Seven Entries on 21st Century Working This journal records seven short takes on personal leadership development; social identity theory; authentic leadership; relationships with careers; leader development; social barriers; and integrating adult, leader, and leadership development. Olivier Serrat 26/04/2019
1 Ideas, Opinions, and Actions for Personal Leadership Development "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything," Eisenhower said to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference in Washington, D.C. (Eisenhower, 1957). (One must take it the former American army general and president of the United States knew whereof he spoke.) From like-minded people, we are often told that personal leadership development plans can guide people through their work lives (and perhaps careers). It helps, at the outset, to know where one stands: that is why many personal leadership development plans are framed by 360° assessment tools, tests of emotional intelligence, the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, the Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, etc. Follow-on "what?," "so what?," and "now what?" questions should then beckon. Why? Because, personal leadership development plans should be located in the where and when of Super's (1957) "lifelong, continuous process of developing and implementing a self-concept, testing it against reality, with satisfaction to self and benefit to society" (p. 282). Illustrating, I joined The Chicago School of Professional Psychology to open a new window: at Super's (somewhat dated) Maintenance (or Management) stage,1 but happier with the ideas that Handy (1991) advanced about "portfolio workers," my present-day personal leadership development plan relates to the third major function of work according to Blustein's (2006) integrative taxonomy of working, viz., working as a means of self-determination; it has less to do with the second, viz., working as a means of social connection and lesser still with the first, viz., working as a means of survival and power. Personal Leadership Development Plan: Olivier Serrat Why We live in a digital age in which business and societal interaction increasingly takes place online. Organizational boundaries have been stretched, morphed, and redesigned. Combinations of hierarchy, market, and network (or community) forms of organizing have appeared across the public, private, and civil sectors. Leadership styles and frameworks— designed for the closed systems of yesteryear—are consumed by fire-fighting and seem to contribute less and less to the success of collective effort. My vision is to become a thought leader in organizational metagovernance. Specifically, I aim to develop leadership management systems for metagovernance of hierarchies, markets, and networks, this to help them apply situation-specific intervention strategies based on combining, switching, and maintenance. What Throughout Year 2 and Year 3 of my doctoral studies, I will endeavor to ground and develop my identity and thought leadership skills in coherent, self-relevant, and authentic values. How: Actions I Will Take to Accomplish My Personal Leadership Development Goal 1
Super (1980) proposed that—across their entire lifespan—people go through five developmental stages: (a) Growth (0–14), with emphasis on physical growth, forming the selfconcept, and exploring early interests and abilities; (b) Exploration (15–24), with emphasis on exploring different areas of work, beginning to focus on a specific career direction, getting specialized training, and beginning to engage in work; (c) Establishment (25–44), with emphasis on settling into a career field, making contributions to the field, and achieving higher levels of responsibility; (d) Maintenance (or Management) (45–64), with emphasis on maintaining a job position, updating skills as needed to stay competitive, and planning for retirement; and (e) Decline (or Disengagement) (65+), with emphasis on gradually separating from work and engaging in other projects such as leisure, time with family, and community activities.
2 Personal Leadership Development Plan: Olivier Serrat 1. Plan Actions Desired/Required Behavior • Values
Response • Values have utility for self-regulation and for evaluating others. I will identify what coherent, self-relevant, and authentic values, inspired by Schwartz (1992), best speed the accomplishment of my vision. (Ethics and authenticity would count prominently among these.) • Skills • Thought leaders must have skills. I will become increasingly conscious that skill acquisition depends on the ability to access problem-specific knowledge and on processing skills. I will also make continuing efforts to appreciate the qualitative changes in process and knowledge that are associated with the development of expertise. Lastly, I will attempt to record the progression of my skills along the continuum from novice to intermediate to expert levels. How: Actions I Will Take to Accomplish My Personal Leadership Development Goal 2. Anticipate Obstacles/Barriers Obstacle/Barrier Resolution • Subject Matter • The doctoral dissertation that I have in mind, provisionally titled Leading Organizations of the Future, will first entail reference to literature on complexity leadership theory, knowledge management, and metagovernance; next, it will call for an ambitious fusion of related concepts; lastly, it will invite generation or development of a new model for metagovernance. Considerable discipline will have to underpin all related efforts. In addition to complexity leadership and paradoxical leadership (about which more later), I expect that neuroscience leadership will help me elucidate what elements of trust and relationship building can encourage engagement and positive working relationships in hybrid organizations. • Time Management • I will develop greater awareness of tools and techniques for general time management, prioritization, scheduling, concentration and focus, goal setting, and self-motivation. 3. Leverage Strengths
