What is leadership? LO22269

AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Mon, 19 Jul 1999 09:28:28 +0200

Replying to LO22244 --

Dear Organlearners,

Steve Swan <SwanSR@ftknox5-emh3.army.mil> writes:

>"Yes anyone can be a leader." Don't think so. There is much
>more to it. Any assumption otherwise probably is basic on limited
>experience being in a position of leadership.
>
>P.S. -- Management is not leadership.

Greetings Steve,

I want to comment on your second last sentence.

Leaders are humans -- people with personalities. Their leadership is a
kind of function. Management is another kind of function, like teaching or
judging.

The following question is crucial. Do any person, say A, need experience
to perform any function F satisfactorily? By making careful observations,
we can answer the question. What we have to look for, are people who have
to perform certain functions without having had any experience to such
functions.

My own observations is that experience is essential. The less the
experience, the more the blunders. Some learn from their blunders and
eventually perform satisfactoraly. Others do not. Thus experience is the
first step to learning. It leads to what we may call experential
knowledge, the foundation for the higher emergent levels of knowledge
(tacit, formal and sapient knowledge)

Even though experience is a foundation for the higher levels of knowledge,
it is self not something monolithic (uniform). For example, it is not
essential for a doctor self to have had, say, malaria to be able to
diagnose the disease in a patient and treat it effectively. However, it
is essential that some people had to contract malaria as a disease and
that other people had to observe this disease and find a cure for it. In
other words, past practice (the patients) and past theory (the doctors)
are essential for the doctor to treat the malaria patient effectively. It
is also essential for the doctor to have joined (shared, commuted) with
these past experiences (practice and theory). How?

Practice is the system and theory is the systems thinking. Practice and
theory are the two legs of knowledge which make it an art. Each leg has to
be developed in order to move effectively. They ( the system and the
thinking) also have to work in harmony. Walking with one leg leg while
dragging the other leg is not nice to observe. People need to experience
the art of any function to perform that function satisfactorily. The
function always involves a change (like motion involves a change in
position). Lack of art in a function cripples that function and thus
inhibits its change. Many a patient, having contracted malaria, died
because the doctor's art did not include the disease malaria. Such doctors
invariably diagnose influenza rather than malaria and treated it
accordingly with grave consequences for the patients.

The art of leadership requires practice and theory like any other human
function. Practice and theory have to work in harmony. This harmony
determines how much of each is needed. A person needs not to be the CEO of
an international corporation to experience the practical side of
leadership. Being a parent, a platoon commander or head of a local firm
gives ample opportunity to complement the theoretical side -- provided the
theory is there! A person also needs not to be a famous professor on
leadership to experience the theoretical side of leadership. Thinking
about leadership, reading books on leadership and participating in
dialogues on leadership gives ample ample opportunity to complement the
practical side -- provided the practice is there!

As to the statement "Yes anyone can be a leader.", there is much to think
about it than merely denying it. It reminds me of the statement "Yes
anyone can be creative."

By the way, leadership and creativity have much in common. A year or two
ago we also discussed the topic of leadership in our dialogue on this
LO-list. I have drawn attention to the fact that any account of leadership
which is quiet on the role of creativity in leadership is an incomplete
account of it. Even the etymology of leadership hints to this. The suffix
"ship" in leadership comes from the Old English word "scipen" which means
to create.

I have followed the recent discussion on leadership closely, trying to see
whether this round would bring us closer to the relationSHIP between
LEAEDRship and CREATIVITY. Up to now little has been said on this
relationship. Cannot the suffix "ship" in relationship guide us to think
constructively about leaders 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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