I’m sad to report that in the past few years, ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion, leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control.
Passion mutates into procedures, into rules and roles. Instead of purpose, we focus on policies. Instead of being free to create, we impose constraints that squeeze the life out of us.
These days, our senses are bombarded with aggression. We are constantly confronted with global images of unending, escalating war and violence.
Aggression is inherently destructive of relationships. People and ideologies are pitted against each other, believing that in order to survive, they must destroy the opposition.
When leaders take back power, when they act as heroes and saviors, they end up exhausted, overwhelmed, and deeply stressed.
When we can lay down our fear and anger and choose responses other than aggression, we create the conditions for bringing out the best in us humans.
Too many problem-solving sessions become battlegrounds where decisions are made based on power rather than intelligence.
We experience problem-solving sessions as war zones, we view competing ideas as enemies, and we use problems as weapons to blame and defeat opposition forces. No wonder we can’t come up with real lasting solutions!
I think we have to notice that the business processes we use right now for thinking and planning and budgeting and strategy are all delivered on very tight agendas.
This is a world of process, not a world of things.
All social change begins with a conversation.
No longer in a relational universe, can we study anything as separate from ourselves. Our acts of observation are part of the process that brings forth the manifestation of what we are observing.
Thinking is the place where intelligent actions begin. We pause long enough to look more carefully at a situation, to see more of its character, to think about why it’s happening, to notice how it’s affecting us and others.
For me, this is a familiar image – people in the organization ready and willing to do good work, wanting to contribute their ideas, ready to take responsibility, and leaders holding them back, insisting that they wait for decisions or instructions.
I think it is quite dangerous for an organisation to think they can predict where they are going to need leadership. It needs to be something that people are willing to assume if it feels relevant, given the context of any situation.
Aggression only breeds more aggression. It only creates more fear and anger.
For eons, humans have struggled to find less destructive ways of living together.
The nature of the global business environment guarantees that no matter how hard we work to create a stable and healthy organisation, our organisation will continue to experience dramatic changes far beyond our control.
Let’s just keep asking ourselves this question: ‘Is what I’m about to do strengthening the web of connections, or is it weakening it?’
Perseverance is a choice. It’s not a simple, one-time choice, it’s a daily one. There’s never a final decision.