3 Personal Leadership Development Plan: Olivier Serrat Strength How Will This Strength Help Me Accomplish My Goal? • Research Networks • I am a member of networks such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, where I rank in the top 0.5–2.5%. Membership enables me to receive answers to research questions, share my expertise to other members and my followers, and find collaborators. I also have a presence on Google Scholar, which records 1,500 citations as of April 2019. • Ability to Synthesize • From much reading across disciplines, I have developed the ability to synthesize—or combine elements of several sources—to help make a point. Writing a strong researched paper requires such ability. In the face of information overload, some have even called the ability to synthesize (joining the dots, making out patterns, sifting the relevant from the irrelevant, and seeing contrasts) the No. 1 survival skill in the 21st century. As organizational ecologies become increasingly dynamic, complex, and competitive, we will all face intensified contradictory, or seemingly paradoxical, demands: every one of us—not just leaders—must develop paradoxical leadership understandings and behaviors so we might visualize and reframe paradox (and thereby produce superior outcomes). To manage the many paradoxes experienced in my work life I adopted the principle of yin–yang, which accepts that seemingly opposite or contrary forces might actually be interconnected, complementary, and even interdependent. The principle of yin–yang serves well when one must synthesize. Who: Resources and Support for Achieving My Personal Leadership Development Goal To gather feedback and support my learning, I will leverage my research (and other) networks. To track progress, I will rely on what scores and citations my research networks advertise as well as the grades and advice I receive at school. I have identified the primary authorities in the fields of complexity leadership and metagovernance. Familiarizing myself with their work will be the object of the literature review I must conduct toward the doctoral dissertation that I have in mind. My qualitative research will also be "grounded" in data gathered through interviews with four or five of the said authorities. Because NVivo is suited to gaining rich insights from unstructured data I may conduct text analyses of what is out there in the field of metagovernance of hierarchies, markets, and networks, to ground-truth of
4 Personal Leadership Development Plan: Olivier Serrat sorts what insights the interviews may produce. My personal leadership development plan will be available to interested parties upon request. 4. Accountability All actions to meet my goal are ongoing. I am monitoring progress on a daily and weekly basis, the principal instruments being rising scores and numbers of citations on Academia.edu, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate, as well as what grades I achieve and feedback I receive at school. Out of many, one measure of progress is the number of followers I attract on ResearchGate. My personal leadership development plan is designed for three years: it is purposeful and self-contained and I do not anticipate having to update it. I will leverage what I learn in the form of the doctoral dissertation I must write (and will continue to self-publish spin-offs in personalized formats every now and then). 5. Acknowledgment I expect the personal impact of meeting my goal to be increased visibility as an expert leader in the field of metagovernance. Beyond one single organization, the parties that would benefit from the changes and improvements that I can identify in the doctoral dissertation would be those who make sense out of the model for leadership management that I will develop. Serrat (2018a) And yet, "The basic practical–moral problem in life is not what to do, but what kind of person to be" (Cunliffe, 2009, p. 94). Assuming no one will disagree with this statement of the obvious, it follows from Cunliffe's maxim that personal leadership development plans are necessary but not sufficient: personal philosophies of leadership must underpin them. What follows is personal philosophy of leadership to both convoy the personal leadership development plan pictured above and help move beyond it in due time: 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, 2018b) Social Identity Theory and its Contribution to the Growth and Development of Leaders We all have personal ideas of ourselves: what we look like, what we are like, how we think, how good (and less often bad) we are at certain things, etc.; most if not all of us reckon these selfassessments grew out of personal experiences. However, social psychologists have found that the most important determinant of self-concept (or self-image) is how others, especially groups, see us.2 In 1902, Cooley described the self-concept as the "looking-glass self," meaning that a 2
A social group is a collective of people who share certain characteristics, interact with one another, accept expectations and obligations as members of the group, and thus defined by a common identity. A primary social group is archetypally small and characterized by personal and enduring relationships: examples include families, friends, peers, neighbors, and perhaps church members. A secondary group is generally large and characterized by impersonal and temporary relationships, often goal-oriented: examples include university classes, committees, and groups of co-workers. In general, secondary groups develop later in one's life and are much less likely to be influential on an individual's identity than primary social groups.
