Building the Bridge As You Walk On It E-Book

Robert E. Quinn

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: J-B US non-Franchise Leadership
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 414

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Building the Bridge As You Walk On It tells the personal stories of people who have embraced deep change and inspired author Robert Quinn to take his concept one step further and develop a new model of leadership--"the fundamental state of leadership." The exploration of this transformative state is at the very heart of the book. Quinn shows how anyone can enter the fundamental state of leadership by engaging in the eight practices that center on the theme of ever-increasing integrity--reflective action, authentic engagement, appreciative inquiry, grounded vision, adaptive confidence, detached interdependence, responsible freedom, and tough love. After each chapter, Quinn challenges you to assess yourself with respect to each practice and to formulate a strategy for personal growth.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Praise

Title Page

Copyright Page

Preface

A NEW APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP

ABOUT THIS BOOK

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dedication

PART ONE - An Invitation to the Fundamental State of Leadership

CHAPTER ONE - Building the Bridge As You Walk On It

THE ORIGINS OF THIS BOOK

THE BACKGROUND

OBJECTIVE ONE: HELPING PEOPLE WHO ARE ASSIGNED TO LEAD CHANGE

OBJECTIVE TWO: PROVIDING A NEW LANGUAGE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY ENGAGED IN TRANSFORMATION

OBJECTIVE THREE: HELPING INDIVIDUALS TO TRANSFORM THEMSELVES AND OTHERS

CHAPTER TWO - The Fundamental State of Leadership

ROBERT’S STORY

THE NORMAL STATE

THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

BECOMING ALIGNED WITH THE DYNAMIC UNIVERSE

CHAPTER THREE - Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership

GAIL’S STORY

THE IMPACT OF ENTERING THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

THE REST OF THE STORY

THE BONDING POWER OF THE UNIQUE SELF

BECOMING WHAT YOU BEHOLD AND BEHOLDING WHAT YOU BECOME

CHAPTER FOUR - Personal Revitalization

GETTING REVITALIZED

THE MYTH OF THE RUTHLESS HERO

BRINGING NEW VITALITY TO EVERY AREA OF LIFE

CHAPTER FIVE - Becoming More Aware and Authentic

EXPANDED AWARENESS AND GREATER AUTHENTICITY

SEVEN LESSONS IN EXPANDED AWARENESS

CHAPTER SIX - Transforming Others by Transforming Self

THE RESISTANT ORGANIZATION

ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION AS AN EMERGENT PROCESS

ORGANIZATIONS ARE TRANSFORMED WHEN WE TRANSFORM OURSELVES

THREE GENERAL STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTING CHANGE IN HUMAN SYSTEMS

A FOURTH STRATEGY

CHAPTER SEVEN - A New View of Leadership

TRANSCENDING THE USUAL CATEGORIES

SUCCEEDING WITHOUT BEING THERE

WHEN CATEGORIES MELT

SEEING THROUGH MULTIPLE LENSES

FOUR WAYS TO SEE LEADERSHIP

MOVING ON

PART TWO - Eight Practices for Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership

CHAPTER EIGHT - Reflective Action

A MONK’S TALE

REFLECTIVE ACTION

PRACTICING REFLECTIVE ACTION

ENTERING THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

CHAPTER NINE - Authentic Engagement

TRANSCENDING OUR SELF-DECEPTIONS

WHAT HAPPENED?

AUTHENTIC ENGAGEMENT

SELF-DECEPTION AND AUTHENTIC ENGAGEMENT IN THE EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE

ENTERING THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

CHAPTER TEN - Appreciative Inquiry

ASKING A TRANSFORMATIONAL QUESTION

APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY

A RADICAL APPLICATION

A SEARCH FOR MY BEST SELF

ENTERING THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

CHAPTER ELEVEN - Grounded Vision

FINDING THE BREAD AND SALT

GROUNDED VISION

A CEO FINDS A VISION

ENTERING THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

CHAPTER TWELVE - Adaptive Confidence

A WOMAN WITH PURPOSE

ADAPTIVE CONFIDENCE

MONITORING OUR HYPOCRISY

THE CAPACITY TO LEARN IN REAL TIME

THE REST OF THE STORY

ENTERING THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Detached Interdependence

POLARITIES

DETACHED INTERDEPENDENCE

MOVING TOWARD DETACHED INTERDEPENDENCE

REACHING DETACHED INTERDEPENDENCE

ENTERING THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Responsible Freedom

