The Leader as Orchestra Conductor.
'The conductor, often referred to as the orchestra 'leader', does not play a musical instrument, nor sing an aria; He does not recite lines; he appears in no chorus or ballet. He does none of those things. Indeed, for want of the talents they require, he could not do any of those things. Yet he renders an indispensible service. He draws out the gifts of others; he coordinates, motivates, inspires; quietly and almost unnoticed, he makes the entire production happen. Such a picture of leadership should perhaps find an analogue in the administrative decision making processes..'
- Robert T. Kennedy 'Shared Responsibility in Ecclesial Decision Making'
The leader as conductor of an orchestra is an excellent metaphor that has been explored in many books.
James Jeffery, a journalist, recently wrote about his experience in conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Read these extracts and recognise in a conductor, the qualities of the authentic Leader in any field.
'When you’re conducting...part of what you’re having to do is process everything in as close to real time as you possibly can. You have to both process the now, what’s going on right when you’ve heard it; and the things that are constantly getting further in the past, making decisions whether there are things that need to be referred to, whether it’s something you can do the next time, whether it’s something you need to stop on, whether there’s a particular player or section that has a problem and if they need your attention visually while the music is still going on. And then you’re constantly aware of what is coming so you can be prepared to make the gestures that allow that music to happen.
'So there’s this almost field theory way of looking at time, where you don’t just exist in the now, you exist in the present, past and future simultaneously.
'It’s about creating an environment in which everybody feels not only that they can give their best but that they can take chances. Great things don’t happen without people really trying to take chances.
'Part of your job is to make it so that the musicians have the best chance collectively to engage with the music and to get better as a group as (well as) they possibly can — so you’re also kind of involved in cognitive psychology. What is it that allows people to do their best, how do they perceive information and take it in, what amount can you give things, what’s the best way to handle the group dynamic at any particular moment?
'What [orchestra members] respond to most is trust. I’ll be honest, none of [the orchestra members] trusted you at all. It had nothing to do with the way you were moving your arms, it was the terror in your eyes, the ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here?”....While we were instinctively able to follow your arm movements, we knew instinctively that you were not to be trusted.
'If you look back in history at the sort of figures conductors cut, you look at Bernstein, you look at (Herbert) von Karajan, walking around with cashmere jackets draped over their shoulders, walking in as if they owned, well, they did own the place. The way they walk into the rehearsal affects the way we start to play.
'The hardest thing for a conductor to do is to have the conviction of their beliefs, to tell 100 people in front of them, who know the music inside out, that their way is correct. That is why they have such thick skin, and why they’re paid so much more money, because they have to believe it, make us believe it, and make the audience believe it. And that’s what they’re there for, otherwise it’s a committee.
'In a sense, the complexities of conducting equal the complexities of communication between people....There’s a certain point at which you become like Wittgenstein — ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ At the same time, Laurie Anderson quite correctly in her response to that says, ‘But can you point at it?’ So there is a sense in which you try to bring out the ineffable, but you’re not able to do it, so you just point at it.'
Decision Making Force Multipliers.
'The only real power a manager has is to call a meeting.'
- Anonymous
A decision maker needs at least one of five things if her decision is to achieve its intended result:
- Time
- Positional Power
- Expertise
- Information
- Luck
She improves the likelihood of success by increasing any of them.
She can compensate for deficiencies in any of them by increasing one of the others.
Find more time, earn a promotion, learn more skills, attend more meetings...carry more good luck charms.
Or she could become a manager.
A manager should only use her positional power to gather the right people around her and to harness their time, expertise and access to information as force multipliers of her own capacities - or deficiencies - in each.
Or she could engage a consultant to use his time and rely on her positional power to gather information and expertise, and present her with the results.
The decisions she makes are the product of her hard work and skill in selecting, supporting - and getting out of the way of - those people as they do their work on her behalf. Phew. That's the labour of management.
Given the unique skills, trust and self-confidence this approach demands of a manager, any wonder that so many rely solely on their positional power - and the exclusive access it gives them to information - as the basis for their decision making.
Monks Do What Monks Do.
'We monks should do what monks do. Here.'