5 person's self grows out of society's interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others (Cooley, 1902). Thence, from Tajfel's (1978) conviction that membership of one or more social groups helps people instill meaning in social situations, Tajfel and Turner (1979) saw that social groups are an important source of belonging, pride, and self-esteem, with social identity the portion of an individual's self-concept that is derived from perceived membership of a relevant social group (Turner & Oakes, 1986).3,4 Specifically, the social identity theory that Tajfel and Turner developed in the 1970s and 1980s aims, in the first instance, to specify and predict the circumstances under which individuals think of themselves as individuals or as group members; but, social identity theory also considers the consequences of personal and social identities for individual perceptions and group behavior, this on the basis of perceived differences in group status, the perceived legitimacy and stability of the differences, and the perceived ability to move from one group to another. And so, social identity theory posits that social behavior will vary along a continuum of interpersonal and intergroup behavior: in a group, entirely interpersonal behavior would be determined exclusively by the individual characteristics of and interpersonal relationships among only two persons entirely intergroup behavior would be determined solely by the social group memberships that apply to more than two persons. At each point along the interpersonal–intergroup continuum, there are implications for positive distinctiveness, individual mobility, social creativity, and social competition. A secondary group is one we choose to be a part of based on interests and activities: one joins a secondary group (or several of them) to perform functions that may differ from group to group. With the advent of social media, a momentous change is taking place and revolutionizing the way we live, learn, work, and play. To wit, virtual social networks now exist in almost every conceivable domain, be it relationship-, interest-, transaction-, or fantasy-oriented. Here, there, and everywhere, Web 2.0 applications are enabling many-to-many connections powered— alphabetically—by blogs, image and video sharing, mashups, podcasts, ratings, Really Simple Syndication, social bookmarking, tweets, widgets, and wikis, among others. According to Super (1980), I am at the Maintenance (or Management) stage and therefore see more opportunities in such secondary groups than in primary groups. Over the last few years, by means of LinkedIn, I have developed a presence in relationship-oriented domains with like-minded professionals in the fields of leadership and management. To a larger extent, by means of Academia.edu and ResearchGate, I have been active in several interest-oriented domains.5 Toward my doctoral dissertation, I plan to draw survey participants through LinkedIn; I also
3
The term "social identity theory" only gained currency in the late 1970s but the underlying concepts are as old as time. 4 To note, social identity does not equate with social categorization: in terms of that, I recognizably belong to certain age, cultural, ethnic, economic, gender, and other categories; but, deeming none salient, I have no interest in highlighting, emphasizing, or—the operative term—accentuating any of them. 5 The domains include business model innovation, change management, communities of practice, digital, emergence, environmental management, evaluation, foresight, future studies, history, human resource management, governance, information and communication technology, innovation, knowledge culture, knowledge management, knowledge sharing, leadership, leadership development, management, natural resources, organizational culture, organizational design, organizational development, organizational learning, organizational theory, performance management, postmodernism, social media, strategic management, strategic planning, strategic thinking, sustainable development, team performance, and virtual organizations.
6 intend to upload successive drafts on ResearchGate, invite comments, and post questions there; at other times, I will spin off assignments in personalized formats. Business Success: Is Authentic Leadership Necessary and Sufficient? "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority," said Lord Acton, a 19th century English historian. In the heydays of the British Empire, when East India companies were developing and imposing colonial rule, Lord Acton might more appropriately have referred to businessmen, some would suggest. But, what is new? Has it not always been the case that—especially in the hands of a skilled operator—power and authority can lead to unethical behavior? Is this not why, from the Greek philosophers ("Know thyself") to the works of Shakespeare ("To thine own self be true"), authenticity has been explored throughout history? Even so, authentic leadership (and ethical leadership also if one makes a point of distinguishing the two) is a relatively recent addition to the corpus of leadership studies: the earliest texts were published in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It may be that the field of management theories is crowded; it may be that, in the new millennium, the challenges facing organizations invite a focus on what constitutes genuine leadership; it may be that the Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, and Worldcom debacles of 2001–2002 focused attention on the need for better corporate governance. To be authentic is to be true to one's own personality, spirit, or character, with the implication (since one can be authentically evil) that such authenticity has ethical dimensions and is therefore worthy of acceptance or belief. However, as if this were not good enough, authentic leaders and their relations with others are at the hands of authentic leadership authorities characterized by nothing less than transparency, openness, and trust; guidance toward "worthy" objectives; and an emphasis on follower development (Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, & Walumbwa, 2005). In the literature, this too often means that authentic leaders must be good listeners, open and consistent, transparent, self-reflective, team-oriented, and visionary; they must be of good character; and they must draw upon experience, have healthy egos, and focus on possibilities. In my view, there is a "shifting the burden" archetype to all this: demanding superman qualities from leaders absolves us of responsibility for developing leadership capabilities more broadly in (or among) ourselves. Conversely, let us not turn a blind eye to the fact that "ordinary" people work with remarkable success all over the world without advertising superhuman characteristics in their leadership styles. In logic, necessity and sufficiency describe an implicational relationship between conditions (or statements). For instance, a condition can be necessary or sufficient without being the other; or, there can be simultaneous necessity and sufficiency. The reason behind recurrent calls for authentic leadership (or ethical leadership) is that—in business—the line between the profit motive and ethics sometime becomes blurred. Let us not delude ourselves: business will always, at the first opportunity, be accused of acting in its narrow self-interest instead of contributing more broadly to society: but, of course with exceptions, business is not deliberately trying to be untrue, unethical, or blind to social needs when its very success depends on meeting these. (Parenthetically, let us not forget that the morality of society itself has at times been deemed wanting in hindsight or real time.) From the foregoing, it follows easily that not every businessman or businesswoman is suspect and that authentic leadership is not necessarily detrimental to business. But, it does not follow
