A Leader is a Community Builder

5 comments

1. Jay, Dan, all,

   what you wrote made me think Jay. 3 things in particular:

   1. the con­cept of work
   2. the work­place community
   3. ego vs net­work-cen­tric & lead­er­ship in West­ern countries

   The Con­cept of Work. I read some­where a quote from Lao-Tze (Con­fu­cius): “The path to being is doing”. In fact, that’s pre­cise­ly the way I work. To me, work­ing is cre­at­ing and cre­at­ing is being. It does­n’t mat­ter if the work I am doing is paid or unpaid, as long as it deals with cre­at­ing some­thing, it cre­ates some­thing inter­nal­ly too. This is also the mean­ing work has for Freema­sons, the act of carv­ing the exter­nal stone reflects into carv­ing the inter­nal one. I don’t know, Jay, how much of it can be taught. I tend­ed to think it could­n’t then, after becom­ing a Freema­son, I changed my mind. I saw lots of per­sons learn­ing to carve the (inner) stone by just watch­ing oth­ers work­ing in the Freema­son sense of the word. I myself improved a lot by watch­ing oth­ers improv­ing. Wait a moment! Isn’t it what Ban­dura called Social Learn­ing The­o­ry Social Learn­ing The­o­ry?

   The Work­place Com­mu­ni­ty. I run a site about online self-help for peo­ple with bipo­lar dis­or­der. The way I hire my vol­un­teers is based on a Code of Ethics that I wrote. Any­way the point is, if you hire peo­ple bas­ing on val­ues, then a com­mu­ni­ty is pos­si­ble. After all, com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice are formed and ran on val­ues! Grant­ed, if the val­ues are about mak­ing mon­ey then peo­ple won’t be as friend­ly as they could be if they were hired on trust, you know? Also, note how I remarked com­mu­ni­ty as opposed to group. A group is a col­lec­tion of indi­vid­u­als with dif­fer­ent val­ues who end up lev­el­ling their per­for­mance toward the aver­age. If there is trust in a com­mu­ni­ty (or if you infuse it), indi­vid­u­als share val­ues but imple­men­ta­tions don’t lev­el toward the aver­age. In oth­er words, the aver­age is being your­self, and cre­ativ­i­ty is enhanced.

   Ego-dri­ven vs Net­work-cen­tric and Lead­er­ship. They imply two dif­fer­ent kinds of lead­er­ship. The for­mer is all about indi­vid­u­al­is­tic goals and per­for­mances, the sec­ond is about less West­ern val­ues. Again, a group is more an ego-dri­ven thing (“I behave or else I get a dam­age”), while a com­mu­ni­ty is more about oth­ers (“I behave or else oth­ers can get dam­aged”). Sim­i­lar­ly, a “tra­di­tion­al” kind of gov­er­nance, more prone to micro­manag­ing, is ego-dri­ven, while a pol­i­cy gov­er­nance (I mean “Carver’s boards”) are more net­work-cen­tric in that rather than being told what to do, you are told what not to, and how to imple­ment goals is up to you (there­by fos­ter­ing cre­ativ­i­ty, and community).

   Ah! I could ram­ble on this stuff for hours! 😉

2. Robert

   This is for you and many oth­ers who might be ask­ing the same ques­tion — which seems to be about how do I begin to cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty? Here are a few ideas that might help you get start­ed, keep­ing in mind that a com­mu­ni­ty is going to be based on a num­ber of ongo­ing conversations. 

   First, do you per­son­al­ly feel you under­stand the vision of your com­pa­ny? Is there one — has it been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to oth­ers? Is it a “vision state­ment” or is it a state­ment that comes from the heart? Is it the shared vision of the com­mu­ni­ty or just of the leaders?

   Have you had or can you invite peo­ple into real con­ver­sa­tions about the vision — includ­ing every­one’s view of what that vision could be or should be? This would be about what you all real­ly want to and can accom­plish togeth­er that you can­not accom­plish separately.

   Can you include in this con­ver­sa­tion some time to mutu­al­ly talk about the kind of com­mu­ni­ty you want to be, not just the goals of the com­pa­ny? This could include your ideas for help­ing and sup­port­ing one anoth­er and turn­ing con­flicts into syn­er­gies. You might want to con­sid­er the qual­i­ties that are dom­i­nant in your cur­rent envi­ron­ment and how you would like to enhance them. As Rosan­na Tar­siero has point­ed out, val­ues are key. What are the val­ues of your orga­ni­za­tion now and how are they expressed? How could they change?

