A NEW definition for leadership that is appropriate for ...



Situation, Stewardship, and Self:

Evolutionary Leadership for a New Era

by Matthew A. Shapiro

An input paper for Team C: Post-Hierarchical Leadership

The Mary Parker Follett Conversation on Creative Democracy

October, 2002 - Boise, Idaho

As we explore the nature of, and potential for, democracy as a creative experience, we inevitably confront the question of what has been called leadership. This term generally refers to the role that certain individuals play in coordinating the energy of a body of people to act upon a decision, or to make decisions upon which to act. This definition does not indicate, however, the vast variation in meaning that “leadership” can take on in real life contexts, in different cultures, and in different eras. Thus its meaning tends to default to unexamined assumptions, which means the inherited tradition of the concept.

I consider it to be at least part of the challenge for Team C to develop a concept of leadership that is reflective of the aspirations we hold for our selves and for the kind of society that we wish to participate in creating. This suggests that we need to examine who we are today, where we seem to be going, and what leadership means in terms of creative democracy.

We live in an era of interconnectedness. An era of the mixing and integration, and sometimes conflict, of cultures on a global scale. It is an era of information and of the use of knowledge to create value. It is an era in which the power of technology has created some of the most destructive power ever held by humankind. It is an era in which more people than ever have access to resources that increase longevity and facilitate education and personal development. It is also an era of vast imbalances in wealth. If we look at our current location in evolutionary history, we may notice a dramatic change in our mode of thinking and living in the world starting approximately one hundred years ago, in what we in the West call the “Progressive Era.” I call this the beginning of a Dialogical Era, which is still quite young but on a steep growth curve.

It was during this “Early” Progressive Era that Mary Parker Follett explored the theory and practice of human interaction in the context of neighborhoods, workplaces, and bureaucracies. She began to redefine our notions of democracy, freedom, and power. We are the inheritors of this legacy of thought, and we are trying to apply it toward the betterment of the human condition.

Follett’s Near-Abandonment of the Term “Leadership”

In her essay “Liquid Leadership,” Albie Davis (1997) highlights Follett’s view on leadership. She notes that to Follett, leadership does not exist as a static condition within a particular person. It flows to where it is needed, “to those who have the passion and perspective to use its creative potential to bring about something new. When the situation no longer requires leaders to be in a leading role and followers to assist them, leadership flows on.” Davis reports that Follett calls this reciprocal leadership, “a partnership in following, of following the invisible leader – the common purpose.” (Follett, 1940/1973).

Davis also tells us that Follett was pleased to see a reduction of leadership courses in college catalogs and considered giving up the term “leader” because of the danger of associating leadership with ascendancy. But in the end Follett felt that there was still value in the word.

In one of Follett’s essays, she talks about the role of teacher as potential leader: “If leadership does not mean coercion in any form, if it does not mean controlling, protecting or exploiting, what does it mean? It means, I think, freeing.” This is echoed in The New State (1918):

The power of leadership is the power of integrating. This is the power which creates community… The community leader is he who can liberate the greatest amount of energy in his community.

It is in this work that Follett identifies neighborhood as the ideal breeding ground for leadership because of the intimacy of people at that level and the raw material of diversity that may be utilized:

In neighborhood groups where we have different alignments on different questions, there will be a tendency for those to lead at any particular moment who are most competent to lead in the particular matter in hand….Thus the different leaders of a democracy appear…You have all the chance the world gives. In your neighborhood group show the clearness of your mind, the strength of your grip, your power to elicit and to guide cooperative action, and you emerge as the leader of men.

Although Follett does emphasize the situational nature of leadership, which will be addressed in this paper, she also speaks to the ideal traits of individuals assuming leadership roles:

The leader must have the instinct to trace every evil to its cause, but, equally valuable, he must be able to see the relative value of the cause to each one of his group ( in other words, to see the total relativity of the cause to the group…In other words the leader of our neighborhood group must interpret our experience to us, must see all the different points of view which underlie our daily activities and also their connections, must adjust the varying and often conflicting needs, must lead the group to an understanding of its needs and to a unification of its purpose. He must give form to things vague, things latent, to mere tendencies.

...the neighborhood leader must be a practical politician. He must be able to interpret a neighborhood not only to itself but to others...He must know the great movements of the present and their meaning, and he must know how the smallest needs and the humblest powers of his neighborhood can be fitted into the progressive movements of our time.

The skillful leader then does not rely on personal force; he controls his group not by dominating but by expressing it. He stimulates what is best in us...He is a leader who gives form to the inchoate energy in every man. The person who influences me most is not he who does great deeds but he who makes me feel I can do great deeds.

