Personal Philosophy of Leadership (2nd Edition) This prĂŠcis revisits an opening statement on a personal philosophy of leadership: that initial statement was informed by theories of leadership; formative experiences of leadership; cultural identity; trends in the development of post-bureaucratic organizations; and sundry work experiences. This revised edition offers reflections on the initial statement, drawing from scholarly readings, discussions, and other developments since the "first edition". Olivier Serrat 28/06/2018
1 Today, most organizations promulgate vision and mission statements, organizational philosophies, and value propositions. Concise explanations of an organization's raison d'être and theory of the business guide its personnel and inform clients, audiences, and partners: a personal leadership philosophy can serve the same purpose by letting interested parties know what its author values, believes, does, cares about, respects, is curious about, is comfortable with, listens to, spends time on, and hopes to inspire. Much as a compass, a personal philosophy of leadership can also keep its author on course. My Personal Philosophy of Leadership (1st Edition) Springing from a discussion of theories of leadership, formative experiences of leadership, cultural identity, trends in the development of post-bureaucratic organizations, and sundry work experiences, my initial statement on a personal philosophy of leadership read: Organizations exist to make people's skills and capabilities effective. From the philosophy that leadership is a responsibility that must be shared by all parties to the act of organizing, I aim in a process of social influence to grow more leaders to bring out the best in fellow knowledge workers so they accomplish more together, in more meaningful ways, than they imagined they might. Implicit in this statement are directions about how I lead and choose to influence, what I value, what I expect from partners, what I do not accept, and—especially— what type of environment I am committed to creating. (Serrat, 2018) Two observations can be made considering the language and concern of the "first edition": • Language. Personal leadership philosophies are not personal ads. The "first edition" made sure to eschew what exaggerations all too commonly characterize the "ideal leader" and are therefore found in the majority of personal leadership philosophies, viz., actionoriented/proactive; authentic; confident/self-aware; creative/positive; customer-/qualityfocused; excellent communicator; flexible; good delegator; highly competent; humble; innovator/risk-taker; learns from mistakes; passionate/committed; personally accountable; supportive; team player/collaborator; tough but fair; visionary; etc. • Concern: Self-Centered vs. Other-Centered. Personal leadership philosophies are not necessarily about their author. Differently, what few (sets of) keywords characterized the "first edition" all had to do with other persons: sequentially, one reads about "people's skills and capabilities", [to be made] "effective", "shared responsibility", "more leaders", "fellow knowledge workers", "together", and "meaningful". And so, the central message of the "first edition" had to do with democratic leadership.1 Emerging Perspectives on Leadership Vastly different conceptions of leadership have generated a somewhat bewildering literature. A helpful way to classify leadership theory is to arrange it according to what type of variable each conception emphasizes: usefully, Yukl (2014) discerned three primary variables (a) 1
Democratic leadership, aka participative or shared leadership, is a style of leadership whereby the members of a group are given a more participative role in decision making, based on candid conversations, collaboration, competence, the free flow of ideas, honest and open minds, morality and values, and trust and mutual respect. To note, even if democratic leaders allow shared participation in decision making, they often decide who is a member of the group tasked with that and offer guidance to keep discussions balanced and controlled. Democratic leadership does not equate with free-for-all anarchy. Some best practices are to create a streamlined decision-making process, keep a record of all ideas suggested, and before that—of course—recruit and involve the right people.
