On Leadership
Chapter 3: Letting Go of Leadership
Authors: Doug Breitbart & Fabián Szulanski
In Chapter 2 we explored the dimensions and benefits of a “post-leadership” organizational paradigm, both for the organization-as-employer, and the employed, as individual human beings — awakened, acknowledged, resourceful, and valued generative contributors to the future manifestation of their organization in the world.
In this third and last chapter of this series, we will explore “how” an organization can metamorphose from being based on an industrial leadership paradigm to a leaderless version of itself.
Before diving into the transformational ingredients and steps involved, we would first like to reassure you, our reader, that we do not suffer from magical thinking, delusion, antagonism towards profit, from ignoring the imperatives of directors and shareholders, or the holy grail of next quarter’s earnings statement and Wall Street analyst expectations that currently afflict today’s leaders.
We got you. We honor and have tremendous compassion, understanding, and appreciation for leaders, and the challenges they face today. What follows is framing and orientation about how to practically go through withdrawal from a power-over paradigm, and embody a non-power-authority-control-over approach to pave the way human beings co-create together in large organizations.
There are initial assumptions, regarding the impact of the transformational process in relation to current operations, that require expressing:
To the above, we believe there are additional initial dimensions of transformation to leaderlessness that are required, which we have summarized below:
What follows is unpacking and articulation of the above, of the energized dimensions and orientations that inform the “way” human beings emergently respond to change; and what we believe is required to enable individual acceptance, contribution, ownership, and engagement with the co-creative process, and flow through the organizational transformation on an “unmanaged” basis.
Centering on Human Beings and Values
The focus must be on the human beings who comprise today’s organizations. The reawakening of the conscious connection, by and between the people comprising the organization, within themselves, each other, and the world the organization serves, is the key to unleashing generative potential, resilience, and values alignment to the organization and its purpose.
Failure to prioritize these human experiential, energetic, and spiritual dimensions, within the context of people working together, is to create an experiential vacuum, inviting fear, alienation, and disillusionment.
Instead of focusing on the who, what, where, when, and how of the generative process; attention to the “why” people engage, and the “way” people relate, and experience co-creation together, is the core of co-creation.
Values are the shared principles and standards of behavior to which individuals, teams, and organizations subscribe. They are the bedrock over which the cultural river flows. In their purest form, they are clear, clean, stable, unambiguous, sustained, honored, and evolved by all.
Shared values inform, enable and define choices, actions, collaborations, policies, decisions, and initiatives. They represent a social contract that is inclusive, voluntary, dynamic, organic, and human-centered; enabling a Values-based organization-wide, co-created, all-inclusive culture while serving as an alignment catalyst.
The evolution of today’s organizations to meet the demands of our changing world, and of its escalating challenges; is both essential and non-discretionary; and, the shift to a human being-centered, values-centered transformation is the means to that end.
Including Everybody
Reawakening the conscious connection, by and between the people within an organization to themselves, each other, and the world it serves is key to unleashing generative potential, resilience, and alignment to the organization’s purpose.
The principle of inclusion speaks to an acknowledgment of the importance of everyone being invited, valued, and recognized as contributors to the organization as a living organism. Elimination of explicit or tacit hierarchical levels of importance, or of relative value contribution equalizes and invites the benefit of true diversities of orientation, central to energizing engagement and collective contributions within the ongoing organizational evolution.
Aligning Values and Purpose
The intention underlying shared values is that they are agreed on a collective basis. There are no shades of gray. Thoughts, words, and actions are either values-aligned or not.
When organizational values are aligned, the individual and collective thoughts, words, and actions are consistent and voluntarily subscribed. Each individual is committed to, responsible for, his or her aligned choices.
When values alignment is in service to a shared purpose on an individual basis, a sense of ownership and engagement are both enabled and valued and central to floating the collective experiential boat. Connecting values with purpose is foundational to increasing organizational lift, from the bottom up, in all dimensions.
Empathizing, Caring, and Supporting
Meaningful organizational change is stress-inducing, if not actually traumatic when imposed, regardless of the best intentions of those seeking it. Even routinary structural events like C-suite revolving doors, spin-offs, mergers, and acquisitions often send disruptive (may be destructive) shockwaves throughout an organization.
In the case of transformation initiatives, these stresses can be no less severe, in spite of the “good” intentions of those seeking to promote them. Without recognition of the human emotional challenges involved; and the commitment of resources to meet the experiential needs and emotional challenges of the human beings navigating these initiatives with priority, from a place of empathy and care, the transformative initiative is doomed.
Being Transparent: Trusting and Acknowledging
Why is transparency so important; and, why is consent required?
