Posts

Posted on

Leadership is an improvisational social accomplishment

Leadership and management are improvisational practices that take place in groups in a particular context at a particular time.

Witness Zelensky in Ukraine.

Many have expressed surprise at his performance because he does not have the traits of the hero-leader stereotype that has mythologized our understanding of leadership.

Leading is the practice or process of inspiring others to help achieve group goals (or common purpose).

Leadership is performed in the present – what you do as a leader is a response to the circumstances that you face at the time.  It is not a pre-programmed activity. It is an improvisational response to the problem or context you face at a specific time.

And to motivate the group a leader must be “seen as one of us”. A leader without followers is just a person taking a stroll in the park. Followers must identify a leader as a fellow member of their group.

As an improvisational practice, leading requires a good understanding of many processes such as motivation, people and group behavior, communication, and strategy and tactics.  It is a complex role, and a social achievement.  It is the poster child of the mantra that there is no one right way.  Having the “traits of a leader” is not enough – you must understand how is happens in practice.

Now, back to Zelensky

The comic turned president has truly become a leader for his people (the group)  to protect the Ukraine (the purpose) in wartime (context and time). He is doing things he has never done before, and probably never thought about doing.  His leadership is an improvisational practice.

Have you prepared sufficiently that you can improvise? Do you understand the process?

I acknowledge the contribution of two books to my thinking – Haslam et.al. (2020) The New Psychology of Leadership. Identity, influence, and power. (Routledge) and Fowler (2022) Complexity: A key idea for business and society (Routledge)

Posted on

Don’t pigeonhole yourself according to a “mindset”, rather use it to understand the way you function.

According to Carol Dweck, there are two basic mindsets, fixed and growth.

These mindsets are a model for how we think, and as a model they help us to explain/understand our reality. But, like all models they are not your reality – they are useful representations but are always incomplete.

Look at the following common models of thinking

  • Open/Closed
  • Divergence/Convergence
  • Exploring/Exploiting
  • Disrupting/Capturing
  • Creating/Executing
  • Unfreeze/Freeze
  • Diffuse/Focused
  • Growth/Fixed

Eight different ways to say the same things. 16 words that can be used to describe a “mindset”. And therein lies a basic problem of these models.

A useful diagnostic tool (the model) is used as if it were the reality. You get typecast (or typecast yourself); for example, as open or closed, as an explorer or exploiter. You tick a box to say, yes that’s me.

Continue reading “Don’t pigeonhole yourself according to a “mindset”, rather use it to understand the way you function.”
Posted on

The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to respond.

I don’t know the exact origins but for many years now I have often said to colleagues that we have two eyes, two ears and one mouth, and that is the proportion in which we should use them.

The management literature abounds with entreaties for us to listen better, to develop listening skills, to be reactive listeners, and to listen first before speaking.

But have we learnt the lesson? Experience would suggest not.

The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to respond. (Stephen Covey) Continue reading “The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to respond.”

Posted on

Love after Love – self-awareness and discovering yourself

The time will come 
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
 at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love-letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on you life.

Source:  “Love after love” from Sea grapes by Derek Walcott. (1976)