Leading Self E-Book

Stig Zandrén

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 175

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Leading Self is about inner leadership and how all of us contribute in the leading process. The book demonstrates how current knowledge of human functioning can be applied in the leading of teams and organizations. A primary purpose is to inspire leaders and collaborators in their professional and personal development.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

AUTHOR & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

COMMENTS

on

Ledning sökes

PROLOGUE

PART I: CONTEXT

Chapter 1: Leading Self

Chapter 2: The Task

Chapter 3: The Team

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 4: Awareness

Chapter 5: Dialogue

Chapter 6: Phronesis

EPILOGUE

APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Glossary

Appendix 2: References

Appendix 3: On the FIRO Theory

AUTHOR & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Stig Zandrén

Photo: Gunnar Reinerdahl

I am an Aquarius, born in 1945, more than a decade after my three elder brothers.

My work experience started in the area of strategic planning and investment analysis for the Swedish Defense Research and for Volvo Car. In 1978, I turned into logistics and management consulting. Lars O Södahl was my boss and coach for eight years, the brain behind Asset Management – ways of thinking for raising productivity by more efficient use of capital tied-up.

In the mid 80’s, I started on my ‘second professional leg’ – human functioning, personal and leadership development. I am a qualified user of a number of concepts for personal growth, collaboration and organizational development.

My mentor was Arne Derefeldt, an early adopter of modern human resource approaches like sensitivity training, transactional analysis, mentoring and coaching. Thanks to Arne, I got in touch with William C Schutz (Will), the founder of the FIRO theory and The Human Element. Will trained and certified me as a facilitator of The Human Element.

Lars, Arne and Will have passed away. They are alive in my mind inspiring me to apply, refine and share their ideas.

I am very grateful to Dag Rudqvist, my professional companion for many years in practising and developing Wills ideas as expressed in The Human Element training. Dags interpretation of the FIRO theory in appendix 3 represents our common conclusions.

I also want to acknowledge Hans Lindberg, my editor, who continuously follows and supports my work – especially for correcting and complementing my translation and reworking of my first book, Ledning sökes, into this book.

COMMENTS onLedning sökes

A very readable book and a valuable complement to the field of leadership and leading processes. The book gives objective and scientific illustrations of many aspects of leadership and of cooperation between leaders and collaborators. The main focus is on psychosocial processes and sustainable development. Despite all the facts, the book is easy to read and pedagogical. The book is therefore suitable for courses and studies. At the same time, some sections are as inspiring, motivating and reflecting as a good sermon.

Anna Rosengren,priest and ethics consultant, Etik i arbetslivet AB

A very well written book in which Stig reflects on his experiences from his full professional life. He pays attention to Stephen Covey, Will Schutz and others. Stig also writes about the challenge of the current society, a society that finds it hard to control and with companies just waiting. We cannot wait and everyone needs to be more aware of their choices.

Per Larshans, (2012) Chief Sustainability Officer, Max Hamburgerrestauranger AB

People need a completely different type of leadership than those leaders and managers who have created the chaos that prevails in the world in 2012. Stig Zandrén’s book Ledning sökes shows in a meritorious way that the world needs leaders who think in new ways and how these ways can look like.

Håkan Lagergren, author and designer of the UID Future Map Ledning sökes is not a book for beginners in organizational psychology. It is a book for those who have read much about the subject and who want to go on with their own thoughts. Stig Zandrén gives many examples of theoretical models which function as a quick course in organizational psychology, a kind of ’psychology for dummies’, for us who do not follow the current psychological discussion. And that is good enough.

Marianne Berg,social worker and journalist, the company Ord & Handling (Word & Action)

This personally written and experience based leadership philosophy is well connected anchored in current research. It has a wide theoretical base and mirrors an optimistic attitude towards the current challenges. The personal address adds another dimension – an invitation to the reader to co-create.

