The Practice of Leadership

Recent­ly, I have begun to feel that lead­er­ship is much more about prac­tices than about com­pe­ten­cies. Man­age­ment is full of com­pe­ten­cies — tech­ni­cal ones, project man­age­ment ones, finan­cial ones, even inter­per­son­al ones. But lead­er­ship draws from deep­er waters of the soul. How would I devel­op a “com­pe­ten­cy” for hon­esty or for inspi­ra­tion or for sen­si­tiv­i­ty to oth­ers’ needs and feel­ings? How would I cre­ate a “skill set” about being in ser­vice to the world and to others?

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The word prac­tice seems to me a bet­ter fit. A prac­tice is a con­scious entry into a cer­tain kind of action, dri­ven by an instinct for con­tri­bu­tion, by per­son­al val­ues, and a desire for impact. A per­son may be good or not at a par­tic­u­lar prac­tice, but it is through great com­mit­ment to the prac­tice that his or her lead­er­ship pres­ence ulti­mate­ly becomes known and is judged by the world.

An exam­ple. More than twen­ty years ago a good friend and men­tor told me point blank that any­one who could not receive feed­back should nev­er be in a lead­er­ship job. For the next ten years I watched him live this eth­ic in his work. It was not always easy for him. Some­times he received very dif­fi­cult, untrue, inflam­ing feed­back — but the way he han­dled it and learned from it was always a mod­el to oth­ers. He did not do this to achieve a com­pe­ten­cy or win mer­it or approval from oth­ers or to get a great per­for­mance appraisal and pay raise. He did it as a part of him­self alone, a core ingre­di­ent of his per­son. He had claimed a per­son­al inten­tion beyond and larg­er than him­self and whether or not it would be entire­ly under­stood and appre­ci­at­ed. I know he had some dif­fi­cult nights and he dealt with dread. Yet he exem­pli­fied a kind of mag­nif­i­cence in this prac­tice that deeply inspired oth­ers like me. I believe his work with feed­back defined a prac­tice, not a “com­pe­ten­cy” — at least not in the shal­low way that word is often used.

What are the most impor­tant of these prac­tices? It’s a good ques­tion. I would say they are myr­i­ad and must be defined indi­vid­u­al­ly. Here are eight I have been think­ing a lot about late­ly, based on my own inner work, my past expe­ri­ences, and my work with clients:

  • Know­ing one­self well enough to artic­u­late a per­son­al lead­er­ship chal­lenge — a focus for pro­found learn­ing; an edge for per­son­al growth
  • Will­ing­ness to engage in feed­back — both giv­ing and receiv­ing — with bal­ance and hon­esty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty; a will­ing­ness to work through the “shad­ow stuff” of relationships 
  • Self-care — the prac­tice of nour­ish­ing one­self; end­ing the var­i­ous forms of self-pun­ish­ment — from over­work or alco­holism or alone­ness or many oth­er addictions 
  • Influ­ence of oth­ers — through the prac­tice of con­nect­ing with oth­ers as peo­ple rather than through force, threat and expec­ta­tion or sole­ly through the set­ting of rigid per­son­al boundaries
  • Deal­ing with “undis­cuss­ables” — the prac­tice of engag­ing with oth­ers around the most sen­si­tive and uncom­fort­able but real top­ics that oth­ers may not feel able to ini­ti­ate — with the goals of learn­ing, per­son­al and sys­tems change, and forgiveness 
  • Build­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion — the prac­tice of turn­ing con­flict into syn­er­gy between self and oth­ers — and among oth­ers — so that group iden­ti­ty, col­lec­tive work, capa­bil­i­ty and joy are the means to pro­found results 
  • Enhanc­ing per­son­al integri­ty — the prac­tice of authen­tic action that is nei­ther self-right­eous nor self-indul­gent but adheres to a mid­dle way that is ground­ed, real and deeply true to oneself
  • Per­ceiv­ing the world from a spir­i­tu­al stand­point — the prac­tice of find­ing a per­son­al view­point that is found­ed on aware­ness and love.

So much of what is writ­ten about lead­er­ship begins with these build­ing blocks, whether the task of cre­at­ing shared vision, chang­ing sys­tems, ade­quate­ly coach­ing peo­ple or build­ing partnerships.

I invite your own per­spec­tives! To you, what are the lead­er­ship prac­tices that you believe are most impor­tant? What have been your expe­ri­ences and sto­ries? What events or peo­ple in your life have shaped your views?

[Update 6/6/11: For more con­text on this post­ing, please see:

Eight Lead­er­ship Practices
First Prac­tice: Know­ing Your Lead­er­ship Edge
Sec­ond Prac­tice: Devel­op­ing Your Com­fort Lev­el with Feedback
Third Prac­tice: Car­ing for Self
Fourth Prac­tice: Lead­er­ship and Influence
Fifth Prac­tice: Dis­cussing Undiscussables
Sixth Prac­tice: On Collaborating
Sev­enth Prac­tice: Per­son­al Integrity
Eighth Prac­tice: Spir­i­tu­al Per­spec­tive]

By Dan Oestreich

I am a consultant, coach, facilitator and trainer supporting the growth and development of leaders and teams. For further information about my work and services, please access my Oestreich Associates website.