Intrinsically, being able to be transparent requires trusting those with whom we share. True transparency requires what in today’s corporate culture would be considered radical honesty, vulnerability, and sincerity by those seeking a change or transformation.
Consistent with the say “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”; there is always a challenge or adverse circumstance that serves as the catalyst for initializing a transformation initiative. Couching everything in terms of “making it better”, in whatever context better might be, does not speak to the practical challenge being addressed.
Being honest about what the problem, question, or doubt is, regarding knowing how to address it, and the impacts it is causing is a foundational step to inviting trust, inclusion, acceptance, and engagement, in service to tackling it.
The other shoe, in this context, is acknowledging the agency of those comprising the organization; and the need to seek their acceptance of, and consent to any new course of action. Without explicitly inviting acceptance, the proposed cure is explicitly impositional, and in service to the perpetuation of a power, authority, and control-over paradigm.
It is important to remember that the piece in the middle, between the sharing of the problem, and then asking for consent to proceed with a solution, is predicated on that solution being co-created and comprised of the contributions of all people within the organization who, after being invited, choose to contribute to its formulation.
Unconditional Nourishing
Any transformation is analogous to the planting of a new seed that requires certain elements and conditions to grow. The prevailing paradigm is rooted in “resources”, usually constrained to three typical categories: man-hours, machinery, and money. This paradigm is governed by an operating principle ruled by scarcity and fear, justified as being in service to efficiency and profit.
For the transformation to successfully root and thrive, we believe that a full array of resources: financial, human, temporal, spatial, professional, cultural, social, and emotional must be provided as and when needed, without constraints, from a place of abundance, and consideration. This provisioning as nourishment of the transformation process must be prioritized over old paradigm drivers of profit and productivity.
Failure to do so explicitly projects a fundamental lack of commitment to:
Now that we have proposed the initial context’s values and characteristics required to let go of the leadership reigns, it would not be unlikely for you, the reader, to expect further elaboration of a more traditional kind: a prescription, formula, roadmap, program, framework, system, manual, or checklist of what, where, when, how, and who should begin the actual transitional process from being lead to being leaderless.
If that is what you seek, then we must refer you back to the framing above; which makes it explicit that this transformation, if properly aligned with the vision, can only be defined and determined by the people who comprise the organization, on an emergent real-time basis. This need be honored from the inception of the decision to go leaderless: that the collective will to co-create the transitional process, together, will be realized in a fundamentally unimposing, non-lead way.
The required catalytic leap is that existing leadership surrender authority, ownership, and control over decision making; and explicitly solicits everyone within the organization to step up, step in, help, and contribute.
In the absence of imposed authority, everyone is invited to figure out, by and between themselves, how they will do this.
In order to attempt this, it would be extremely important that the existing leadership actually have respect for, and trust in those they have hired to possess the awareness, consciousness, intelligence, and capacity to work together and figure it out.
We would argue, this is actually empirically already known to be true; and is proven on a daily basis, when those same employees show up for work every day, thereby sustaining the existence of the organization, as it is.
The true calling of the question for current leaders is: are they able, willing, and interested in overcoming their own fears, doubts, and worldviews that underwrite the belief that “leadership” is an absolute requirement for organizational transformation and survival?
If we were to imagine leadership successfully transcending these fears and beliefs, and deciding to proceed; the need that arises thereafter is to inquire into and discern what is needed, to assist all throughout the organization, as they navigate the brave new post-leadership world; and to support the flows of information, insights, and actions being taken, by and between the people who comprise the organization, in service to the whole, regardless of their role or function.
The proposed transformation is of the pre-existing leadership and management members of the organizational community from being projectors of authority and control into parts of a living supportive nervous system, sensing, signaling, and connecting all the other human beings — individuals and groups — that comprise the organization, on an emergent basis.
In this context, former leaders, as human beings, are invited to contribute as equals, along with all other people in the organization, in alignment with all of the essential principles outlined above, within an organization leaving leadership behind.
With this third and last chapter of our series On Leadership, we hope to have provoked an expansion of perspective regarding life beyond leadership for today’s organizations. Withdrawal of managed, power, control and projected authority from the co-created reality may well generate a vacuum of sorts, in the short term.
However, nature abhors a vacuum, and the human beings comprising the organization are both capable and welcoming of the opportunity to step up, step in, and fill that void with collective insight, innovation, and engagement, to meet the emergent needs that lie ahead if invited and given the opportunity.
Chapter 1, On Leadership -https://medium.com/@dbreitbart/on-leadership-7884bdd3573d
Chapter 2: -A Leaderless Vision -https://medium.com/@dbreitbart/on-leadership-525f82513b35