Bosse Forsén,BTJ spring 2012

PROLOGUE

This book is inspired by and dedicated my great mentor, Will Schutz (1924–2002). He was a psychologist and also a scholar who managed to integrate his scientific platform with a wide range of experiential learning. I especially appreciated his ability and drive to demonstrate that human emotions and feelings are essential factors behind what is going on between us and in our organizations. He brought feelings into the open and created a unique pedagogic for training us to be aware of, accept and appreciate our emotional self. In his last book, The Human Element – Productivity, Self Esteem and the Bottom Line, Schutz made these fundamental statements about the connection between self and leadership:

At the heart of all human functioning is the self.

Best solutions to organizational and leadership issues require self-awareness as an essential first step.

Deeper self-awareness leads to self-acceptance and then self-esteem.

As individuals gain self-awareness and self-esteem, they become more open and honest with their co-workers. They redirect the energy they now use for defensiveness, withholding, and other interpersonal struggles into productive work.

After my first professional twenty years as a logistics consultant these statements became a key to my understanding of what is going on in organizations and in myself. I spent another couple of decades as a trainer of The Human Element seminars, applying and refining Will Schutz’ ideas, introducing them in different contexts, such as business, schools and peace work.

The purpose of this book is to inspire those of you who work in organizations, as leaders or co-workers, to reflect on your self and your organization, but also on people and organizations around and on human functioning in society. I have chosen to focus on the leading process, the interaction between the leader and the co-worker in groups and in specific contexts. The self and the team are assumed to have the task to improve the conditions for human functioning and community. How can we together, through leading and leadership, create good circumstances for people to improve and develop?

My starting point is the way I think, consciously and unconsciously. Which are my basic assumptions about myself, the conceptual basis for my self-esteem. Are the assumptions formed in my childhood still relevant? Are there other ways of thinking about myself that are more relevant today? What do I think of myself when approaching and being in groups?

Our basic assumptions and self-esteem guide our approaches to the outside world. Our different ways of thinking are inputs to cooperation – and they also seem to quite often create obstacles. At the same time, working together seems to be something we humans are made for. How can we create good circumstances for cooperation? How do we take responsibility for ourselves - for our thoughts, feelings and behaviors?

On the one hand, I believe that we need to rethink in order to go from the last 200 years of extraordinary development to a feasible future for human beings on this planet. Our ways of thinking determine – and also limit – our capacity to meet global challenges in relevant and efficient ways, some of the most urgent being climate change, health conditions and human rights. There is an urgent need for questioning current ways of thinking and opening up for radical rethinking.

On the other hand, I think that everyone has a great unused potential to change mindset and ways of doing things. We all have hereditary, conscious and unconscious perceptions of what is wise to do. In the last 100 years or so, knowledge of human functioning and interpersonal relating has expanded tremendously. This development of the human sciences, I find affecting the public mindsets much less than the equally expanded knowledge of technology and the natural sciences.

This book consists of two major parts: CONTEXT and DEVELOPMENT. The Context part is about the concepts of leading and leadership, task, self and team. In the Development part I share my experience and insight within three phases of a personal development process:

Becoming aware

Relating to new awareness through dialogue with yourself and others

Acting wisely on the basis of new experience and insight.

Acting wisely stands for reflecting on intentions and consequences related to our actions. Especially I want to raise the question of our responsibility for our ’backpack’ – traumas, emotional memories, and other earlier experiences which might threaten our self esteem today. The leader’s behavior has impact upon the functioning of as well the organization as the individual co-workers. In an urgent and critical situation the consequences of the leader’s hidden trauma combined with low self-esteem can be disastrous. From this point of view, I find it important and self-evident that we all explore our life experiences, enhance our self-awareness, and take responsibility for our self-esteem.

Below is a summary of ideas on leading and leadership to be found in this book. Leading and leadership are two sides of the same coin and self is the common denominator – the leader’s self and personal leadership, and the self leadership of other selves being led. Assuming free will means that all of us are free to choose how to act. How can I influence other’s choice to act – if at all?

THINK

be clear about context and the task

set up your ethical guidelines

create driving force, for instance by having a clear vision

explore your self and your organization

RELATE

know and be yourself

take responsibility for your self-esteem

be in the center of the team

be empathic

INFLUENCE

engage: release energy, competence and compassion

motivate: stimulate initiative, taking responsibility and caring

act:: be a model, turn and twist, complement the team

The ideas and suggestions in this book are not unique. My intention is to focus on ideas which I have learnt to appreciate – and invite you to try them out for yourself. I do not ask you to be instrumental and strictly follow some rules. It is when you have made yourself aware of these and other ideas, reflected on them, tried them out and made them unconscious, that you can function intuitively and relevantly as a leader and as a co-worker.