A CASE OF PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE

RESPONSIBLE FREEDOM

THE DAILY PRACTICE OF RESPONSIBLE FREEDOM

ENTERING THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Tough Love

FINDING LOVE WHERE WE LEAST EXPECT IT

TOUGH LOVE

TOUGH LOVE AT THE TOP

TOUGH LOVE AT OTHER LEVELS

ENTERING THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

PART THREE - Developing Leaders

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - The Stages of Self-Change

A WOMAN WHO KNOWS

THE PROCESSES THAT PRECEDE SELF-CHANGE

FURTHER INSIGHTS

ENTERING THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Inviting Others into the Fundamental State of Leadership

THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP IS EPISODIC

TRANSFORMATIONAL TEACHING

ATTRACTING OTHERS INTO THE FUNDAMENTAL STATE OF LEADERSHIP

The Author

References

Index

Praise forBuilding the Bridge As You Walk On It

“Prepare yourself for a journey into intellectual, emotional, and spiritual integrity—a journey that will span the remaining course of one’s life.”

—Allen C. Bluedorn, author, The Human Organization of Time

“Bob Quinn makes exquisite use of real-life experiences in such a way that his book is engaging as well as profound. It speaks to me directly.”

—Ricardo B. Levy, founder and chairman of the board, Catalytica Energy Systems, Inc.

“This book is not about superheroes, but about how each one of us has the power to create positive change—if only we are willing to see and step into our own capabilities.”

—Sim B. Sitkin, director, Fuqua-Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics, Duke University

“For someone who has struggled for twenty-five years with change, personally and professionally—as an internal change agent, external consultant, and academic—Building the Bridge As You Walk On It provides a profound integration of the self/other/organizational contexts and a timely reminder that all change is self-change.”

—Mike McGrath, vice president of consulting services, Executive Development Associates

“I picked up Building the Bridge on a gray, rainy California morning thinking I would peruse a few pages before a nap. I laid the manuscript down only when the last page had been turned many hours later. No nap! Instead a bright awakening to insight and wisdom regarding leadership that Robert Quinn lucidly structures through stories carefully paired with precise conceptualization.”

—André L. Delbecq, Thomas J. and Kathleen L. McCarthy University Professor, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

“Quinn details the practices to follow in the journey towards the fundamental state of leadership. Leaders of corporations, governments, nonprofits, community action, families, academic departments—all find resonance with this book!”

—Laurie N. DiPadova-Stocks, founding director, Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement, Northern Kentucky University

“This book provides a guide for change that leaders at all levels of the organization can understand and use. More important, it will help them become people who really like themselves. Because they live and act from principle, they will not have to worry about the craziness of organizations and life.”

—Lloyd Baird, director, the Leadership Institute, Boston University

“With more and more people reading this book, the notion of resistance to change may gradually fade. Quinn’s attractive concept of positive deviancy is not only an antidote to resistance but a way of thinking and acting that embraces change.”

—W. Warner Burke, Edward Lee Thorndike Professor of Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

“Effective leadership is crucial for successful organizational change, but the person as leader is often ignored in discussions of change. This wonderful book places the person of the leader front and center. It invites, encourages, and inspires its readers to find in themselves the leadership of which they are capable.”

—Jean M. Bartunek, professor of organization studies, Boston College

“This book highlighted for me that leadership is an endogenous development, not an exogenous event. The most effective leaders are those whose who remain coachable themselves, and focus on developing themselves.”

—Bert Whitehead, author, Facing Financial Dysfunction: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things With Money

“If you or your family or your organization are in pain, and you want the pain to stop but it won’t, read this moving, action-oriented book.”

—Bill Torbert, author, Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership

“Robert Quinn’s book is fascinating, I wish its valuable insights had been available to me when I led a major bank. It is so easy to glide along in your comfort zone. I was particularly taken by the quote ‘real leadership is about moving forward in faith, and doing so requires both head and heart.’”

—Jack Hoag, director, First Hawaiian Bank and BancWest Corp.

Copyright © 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Quinn, Robert E., 1948-

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7879-7112-X (alk. paper)

1. Leadership. 2. Executive ability. 3. Organizational change. I. Title.

HD57.7.W56 2004

658.4’092—dc22

2003027454

Preface

A book emerges as an author attempts to meet the challenges of life. This book takes root in many contextual patterns but two are of particular note. The first concerns my experiences at the University of Michigan.

During the past few years at the Michigan Business School, I have been involved in a movement. My colleagues Kim Cameron, Jane Dutton, and Gretchen Spreitzer and I have been facilitating the emergence of a new field that we call positive organizational scholarship. This field brings together scholars who focus their research on that which is unusually positive in organizational life. They seek to understand not ordinary patterns of organizing but patterns of positive deviance, that is, behavior at the far right of the normal curve. It is behavior of extraordinary positive impact.

