…inspiring, supporting and celebrating everyday leadership that connects communities - welcome!

Earlier this year, I read a review of a book entitled “Leadership Agility” by Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs (the article was entitled “Loftier Rungs on the Leadership Ladder” by Harvey Schachter, The Globe and Mail, April 18, 2008). I have given copies to many of my coaching clients and continue to find the description of a leadership ladder encouraging.

With apologies to the book’s authors, I have yet to purchase and read the book, but would like to share the concepts I learned from The Globe and Mail review of it.

Joiner and Josephs studied over 600 managers and defined a ladder of leadership development:

Expert Level: 45% of managers were here on the bottom rung of the ladder (10% were not even on the ladder). Expert level leaders rely on subject-matter expertise and positional authority. They have a tactical and analytical orientation.

Achiever Level: 35% of managers are on this next rung where they realize that their power comes not only from their own expertise and authority but also from motivating others. By making it challenging and satisfying for others to contribute to the organization’s goals, these leaders can be highly effective in moderately complex environments.

These first two levels form 90% of today’s managers (including the 10% who didn’t even make it onto the ladder!). They operate from a mindset Joiner and Josephs call “heroic” - “they assume sole responsibility for setting the organization’s objectives, coordinating the activities of their subordinates, and managing performance”.

Post-heroic leadership contains three higher levels:

Catalyst Level: 5% of managers are on this rung. They articulate an innovative and inspiring vision, bring together and empower the right people to make the vision reality and act as facilitator. These leaders seek an open exchange of views and engagement with diverse stakeholders.

Co-Creator Level: 4% of managers are at this level where there is an understanding that everything is interdependent and a commitment to the common good. These leaders often pioneer new forms of organizations and include corporate responsibility in their bottom line. They have high emotional resilience and capacity for dialogue, collaboration and creating win-win solutions.

Synergist Level: Only 1% of managers are at this rarified level. They have an ability to collaborate with others in real-time because they can “enter fully into the moment-to-moment flow of their present experience”. The capacity to be attuned to the situation and needs of others, even in contentious and chaotic circumstances, allows these leaders to “stand in the eye of the storm”, have “synergistic intuitions”, and “transform seemingly intractable conflicts into solutions that are beneficial for all parties”.

The authors found that as leaders climb into the post-heroic levels they become more sensitive to others and can monitor their own and others’ feelings as they interact. Forty percent (40%) of these leaders had a regular meditation practice and another 10% meditated less regularly. Some reported that therapy had helped them understand their own impulses.

Why do I find these findings encouraging?

I love how a text that studied managers in business settings found that the leaders at the highest level were relying on a capacity to be present in the moment and enter into their experience fully - something that I believe strongly is true and usually associated with spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle and others.

I love that meditation, emotional attunement and self-awareness were cited as important by these leaders. This was confirmation of the value of practices that are not often associated with leadership in the business world - practices dear to my heart!

I love how the ladder is a progression from “heroic” efforts from the individual ego, to facilitation and collaboration with others, to “synergistic intuition” in the moment - what I would call connecting to higher energies and deeper ways of knowing.

Most of all, I am encouraged by what these findings point to outside the business world, and in particular in terms of community leadership. I am confident that there is a far greater proportion of synergistic leaders in the world than the 1% of managers found in this study. Why?  Because part of the journey up the leadership ladder often involves leaving the corporate world and finding other work or purpose that aligns with one’s values, beliefs and calling. Synergistic knowing in the moment-to-moment flow prompts people to follow deeper impulses - in Tolle’s terms to want to add positivity to the world and avoid creating negativity. I suspect these leaders are all around us - maybe you are one of them?

I’m curious what you might have to add synergistically to these thoughts - please share with us below!

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Leadership, truth…sometimes, the mainstream media community surprises me…

A few months ago, by wife and I got rid of our cable TV. Why? We were finding that there was seldom anything on that we felt was really worthwhile watching during the fairly limited opportunities we had to watch. (Sidebar: we haven’t missed it at all!).

In addition to reading more with the time we may have watched TV, we have started to watch more DVD movies. You might guess that we’re not generally in for the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Instead, we usually head for the “road less travelled” at the video store.

A couple of days ago, Fiona came home with a movie that we didn’t recall hearing about called The Great Debaters, released on Christmas Day 2007.

Because we haven’t generally heard much about the movies that we rent, it’s always sort of an adventure to watch them - sometimes you win, other times not so much.

As we started to watch this movie though, my expectations were heightened from the very beginning when I discovered that Oprah Winfrey had co-produced it, and Denzel Washington both directed it and played the leading role (the professor).

It didn’t disappoint. Have a look at the trailer (2:30) to get a sense of what the movie’s about.

Why am I telling you about this? Here’s why:
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