7 that we should stop from promoting authentic leadership in others, beginning with ourselves, or that authentic leadership per se is sufficient. To further boost (not incorporate) authentic leadership in the course of self-development, I would eschew the kind of definition cited earlier: if it is to serve, a definition must be pithy; it must not be a laundry list. Specifically, I would recast authentic leadership as values-infused leadership to connote preoccupation with quality actions in respect of personal and organizational values. To my way of thinking, values-infused leaders are self-aware and genuine; they are mission-driven and dedicated to results; and, they lead from the heart. Because values-infused leadership demands action, I would continuingly confirm demonstration in practice and look for improvements. "Relationships" with Careers Social connection refers to the feeling that one belongs to a group, which generally entails feeling close to others. Aristotle observed in his Politics that Man is by nature a social animal and declared, unequivocally, that anyone who cannot lead the common life or is so selfsufficient that he or she does not need to is either a beast or a god. Of course, Aristotle was right: Man is a profoundly social species and the pleasures of social life affect us much as physical pleasure does; the drive to connect is embedded in our biology and, upstream of that, in our evolutionary history: scientific evidence demonstrates it is a core psychological need, essential to being satisfied with life, as Maslow (1943) posited in detail.6 For each of us, the inherent need for social connection begins at birth (when the relationship with our caregiver is an absolute necessity); thereafter, it conditions our lives and only ends with our demise.7 Quite appropriately, therefore, working as a means of social connection is the second major function of work on the word of Blustein (2006), who underscored thereby the way in which "working connects people to their social context and to interpersonal relationships" (p. 22).8 Blustein (2006) saw that two dimensions define this element: "First, work furnishes us with a means of developing important social relationships and bonds" and "Second, working links people with a broader social milieu, thereby providing a structured means of relating to their proximal and distal social contexts" (p. 22). Blustein (2013) continued on the theme of working as a means of social connection in much the same way: "Working serves as one of the major theaters for interactions with others, including relationships that are supportive as well as relationships that are problematic. In addition, working provides an informal connection to the
6
From the bottom of his hierarchy of human needs upwards, Maslow's (1943) five-stage model included physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and selfactualization needs (and so one can see that the need for social connection underpins the third and fourth levels). (To note, the five-stage model can also be divided into deficiency needs and growth needs, with the first four levels in the first category and the top level in the second; hence, the third and fourth levels are associated with deficiency needs, which underscores their primacy.) Beyond self-actualization, Maslow (1993) later posited transcendence needs, meaning that a person can be motivated by values beyond the personal self (e.g., mystical experiences, certain experiences with nature, aesthetic experiences, service to others, the pursuit of science, religious faith, etc.); one can see that the need for social connection also finds traction there. 7 Relatedness takes multiple forms: family connections, friendships, romantic attachments, casual acquaintances, peer groups, work-based relationships, etc. 8 In Blustein (2006), working as a means for survival and power is the first function of work and working as a means of self-determination is the third.
8 social world via the sense of contribution that people experience in their work" (Blustein, 2013, p. 8).9 Summarizing, then, Blustein (2006) averred that the working context and relational world share considerable overlap; that supportive relationships (i.e., emotional, nurturance-based, and instrumental) are very likely helpful to people as they negotiate the complexities of work life; and that the nature of work connects people to the broader social context (p. 113). Comparing and contrasting with the experience of my work life gives reason to reprioritize the benefits that Blustein (2006) found in working as means of social connection. I was brought up in West Africa and—from the age of 15 or so—in England where I eventually obtained undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. In between universities, I had a stint as Assistant Cultural Attaché in the French Embassy in Indonesia. I then moved to Japan and practiced for half a dozen years in engineering consulting companies. The ground plan was to join an international organization at some point: when that happened, I developed in turn specialties in project design, project implementation, strategic planning, public relations, environmental management, evaluation, knowledge management, information and communication technology, and much else through working across sectors in many countries. I never sought the supportive emotional, nurturancebased, and instrumental relationships that Blustein (2006) ascribed weight to because, having established a reputation as a problem-solver, my tasks were almost always self-contained; the explanation was that, for me, connection to the broader economic, environmental (especially), political, and social worlds was far more important than connecting to the organization I operated from—I used to say—in contrast to worked in. How so? I have always placed in the ENTP (Extroversion, Intuition, Thinking, Perception) personality type of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator assessment. Why I should have given so much time to global concerns is that ENTPs live in the world of possibilities. But, one downside, from the perspective of social connections, is that ENTPs can neglect close relationships when they pursue new ideas. Leader Development Through Learning from Experience Correctly, McCall, Lombardo, and Morrison (1988)—cited in Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009)— made much of the fact that—although generally recognized as important—the phenomenon of learning on the job had not received enough attention from researchers to enable people to make the most of it. The focus of McCall, Lombardo, and Morrison (1988) was executive (i.e., leader) development: toward the research, interviewees were asked to reflect on at least three key events in their careers and, predictably perhaps, responses underscored that on-the-job experiences had instilled more lessons than classroom experiences; but, more significantly, responses revealed also that what lessons were drawn owed more to self-reflection than to experiences per se. Subsequent research by McCauley, Ruderman, Ohlott, and Morrow (1994), also cited in Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009), on what circumstances can activate on-the-job learning isolated the main categories of job transitions, task-related characteristics, and obstacles. Further research by McCauley and Brutus (1998), also cited in Day, Harrison, and 9
Work leads to direct interpersonal interactions with a finite number of others (e.g., coworkers, clients, supervisees, and supervisors) and indirect links to society at large, which lets workers feel they are contributing to larger economic, political, and social worlds and thus connects them to broader cultural contexts (Blustein, 2011). Needless to say, inequalities, working arrangements, and other factors can—and often do—inhibit workers from fulfilling relational needs at work. Also, what social connections work affords usually detract from the enjoyment of others (e.g., family life), which evokes considerable stress.