4 comments

  1. Read­ing your com­ment on my blog, made me feel I was hear­ing a well-known voice from dis­tance. Even though I do not know the writer you have men­tioned, I feel I have read this text before or there is some­thing beyond the text, which is so famil­iar to me: a kind of “déjà vu”. I read your com­ment four or five times and I asked myself where, when, who told me this before.
    Thanks Dan, you opened a door I had for­got­ten for a while.
    Oh I also have some­thing to say on your recent post (Prac­tice of Leadership)which I pre­fer to think first.
    Hap­py New Year and I wish you the best
    Ellin

  2. Your “prac­tice of lead­er­ship” phi­los­o­phy is pro­found. Most “lead­ers” I have encoun­tered in recent years do not think at this high­er lev­el. If they did, the world of work would be a delight­ful place.

    Jane

  3. Hi Dan, this is Jay. I haven’t set up my account yet, so this will post as “anony­mous”. Maybe that’s a good thing.

    Your thoughts on the prac­tice of lead­er­ship here are quite pro­found. You are real­ly think­ing about lead­er­ship at an essence lev­el. You and I have worked with many lead­ers, some of whom were oper­at­ing at this lev­el — many who weren’t. 

    It occurs to me that there may very well be lev­els or gra­da­tions of lead­er­ship aware­ness. Like the line in Rilke’s poem “I live my life in grow­ing orbits which move out over the things of the world…” Many peo­ple with pow­er are lead­ers, but at what lev­el? I have met many busi­ness and polit­i­cal “leaders” with a great deal of pow­er who did not strike me as peo­ple oper­at­ing at a par­tic­u­lar­ly deep lev­el of lead­er­ship aware­ness. (Or what Peter Koesten­baum called “leadership mind”.) I recent­ly heard a CEO of a major US cor­po­ra­tion refer to his wife as “an asset when I trav­el in the Mid­dle East.” I was sad to hear him refer to her in that way. I didn’t get a sense of much lead­er­ship aware­ness from him. And, unfor­tu­nate­ly, I don’t think the peo­ple that work for him real­ly sense it either. 

    I won­der what prac­tices of lead­er­ship Nel­son Man­dela is work­ing on. Or Aung San Suu Kyi, Kof­fee Anon, Col­in Pow­ell or Moth­er Tere­sa when she was alive. 

    I like your list of eight lead­er­ship prac­tices. The one that most intrigues me right now (as I said in an ear­li­er post) is authen­tic­i­ty. I see that you have that in the area of per­son­al integri­ty. That sounds right to me. 

    I am attempt­ing to be as authen­tic as pos­si­ble in as many sit­u­a­tions as I can. I have noticed myself late­ly sort of check­ing in on myself dur­ing my con­ver­sa­tions with oth­ers. A voice some­where inside of me says “that’s good, you are real­ly speak­ing from the heart to this per­son” or “hey, why aren’t you phras­ing your thoughts, your feel­ings as hon­est­ly as you say them to yourself?”

    I real­ly believe in com­mu­ni­ty. Com­mu­ni­ty to me means any time there are peo­ple work­ing or liv­ing togeth­er or who want to be con­nect­ed to each oth­er – they are build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty. And I don’t think you can have com­mu­ni­ty with­out authen­tic­i­ty. So as I jour­ney through my day, I am look­ing for com­mu­ni­ty, for con­nec­tion. And I believe that I have a bet­ter chance of being in com­mu­ni­ty when I am being authentic.

    I have been work­ing in the field of Orga­ni­za­tion Devel­op­ment for more than twen­ty years now. In its essence, I think that most of us could agree that OD is an effort to build health­i­er, more pro­duc­tive – com­mu­ni­ties. And noth­ing builds com­mu­ni­ty faster, for me, than authenticity.

    Thanks again, Dan, for your fine work on your web­site and blog.

  4. Hi Dan,

    I real­ly enjoyed your eight lead­er­ship prac­tices. Some­thing that I’ve been focus­ing on late­ly is grat­i­tude, thank­ful­ness and appre­ci­a­tion. You gave an exam­ple of a friend who was excel­lent at han­dling feed­back, both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive, and it struck me that liv­ing in the spir­it of grat­i­tude is prob­a­bly nec­es­sary for han­dling feed­back so well. Feed­back helps us avoid liv­ing in a vac­u­um and allows us to bet­ter learn about our­selves (self-knowl­edge). And by being grate­ful for all feed­back in this light, it becomes eas­i­er to accept.

    Thanks for the authen­tic and thought-pro­vok­ing writ­ing! It’s great to see more blogs like this.

    - Sean
    http://voisen.org

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