Direction, Alignment, Commitment: Leadership Revisited

After a previous post about Leadership, Jonathan Reams, editor of Integral Review, sent me a fascinating paper illuminating the subject and putting my attempts to think about a new leadership on acid.

“Direction, alignment, commitment: Toward a more integrative ontology of leadership” is a paper published in Elsevier Leadership Quarterly 19, written by Wilfred Drath and 5 colleagues at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC (USA).

They start by stating that leadership has always been based on what can be called a tripod: “In its simplest form [leadership] is a tripod – a leader or leaders, followers, and a common goal they want to achieve”. So basically the act of leadership has been this: leaders and followers interacting with each other to figure out how to achieve their common goal.

The writers noticed a fundamental shift in the emergence of a new form of leadership and decided to find out what is happening. Based on their research, they proposed three new principles for leadership: Direction, Alignment and Commitment (DAC).

This is based on following principles: “(1) direction: widespread agreement in a collective on overall goals, aims, and mission; (2) alignment: the organization and coordination of knowledge and work in a collective; and (3) commitment: the willingness of members of a collective to subsume their own interests and benefit within the collective interest and benefit.”

The reason I was very excited to read this paper is that it takes the focus off ourselves, and puts it onto that which we aim to achieve. It also illuminated situations of success and failure that I had not seen as clearly formulated.

For years I struggled with what is called the tripod, and I think most of us know this struggle. In a world that consists of hierarchies based on leaders and followers, we all pick a place we feel most comfortable with: some at the top, some at the bottom, some safely tucked away in the middle. I often wrestled my way to a leadership position, only to crash down because of arrogance and hubris, incredulous to my own lack of common sense. It took many years to learn to have the humility and appropriate self-knowledge to renounce compulsive interest in positioning, and just be myself. Similarly, I know many people who suffer at the bottom while they have everything in them to deserve being seen and highly respected – but some seem to value the security of the place they suffer most. And there are truckloads of us hiding out in the snug uneventful middle, hoping to have enough freedom to be ourselves somewhat, but not enough visibility to be forced out of our comfort zones.

Leaders then have the noble task of making sense of this and, in more egalitarian environments, to understand and encourage everyone. But it all in all it is a sad picture because the focus tends to be a lot on our interactions and little on what it is we want to achieve!

What started to shift for myself, after I had crashed down often enough to know that my approach had to change, is not that I position myself differently. It is more that I started to lose interest in the whole business of positioning, the energy-consuming act of being leaders and followers trying to figure out how to manifest our common goals. I realised I just want to get on with it, I have my own relationship with the purpose and feel deeply responsible for it. That means working together with others, inspire, respond to what is effective and genuine, and avoid what is inauthentic and bureaucratic, in order to not be distracted by the messy complexity of human interactions but use the best of it.

Leadership in the DAC-paradigm means that the people who are most committed to a clearly defined direction and create the most alignment with those around them will emerge as leaders. It doesn’t mean they are leaders, or try to be, nor that others couldn’t be – it means putting yourself behind the mission with everything you have, and align all possible people and talents.

There is another phenomenon that the writers noticed: DAC is a framework in which there is no specific content, no investment in how it is being used. It is all about the functionality of finding the best way to fulfil a purpose.

This could be anything. With some colleagues I work on an equal footing that doesn’t contradict the fact that one of us is the boss, while the naughty kids next door seem to prefer a forceful shout – at least they always give me a big, generous grin when I shout my “Oy you little monkeys!” In larger situations, I often long for simple, clear structures, which help to facilitate effective, clean interactions.

This puts our ideas upside down. We have reaped the enormous benefits of the postmodern change from ‘command and control’ to mutual understanding and equality, and we have cultivated enough openness for many more people to think independently and live with dignity and respect. Might it be time for us to go a step further and question the entire system that this need for equality arose from?

That’s a challenging thing to do. It is hard to release the stranglehold of our imagined need for control. Many corporate structures hang together in the tripod approach and would fear falling apart if questioned. It might feel threatening to not have clearly pre-defined power structures to rely on. Not everyone might understand the difference between “whatever!” and “whatever works best”. Talented individuals might not want to change their tack after spending a fortune on their MBA. Our society has not changed yet.

But if we really want to make good on the promise of post-modernity – full self-expression for every human being – why wouldn’t we take that in the biggest possible context? How about going a step further and developing the free expression of our deepest passion for purpose, without interference of our interpersonal structures?

More Truth about Teams!

Since my last post there has been a barrage of great responses, not only on this blog site but also on various networks as well as personal email. A big thank you to everyone for your thoughtful responses as they started a real discussion and demanded more thought.