9 Halpin (2009), concluded that assignments play a central role in leader development; that some are more developmental than others; and that different types of assignments are associated with different kinds of learning (Day, Harrison, & Halpin, 2009, p. 135). Assessment, challenge, support, and the ability to learn ought, therefore, make experience more developmental, and the Center for Creative Leadership—which funded the research mentioned above—has since developed its own practical theory to maximize benefits from experiences in the leader development process, involving quantitative and qualitative components with attention to interactions between the two (Gurvis, McCauley, & Swofford, 2016). Of course, the Center for Creative Leadership's insights are precious. But, potential contributions to learning from job transitions, task-related characteristics, and obstacles must still be factored in the hurly-burly of work experiences. And, even though they can in theory be educational, operational, and self-developmental, job experiences will in practice (and quite overwhelmingly) spring from a myriad distinct and concurrent operational activities that cannot be readily measured with the same yardstick even if one somehow found time for that. Further, experiential learning ought to entail learning before and during, not just after, which makes the need for appropriate tools, methods, and approaches even more exigent on the off-chance such can, as it should, be factored in. What is more, notwithstanding difficulties of measurement before, during, and after, experiential learning demands "synergetic transactions between the person and the environment" (Kolb & Kolb, 2005, p. 194); alas, the learning cycle of experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting can hardly be expected to eventuate if one does not operate in a learning organization per Senge (1990), who forewarned against the delusion of learning. [By delusion of learning, Senge (1990) meant it is impossible to learn from direct experience when actions have consequences beyond one's learning horizon.] And yet, some organizations learn better than others, assuming surviving or thriving are the gauge:10 if the difficulties of learning from experience (such as those mentioned above) are not insurmountable, how then does the Center for Creative Leadership propose we should match its theory to each organization? Taking a perhaps more realistic account of the circumstances of working, Bandura (1997) posited vicarious (or social) learning, viz., learning that occurs through the observation and modeling of others, which may be how all learning begins. There is also a large body of work on learning from narratives, but less so of the corporate kind. In my work life, what important lessons I have drawn from experience always seemed an outcome of operational experiences from job transitions, task-related characteristics, and— especially—obstacles. (But, by what criteria are we to gauge importance? Does overcoming obstacles, and nothing else, equate with learning?) Elsewhere, I do not think that educational and self-developmental experiences ever gave me food for thought, perhaps if we agree with the Center for Creative Leadership because these experiences were never couched against an assessment, challenge, and support framework. (But, neither—for that matter—were my operational experiences.) Elsewhere still, excepting one role model whom I briefly observed from afar in formative years, I do not think that social learning contributed much either: most operational experiences were of a problem-solving nature while regular assignments followed the tried-and-tested formula of business processes, procedures, and "good practice," aka routines. Lastly, I concur with Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009) that narratives can help learn from others' experience. I have a soft spot for storytelling: it enables articulation of emotional aspects as well as factual content; provides the broader context in which knowledge arises and As said by Senge (1990), learning organizations are "… organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together" (p. 3). 10
10 so increases the potential for meaningful knowledge-sharing; and augments the likelihood that learning will take place and will be passed on because it grounds facts in a narrative structure (Serrat, 2008). And so, 10 and 8 years ago, respectively, I launched two storytelling initiatives: one led to a book providing very personal and human perspectives on the challenges of the development world; the outcome of the other was a multimedia platform (of about 500 videos) that chronicled accomplishments in sustainable development through the views and insights of staff and external stakeholders. So much for my work life: in my personal life, the learning style is decidedly visual (spatial), verbal (linguistic), and solitary (intrapersonal); much of it is based on reading. Social Barriers and Working Devine (1995) acknowledged that social categorization helps human beings process information in stimuli-rich social and interpersonal circumstances but remarks also on the propensity of people to organize their perceptions of others according to irrelevant categories. Expanding on social categorization theory, Blustein (2006) highlighted racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and ablism as so many social filters—barriers, really—that can "inhibit and even prevent the full expression of natural strivings to engage in meaningful and rewarding work" (p. 154), this because a frequent outcome of the pervasive process of social categorization is prejudice. More specifically, "The implicit hierarchy in which groups are viewed has created social barriers in which some groups have greater advantages than others based on demographic characteristic" (Blustein, 2006, p. 155). If the repercussions of iniquitous barriers on working and the psychological experience of working are not flagged, Blustein (2006) reasoned further, there can be no hope that individuals will ever fructify their talents; and there can, of course, be no hope that the three renewed functions of working in the 21st century that Blustein (2006) ardently sponsored—viz., working as a means of survival and power, working as a means of social connection, and working as a means of self-determination—will eventuate either. Reading