- Abbot Placid Spearritt, Sixth Abbot of New Norcia
New Norcia needed 12 million dollars to maintain its heritage buildings.
One of my jobs was to help the monks to fund it.
The businessman was offering us lots of money in return for the use of the New Norcia brand to market his product.
'I'll need to take it to the brethren of course,' the Abbot said after I'd briefed him. 'I should warn you that I'll be voting against it. The proposal doesn't fit with our European, Aboriginal or Monastic heritage. I also need to be mindful not to distract the brethren away from their prayers. There are plenty of worthy tourist icons that could do with the money. As for us, we monks should do what monks do. Here.'
The Abbot of a Benedictine Monastery, the Air Officer Commanding Western Australia, the Chief of the Defence Force; each had clarity of Purpose - their Widget - to guide them when faced with a right-versus-right decision.
Monks seek God - therefore they pray. Yet they interrupt their prayer to find Him in each visitor to their monastery.
The Air Officer Commanding WA seeks to develop positive relationships with the local civilian community to ensure its support of his jets screaming over its homes - therefore he allows families onto his Air Force Base to cool off in the taxpayer funded swimming pool built to to train military jet pilots to survive a ditching into the ocean.
The Chief of the Defence Force seeks to defend Australia and her interests - therefore he deploys forces beyond our shores.
Teachers should teach.
Doctors should heal.
Bakers should bake.
Leaders of the above - principals, medical directors, bakery owners - should create the space and hire managers to keep it free of distractions from teaching or healing or baking.
Decision makers and their advisers faced with right versus right decisions should ask themselves: What's my Widget? Which decision will build it?
Good decision making begins with Widget clarity. Knowing where we want to be helps us to focus our time and attention, and that of those who support us, on making decisions that get us there.
The Abbot did approve another proposal - the New Norcia Abbey Ale. 'Monks have always brewed beer,' he said.
What I Learned From Invading Australia.
We were outgunned, outnumbered and surrounded.
We were attacking Australia.
We were winning.
'I need to lodge small groups of special forces soldiers at various points on the Australian coast,' the Kamarian Commander of 311 Raider Battalion briefed me. 'I want to hide them beneath the decks of fishing vessels that will drop them off without the vessels being intercepted by the Australians. Can I fly the Mussorian flag on them under International Law?'
'Yes Sir. It's called a 'Ruse of War. It's legitimate. Your only obligation is to lower the flag and raise our Kamarian flag if we are discovered and need to defend ourselves. Your biggest risk of interception is by fisheries inspection officers so don't display any fishing gear.' It was much more fun being legal adviser to the bad guys on military exercises.
Following the sabotage and destruction of military and civilian infrastructure across the north of Australia by unknown foreign military elements, the Australian government responded. It suspended the right of innocent passage. No vessel, including ours operating under false flags, could transit Australian terrotorial waters. The Commander asked me for my advice.
'Declare victory, Sir,' I said.
$13 Billion of trade that came through Australia's northern waters annually was halted.
Australia's response to the threat of three civilian fishing vessels and a handful of commandos had self-inflicted billions of dollars of damage to its economy. Much more than the weapons of the armed forces of the mythical tiny island state of Kamaria could ever have done.
The first job of a Leader is to Create the Space.
Boundaries should be liberating catalysts for creativity.
Be generous and discerning in the size of space you create for people - in agreements, rules, policies, practice.
Once you limit the horizon, you have to patrol it. You have to enforce it. You have to mend it. You have to justify it.
You will add to the $250 Billion Australia already spends each year on compliance.
You will constrain and restrict innovation and cause other unforeseen damage.
You can be sure that each person down the hierarchy will define the operating space even smaller for their people.
If someone exploits your generous boundaries - breaks a rule, abuses your trust - be careful not to respond by drawing the lines in tighter. You'll catch more than the stray in your net.
If they breach the boundary again - don't shoot.
Instead, invite them to leave your space and create their own.
Invite them to be a Leader.
Leave the Idiot Work to the Idiots.
'Leave the idiot work to the idiots.'
A bishop's answer when asked to define Subsidiarity - so the story goes.
