impaired, then leadership and
personality may easily become fragmented. Furthermore, personality itself
may easily become fragmented in its many faculties like spirituality,
fidelity, character, knowledge, competence, diction, emotion and
creativity. As a result, some qualities of a faculty may easily become
displaced from that faculty into leadership. This will place a heavy
burden on leadership which leaders cannot bear indefinitely because of
having to manage the increasing complexity of the world.
For example, it is often said that leadership involves a commitment to
lifelong creativity and learning. However, creativity and learning are two
faculties of a person's personality rather than qualities of leadership.
By stressing only some of all the faculties of personality, that
personality may easily fail in developing its other faculties.
Furthermore, personality is the formedness of a particular person in body
and spirit. By not specifying the person(s) involved, the leader may
become so engrossed in those specified faculties of him/herself that
he/she forgets that the followers and their full personalities are at
stake.
It is the lifelong commitment itself which is also a quality of
leadership.
Consider another example. It is often said that leadership involves the
persistent sense of the urgency to change. However, the need for change is
part of creativity. To speak of this need as an urgency is a recipe to
disturb the rhythm of creativity. In part 7 we will go deeper into this
rhythm.
It is the persistent sense itself which is also a quality of leadership.
Here is a trickier example. It is often said that leadership involves the
communication of vision. The communication part has nothing to do with
leadership, but with the diction faculty of the leader's personality. Here
both the body language and spoken language play a role. In the spoken
language prevailing thoughts, vocabulary, wording styles, metaphor and
stories all play a role.
Communication also requires feedback through the flow of information to
both sides forming a closed loop. Both the leader and follower depend on
this feedback loop to diminish misunderstandings while increasing
collective understanding.
As for the vision, whose vision will it be? The leader may have an
authentic and clear vision, but imposing it from without on the followers
rather than helping that vision to evolve within followers will destroy
their spontaneous commitment to that vision. The leader has to present
his/her own vision so that followers can use it to model their own vision.
The fact that the developing visions of the followers may differ somewhat,
is of no concern. It is rather through the common vision of the leader
that they share their visions. The common vision of the leader acts as
mouthpiece in the associative pattern of wholeness.
As for supplying the common vision itself, it is also a quality of
leadership.
The vitality (liveness and openness), integrity (wholeness and sureness)
and consistency (spareness and otherness) of the leader's personality are
crucial to ensure the entire flow of the personality along the
"one-to-many-mapping" so that all followers can benefit from it as
catalyst. It is good when a consultant point out some important features
(like motivation or compassion) of personality in this flow. But when the
consultant fragments some features from the entire personality because
others also have fragmented other features to sell them as treasure maps,
the consultant is merely aggravating a fragmentation grave to leadership.
The leader of a complex organisation ought to know which particular
feature of his/her personality will catalyse a particular follower in a
"one-to-one-mapping". But in the "one-to-many-mapping" involving all
followers this is impossible because too much complexity is involved. Some
followers will be catalysed by a particular feature while others will be
catalysed by another feature, etcetera, etc. In order for all followers to
benefit, the entire personality of the leader has to flow along the
"one-to-many-mapping". Thus little privacy is left over to the leader.
Although the leader may avoid fragmenting personality in its many
faculties, the leader may still accentuate one faculty more than the
other. This may result into a rigid leadership role/styles. For example,
should the leader over emphasise creativity, he/she will be thought of as
the Artisan. For experiential knowing it will be the Story Teller. For
tacit knowing it will be the Mentor. For formal knowing it will be the
Sovereign. For sapient knowing it will be the Sage. For believing it will
be the Missionary. Each follower has a unique preference pattern for one
of these roles/styles. However, to reach out to all followers, the leader
cannot afford to become rigid in a leadership role/style.
To lead an organisation is more that to manage it. For example, the
typical manager acts in terms of actualities while the leader also acts in
terms of potentialities. The typical manager deals with the explicate
order while the leader also seeks for the implicate order. The leader is
very much aware of the whole environment in which the organisation has to
operate whereas the typical manager focuses on the organisation. Synergy
and symbiosis with the entire world is most important to the leader,
regardless of the size of the organisation which he/she leads. The
manager, on the other hand, expects followers to work (ergos) and to give
life (bios) to that organisation up to the hilt.
Since the leader of an organisation is usually its executive manager, the
expectations of followers from the typical manager is a serious threat to
leadership. That is why a new executive leader of an organisation often
assures followers that management will remain the same. However, after
some time when that leader (under disguise of the manager) wants to
spearhead a necessary organisational change, he/she finds it impossible to
get rid of that disguise.
The best which a new executive leader can do, is to be honest to that
organisation from the beginning. Even new executive leaders have to
anticipate changes by imagining complex inner movies. That does not happen
overnight. Thus new leaders have to assure followers that changes will be
made, but only when the leader is sure that these changes will be to the
benefit of all followers. The new leader who introduces vast changes very
soon often lead that organisation in great tribulations. To defend these
tribulations by saying that they were necessary because of poor leadership
in the past, is adding insult to injury.
Leaders should also be very honest about the following. Every leader has
weaknesses. To lead with these weaknesses is fatal. The leader rather has
to lead from his/her inner strengths. However, the leader should make a
solemn pledge to followers that when he/she makes an apparent error, they
are invited to discuss it freely as soon as possible with him/her without
any fear for retaliations. If an error had indeed been made in weakness,
the leader will correct that error immediately.
There is an erroneous belief in the world of management the past couple of
decades that somebody skilled in administration, creativity, interpersonal
skills and leadership can become an executive leader of any kind of
organisation. Personality is one whole which also involves knowledge. A
person who does not know thoroughly all the day to day activities of that
organisation which he/she has to lead, is seldom fit, if ever, to lead
that organisation.
It is far better to encourage followers in the organisation itself to
improve themselves so as to become the future leaders of that organisation
and indeed promote them rather than to import leaders with a proven track
record in a different kind of organisation. The spirit of shared ownership
is cultivated from within that organisation just as knowledge is
cultivated within a person.
Leaders often have to work with leaders of other organisations on a
contentious issue. There are several kind of collaboration. Consider for
example a coalition. Here the strongest leader set the course which the
others have to follow. But in an alliance all leaders are treated as
equals. However, in both a coalition and alliance all leaders thinking
otherwise on the same issue are left out. To accommodate these outsiders
an union or a corporation can be considered. In an union, like in a
coalition, the strongest leaders (ruling and opposing) determine the
course. But in a cooperative collaboration all leaders of all parties have
to work together without one dominating the other.
It is the personalities rather than the leadership of the leaders which
will determine what kind of collaboration will ensue. The kind of
collaboration has an important feedback to the followers of every leader.
For example, followers may think of their leader as a cooperative person,
but once their leader is involved in a coalition, they will begin to think
of the leader as a bully or a weakling. Therefore leaders have to
contemplate carefully the personalties of other leaders which they have to
work with otherwise their followers will get the wrong signals.
Lastly, a leader should never forget to reward any follower upon an
accomplishment. The reward should be paying tribute to the spiritual
importance of that accomplishment rather than handing out some material
gift. Since the spiritual is of higher order than the physical, any
material gift will easily denigrate the importance of such a spiritual
accomplishment.
With care and 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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