Blustein (2006), it is difficult to imagine that anyone would ever disagree with the argument that social barriers create inequitable conditions for some but ease access to wealth and power for others are concerned, or that their removal is as urgent as the advancement of feminism, multiculturalism, and other social justice movements (Blustein, 2006, pp. 194–195). And yet, social barriers are alive and well here, there, and everywhere. The sad vignettes with which Blustein (2006) illustrated race and racism, gender and sexism, social class and classism, disabling conditions, sexual orientation diversity and heterosexism, etc. have a local, meaning, American, flavor, which does not surprise given the author's origins; but, one social barrier that Blustein (2006) did not allude to has an international dimension. These days, many organizations profess they have no unintended discrimination and claim to be equal opportunity employers, often with some variant of "[Name of organization] is an equal opportunity employer" at the end of a job advertisement. International organizations are no exception to the equal opportunity employer movement, even adding that "Women are particularly encouraged to apply." In these organizations, however an informal formula is applied whereby staff positions are apportioned to larger shareholding countries and senior management positions are filled likewise; thus, nationals of larger shareholding countries are found across grade levels for the purpose of eventually replacing senior compatriots. Blustein's (2006) treatment of social barriers and working concluded with the pious hope that his book "will generate a body of knowledge that will ultimately inform social policy efforts to reduce and eradicate social barriers, by this means enhancing opportunities for people to feel empowered
11 and engaged in their working lives" (p 195); he might have expressed the hope that "the truly deserving"—not just "people"—will one day feel empowered and engaged. Integrating Adult, Leader, and Leadership Development in the 21st Century Van Velsor, McCauley, and Ruderman (2010) defined leader development and leadership development, respectively, as "the expansion of a person's capacity to be effective in leadership roles and processes" (2010, p. 2) and "the expansion of a collective's capacity to produce direction, alignment, and commitment" (2010, p. 20). Day (2001) offered a similar distinction: "Leadership development is defined as expanding the collective capacity of organizational members to engage effectively in leadership roles and processes" (p. 582) while leader development is concerned with enhancing the capacity of individuals to engage successfully in leadership tasks and roles in organizations. The distinction between leader development and leadership development is subtle but telling: leader development has to do with human capital and leadership development has to do with social capital; this summons practical and research insights into how individual-based knowledge, skills, and abilities might be developed both singly and in unison with network-based knowledge, skills, and abilities to create organizational value (Day, 2001, p. 585). That said, the distinction having been made, this journal entry is contextualized by the felt need to integrate approaches to adult, leader, and leadership development in a fast-changing and interconnected world that demands more individual and collective contributions than ever before. The individual and collective dimensions that both distinguish and associate adult, leader, and leadership development are at the heart of the personal philosophy of leadership development mentioned earlier. Even so, personal definitions-cum-philosophies of leadership are but statements of understanding or intent: they must be tested if they are to gain traction in the outside world. Therefore, I have borne that personal definition-cum-philosophy in mind for the purpose of self-development and scrutinized its expansive expression for possible limitations in conceptual, practice, and research contexts. Does the personal definition-cum-philosophy of leadership, for example, accommodate the concerns raised by such questions as: How do external factors shape adult and leadership development? What role, if any, do gender and other individual differences play in adult and leadership development? What is the role of work and vocation in adult and leadership development? To what extent can individuals influence and shape their own experiences during the adult development years? If adult development influences vocational expertise, does vocational leadership experience affect social experiences? Conceivably, elements of responses to these and suchlike questions can help integrate adult, leader, and leadership development in the 21st century. Without a doubt, external factors shape adult, leader, and leadership development. In a globalizing world characterized by job insecurity and—paradoxically—isolation, workers have no choice but to explore a wider, more inclusive, comprehensive, and diverse world of work than before and be open to possibilities for growth, learning, and change (Covey, 2004). In the literature, "boundaryless," "portfolio," and "protean" are terms that imply the necessity for individuals to ongoingly develop their human capital and trade job security for employability (Hall & Associates, 1996). For many, career choice and career development are a thing of the past: in view of that, Blustein (2006) repositioned work, three-fold, as a means of survival and power, a means of social connection, and a means of self-determination. Moving beyond the confines of vocational counselling, to cite but one other response to the modern preponderance of external factors in work lives, the American Psychological Association (2016) instructed psychologists to strive to understand how economic, legal, and social factors can impact