The Positive Organizational Scholarship group meets regularly to discuss key questions, and we participate in research presentations and in larger conferences. Recently we finished the first book on the topic (Cameron, Dutton, and Quinn, 2003). We have also organized a research center. In all of this activity, we have been focused on the question, What gives rise to extraordinary patterns of positive organizing? The question consumes my interest.

During this time, another contextual pattern was also unfolding. For thirty years, I have maintained one foot in the world of research and one foot in the world of action. During this time, I have been trying to both study and create more positive patterns of organizing, and as I have done so, it has become clear that some notions are more important than others.

One key notion is the fact that entropy—the dissipation of energy, slow death—operates on both the human ego and the organizational culture. Individuals and organizations are continually pulled toward entropy. This happens while individuals and organizations deny that their decisions are taking them individually and collectively toward slow death. Denial takes place because people are terrified of remedy. The remedy is to make deep change. No one ever wants to make deep change because that means letting go of control. This book is about how real people find the courage to make deep change.

This book is the third in a trilogy on the process of helping individuals and organizations to make deep change. The first book was Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within (1996). The second book was Change the World: How Ordinary People Can Accomplish Extraordinary Results (2000). When I published Deep Change, the book started slowly and then took off. It very gradually became one of the publisher’s all-time best-sellers. This meant that Deep Change was a word-of-mouth book: people read it and then recommended it to others. Some of the readers wrote to me. They liked the book because it helped them in engaging in the very difficult process of making personal and organizational change. They told me how they used the concepts to navigate a personal crisis or to lead the transformation of their organization. These were usually potent episodes. The publication of Change the World in 2000 stimulated still more readers to share their reactions.

In 2002, the publisher asked me to update and revise Deep Change. I agreed and began the revision project. Then a surprise occurred: the revision became an entirely new book. The new book emerged because I ended up listening to some very special people. I contacted the people who had written me those original letters, and I asked them to write a full account of what happened when they used Deep Change to make deep change. They shared cases ranging from very personal transformations to the transformation of major organizations. Every case was intimate, candid, rich, inspiring, and instructive.

Each person spoke of significant outcomes. One example comes from a man you will meet later. For four years, he worked at the head of his organization and thought of himself as a leader. Then he experienced a crisis that led him to make a deep personal change. Afterward he wrote of the impact on his organization: “I have a critical mass of individuals from both the staff and board who are willing to look at our challenges in a new way and work on solutions together. At our meetings, new energy is present. What previously seemed unimaginable now seems to happen with ease. I sometimes wonder why it seems so easy, why we now have such a positive culture.”

He wonders why his organization that was once quite ordinary is now extraordinary. Then he goes on to answer his own question. The answer defies what is written in almost all textbooks on management and leadership. It defies common understanding and practice. It is a promising answer in that it suggests that every one of us has the capacity to transform our organizations into more positive, productive communities like his. Yet it is a painful answer that almost no one wants to hear. That is why it is not in the books on management and leadership. Painful answers have no market. The man states: “I know it all happened because I confronted my own insecurity, selfishness, and lack of courage.”

In that seemingly illogical and impossible sentence is the essence of this book. From the many people who read and applied Deep Change, we learned many lessons, but this one is most central. We can transform our organizations by transforming ourselves. This is one of the central answers to the question asked among my colleagues: What gives rise to patterns of positive organizing?

A NEW APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP

This book provides an approach to leadership that is derived from the reports of people like the man I referred to. The central argument is that most of us, no matter how high or low our position, spend most of our time in the normal life state. In this state, we tend to be comfort centered, externally driven, self-focused, and internally closed. Yet it is possible for anyone, no matter how high or low their position, to enter the extraordinary state which I call the fundamental state of leadership. In this state, we become results centered, internally directed, other-focused, and externally open.

When we enter the fundamental state of leadership, we become a distortion to the social system in which we reside. We are a new signal to which others must respond. In this sense, we become creators of a new order. We become a stimulant of positive organizing or the emergence of a more productive community. The man who thought he was a leader captures the phenomenon. He entered the fundamental state of leadership, and his organization changed. It was at that point that he became a leader indeed.

His personal transformation gave rise to positive organizing, to a more productive community. He suddenly had a critical mass of people who saw things in a new way. They were more willing to join together and produce innovative initiatives. They were more energized. Seemingly impossible accomplishments began to happen in an effortless way. Leading suddenly became easy. That effortless accomplishment was born of agonizing change. In this book, you will learn how to enter the fundamental state of leadership.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

This book presents a radical, inductive, and applied theory of leadership. Radical means returning to the root or foundations of a thing. The foundation of leadership is not thinking, behavior, competencies, techniques, or position. The foundation of leadership is who we are—our identity or foundational state. When people alter their interior world, they also alter their exterior world. As we come to understand this fundamental framework, our understanding of leadership is radically altered.