   Also in your con­ver­sa­tions, you may want to talk about where pow­er real­ly rests in the orga­ni­za­tion. How are deci­sions made? How are con­flicts resolved? How are agree­ments made and realized? 

   So who should you have these con­ver­sa­tions with? Think of this as an enlarg­ing spi­ral that begins where the ener­gy for change is, not where it is not. Invite peo­ple into safe set­tings that focus on pos­si­bil­i­ties, not bar­ri­ers. This could be your asso­ciates; it could be cus­tomers; it could be the for­mal lead­ers; it could be every­body at once; it’s real­ly any­one who is inter­est­ed and wants to make a pos­i­tive contribution.

   What you are doing through these con­ver­sa­tions is begin­ning lis­ten deeply to the voice of the com­mu­ni­ty with­in the orga­ni­za­tion, and to raise up to con­scious­ness the idea that we are here mutu­al­ly and there could be a deep­er, rich­er sense of con­nec­tion with one anoth­er and with the clients and cus­tomers of the enterprise. 

   If you start these con­ver­sa­tions and then also begin to fol­low-through on some of the ideas that emerge, how­ev­er small, this can begin to enlarge the spi­ral of new ener­gy and gen­er­ate even more pos­si­bil­i­ties and fos­ter the inclu­sion of even more people.

   As you do this work, you are like­ly to begin to under­stand your own dreams, and your pos­si­bil­i­ties as a leader with­in this com­mu­ni­ty. And that point you may want to explore even more deeply the prac­tices being dis­cussed on this site. In par­tic­u­lar, what may come to you is a rich sense your own gifts and the true nature of your con­tri­bu­tion to a bet­ter world.

   Thank you, Robert, for ask­ing this ques­tion. We hope this gives a few ideas for prac­ti­cal action. Please feel free to write back and keep this con­ver­sa­tion going.

   Jay and Dan

3. Dan, Rosan­na et al 🙂

   Thank you for some tru­ly eye open­ing and inspir­ing read­ing. It’s so refresh­ing to be able to read such thought-pro­vok­ing writing.

   Regard­ing the ‘leader as a com­mu­ni­ty’ notion — can any­one point me in the direc­tion of some more prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion? I’m involved with a great small com­pa­ny filled with cre­ative peo­ple, and I want to see what I can do to help this group achieve new syn­er­gys­tic highs.

   I have no for­mal man­age­r­i­al train­ing or expe­ri­ence. I’m one of those creatives!

4. Jay’s Lead­er­ship Ram­ble #2 — Trans­for­ma­tion­al Mystery

   Why is “community” impor­tant in the work­place? We have been talk­ing a lot about lead­er­ship here in Dan’s blog. Thanks to those of you who have com­ment­ed on Jay’s Lead­er­ship Ram­ble #1. In that ram­ble, I talked about my obser­va­tion that peo­ple in orga­ni­za­tions have “community hunger”. Is that your expe­ri­ence? I also said that a leader is some­one who knows how to build com­mu­ni­ty with­in an orga­ni­za­tion. Some CEO’s and man­agers know how to do this, many don’t.

   As I have been think­ing about the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ty in the work­place, I have reflect­ed back on why this idea of com­mu­ni­ty is impor­tant to me. It has to do with trans­for­ma­tion­al mys­tery. Say what? Oh boy, we’re in for it now.

   What is trans­for­ma­tion­al mys­tery? I’ll get to that in a minute. 

   In my first job out of col­lege, I worked for a non-prof­it youth agency in San Fran­cis­co led by a very charis­mat­ic priest names Miles Riley (Fr. Miles O’Brien Riley’s Web Site). There is a long sto­ry about this agency, but I’ll spare you. 

   Some time in 1971 we had a team retreat with the all of the staff and some of the vol­un­teer kids that worked with us. I think Miles had one of his broth­ers who was an orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist run the retreat. We met and talked for a few hours. In the ear­ly after­noon, we had a vol­ley­ball game. Dur­ing that game, it hit me. We were a com­mu­ni­ty. We could do some extra­or­di­nary things because we were more that a col­lec­tion of indi­vid­u­als – we were a team. More than a team, we were a com­mu­ni­ty. We knew each oth­er, we had worked hard togeth­er, we had achieved some of our goals togeth­er, we trust­ed each oth­er, and we knew we could do more great stuff together.

   In that moment I was trans­formed. The moment before, I was just think­ing about vol­ley­ball, who was win­ning and prob­a­bly some of the young women who were look­ing pret­ty good that day. Sor­ry, Father Miles, it won’t hap­pen again. 