2 characteristics of the leader, (b) characteristics of followers, and (c) characteristics of the situation. Bolden, Gosling, Hawkins, and Taylor (2011) made the same point.2 Thence, since no variable can be entirely self-contained (but interacts with the others), we have intra-individual theories, dyadic theories, group-level theories, and organizational-level theories. (Of course, there are multi-level theories too.) For sure, no single, "correct" definition of leadership can cover all situations: what should matter is how useful each conceptualization is for increasing understanding; in the 21st century, however, most leadership theories are coming up increasingly short. "Old paradigm" trait approaches and notions of situational, contingency, transactional, and even transformational leadership—all of which smack of command-andcontrol more or less overtly—cannot serve the miscellany of organizations that need leadership in the workplace in the 21st century. In any case, "ordinary" people work with remarkable success in extraordinarily challenging circumstances all over the world, yet do not advertise superhuman characteristics in their leadership styles. And so, what recent additions have been made to the body of knowledge ought to be of interest. Of course, everyone has a Top 3 or Top 5 of what theories best explain (and perhaps predict) leadership in a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, aka VUCA. At The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, some emerging theories (perspectives might be a better word) are taken to include ethical and relational leadership; paradoxical leadership; the neuroscience of leadership; emotional leadership; and gender, diversity, and cross-cultural leadership. The School makes passing mention of complexity leadership theory, which may however be the only completely new theory (albeit still in-themaking).3 2
Bolden, Gosling, Hawkins, and Taylor (2011) presented three useful theoretical perspectives on leadership: (a) leadership as a property of leaders, with related consideration of the traits of leadership, leadership behaviors and styles, situational and contingency approaches, and leadership skills and functions; (b) leadership as a relationship between leaders and followers, with related consideration of leader–member exchange theory and follower-centered perspectives, transformational and charismatic leadership, and servant and quiet leadership; and (c) leadership as a social process, with related consideration of shared and distributed leadership, and discursive and constitutive leadership. Thence, Bolden, Gosling, Hawkins, and Taylor (2011) proceeded to (re)define leadership as "(1) a process, (2) of social influence, (3) to guide, structure, and/or facilitate, (4) behaviors, activities, and/or relationships, (5) towards the achievement of shared aims" (pp. 20–21). 3 To emerge is to become manifest: this means that what theory emerges need not be entirely new; the only requirement is that it should have come to (some degree of) prominence from a hitherto obscure (or uncertain) position. Depending on how one defines "emerging", then, other candidates might include evolutionary leadership theory (which states that leading and following are adaptive behavioral strategies that have evolved to solve social coordination problems, the relationship between a leader and his/her followers is fundamentally ambivalent, and modern organizational structures are sometimes inconsistent with the innate psychological mechanisms of leading and following); leader–member exchange (LMX) theory (a still evolving descriptive theory that explains how people relate to and interact with one another); organizational socialization theory (which looks at the processes by which people learn about and adjust to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, expectations, and behaviors needed for new or changing roles in organizations and intuits that without understanding a culture one cannot understand its leadership and vice-versa); and social impact theory (which examines the rules whereby individuals can be sources or targets of social influence, with social impact a function of the strength of the source of impact, the immediacy of the event, and the number of sources exerting the impact).
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Ethical and Relational Leadership. Since the onset of the new millennium, discussions on ethical and relational leadership summon up a profusion of related terms (and associated theories): in his coverage of ethical leadership, Yukl (2014) included authentic, servant, and spiritual leadership. But, overlaps and occasional disagreements matter not: as Heifetz (1994), cited in Yukl (2014), explained "… there is no ethically neutral ground for theories of leadership, because they always involve values and implicit assumptions about proper forms of influence" (Yukl, 2014, p. 341). Paraphrasing Vielmetter and Sell (2014), the contemporary paradigm is that "doing the right thing" is more than a moral obligation: it is a critical success factor in ethicized, transparent climate in which power is transferred by leaders to their stakeholders. "Altrocentric leaders integrate ethical values, social responsibility, and concerns for health, safety, and the environment into their decision making. They continually seek innovative ways to improve business performance while contributing to the greater good" (Vielmetter & Sell, 2014). Paradoxical Leadership. From the late 1980s, many have argued that the orthodox world of ordering, controlling, and organizing should be replaced by a normalizing world of disordering, disrupting, and disorganizing. Handy (1994) was a notable precursor with The Age of Paradox. Today, pace the staidest (and fast-disappearing) working environments, there is little doubt that modern organizations are