The blunt interpretation is proof that even the noblest values can be demeaned and misappropriated.
Subsidiarity is the principle that says a decision should be made at the lowest appropriate level.
Subsidiarity allows each person their dignity.
It is a principle of social justice that, while used by the Roman Catholic Church, is wrongly attributed to it (and therefore possibly ignored!) It predates the Church and has universal application to good decision making. Its universality is demonstrated in the fact that it is part of the Treaty on European Union.
'Subsidiarity' stems from the Latin subsidies, which means 'help, assistance'. And here, as with all good ideas, is where it goes wrong.
The person who is interested in power, practices subsidiarity by choosing what power to delegate to those below him in the hierarchy. To him, subsidiarity is throwing crumbs from the decision making table. This apparent act of generosity and power sharing upon which most organisations operate has its sinister side. The person receiving the crumbs becomes dependent on the person throwing them.
The other version of where subsidiarity comes from is subsidiaries, which means 'of or belonging to the reserves'. In the Roman army, the reserves waited in the rear in case the front line army needed them to overcome a superior enemy. The reserve army did not initiate action, it waited to be called up. It strengthened, reinforced and perfected an act already begun.
In good decision making, subsidiarity presumes that a person should be left to make their own decisions - even 'wrong' ones - without interference from a superior authority. That 'superior' authority can be in a family, a community, an organisation, a state, or the world.
A person will concede part of their individuality as part of their membership of one of those groups. They may also concede some of their decision making authority. But only to the extent necessary to benefit the whole, from which they benefit.
If the authority that the person has conceded as part of their membership of the group is exercised 'beyond the necessary', then the group begins to destruct. The reason is that the person is unable to exercise the talents that they have brought to the group. As the group can only define itself by its works - the sum of each person's talents - then the loss of part of those talents means that the group is not able to function.
In short - subsidiarity requires that each person has as much autonomy and responsibility as possible, and as much control or intervention by a higher authority as necessary.
Individual initiative should only be limited where it is absolutely unavoidable.
The benefit of subsidiary to the higher authority is that it can focus with greater freedom and energy and effectiveness to tasks belonging to it, and to which it alone can accomplish.
Ironically, subsidiarity is one of the reasons to have a higher authority. Such authority exists to create the space to enable people to discover their potential. If the higher authority moves into that space then it contradicts its reason for being. If the boss starts interfering - for well meaning or other reasons - in the decisions and actions of the workers, the boss isn't doing his job.
The higher authority assists by removing obstacles to the person that the person can't remove themselves, or that are otherwise more effectively removed by the higher authority so that the person can focus on their core business.
A Leader practises subsidiarity when they create the space; when they define the purpose and invite the right person to stretch their potential towards it; when they equip the person with the tools that they need to leverage their talents, when they affirm without intervention, when they retreat...
Sadly, it is a perversion of subsidiarity that is most commonly practised. It is that a worker starts as an empty vessel - a human resource. The worker is loaded with information and authority and power by the boss to the extent that the boss feels necessary. The boss adds or removes that cargo as he thinks fit. The boss sets that vessel adrift, attached to a rope.
In short - the worker's power only exists in as much as it has been given to him by the boss. This is what most people mean by 'delegation'.
A healthy organisation recruits people who have existing talents that the organisation needs. It then lets them get on with the job. The boss's job is to remove the obstacles.
And stay out of the way.
Challenge Them Into the Future.
Dr Fiona Wood, AM is one of the world's leading plastic surgeons who specialises in burns patients. Earlier this year she was interviewed about what she had learned from her surgical research and practice about Good Decision Making and Leadership.
She started where all Leadership and Good Decision Making begins - the Widget - or 'purpose' as Dr Wood described it:
'I think decision making is something that you have to really take on - I was almost going to say a level of aggression - but a level of purpose might be a better term. Because you have to make a decision. There is someone in front of you that needs your help - you have to make a decision.