Finally, Follett tells us that democracy as the only thing that will bring out true leadership:

Democracy does not tend to suppress leadership as is often stated; it is the only organization of society which will bring out leadership. As soon as we are given opportunities for the release of the energy there is in us, heroes and leaders will arise among us.

Differences that Make a Difference (In the Situation)

The concept of leadership is rooted in the act of making decisions, which is utilizing information to allocate mental or physical energy in a context of action. Information, in turn, can be described as “difference that makes a difference” (Bateson 1979). In the case of a creative democracy and the continuous effort toward living a “good life,” we want the differences being made to be those which represent the creation of relationships and the opening of pathways, rather than those which harm relationships and close pathways.

If we are to seek – in any situation – those differences that create relationships and pathways, then the opportunity for making differences needs to be open to all of those who are affected by a situation. The reasons for this are numerous. For one, it is impossible to predict the origin of the difference that makes a difference, its expression, and its delivery. Two, interaction among people produces the “circular response” (Follett, 1924) that is the source of creativity. Three, ensuring that all stakeholders have the opportunity to make a difference in the evolving situation will increase the commitment of those stakeholders to the solutions and decisions made.

Taking a cue from Follett and looking at actual patterns of living, we see that there emerge situations where one’s difference is the difference that makes a difference. This is the heart of situational leadership. Situational leadership can be contrasted with formal leadership in which the source of decisions and inspiration to putting energy behind those decisions is associated with a particular person who has certain traits, or with an office. I propose that situational leadership – rooted in the differences that people bring in to make a difference that makes a difference – is an essential aspect of leadership in a new era.

In “simple” societies, situational leadership may have been more predominant. However, since the range of contexts for creativity and the range of challenges was more limited (e.g., to solve a food supply problem, to more successfully control territory, etc.) there were not as many opportunities for the development of self-differences and diversity, nor diversity of relationships, flow of energy and information, etc. In such a limiting context, I imagine that situational leadership would not have flourished as a process of community-wide and personal fulfillment.

As societies became more massive, complex and hierarchical, leading to the nation-states of the 19th and 20th centuries (as well as large industrial organizations like corporations), leadership became less situational and more formalized. Formal leadership in recent centuries was associated with families, classes, and then more predominantly elected officials. In the 20th century, the paradigm for the emerging “science” of leadership was to associate leadership with leader, and to identify leaders as “great men” with certain traits that would enable them to guide their organizations and communities (Magliocca & Christakis 2001). Magliocca and Christakis note that this model, although taking different forms, has penetrated into even some of the latest “cutting edge” management theory (e.g., Covey, Bennis, and others).

Another problem with the concept of leader that is predominant is that implies followers. This in and of itself may not be a problem situationally, but in the context of a mass society characterized by a mode of social organization that Follett would characterize as “the crowd,” it means that the vast majority of people will assume the permanent identity of “follower”. Today we are poised on a global and ecological society in which personality-centered, formal leadership is not appropriate in a growing range of situations. The notion of hierarchy must be replaced with that of holarchy, in which parts and wholes (individuals and communities) exist in embedded contexts with inter-dependence in all directions. In a systemic and ecological worldview, we can finally escape the ladder of classical and industrial hierarchy are return to the local contexts wherein we can re-learn situationality of leadership. But this return to locality is not a return to provincialism, for the local today is the nexus of the global. This combination of factors means that we may be on the verge of a kind of universal leadership that will be substantially different and more emancipatory than any experience of leadership in the past.

Stewardship: Responsibility With and Responsibility To

We now move to another critical feature of the transformation of the concept and practice of leadership in a creative democracy. This is the notion of stewardship. Peter Block (1993) defines stewardship as the willingness to be accountable for the well-being of the larger organization by operating in service, rather than in control, of those around us. He notes that this is a challenge, because we are raised to believe that if we were to be accountable, we needed the authority to go with it:

We are reluctant to let go of the belief that if I am to care for something I must control it. If I have stewardship for the earth , I must exercise dominion over the earth – this sort of thinking undermines our intentions.

He continues:

The desire to see stewardship as simply a different form of leadership is to miss the political dimension of the distinction. When we hold on to the wish for leaders, we are voting status quo on the balance of power. Looking for leadership is some blend of wanting to get on top or stay on top, plus liking the idea that someone up there in my organization or society is responsible for my well-being.

I define stewardship slightly differently, emphasizing responsibility to and with others, but not for others. We are responsible for the whole in this sense, but not for others in that whole. They are responsible for themselves, and to us and with us.