hotbeds of paradox. We are all familiar with the tensions of organizational life; they impact individuals (work vs. family), leadership (control vs. empowerment), learning (reflection vs. performance), performance (competition vs. collaboration), promotion (seniority vs. meritocracy), rewards (individual vs. group), strategy (change vs. stability), structure (centralization vs. decentralization), and teamwork (task vs. relationships), to name a few. Helpfully, Smith and Lewis (2011) grouped organizational tensions in four categories that have to do with (a) learning, (b) belonging, (c) organizing, and (d) performing. To engage paradox, Poole and Van de Ven (1989) had earlier identified four strategic responses: "(i) acceptance, keeping tensions separate and appreciating their differences; (ii) spatial separation, allocating opposing forces across different organizational units; (iii) temporal separation, choosing one pole of a tension at one point in time and then switching; and (iv) synthesis, seeking a view that accommodates the opposing poles" (as cited in Smith & Lewis, 2011, p. 385). Accepting duality, specifically, being able to "hold" competing interests in mind to reap the benefits of positive outcomes from both poles, is about letting go of attachments and preferences, which can be achieved with emotional intelligence and critical honesty about "comfort zones". The Neuroscience of Leadership. Neuroscience is the study of the structure or function of the nervous system and brain. Because humans are a social species, social neuroscience has grown as an interdisciplinary field aiming to understand how biological systems implement social processes and behavior and how biological concepts and methods might inform and refine theories of social processes and behavior. In The Neuroscience of Leadership, Rock and Schwartz (2006) drew hard conclusions from cutting-edge research (that severally promote or challenge other leadership theories): (a) change is pain, (b) behaviorism does not work, (c) humanism is overrated, (d) focus is power, (e) expectation shapes reality, and (f) attention density shapes identity. Subsequently, Rock (2008) developed a model defining five domains of social experience that are deeply important to the brain, namely (a) status, (b) certainty, (c) autonomy, (d) relatedness, and (e) fairness,
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aka SCARF, and which allows exploration of nuanced actions that reduce threats and increase rewards in the context of collaborating with and influencing others.4 Emotional Leadership. Emotional intelligence describes an ability, capacity, skill, or selfperceived ability to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups. And so, emotional leadership theory proposes (quite reasonably) that a leader's emotions, be they positive or negative, influence the performance of individuals and groups in an organization. The theory posits a correlation between positive emotion and effective leadership: with emotional intelligence, leaders can transmit positive moods to individuals and groups through the mechanism of emotional contagion; the specific processes through which they can do so include feedback, in-depth conversations, task allocation, resource distribution, etc. Six emotional leadership styles have been proposed (e.g., affiliative, coaching, commanding, democratic, pacesetting, and visionary), with each style having different effects on the emotions of personnel in organizations. To note, emotional leadership has been criticized precisely because it rests (and perhaps plays) on emotions: detractors find it impulsive; unbalanced; (unnecessarily) feelings-based (whereas effective leaders are expected to have a higher level of self-control than others), which may lead to unethical decisions; and driven by sympathy (as opposed to empathy). Gender, Diversity, and Cross-Cultural Leadership. Leadership studies have focused on gender and diversity for about 30 years; however, they fixated on differences (and similarities) between male and female leaders and did little other than ponder whether diversity was something a leader had to enhance or just cope with. The focus on gender, for one, has taken a more recent critical turn whereby stereotyped views of masculinity and femininity have been questioned and gendered representations in leadership theory and discourse have been problematized (e.g., the glass ceiling and glass cliff). Meanwhile, the ambit of diversity has grown to include ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, education, and even gender, thus shaping ever more multifaceted concerns (e.g., the bamboo ceiling, the brass ceiling, the concrete ceiling, the glass closet, the sticky floor, etc.) from which one coherent body of theory (as distinct from a set of sometimes conflicting perspectives) is not likely to emerge. Cross-cultural considerations aside, what with the irreversible incorporation of women in the economy and their (slowly) growing but undoubtedly deserved representation in the higher echelons of management, some wonder also whether gender is indeed of such importance to leadership. Complexity Leadership. Leadership theories of the 20th century were the expressions of what top-down, bureaucratic paradigms characterized and gave impetus to the Industrial Age; but, to more and more observers, they are not suitable for knowledge economies. Drawing from complexity science, complexity leadership theory reframes leadership as a complex interactive dynamic from which adaptive outcomes emerge. Specifically, complexity leadership theory focuses on enabling the learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of complex adaptive systems in the context of knowledge-producing organizations; its conceptual framework articulates the three (intertwined) roles of adaptive, administrative, and enabling leadership.