12 opportunities for and barriers to employment and how they subsequently alter career trajectories. Of course, adult development is not the only going concern: in a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, leader and leadership development must at long last eschew myopic fascination with mainstream theories of leadership—many of which such as transactional and transformational leadership still smack of command and control 100 years after Taylor—and concentrate instead on making leadership happen throughout organizations as an output. Of course, individual differences also play a role in adult and leader development. Super (1980) proposed that—across their entire lifespan—people go through five developmental stages: (a) Growth (0–14), with emphasis on physical growth, forming the self-concept, and exploring early interests and abilities; (b) Exploration (15–24), with emphasis on exploring different areas of work, beginning to focus on a specific career direction, getting specialized training, and beginning to engage in work; (c) Establishment (25–44), with emphasis on settling into a career field, making contributions to the field, and achieving higher levels of responsibility; (d) Maintenance (or Management) (45–64), with emphasis on maintaining a job position, updating skills as needed to stay competitive, and planning for retirement; and (e) Decline (or Disengagement) (65+), with emphasis on gradually separating from work and engaging in other projects such as leisure, time with family, and community activities. Super's (1980) insights are likely to perdure, and so continue to impact both adult and leader development. But, lengthening lifespans will test the ambit of the development stages that Super (1980) particularized, particularly regarding what he termed the Maintenance (or Management) stage and the Decline (or Disengagement) stage. Elsewhere, racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and ablism are so many outcomes of social categorization, meaning to both focus on and denigrate individual differences, that can curtail (or prevent) aspirations to engage in meaningful and rewarding work: removing social barriers must be on a par with feminism, multiculturalism, and other social justice movements. For sure, to note but one, the rise in female labor force participation rates demands action to offset inequities such as the "Glass Ceiling" and the gender wage gap. The average American worker now works 44 hours a week (or 8.8 hours a day Monday to Friday), up from 40 hours a week in 2000 (and above the peak of 42 hours a week in 1950): therefore, the role of work and vocation in adult, leader, and leadership development is important. Certainly, recasting work as a means of survival and power, social connection, and self-determination opens rich vistas for career development, counseling, and public policy. But, Blustein (2006) rightly cautioned that "We … developed our previous psychologies of work from vastly different social conditions, at a time when the needs of society were very much rooted in an industrial era that fostered a great deal of regularity and constancy in work lives" (p. 25). Some might say that Blustein's (2006) emphasis on working as a means of social connection was itself obsolete: there is a long history of alienation among workers performing routine functions in rote fashion; alienation can be traced to the development of agriculture, which fixed people in man-made environments. Today, FlexJobs reports that half of all American employees work remotely at least half of the week (Flexjobs Corporation, n.d.). But, the increasing virtualization of work is a global phenomenon: if direct interpersonal interactions at work continue to dwindle it will be necessary to further develop indirect links to society at large— which let workers feel they are contributing to larger economic, political, and social worlds—and also offset lack of social interactions by participating in interest groups or other social groups. Likewise, to be more relevant to the 21st century workplace and specifically to the role of work and vocation in adult, leader, and leadership development, Super's (1957) developmental view of career development must, above all, be enriched by the concept of adaptability (Herr, 1997). But, for fuller interpretation and application of the role of work and vocation in adult, leader, and leadership development, concerns other than adaptability in the whirlwind of globalization must
13 also find their place. A contemporary concern is that power—even if survival remain the primary concern of hundreds of millions of people—can no longer be the ultimate goal of vocational extension for the privileged; with the spread of common ethical principles, the time has come for internal impetus, moral development, and moral behavior. Rest (1986) delineated the four essential psychological processes of moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral motivation, and implementation as determinants of the link between moral reasoning and ethical behavior: in consequence, ethical behavior is ever more it seems seen as a function of environmental influences, which makes the field of study of moral development quite rich with practical implications for adult, leader, and leadership development. There is growing interest too in how work might become more meaningful: Deci and Ryan's (1985) self-determination theory underscored the need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence in context but Blustein (2006) pointed also to the need for value congruence and, vitally, the need for access to the opportunity structure. Another modern concern revolves around the concept of "thinking about knowing": for adult, leader, and leadership development, we should all want to develop cognition mapping by means of heuristics, schemas, and cognitive complexity; exemplify related abilities in our working life (as elsewhere); and sharpen our understanding of how—considering the varying circumstances of their work days—leaders engage in sense-making. Recognizing that leadership is not, expressly, a cognitive endeavor, Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009) argued persuasively that thinking is for doing, that adaptive behavior hinges on accurate sensemaking, and that cognition grows from experience (p. 117). Of the essence also in the Age of Knowledge is the idea of "wisdom": Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009) remarked that, excepting Sternberg's (2003) WICS model—WICS stands for wisdom, intelligence, and creativity, synthesized—the leader or leadership development literature has not paid much attention to wisdom (p. 223). The argument behind the WISC model is that "One is not 'born' a leader. Rather, wisdom, intelligence, and creativity are, to some extent, forms of developing expertise" (Sternberg, 