Inductive means we build the theory not from abstract numbers but from the actual observation of people who are transforming. These are not normal people living in the middle of the normal curve. These are people who are temporarily at the far right end of the curve. These are positive deviants. A theory derived from such observation will not be a normal theory of leadership but a unique theory that does not derive from the identification of normal patterns.

Applied means we are focusing on the how. We are providing an approach that tells people what they can do if they want to radically alter and improve the groups within which they reside.

The book is divided into three parts. Part One introduces the stories of some of the people who read Deep Change and then made deep change themselves. The stories are intimate, compelling, and transformational. To read them is to be inspired. Across the stories, we see important patterns. The stories help us to come to an alternative view of leadership. I thank these incredible people for their marvelous contributions.

In Part Two, we journey even further from the realm of normal leadership thinking and move to a more dynamic and complex view of leadership. In doing so, we explore eight unusual concepts that are presented as practices that can help us enter the fundamental state of leadership. To illustrate the eight disciplines, I have drawn cases from Change the World: How Ordinary People Can Achieve Extraordinary Results and Letters to Garrett: Stories of Change Power and Possibility. In this sense, this book contains the best of three books.

In Part Three, we turn from the emphasis on changing ourselves to how we can best learn to help others change. We approach the question from the point of view of helping others that we associate with entering the fundamental state of leadership. We then approach the question from the point of view of education and training. How do we teach people in a classroom to enter the fundamental state of leadership?

At the end of each chapter are a variety of tools, including sets of questions that can be used for reflection or discussion, designed to help readers make progress. It is my hope that they will help readers to construct a radically more positive world.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people have helped along the way with this book. John Bergez has been extraordinary as a developmental editor, and Kathe Sweeney has been a most supportive editor. Pauline Farmer has worked tirelessly on the manuscript. Many colleagues, students, and family members have contributed opinions. Horst Abraham, Susan Ashford, Kim Cameron, Jeff DeGraff, Jane Dutton, Bill Leigh, Ryan Quinn, Shauri Quinn, Shawn Quinn, Gretchen Spreitzer, Anjan Thakor, Karl Weick, and many others have made contributions that have shaped my thinking. I am particularly grateful to those wonderful people who have made deep change and then had the courage to share their own stories. Those stories are gifts to help each of us more frequently enter the fundamental state of leadership.

Ann Arbor, Michigan

February 2004

Robert E. Quinn

Dedicated to Kim Cameron, Jane Dutton, and Gretchen Spreitzer. Thank you for spending so much time in the fundamental state of leadership. You have thus made it possible for me to live in the flourishing of a productive community.

PART ONE

An Invitation to the Fundamental State of Leadership

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

—RALPH WALDO EMERSON

In 1996, I published a book entitled Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within. The premise of the book was that anyone can be a leader of change, but to do so requires the transformation of self. Some readers shared their reactions and described how the book helped them in their own journeys into deep change. They usually also described the profound impact those journeys had on their own lives, the lives of the people around them, and the systems and organizations of which they were a part.

In reading their stories, I began to notice some shared characteristics. Analyzing these characteristics led me to develop new model of leadership. I began to think of leadership not as behaviors and techniques but as a state of being. Leadership is first about what we are. I call the new model the fundamental state of leadership.

Seeing leadership in this new fashion also helped me to conceptualize practices that can help people more frequently enter the fundamental state of leadership. These practices, in turn, led to radically new proposals for how we can develop leadership in ourselves and others. These three notions—what the fundamental state of leadership is, the practices that can help us enter that state, and the implications for leadership development—are, respectively, the subjects of the three parts of this book.

As the book unfolds, the fundamental state of leadership will take on increasingly precise meaning. We begin, however, where my own journey began—with the stories of people who have had the courage to embrace deep change. Each of these stories illustrates a facet of the fundamental state of leadership and its impact. Read these stories attentively and receptively. Each of them is about someone who has entered the creative state. Each is a story that illustrates the truth of Emerson’s statement: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

CHAPTER ONE

Building the Bridge As You Walk On It

“I decided to acknowledge my fears and close off my exits. Suddenly, my workplace became a place filled with people doing their best to either avoid deeper dilemmas or face them and grow. The previous importance of titles and roles began to melt away before my eyes.... My own change of perspective led me to see a new organization without having changed anyone but myself.”