’Leading self’ is applicable to any specific context. Since many selves normally participate in the leading process – inside as well as outside the team – it is my intention to show how each of us can engage in and contribute to leading these selves. Sometimes it is ’the last drop’ which triggers change and you might be the one supplying that drop.

PART I

CONTEXT

1 LEADING SELF

1.1 Concepts and Definitions

An association of individuals needs a director, but has no place for a ’leader’. The ’anti-individual’ needed to be told what one should think; by necessity his impulses needed to be converted to craving; and these cravings to projects; he needed to be made aware of his power and this was his leader’s task. Wilhelm Röpke (in my translation)

This book is based on the idea that every human has the potential to contribute to change in the environment that one is a part of. Be it a local association, a private company, a national parliament or a global network. The personal and inner challenge for each of us is to be enough aware of situations and relate to this awareness in a wise, clever and caring manner. The external challenges, such as population growth and energy supply, bring people together in groups, companies, nation states and global networks. Managing nature and society on planet Earth concerns all human beings and the human species. In the meeting between the inner world of an individual and the external systems, responsibility and leading are two important aspects.

I want to make a distinction between leading and leadership. Leading is the process in which leadership is exercised. Leadership stands for the way in which a person leads and influences while leading stands for a process and the task to move in a certain direction. Leadership is something personal. Leading is connected to the social system – a type of management. The process of leading is based on agreements between a mandator and those committed to the management function and to the assignment of exercising their personal leadership.

Much has been written about leadership and management in modern times, especially the last 100 years. The amount of references indicates that there are as many definitions of leadership as there are authors. Lena Lid Andersson made in her thesis from 2009 an overview of the research and the literature. She found close to 15,000 books about leadership up to 2003. Content and underlying research can be differentiated into three different aspects of leadership:

the leader as a person – profile, behavior and charisma

contingency in the situation

leading as a process

Interaction between the personal leadership and the social context makes the field of leadership development complex. Henry Mintzberg argues that it is impossible to educate the leaders and also to train the leaders to to act in any organization. The most successful and admired leaders have been trained in the prevailing culture they are to act in. My current examples are IKEA’s founder Ingvar Kamprad and the late leader of Apple, Steve Jobs.

The word ’lead’ has different connotations and that is one aspect of the conceptual difficulty. To lead means 1) to be first and foremost in relation to others, 2) to be responsible for, and 3) to be the initiator of something. Especially the first meaning is problematic. To place an expert, supervisor or manager outside or above the others in a group is like controlling people by sending signals from outside to their brains.

The management function in an organization can be compared to the central nervous system of a human being and the leadership to the coordination between the neurons in the brain. Collaborators exercise leadership by following the formal leaders and also by taking initiatives when the formal leader fails or needs to be completed. There is hierarchy. In case of emergency, the central leadership takes over – in the same way as ’the reptile brain’. In a crisis situation it is often too late to include the ideas of collaborators – the frontal lobe. However, human brains and organizations can practice confronting imagined events, for instance in simulated crisis situations. A successful Swedish skier, Ingemar Stenmark, once said in an interview: ”It seems that the more I practice the more luck I have”.

An assumption in this book is that all of us in a social system have impact upon each other. Each of us has impact upon the groups we are in. I will argue that we have the ability to become aware of the power we exercise and to choose our actions. How we relate to others is a function of how we relate to ourselves. Accordingly I have a personal responsibility to explore and when needed to adapt my behavior in relation to 1) the context, 2) collaborators and other persons involved and 3) myself. No change of the personal leadership is possible unless I myself decide to change. Being able to change myself is also a necessity, if I want to control and influence others – without using physical violence. It is up to me to choose how I live up to my commitments and challenges. To stay where you are is sometimes quite pragmatic. The choice not to change is also a choice.