   In hind­sight, this trans­for­ma­tion was, to me, mys­te­ri­ous. At the time I didn’t think much about it at all, except that it was true and I felt good to be part of some­thing big­ger than myself. We did go on to do some amaz­ing work togeth­er for a few years. 

   But now I look back and think, that was a trans­for­ma­tion­al moment in which I got it. I saw what we could do and who we were. I say it was mys­te­ri­ous because it was not sequen­tial, it was not devel­op­men­tal, it just occurred. Since that time, I have had count­less trans­for­ma­tion­al moments, some that occurred in work set­tings, oth­ers that hap­pened in my per­son­al life as well. 

   If you are will­ing to indulge me, I would like you to think for a moment about the trans­for­ma­tion­al mys­ter­ies in your life. How about falling in love? Remem­ber the moment when you were there, just two peo­ple, talk­ing, then – you felt it. How about the moment you real­ized you could per­form at a new lev­el in sports, arts, gar­den­ing, cook­ing, what­ev­er. How about trav­el­ing? Ever had a trans­for­ma­tion­al moment some­where — maybe at the Grand Canyon, the Great Pyra­mid, the Taj Mahal, the Lou­vre in Paris? Or maybe one time you were just on a train going some­where, look­ing out the win­dow and think­ing – oh my God, I’m alive. How about in busi­ness? Have you had this moment that I had when you were with a group and you real­ized – we are doing this – we are cre­at­ing some­thing extraordinary. 

   If you can’t find your own mys­te­ri­ous trans­for­ma­tion­al moment like one of these of your own, I sug­gest you think about some of the great films that you have seen. How about Fro­do Bag­gins being trans­formed mys­te­ri­ous­ly by find­ing the Ring? How about Jer­ry Maguire, self absorbed male ego­ma­ni­ac, like many of us, dis­cov­er­ing that he needs and loves his wife, that he can actu­al­ly help his friend Rod Tid­well, that it’s not all just about the mon­ey? How about the moment when Julia Roberts in Erin Brock­ovich tells Albert Finney, “I’m smart, I’m hard­work­ing, I’ll do any­thing and I’m not leav­ing here with­out a job”. Or Meryl Streep in – any­thing she has done. 

   Trans­for­ma­tion­al mys­tery and com­mu­ni­ties with­in orga­ni­za­tions — pret­ty weird, huh? Not the stuff of prof­it mar­gins and high pow­ered exec­u­tives. But I’m not inter­est­ed in high pow­ered exec­u­tives and their pow­er games. I’m inter­est­ed in qual­i­ty work, the place where real prof­itabil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty comes from – which I think can only come from an orga­ni­za­tion that cre­ates com­mu­ni­ty with­in their organization. 

   Here’s a real sto­ry about tran­for­ma­tion. In the last year, a friend of mine took a job as the CFO of a matur­ing high tech start-up com­pa­ny. They believe they will dou­ble the num­ber of employ­ees in their com­pa­ny in 2005 with some big time rev­enue growth dri­ving that increase in staff. My friend asked me to help him and his staff think about the cul­ture of the orga­ni­za­tion. I asked my friend Nan­cy J. White to help me work with my friend on this project. She was more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy than me, smarter too. 

   What Nan­cy and I did was pro­vide my friend and his staff with an expe­ri­ence of “transformational mys­tery. We met with them for a half day twice in the fall and helped them see their orga­ni­za­tion through new eyes. We asked them to real­ly look at their com­pa­ny in a trans­formed way. If you want to know more about how we did this, let me know. 

   And when they looked at their com­pa­ny with new eyes, this was the ques­tion they asked them­selves: How can we devel­op the extra­or­di­nary Lead­er­ship at Com­pa­ny X which will help us grow and evolve the vibrant pro­fes­sion­al team (I want­ed the word “community” but it isn’t my com­pa­ny) who enjoy gen­er­at­ing the tech­no­log­i­cal qual­i­ty and inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts and finan­cial results that we envi­sion by Decem­ber 2005 and beyond? Nan­cy and I helped them build a strate­gic plan to cre­ate that kind of extra­or­di­nary lead­er­ship which they are now busy implementing.

   So yes, it’s a bit “out there”, it’s “wuwu”, but it’s real. I think lead­er­ship is about cre­at­ing mys­te­ri­ous trans­for­ma­tion­al expe­ri­ences that con­firm that an orga­ni­za­tion is a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple doing great work — work that awak­ens their genius. What’s that? That’s in the next lead­er­ship ramble. 

   Jay

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