Leadership Development

Individual Leadership matters, Context event more!

Over the past several months as a Leadership Consultant, it

seems, to me, that there is a lot of emphasis placed on the Leadership behaviors demonstrated by the individual. That is indeed a good starting point. Over these years I gather there are few areas on which Leadership Skills/Competencies get built:

1.     Through skills acquired that soon form into unconscious competencies.

2.     An ability to use a wider range of Leadership styles flexed for context and purpose.

3.     Purposeful creation of a work climate, which supports clarity, task focus, team spirit, flexibility, and meaningful rewards and outcomes to all involved.

4.     A learning agility and personal discipline that allows one to navigate even through ever new & ambiguous events that arise from systemic complexity.

5.     A learned optimism and feeling of control from within.

6.     A deep self-awareness of self and ‘other’ and actions that come from awareness.

7.     A deep respect for self, the other and a purpose that goes beyond.

That said, Leadership effectiveness is also a function of Context. We are after all, part of a system, and unless we grasp the dimension of the larger system, we will continue to work, ineffectively in one part of it, and unsuccessfully. All parts are ‘man made’ divisions to support analysis, but it is only through synthesis that we can hope to fully understand. A change in one part, has an impact on all of the parts, and unless we grapple with the full system (both closed and open), we at best change one problem to another (it does not go away – it simply changes it shape). We substitute one issue with another.

Context is not just ‘situation’. The context or larger system itself can create phenomena that cause an issue. Let me change that, the issue is not caused, it is perceived. That said, if we are to solve a problem (whether at an individual level, or at an interpersonal level, or at a work group level) we may need to work at the systemic level especially if we discover that at each substratum level, the issues seem to be across industries and work groups. It is systemic. Given that the individual itself, and the workgroup (consisting of individuals again), and collectivity (individuals of several sub-groups itself), are all part of the system itself, it calls for a simultaneous ability to reflect at that outside and to reflect within at once. To see the emerging Gestalt, for what it is. As J. Krishnamurthy said, 'the observer is the observed'.

An event to be understood is to be seen not just at a phenomenological level, but also at the intra-personal and inter-personal, even more at an intra-psychic level, further to that at an intra-existential level. In that, the drop falls into the ocean, or as Kabir, before he died, with great sagacity, changed his final verse to, 'the ocean falls into the drop'. Leadership then is not a journey, a search for a promised Xanadu:in fact Leadership is to be discovered within, in the wholesomeness. 

Leadership is as much about inspiring individuals and workgroups as it is about re-contextualizing. At an individual level, it will call for re-socialisation and re-culturalisation, and deeper self-awareness.

Fundamental to all of this, is what Zarathustra explained as the will to power. 

"And as the lesser surrenders to the greater, that it may

have delight and power over the least of all; so the

greatest too, surrenders and for the sake of power,

stakes itself."