Dr Wood acknowledged that decision making is cumulative - that each decision informs the next:
'That decision may not be right – you have to take that. You have to understand that the decision you've made, the action you've taken, has led to then making the next decision. Sometimes it will be right, sometimes wrong. You've just got do deal with it with a level of purpose. And so you bring to the table all your experience - the knowledge that brought you to that point. And it's a question really of visualising the outcome.'
Her Widget focus is paramount in her thinking, and relies on the systems that have been developed to support it:
'I see this individual....If you meet me as a professional you're having a bad day. So they are damaged, and now I want to use everything in my power, in our systems that we work in, in our systems and the knowledge that is out there to make their path to the outcome the very best it can be.'
Even though in each operation she is focussed on the person before her on that day, she maintains her disciplined focus on a more strategic Widget. Each patient illuminates the path to her Widget, yet in such a way that nether the immediate needs of her patient, or the longer term Widget journey is compromised:
'And the outcome that I've visualised for many, many years is scarless healing. We've changed the goalpost. We've inched doggedly there...are we there all the time? Absolutely not. But we're making progress. So it's visualising that outcome and making every play such that you can move it closer to that outcome day by day. And it's learning. It's always taking the blinkers off and learning so that whatever the decisions you've made today, you make sure that you make better ones tomorrow. And that has been actually an entrenched coping strategy to make sure that you critically analyse the work of today to make sure that tomorrow is better.'
Dr Wood's focus does not mean that she is blind to other new information that can serve her Widget:
'I see people out there that do nanotechnology, or genetics or all sorts of different things - psychology, neuroscience and they've got parts of my jigsaw. I need to get parts of that jigsaw and bring it in to play here. And therefore you have to make decisions on lots of different levels. But when you pare that all away you look at the person in front of you, you've got to get the removal of the dead tissue without them bleeding out such that you can repair them the best you can with today's technology such that you set them up for the best outcome.'
Her Widget focus allows her to quickly engage a surgical team with the needs of each patient:
'I teach my guys: As you walk in you make sure you connect with everybody in the room and if there's people you've never seen before you write everything on the board that you're going to do. You should not be making the decisions while you're doing it. You should have visualised it - you go in knowing what you're going to do and knowing your escape routes. So all of that has to be in your mind. And you have to see the landscape. What is it that you've got to work with in terms of your human resources - and engage them. Make sure they understand what you're trying to do and feel the passion - feel that for that period of time the only focus is for that individual. And that's a really important part of the whole. Engaging everyone.'
Dr Wood explained how the path towards the Widget is a meandering one, and that we should not measure our progress on the result of one decision alone:
'The outcomes have got to get better every day. And it's not linear. I don't live in an environment where every day that passes your chance of survival increases. It's not linear - it's a roller coaster. The waves of infection come relentlessly over, unless we've completely sealed - the person weakens and weakens and weakens. A third of the patients who don't survive will survive somewhere around three months. And they're hard days.'
Dr Wood affirmed Step 1: Step Back as being important in good decision making:
'We have this concept that 'Oh, it's macho to keep going'. But it isn't macho to keep going if your performance falls away. And so for a long, long time I've been very aware of people around me and trying to work out who needs to be rotated out...and so it's having that awareness and as I've got older, I don't stay in and so part of it is rotating yourself out, so that it becomes acceptable....
Dr Wood's ideas on leadership are consistent with Creating the Space and Defining the Purpose and inviting people into that space and using the focus on the Purpose as vehicles to reach their potential:
'I think leadership…Vision...is really interesting. Because I believe that everybody can dream. I think leadership is giving people permission to dream. Because I think if you take the time to listen to people you'd be amazed at what they dream. And then you encompass that dream into a vision.'
Yet always the laser Widget focus:
'I saw a child in 1985 and it changed my life. I thought 'That child is so badly injured from a cup of coffee?' We've got to be able to do better. I've carried that photograph around with me for a long time.'
Dr Wood addressed the potential for conflict between Widget focus and learning where we are in relation to our Widget, and the need to get the day-to-day work done. She described the importance of being disciplined in routine and preparation in order to be creative:
'What we want to be is innovative problem solvers but we want to generate outcomes on a regular basis. In every field of endeavour that is a conflict - on the surface of it. But when you start to dig a little bit deeper… I indicated that it is not appropriate to be making decisions about where you cut when it's right there in front of you. You've made those decisions previously. You've visualised. you've gone to the table - whatever table it is - with your outcome in mind and understanding the opportunities you've got to get there. So there’s an element of planning almost on the run all the time. It's getting into the habit.'