For the purpose of this book, I will use the concept ’dynamic leadership’ which stands for leadership behavior continuously chosen in an exchange process with the environment. It differs from ’instrumental leadership’, through which the leader normally sticks to memorized principles and previously set rules. The conditions for leadership, whether dynamic or instrumental, can be sorted under three headlines: Task, Self and Team.

These three concepts will be further defined and elaborated on.

How I think as a leader is basic. However, leadership is more than that. In line with modern brain research I see thinking as an integrated part of holistic human being, rather than, like Descartes, separate from the physical body. The psychologist Manfred Kets de Vries emphasizes the importance of the leader’s self concept and it’s influence on the environment. According to de Vries, leading is a dynamic process in the encounter between the human being and the organization. In this process leadership implies being in continuous contact with the task, the collaborators and one’s self – in thoughts as well as through feelings.

In a formal leadership assignment special skills are required, that only certain persons have. However, I think that every person influence the leading process through attitude and behavior. In the following three sections I will describe how everyone’s ability to think, relate and influence can be enhanced in the leading process.

1.2 Thinking

We develop leaders, and we develop countries. Or so we believe.

We also believe that we develop countries by developing leaders.

Perhaps we need to develop our thinking.

Henry Mintzberg

The Monroe Institute offers a recorded introduction to one of their meditation programs that further confirm the importance of thinking:

Science now knows much more about the combination of your mind, what and how you think and your actions, what you do and how well you do it. One fact stands out: if you think clearly, sharply, smoothly you will do and be far more effectively. If you direct your thinking, your thoughts, you can be whatever you so direct.

How do we actually get something done? How do we accomplish change? According to the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, wisdom comes first. He used the term phronesis, signifying ‘practical intelligence’, the ability to discern why and what to do – wisdom in action. He also asserted that phronesis is not enough. We also need to develop skills to actually do it (techne) and our ability to get results – to succeed.

There are many initiatives to contribute to a better future, and the will to change is often very strong. Methods for converting thoughts into actions are continuously being developed. Meditation, mental training, cognitive therapy, rebirthing breath-work and mindfulness are a few examples. Ways to become successful are continuously presented in management literature and by media. Most disciplines and organizations are engaged in continuous improvement and ‘world class’ programs.

There are, in my mind, two problems related to this development. As well wisdom as technological development and success courses are to a great extent driven by competition and egoism, from the reptile brain rather than from the frontal lobe. The second problem is that it is an externally controlled development, which does not enough liberate people’s internal abilities, such as curiosity, creativity and the ability to create future visions. Both these tendencies cause gaps – gaps between ethics and action, between technology and actual success.

I think of three elements, which can fill these gaps – applied ethics, visions and innovations – all three examples of how we can use knowledge and thus challenge ourselves to learn more. By ‘applied ethics’ I mean regularly reflecting on what I am doing and on what I regard as good and right to do. Good visions, well reflected upon, can be the basis for radical innovations. However, for success, a lot of sustainable work remains. The following examples show leadership through ethical, visionary, innovative and sustainable work in different contexts.

If you ask people to think of a visionary leader, the same names almost always are mentioned. Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of a non-violent liberation of India is an example, which also inspired Nelson Mandela to his vision for liberating South Africa from the apartheid. In the business world Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA) and Steve Jobs (Apple) have already been mentioned. These leaders have all acted in prevailing cultures of competition and fighting. To find examples of leadership cultures of love and care I need to go back to Confucius, Muhammad and Augustine. However, these visionaries have been interpreted in ways that have led to long and violent fightings.

An interesting combination of ethics, vision and innovation I find in Hässle, a Swedish pharmaceutical company, now a part of the Astra-Zeneca group. In this company, Ivan Östholm led development of new pharmaceuticals during three decades. Losec, a gastric ulcus medicine, has got most attention. In his book Human Leadership Håkan Lagergren interviewed Ivan Östholm.

Ethics are the principles and values used to govern actions. They are as important for an organization as for individuals. Östholm tells us:

Together we formed an environment in which it was obvious that we should develop pharmaceuticals that were good for humans with superior scientific and clinical documentation. Marketing should inform doctors on how to use our pharmaceuticals properly. A creative atmosphere was an important condition: ideas behind radical innovations are created by individuals.