Usefully, Rock (2008) made suggestions for further research, the scope of which underscores the limitless potential of the neuroscience of leadership. Questions that still beg answers are: Which of the domains in the SCARF model generate the strongest threats or rewards given different types of organization? What are the links between the five domains? What are the best techniques for minimizing threats and maximizing rewards in each domain? Does the relative importance of each domain vary across, say, individuals, gender, or tenure? What are the implications of the model for organizational design? (Rock, 2008, p. 8)
5 My Personal Philosophy of Leadership (2nd Edition) Recapping, it can be seen that complexity, culture, diversity, emotions, ethics, gender, neuroscience, paradox, and relations are additional concerns pressing for inclusion in leadership studies. (Not to forget, others could have to do with evolutionary leadership theory, leader–member exchange theory, organizational socialization theory, and social impact theory, to name a few.) Reiterating, my "first edition" of a personal philosophy of leadership read: Organizations exist to make people's skills and capabilities effective. From the philosophy that leadership is a responsibility that must be shared by all parties to the act of organizing, I aim in a process of social influence to grow more leaders to bring out the best in fellow knowledge workers so they accomplish more together, in more meaningful ways, than they imagined they might. Implicit in this statement are directions about how I lead and choose to influence, what I value, what I expect from partners, what I do not accept, and—especially— what type of environment I am committed to creating. (Serrat, 2018) Reflecting on the "first edition" in light of the emerging theories outlined here, I can confirm that culture, diversity, emotions, ethics, gender, neuroscience, and relations are implicit in the othercentered, democratic expression of his personal philosophy of leadership. There remains complexity and paradox which, if they are not implicit, are nonetheless implied: recognition that organizations exist to make people's skills and capabilities effective but signifying nonetheless the intention to make doubly sure of that intimates appreciation of paradox; and complexity leadership theory, we saw, rests on enhancements to learning, creative, and adaptive capacity that are also already abundantly implied in the text. And so, until such time that experience, circumstances, or events demand modifications, I reckon that the "second edition" of my personal philosophy of leadership can remain unchanged. Postscript Sometimes, our personal philosophy of leadership may be irrelevant to the situation at hand; in certain such cases—most likely complex (but perhaps even chaotic)—one must be patient, allow time for reflection, and use approaches (such as listening fully to others) that encourage interaction so patterns can emerge; in other such cases, it may just be that our values do not fit the organization we are working in (or dealing with) and one should refrain from fighting its culture. Whenever the situation demands it, provided one's integrity is not threatened, compromising may be the closest thing to winning. An ideal is worth aspiring to and worth using as a standard only if we can get there from here; if not, the second best is the first best. References Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Hawkins, B., & Taylor, S. (2011). Exploring leadership: Individual, organizational, and societal perspectives. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Handy, C. (1994). The age of paradox. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Poole, M., & van de Ven, A. (1989). Using paradox to build management and organization theories. The Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 562–578. Rock, D. 2008. SCARF: A brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others. NeuroLeadership Journal, 8(1), 1–9. Rock, D., & Schwartz, J. (2006). The neuroscience of leadership. Strategy+Business, 43, 1–10. Serrat, O. (2018). Personal philosophy of leadership. Unpublished manuscript, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
6 Smith, W., & Lewis, M. (2011). Toward a theory of paradox: a dynamic equilibrium model of organizing. Academy of Management Review, 36, 381–403. Vielmetter G., & Sell, Y. (2014). Leadership 2030: The six megatrends you need to understand to lead your company into the future. AMACOM. Yukl, G. (2014). Leadership in organizations (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.