The responses can be roughly divided in two categories:

1. the importance of equal participation and inclusiveness, and
2. a focus on what needs to be done, the purpose, and how to align everyone with that.

Historically, teams are a relatively new phenomenon. There wasn’t much like it back in our parent’s age – perhaps an Olympic team, a string quartet or the Apollo missions were early manifestations, but in the workplace it was command and control and rigid, firm hierarchies. Even when I first started working a straight job in the 90’s in the Amsterdam Harbour (which admittedly was a very traditional environment) there was no such concept as a team.

To begin with, I want to do more justice to the existence of teams. They have emerged as a result of the greater freedom and egalitarian approach that came with the pluralistic worldview, now typical for the Western world. Bottom-up approaches, the inclusive workplace, personal development, mutual understanding and respect are the great achievements of the second half of the 20^th Century.

At the same time I don’t see them as a purpose in themselves. If we make a climate of mutual understanding and bottom-up empowerment the goal, we could end up in those mushy situations in which we’re caught in endless meetings, satisfying a requirement for the job-review, but not being at the top of our creativity, and therefore possibly resentful and in perennial conflict with the most creative drive in ourselves – and with our colleagues. Because what is the team there to do? What is my right to self-expression worth if it inadvertently creates an environment that stifles my ability to act on my own creative drive?

What I’m pushing into is something beyond the phenomenon of teams – something that is being enabled by our capacity to listen, share, understand and make space for each other – but that takes us beyond ourselves into a possibility that none of us can imagine or manifest by ourselves. Here are a few great responses that I think point into this direction:

“What I found key is the individual purpose and/or motivation should be aligned and catalyzed by the collective. Individual should be in the center but grounded in the collective big-picture. (…) The magic seems to be in kick-starting the individual fire, by finding and highlighting to the collective the unique contribution of each individual in the team. (…) And we compete by shaping the diamond in so more perfect angles together.” (Daniela Micodin in Vienna)

“… we are exploring how we demonstrate collective intelligence beyond ego by acting out of our authentic selves as we work together. (…) The key challenge: how to inspire individual genius within collective wisdom to create collective genius!” (Robin Wood in Perpignan)

“However, I firmly believe that it’s worth the effort to try to make [teams] work, by dealing with the many issues you illuminate [...]. When you address head-on the varying levels of capacity, ego, territorial concern in an open, safe and supportive atmosphere [...] you can emerge with something quite amazing and beyond anyone’s furthest imagination of what is possible.” (Nadine Hack in New York)

What I find so strong in these responses is the inherent balance between the personal and the collective, the interior and the exterior, the individual needs and the collective purpose. There is a climate of understanding, respect, trust, bottom-up empowerment – but it is a climate in which empowerment serves a strong collective drive, respect and understanding enable the facing of ego-issues, and trust shifts competition from individual dominance to collective excellence.

I know from my own experience that this balance is the hardest thing to achieve, but the most amazing and satisfying thing we can do in a lifetime. I’ve been in situations that were as close to perfect as humanly possible (Nadine knows this as she beautifully guided me in it and showed me many things about myself!) and was utterly challenged to embrace the possibility of a higher emergence. Despite my enthusiasm for this emergence, I struggled and at some point failed to embrace it when I needed to – but it taught me the real human growth that this takes.

Why is that? The creative force we can unleash by going beyond our mundane, superficial relationships is stronger than we are, we can’t control it, it takes over from us. The more you let go, the more there is to give. It’s a bit like this: the more money you put in the bank, the greater your debt. Now if there’s anything you want to keep for yourself, that’s an unattractive scenario. But if you want to give everything to what stirs your passion, it’s the best thing you could ever do. And if you not only see your peers flourish in doing the same but experience yourself the exhilarating power of collective emergence, you have entered a new way of being.

So that’s a very different way to work. There are some inspiring examples of team emergence – I recently read the story of the handful of Open Source volunteers who saved the Internet when something went badly wrong – without official positions, without anyone taking a lead; for two hours they laboured to get it back on track, just because they felt called to do it. And they needed money nor glory in return – there were no job-reviews.

Here’s my hunch: the whole thing about Team Players is only the beginning. It was the act of putting on our skates – now we have to start skating! And whoever has ever had the pleasure of skating on natural ice (as a Dutch girl, I grew up with that), you know that skating alters your perception of the possible, particularly when you do it together and bolster each other’s courage; the ice may crack, you may not know how to stop, but you have that exhilarating sense of freedom and possibility – an expanded understanding of your own destination.