She affirmed the idea that good decision making is being confident enough about what you know, to be attentively curious about what you don't:
'What is it that I bring to the table? What's my experience? What's my knowledge? The lawyers do it all the time with precedent, looking back at old cases. Get into the habit that it's always ticking over. Questioning the landscape. And I think underpinning that is a fundamental belief that today is not as good as it gets. Not in that you criticise today. It's not bad. It's the best it can be - today.'
Dr Wood's approach to learning is to seek out feedback. She goes beyond a healthy belief in relying on the power of complaints to provide it. In fact, why wait for a complaint to inform you, and assume that if there is none that you are doing okay? She advocates declaring your understanding of your Widget to the world and inviting it to comment:
'As you've finished, as you've closed up and you walk away, you don't strut. You actually think 'Okay - given that same situation happens tomorrow, how could I have analysed it better, and then you go through the whole exercise again…the debrief. That's not specifically surgery, It's not specifically sport. It's part of exercising your mind. And the next step is doing that in public. Because that's when it starts getting exciting because there's absolutely no doubt we're in an environment where you need multiple minds to solve problems. And so you have to have that level of inquiry and sort of ticking over and then you connect. And you start to develop a language of innovation and visualisation. So you can push forward.'
Dr Wood shared her belief in the value of 'trauma' as a stimulus to growth, extending the literal trauma to her patients' longer term recovery and resilience, to a metaphor about character:
'I can track periods of my life where I went through post traumatic growth. And it wasn't painless. The hardest thing for me post Bali was that people wanted to know my name. Yet I recognised that as part of that I became stronger. And I became able to engage in this positive energy, in this positive good news stories. And I had my blinkers taken off such that i engaged with the community in a broader sense....How we can use energy that is so profoundly negative and turn that around - I think that's fascinating. It's tiring sometimes. And it's hard. But part of that post traumatic growth is having the infrastructure around you, having the people and connectivity around you that give you the ability to lead.'
She had some powerful advice to give on how to deal with criticism and how innovation challenges conventional thought about 'the way things are done':
'There's an element of inertia in practice. Whether that be clinical practice or business practice...This level of inertia is really quite an interesting animal. Because it's useful, but it's also a hindrance. We need to have a level of capacity to maintain things moving forward at a pace that can be managed. And equally, we have to have people testing out the front. And so I have engaged with surgical inertia up front and centre and I've had to make the decision not to engage in that negative energy but to continue to be driven by the positive outcome, collect the data, present the data. And as the things roll forward, the data will speak for itself. And so that inertia starts to be overcome. And I think that the challenge when you're in a situation with that level of inertia is to understand you've got a choice. You turn around and you fight it…and it's bigger than you. Or you stay out the front and you wait for them to catch up. And they get there.'
Yet always returning to the supremacy of the Widget - and the need for a leader to be clear about defining it to the team, regardless of how clear it is to her or how passionate she is about it:
'I had a really interesting lesson in leadership inadvertently in the early 90s. 1991 I hit the ground running. I was very focussed on time to healing. Every day in a burns unit is a day too long. I aggressively engaged in a skin culture programme....the social worker at the time who was a bit older than the rest of us came and said 'Stop!' I thought 'What do you mean, Stop? ‘Sit down. I need to talk to you. I've been asked to come and speak with you. Well you're too intimidating.’ (Give me a break! )‘We understand that what you're doing has got to be right. It's got to have some real benefit. But we don't know what it is. We can feel your passion. We have no idea how we can explain it to the parents, to the patients, to their relatives, to the new nurses when they come on. We're all at sea…’
Dr Wood learned the definition that a leader is someone who makes good decisions that others choose to follow:
'Leadership 101. No team - no leader. Done. The elastic was at breaking point and almost snapping behind me. And had I not had that energy that they all got caught up in, it would have snapped well and truly. So that's the point when I said 'Right. Everybody who's at this table is here for a reason. You've got to be able to be leaders in your own right....Passion on its own doesn't cut it. The communication bit has to be strong.'