2003, p. 386). The WISC model jives with Sternberg's (1985) view of intelligence as how well individuals deal with environmental changes throughout lifespan, toward which he postulated the triarchic theory of intelligence: componential (analytical), experiential (creative), and practical (contextual); how andragogy can advance Sternberg's (1985) definition of intelligence is a research need with practical implications. There ought to be fascinating overlap also with Van Velsor, McCauley, and Ruderman (2010), who recommended that three key questions be raised when designing experiential developmental opportunities: "How might this experience build on and deepen … existing abilities? How might this experience broaden … capacity by adding new skills and perspectives? Which processes and systems would aid the transfer of … lessons of experience and benefit the broader enterprise?" (p. 82). Aside from Sternberg (1985, 2003), Day, Harrison, and Halpin (2009) noted that the only other approach to wisdom that conceptualizes it as an expert knowledge system is the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm proposed by Baltes and Staudinger (2000). The Berlin Wisdom Paradigm concerns itself with the fundamental pragmatics of life and considers wisdom "the pinnacle of insight into the human condition and about the means and ends of a good life" (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000, p. 122). The key message that one can take to both heart and mind is that, as envisaged by the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm, wisdom is a means to an end (and not an end per se) that must find application (pursuant to activation and organization) and that the beneficiaries of the application of wisdom should be others just as much as oneself (if not more). Clearly, wisdom is more than knowledge: it is experiential knowledge that, somehow, enables people to make virtuous judgments for the common good; but, how does the turn come? Life experiences, coaching, and age cannot be all there is to it. What are (some of) the micro- and macrofactors and processes, using the language of the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm, that must collaborate to generate wisdom? We saw that competence in context—together with autonomy, relatedness, value congruence, and access to the opportunity structure—conduces self-determination. But, the process of
14 developing competence is complex, developmental, and must extend over the course of adult and leadership development (Day, Harrison, & Halpin, 2009); therefore, more than ever before, individuals must influence and shape their own experiences with care for identity and selfregulation processes. Help is at hand: Day, Harrison, and Halpin's (2009) integrative theory of leader development is articulated around expertise, identity, and adult development processes; it is self-evidently comprehensive, with cornerstones that are complementary and mutually reinforcing. On-the-job experiences combined with assessment, challenge, and support can particularly enhance the ability to learn, especially if approaches are systemic rather than events-based (McCauley, Van Veslor, & Ruderman, 2010). But, this is where the difficulty lies: individuals are assumed to be willing and able but (unless they are particularly well resourced) organizations are limited by internal operating systems and may not—owing to the number of individuals, their different stages of development, and the sheer variety of work experiences— be able to orchestrate actions for adult development. In short, accepting limitations, what is urgently needed is advice on such essentials as aligning adult, leader, and leadership development and organizational strategy; identifying the desired outcomes of adult, leader, and leadership development; determining the sequencing of inputs to adult, leader, and leadership development; and, last but not least, instituting social and organizational contexts that enable adult, leader, and leadership development. Adult, leader, and leadership development presupposes also that vocational leadership experience can affect social experience. Through the act of leading, what identity has been forged by vocational experience can facilitate the communication of vision and the motivating, directing, and supporting of colleagues; indeed, leaders with well-developed identities will actively seek out experiences that enact leadership (Day, Harrison, & Halpin, 2009). As leadership competencies develop, the likelihood of a leader's identity crystalizing increases and—in a mutually reinforcing spiral—further supports the motivation to lead, learn more about learning, transmute individual-based knowledge, skills, and abilities into network-based knowledge, skills, and abilities, and thus transform the social experience itself. Towers Watson (2013) advised its corporate clients that agile thinking, authenticity and responsiveness, change leadership, collaborative problem solving, digital business skills, and global operating skills are competencies that will be required in leaders of the future. Granted that Towers Watson (2013) spoke to an elite, it is not clear why such competencies should only be required of leaders tomorrow when they might here and now constitute terms of reference for a great many workers in industrialized and newly industrialized economies. Regardless, the point is that Tower Watson's (2013) language illustrated for a growing number of workers in a growing number of countries the chasm that separates the 21st century from the world of working in the second half of the last century: integrating adult, leader, and leadership development, for instance along the themes developed here, has become the responsibility of each and every. Having revisited the personal philosophy of leadership development with which this journal opened in light of the five questions considered earlier, I find it an even trustier statement of understanding and intent, connoting among others connection, expertise, identity for adult, leader, and leadership development in a self-avowedly modern psychology of working. For continuing self-development, I look to further cultivating self-discovery, for example by evaluating methodologies that support the development of emotional intelligence, and researching the wisdom of leadership.
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