When we consider that everything we do affects those around us, and vice-versa, and that all public policy is ultimately rooted in the daily decisions and actions of each person, we begin to see that stewardship must be the foundation for any new conceptualization of leadership in a creative democracy.

The Third “S”: Self (Example-Setting)

Now I will focus on what I consider to be a third aspect of post-hierarchical leadership. This is the leadership of the self that is represented by example-setting. Example-setting seems to be of two kids: normative and creative. Normative example-setting would be demonstrating through one’s actions an adherence to a particular norm, highlighted when the majority of people in the community either do not hold that norm or – more commonly – where the majority of people hold that norm only nominally but do not live up to it because of a perception that they are alone in their commitment and that their difference will not make a difference.

This perception is reinforced by the belief that until the masses are doing something, there is no point in an individual trying to do it, which ignores the fact that all progressive change begins and ends with the acts of individuals. This creates a self-fulfilling cycle of inertia.

Creative example-setting would be demonstrating that novelty comes about from individual imaginations and certain kinds of interaction in groups. This kind of example-setting would be important because it could empower people to develop solutions that may be liberating to themselves and to their communities. People would not waiti for “experts” or those formally elected to produce solutions that may be of lower quality or elicit less of a sense of ownership by a community.

I see three orders of example-setting. The first and most important kind we have already looked at. It is setting the example of acting responsibly to and with others with whom one is interdependent. The second order of example-setting is what I will call effective example-setting. This means skillfully maximizing the impact of one’s example-setting to inspire others. The third order of example setting I will call example-showing. This means acting to show the examples set by others to others. At this level, one is approaching the role of a “high-profile” steward.

Summary and Conclusion

To summarize this input paper, I would like to propose a new definition for leadership that may be appropriate for our evolutionary era, our times, our society. I characterize this as evolutionary leadership in the sense that evolution is a continually creative force emerging from the continuous spiral of differentiation and integration:

Leadership is a quality of the relationship between individual and collective in which some contextual uniqueness of the individual is enabled to flow forth to make a difference that makes a difference for the continual creation of freedom.

In other words, leadership for a creative democracy emerges when one’s difference makes the difference that makes a difference.

This quality of relationship is a quality of individuals only via a collectivity of individuals, and it is a quality of a collectivity of individuals only via its individuals. This quality is demonstrated first within the scope of an individual’s life in the conscious and creative tension between their individual self and their collective self as internalized, and it is demonstrated through the act of being responsible to other and with others (stewardship).

It is demonstrated second in effective example-setting of such conscious and creative tension, and again through the context of being responsible to and with others (stewardship). This example-setting is inspirational.

It is demonstrated third in effective example-showing of such conscious and creative tension, again in the context of being responsible to and with others (stewardship). This coordinated example-showing enables community learning to take place.

In sum, leadership, stewardship, and community learning are all interconnected if authentic and appropriate to our present condition.

Because of the tension between individual and collective individual, leadership always requires courage, and leadership fosters courage in all people. Authentic leadership thus manifests as societal courage.

Because of the quality of enabling contextual uniqueness to flow forth, leadership in this sense requires humility. Leadership therefore fosters humility in all people. Authentic leadership thus manifests as societal humility.

A steward is every conscious and responsible citizen. In some contexts, that citizen – by virtue of differences that make a difference through effective example-setting, example-showing, capacity for facilitation and integration – may play an extended role in building community and in releasing the energy of the people. This is the closest approximation I give to the conventional notion of “leader,” but it is in the transforming sense communicated by Follett rather than the traditional transactional and hierarchical notion rooted in hierarchical society – both feudalistic and industrial.

Finally, a society that fosters leadership is a society that:

is humble

is courageous

values difference

learns

thrives in situationality and contextuality, e.g., is flexible and dynamic

References

Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: Bantam, 1979.

Block, Peter. Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1993.

Davis, Albie. “Liquid Leadership: The Wisdom of Mary Parker Follett.” A Leadership Journal: Women in Leadership – Sharing the Vision. Vol. 2, No. 1, Summer 1997.

Follett, Mary Parker. The New State. New York, London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1918.

Follett, Mary Parker. Creative Experience. New York, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1924.

Follett, Mary Parker. Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett. Ed. E.M. Fox and L. Urwick. London: Pitman Publishing, 1940, 1973.

Magliocca, Larry A. and Alexander N. Christakis. “Creating Transforming Leadership for Organizational Change: The CogniScope System Approach.” Systems Research and Behavioral Science 18: 259-277.

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