A Leader retreats:
There is absolutely no point in me being so entrenched that as I get through my final kick, everything fades away. Succession is so important. It's not because I want to be remembered. It's because the people need treating! And they need to be treated better and better and better. So for me, it's delegation. But delegation with meaning. Empowerment in a real sense. I need to let them deliver. Such that I can get out of my head, get it on paper and challenge them into the future. But in a way that is not intrusive. Not imposing my surgical inertia on them. But allowing them to grow.
Dr Wood leads a team in Good Decision Making in life and death situations. It's not just theory to her. She is still able to use the language of 'dreams', 'visualisation', 'mistakes', 'passion', 'innovation' and 'personal growth' while literally operating at the leading edge of science.
If Dr Wood can save lives while still creating the space for these ideals that allow others to become who they are, then most workplaces have no excuse.
This is Leadership.
'With the greatest leader above them people barely know one exists.
The great leader speaks little. He never speaks carelessly. He works without self-interest and leaves no trace. When all is finished, the people say, "We did it ourselves." '
- The 17th Verse of the Tao Te Ching.
Create the Space.
Define the Purpose.
Limitations Liberate.
'Leadership should be aimed at helping to free people from oppressive structures, practices and habits encountered in societies and institutions, as well as within the shady recesses of ourselves. Good leaders liberate.'
Amanda Sinclair, Leadership for the Disillusioned
A Leader Creates the Space.
This implies boundaries.
Boundaries give certainty of the resources - time, materials, people - with which to create.
Limits, rules, policies, regulations, contracts, processes, checklists - liberate.
The Leader, having created the space and its boundaries, stretches out her hand to us sheltering in our shady recesses and says:
'Come out and play!'
Compliance.
'I'm certainly not the first person to point out that general rules cannot handle all cases. This is exactly what Aristotle had in mind with the notion of Equity: The necessity of judgement making a correction to a rule - not because there is something wrong with a rule, but because of the generality of a rule that will necessarily make it inappropriate to some cases that it will seem to govern. Trying to accommodate or replace equitable judgement with additional rules simply won’t work.'
- Stephen Cohen
Deloitte released a Report last week that found Australia spends $250 billion a year on rules and compliance by both governments and businesses
That's more than eight and a half Defence budgets.
That's over $10,500 for every man, woman and child in the country.
The private sector spends $155 billion a year administering and complying with self-imposed rules
1 million people - one in every 11 workers - are employed in ‘the compliance sector’.
Middle managers and senior executives spend 8.9 hours a week complying with the rules that firms set for themselves, with other staff spending 6.4 hours.
These rules cost $21 billion a year to administer.
They generate $134 billion a year in compliance costs – double the matching compliance cost of public sector regulations.
The Widget for many people is ticking boxes.
There are many good reasons to learn and apply good decision making.
Cost is one.
The last job of a Leader is to get out of the way.
Be Decisive And Wait.
Those iPod quarterly sales meetings in March 2002, June 2002, September 2002, December 2002, March 2003 and June 2003 must have been tough.
The owners of two billion iPods should be grateful that Steve Jobs didn't respond to these numbers with the 'decisiveness' that many managers mistake for good decision making.
The first job of a Leader is to create the space.
And hold it.
Hold it.
Hold.
Preside.
From the very beginning, Obama has been a presider rather than a decider. His modus operandi is to marshal existing political forces toward a particular, prgmatic set of goals.
- Andrew Sullivan
A good Leader Creates a Space.
She presides over that Space.
She holds it.
The measure of her power is not in what she does.
It's in what others do in that space.
It takes strength for her to hold that space against the forces that batter against it. Time. Money. Efficiency. Expediency. Fear. Ego.
And the most powerful of them all - her self-doubt.
'Preside' comes from the Latin praesidere - to stand guard over.
Anyone who creates a space and protects the process of discernment and decision making within - is a Leader.
Give.
