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Leadership is about mission, communication
and results. To master management, learn to coach yourself and your subordinates
to work together to define missions and get results. We coach and mentor people
in leadership, team training, systemic coaching and relationship
management.
Leadership
Within the larger frames of missions and visions,
day-to-day leadership is about survival, power, stability and success. Leadership is about
managing relationship systems within larger environments. Leadership is about
guiding human systems - whether teams, families, businesses or countries.
Leadership can make or break any group of people.
Leadership at any level requires solving personal, professional
and technical problems, providing stability and developmental opportunities, assessing internal
and external conditions and planning for expected and unknown possibilities.
Effective learning requires continuous assessment. If this
assessment can be done by the learners, with a goal of learning better, this
avoids judging, evaluating and comparing people with first impressions.
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Taken together, mission, vision, and assessment
create an ecology, a set of fundamental relationships forming the bedrock of real
leadership. These tools allow people, regardless of job title, to help shape their
future. Peter M Senge |
Leadership is a primary asset of an organization, and you can
manage leadership
as you would manage any other key part of an organization.
What leaders need to know
Most leaders face external pressures, such as demands for
performance, regulations and ordinances, public concerns
about environmental and health issues. Safety and survival requires ongoing attention to
these pressures, just as much as to old equipment or outdated practices.
Leaders not only lead any reforms that might be implemented, but
also convince stakeholders that those changes are necessary - and seek funds to support
innovation. Leaders can leverage reform with systemic leadership, integrating
individual self-assessment with knowledge and organizational goals.
It is interesting to study the qualities of leaders. We can study
their characters, values, style, skills and behavior. But if we attempt to copy their patterns, if we try to copy behavior that is incongruent with our own values
and identity, we will likely fail.
Many people become competent managers, but fail as leaders.
As leaders, you should know:
- Why you want to lead other people?
- What you do when you make a mistake?
- What you when the unexpected happens?
- What you consider before initiating change?
- What are your private thoughts about leadership?
- What are your private beliefs about
yourself as a leader?
- What are your private thoughts about the people
who follow you?
Followers
Leaders and followers are both essential parts of human systems, and
both express systemic behavior typical of other
entanglements.
A leader must have at least one follower. Leaders want at
least one other person to follow their example, instructions or advice. So we
also study followers. Why do most people prefer that other people make decisions
for them? What qualities set leaders apart?
Classical thinking uses cause-effect statistics to analyze
events. Systemic thinking provides leaders with explanations of why things are happening in their organizations,
and how to change. Quantum thinking
explores other possibilities inherent within human systems.
Knowledge Management . Merging
Organizational Cultures
Individual & Systemic Coaching
Culture affects behavior, performance and beliefs. Cultures
legitimize certain behaviors and rejects others. But as leaders
shape an organization's culture, a culture will also shape its leaders.
Building or rebuilding work environments are transition
periods for organizations. Leaders can dictate or guide organizations to clearly
articulate goals that all members are expected to work towards. Two overlapping
areas are coaching individuals and coaching systems.
Individual
coaching increases specific knowledge and performance, following the choices
communicated by the leaders. This includes clarifying their standards and modeling
those standards as behavior. Systems coaching help people understand abstract issues
and predict what will likely happen.
Archaic, Classical & Systemic Leadership
Systemic leadership does not replace archaic or classical
leadership. Each offers complementary leadership tools for different types of
organizations.
- Archaic leadership is often useful for managing
remote, rural or religious communities which seek the help of esoteric
entities to control the environment (e.g. - many people in remote African
communities believe that global warming is created by local gods) Archaic leadership skills are useful where weather and other
environmental factors create community problems.
- Classical leadership is often useful when managing
simple organizations that are in equilibrium (or changing slowly) in stable
environments (e.g. - many people with government jobs believe that their
welfare requires rigid adherence to established rules). Classical leadership skills are useful in predictable and
controllable situations.
- Systemic leadership is often useful when managing
complex organizations in changing environments (e.g. - many entrepreneurs
often change their business structure to cope with changing market
conditions and economical trends). Systemic leadership skills
are useful in unstable situations where there are strong pressures and ambiguous
objectives.
Accelerated Learning
Don't Step in the Leadership!
Leading coherent teams is very different to managing groups of randomly
selected people who have many conflicts and hidden agendas. The principles of systemic
team leadership reveal ways to create
strategies to maintain and develop human systems.
Systemic leadership provides an integrated approach to
relationship challenges. Systemic leaders understand the power and influence of
the environment on human systems. Systemic managers can improve and maintain human
systems by analysis, participation and
expert modeling.
Systemic team leadership includes
ways to assess opportunities and challenge appropriate people to take meaningful
roles. Systemic team leadership includes inspiration, raising consciousness and
creating value in membership. See Systemic
Coaching and Systemic Education
Leading Systemic Change
Achieving beneficial systemic change is rarely quick nor
easy. Leading a complex human system requires adoption, adaptation and
management of all sub-systems, their boundaries and interfaces.
In any human system, specific interactions
between members may seem random or even chaotic. However the overall flow and consequences can
be managed. Systemic leadership requires information about the skills and
attitudes of system members, which reflects their flexibility to cope with,
adapt to and learn from unexpected events and environmental changes.
Leaders can use this information to protect the
most flexible yet fragile members of a system - the children. In this way,
leaders can affect true systemic change that leads to lasting and sustainable
development. Plans that include the health and success of future
generations can inspire all members.
In their struggles to fulfill quotas and norms,
leaders may ignore sustainable long term development:
- day-to-day fulfillment of the
long-term mission
- values and beliefs that underlie
how members interact
- how
your team members interact with members of other teams
- supporting the creativity and flexibility
of the member's children
- maintaining flexible outcomes across
generations of employees
Soul Leadership
Of the many types of leadership, soul leadership
may need the most stamina and courage and inner strength. Soul leadership
requires that you befriend your emotions and your ego. If you can do
this, you cease to be limited by your history or your imagination, and
you can find courage to change the world.
Soul
leadership requires that you transcend your need for respect, dogma, success and
recognition. This will take you outside your comfort zone ... where you can
enjoy the power of
achieving more than you dreamed - and the humility of being forever less
than what our planet needs. Within your deepest joys and your darkest
despair, you can choose and fulfill a life mission.
If you practice soul leadership, you can become a role model
for leaders - without need for credit nor desire for applause. Your work becomes Soulwork.
Martyn Carruthers worked in health physics
and nuclear physics for 18 years before founding Systemic Solutions
- a practical synthesis of quantum thinking and systemic coaching.
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright ©
Martyn Carruthers 2004-2012 All rights reserved.
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