'You have to trust people and give them space if you want to get things done.'
- Mr Alec Coles, Chief Executive of the West Australian Museum
The first job of a Leader is to Create the Space.
Listen...
Backed.
'Decisions made by my Chief of Staff and my Office have my full backing and authority. Anyone who suggests otherwise is wrong.'
When your boss says 'I'll back you,' - and she does - that's arguably one of the greatest gifts.
And a huge burden.
Pass both on.
Say: 'I'll back you,' to your people.
Say: 'I'll back you,' to your customers.
Say: 'I'll back you,' to yourself.
Feel your burden ease.
Feel the anxiety in your chest.
Backing them isn't a sentimental leap of faith into the unknown.
When you back them. When you promise them - or at least yourself - that they act with your authority and that you will stand by their decisions regardless of the outcome and accept all the consequences - you realise you're utterly compelled to:
- Know them
- Clearly define their expectations
- Define their Widget
- Equip them with everything you have - especially information
- Affirm them
- Get out of their way
When I reflect on my good bosses.
My peers.
My parents.
I think that the message - in words and deeds - of 'I'll back you,' taught me the most about work, myself, and life.
'I'll back you,' says: 'I believe in you. Go and become that person I see and believe in.'
[Now think of the converse and understand how damaging and destructive it can be not to have the backing of a boss. It wounds our soul.]
[Now think of a boss who backed you - and write to them and thank them for the faith they showed in you.]
Laying down your life for another isn't as literal as the mournful notes of the Last Post honouring war dead have us believe.
It's putting yourself at risk to back another.
Is this the answer to how we bring Love into our workplaces?
The Greatest Love?
By backing each other?
Observed.
'For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts.'
- Bruce Schneier
The Leader begins by creating the Space. She invites others into the Space to become who they are. She assumes that they will make mistakes. Get things wrong. Fail.
The Leader doesn't respond with regulation. The opposite. She ultimately Retreats - leaving us to do our work. To make more mistakes. To continue becoming.
Her faith in us mostly doesn't end well in the measure of the world. We fear freedom. Getting it wrong. We don't know what to do. No-one has taught us. We want to be told. We want someone to blame for our choices. For our unhappiness.
We feel threatened when observed. [I'm not trusted.'] We feel threatened when unobserved. ['I don't get any feedback or gratitude.']
Eventually the Leader is replaced by a manager. He tells us what to do. He checks and corrects. We chafe and share our grievances with each other during our designated breaks and are secretly grateful that we are no longer responsible for our unhappiness.
Constantly fearful.
Longing for Leadership.
If.
If I write a good job description for you.
If I write a good job ad for you.
If I write good questions for your job interview and write down the ones you ask back.
If I write to your last boss and ask her if you make good Widgets.
If I write a good employment contract for you.
If I write good policies for you.
If I teach you a good job induction.
If I teach you about my Widget.
If I teach you how your Widget fits into my Widget.
If I teach you with feedback and a pay cheque.
If I get out of your way.
If I Do all of this for everyone who you rely on to help you to Do your job.
If - after you Do it - I say:
Thank you.
If I keep Doing for you all I said that I would Do.
I'd have done my job.
And you'll go on Doing yours.
You don't need to be managed or led.
You just need to be left to Do.
We don't need more leaders or managers.
We need more Writers and Teachers.
We need more Doers.
Check.
To check whether your boss wants Leadership or management, try any of the following and see what she does:
- Disagree with her in a meeting.
- Answer 'I don't know' when she asks what someone else is doing.
- Delay reporting to her because you were teaching someone else.
- Answer 'I don't know' to any of her questions.
- Say 'I was wrong'.
Most organisations simply don't have the metaphorical and literal structural tolerance in their people and systems to withstand the amount of turbulence that would flow from having as many Leaders as they proclaim to want or allow.
Which is why most organisations advertise and train for leadership - and recruit and promote for management.
Rare.
Being a Leader is hard.
That's why it's rare to find her.
Organisations call 'Leaders' people who:
- Made a Widget well enough to supervise other people to make (often different) Widgets
- Did something in another organisation that their boss wants them to repeat for them
- Get invited to meetings with limited chairs to learn to advocate their boss's opinion
- Umpire Widget conflicts (rarely) and interpersonal conflicts (mostly)
- Make their Widget better than anyone else in the organisation
- Control others so that the boss doesn't have to
Boss's call them 'leaders' to acknowledge what they want them to do is hard - yet not Leadership hard.
It's a rare boss who will pay you to make decisions that contradict her.
It's a rare boss who will trust you to trust others to change direction from the one she chose.
Rare good bosses means rarer Leaders.
Grace.
I had decided before the phone landed back on its cradle.
I was annoyed. Angry. Frustrated. Indignant. Irritated. Offended.
I was right and they were wrong. It was irrefutable. I was their boss. I was going to do my job and boss them.
I rose from my chair to walk the seven minutes down to where they were waiting. I was going to put things right. Out the door. Beneath trees splintering 5.30pm sunlight. Through the aromas of earth, heat and bush. Propelled by my duty I tracked towards my wayward charges.
That person did not meet them. Someone else did.
They had held onto their anger and emptied it over me. Mine had peeled off in transit. They spat their argument. Mine straggled behind me kicking gum nuts. They had been rehearsing their demands. I had been seven minutes free in the late afternoon.
We all discovered a better position for the coffee machine.
They were still wrong and I remained right. Just as the gum nuts had obediently arced away into the softness of leaf debris in response to my boot. So what?
Their rebellion had gifted me seven minutes glimpsing wisdom and Grace.
The Abbot used to say that there aren't as many Holy people as there once were. I think that he was talking about Leaders.
Leaders are much, much rarer than the many to whom we award that title. Very few people have all the qualities of a leader because they are counter-intuitive. Study Leadership and the conclusion is that Leadership is impossible. May as well be a boss instead.
The answer?
Grace.
The aspiring Leader attends to the list of qualities and inevitably edges her brain towards the abyss of contradictions and vulnerabilities - until she closes her eyes and leaps into her fears then feels the soft tug of the silken parachute of Grace filling with air above her and lowering her gently back down to earth.
Never to be the same.
Evidence.
The CO of the Squadron was waiting for his two F111s when they taxied in to their hangar bays. Two days later he was waiting for me.
'The future of military aviation - indeed aviation in general in Australia is at a crossroads,' he began. 'The Minister wants us to deal with this incident in a way that ensures continuing confidence in our responsible use of airspace to conduct our training.'
My legal boss had put it more bluntly when he'd tasked me as the Prosecuting Officer. 'If you don't get convictions, don't bother coming back.'
The two pilots had each flown a low level 'spacer pass' by the control tower at the bombing range 30 seconds apart. Their speed was just below the sound barrier, causing a sonic 'disturbance' that blasted the tower into $100,000 worth of damage. The range controller was showered in glass but otherwise unhurt and with a great story to tell.
I arrived at the Base on the Friday. The trial was to begin on Monday. Everyone at the Squadron was as respectful as my rank required in assisting me to gather evidence. But no-one wanted to help me to convict two of their own pilots.
'There was an airman who filmed it,' the CO had told me. I found him and asked if I could have a copy of the video. 'I gave it to the Squadron Safety Officer,' he told me. The Squadron Safety Officer shrugged. 'I deleted it,' he said. It wasn't the smoking gun, but it would have helped.
Three years later and I'm visiting the Directorate of Flying Safety in Canberra to give some legal advice. I'm chatting with the two Squadron Leaders about the F111 trial and ask their opinion about some of the questionable technical evidence given by the pilots.
'Would you like to see the video?' one of them asks. My jaw falls open.
My role as Prosecuting Officer in a Defence Force Disciplinary Act trial was to use an adversarial process to present admissible evidence that proved beyond reasonable doubt that two pilots had broken the law and should be punished to deter both them and others from doing the same. In SPEAR terms I was helping to Patrol the Space.
The role of the Directorate of Flying Safety is to use an inquisitorial approach to gather information about aircraft incidents to learn from them and pass on those lessons to all pilots to keep them safe. It was helping to Create the Space.
Same information - different Widgets.