Who´s driving your leadership?
Leadership has been a central focus for organization success for years. New styles, new terms, new approaches have circulated every five to ten years. Until recently, however, they all continued to align with and reinforce a hierarchical model with an organization-as-machine mindset. Leaders in such organizations make decisions using “hard skills,” logic, linear thinking, and intellect. Anything having to do with relationships, communication, or engagement is labeled “soft skills,” said with a demeaning tone. The model of organization-as-machine, however, is coming to its end. What is emerging, and none too soon, is the idea of organizations as living systems, where those soft skills are essential to the health of the system.
Organization as Machine, People as Replaceable Parts
For years it’s been thought that emotions, intuition and anything related to the heart have no place in business; they have even been seen as weaknesses. The goal, after all, is to perfect the system to maximize profit. When problems occur you fix or replace the parts, including people; relationships and emotions just get in the way. Logic and linear structures rule these systems. Leaders in such organizations aim for perfection: no mistakes, zero defects. Those who rise to the top are the most competitive, developing the “right” answer or solution to problems, and organizing work efficiently and effectively. Employees, who are seen as replaceable parts, keep their jobs as long as they accomplish their assigned tasks in the appropriate amount of time. Carrots and sticks are the primary motivators. Everyone’s personal lives are kept separate and sometimes even a secret because of the guilt and shame about being happy outside of work.
This organizational paradigm has worked for businesses and shareholders for a long time, which is one reason so many leaders cling to this leadership frame. But it takes a heavy toll on everyone. Such leaders take their identity from their professional status, being right, and achieving goals. That identity is always at risk of collapsing in the face of failure or a misstep.The lack of relationship and connection combined with the stress of trying to achieve the unachievable (perfection) leads to health issues, unhappiness, loss of meaning, confusion about one’s identity, and as result, the attenuation of human spirit. All sacrificed at the altar of beliefs about what generates efficiency and profit and what is meaningful and of personal value in society.
The organization-as-machine uses the human need for belonging, love, and connection as a motivator and it has proven to be a powerful one. Fear of getting it wrong, losing to a colleague, losing market share, losing social or professional status all translate into risking not being of value to the company; risking being let go because you no longer belong. With this proven formula, the underlying emotional motivator in these organizations is fear. What neuroscience tells us is fear is an abysmal motivator. It may drive us to act, but we act with a narrow focus. The human brain-on-fear diminishes access to creativity, emotional intelligence, and higher order thinking, all of which are vital for an organization and people to thrive, especially in the face of chaos.
The good news is that such rigid structures and fear-based leadership are not capable of responding effectively to our current world of rapid and continuous change. They cannot handle the complex challenges, the volatility, or ambiguity that arise on a regular basis at every level of an organization and ecosystem. This raises questions and invites dialogue about new organization structures and leadership styles that might be more successful in the face of these challenges. In recent years, there has been a growing recognition that to adapt and innovate in the face of change and complexity, leaders need to engage more and more people with broader perspectives in solution-finding. They need the creative insights, the collective intelligence, and the collaborative spirit of people working together with purpose. In short, they need the heart.
Leading from the Heart
Foundational to leading from the heart is personal and organizational purpose, beyond simply making money. The human spirit is inspired by a meaningful purpose. When people in an organization align around a shared purpose, they come alive, engage, and commit. This becomes an internal motivator for everyone working in the company. Organizations that have engaged employees around a shared purpose have witnessed not only improved morale and retention, but increased productivity, creativity, efficiency, and profit.
If you google leading from the heart, you will get more that one billion hits in less than a second. The articles, books, and training focus on teaching leaders essential human capabilities, including:
Self-awareness and emotional intelligence
Effective communication
The importance of and ways to strengthen relationships and inspire people
How to engage and reward contribution and collaboration
Ways to facilitate collective intelligence
These are not skills or behaviors designed to motivate others; they are practices that align with leading from the heart. People can sense when leaders are “going through the motions,” but are not being genuine. These leadership practices require authenticity, which means they cannot be implemented without self-awareness, understanding and a new mindset. Perhaps the greatest challenge traditional leaders face in transforming their style to leading from the heart is the challenge to their ego and sense of identity. People must be willing to see themselves as more than their professional position and their ability to be the brightest in the room. Leading from the heart requires leaders to be more concerned with empowering and bringing out the best in people than in fortifying their ego. This transformation requires vulnerability, which does not come easily. The paradigm shift to leading from the heart requires a significant emotional experience, often combined with coaching.
Leading from the Heart: Conscious Leadership
Understanding, embodying, and personifying this new leadership paradigm results in what we call Conscious Leadership. Traditional leadership is limited by ego and unconscious behavioral drivers, especially identity and worldview. For example, if a leader identifies as a person whose role and sense of responsibility is to work endlessly in order to escalate in the organization and thus be a source of pride for their family, self awareness will be limited by this identity. All thoughts, emotions, decisions and actions will be narrowly focused to earn and maintain that identity. Unconscious fears that threaten that identity will inhibit access to creativity and vision. Such leaders will not be aware of their own fuller potential or external possibilities outside of that worldview; their creativity goes unnoticed and unused. And they are likely to overlook or ignore other people’s potential if it threatens their’s.
On the other hand, conscious leaders break the restrictions of an extrinsic, static identity replacing it with a sense of self that is continuously evolving in relationship to the world around them. Someone with this world view sees their role as a catalyst and their professional environment as a playground to develop potential and create possibilities that may well transcend their position and time. Such leaders are positive and heartful. They scan for potential and build spaces for innovation and growth. They understand the real power and potential of the organization depends upon the collaborative and collective talent of its members, and they are determined to ignite it, one conversation at a time.
The world today requires leaders with this level of consciousness and mindset. They will be the pathfinders, creating the transition from systems that no longer serve us to ones that inspire human evolution and flourishing. (See the chart below, for a summary of the differences between traditional leadership and conscious leadership.)
Organizations as Living Systems
Surveys indicate that business people experience the current hierarchical, mechanistic organization as a place of drudgery. Fredric LaLoux offers a brief history of organizational paradigms in Reinventing Organizations, suggesting we are on the cusp of a new paradigm for organizing, working, and leading. It is a move toward a natural, living systems paradigm. Living systems are whole and dynamic: continuously learning and evolving in response to the world around them (just like conscious leaders). They are self-managing and self-organizing guided by minimal structure and evolutionary purpose. Such organizations engage both the heart and the head, inspiring leaders at every level. Using twelve diverse case studies from around the world, LaLoux illustrates the potential for such organizations to be highly effective and profitable as well as places that inspire human health, joy, and flourishing.
Most organization leaders are not ready to make this jump. Concepts like self-organizing and self-managing are impossible to even imagine from a traditional organization mindset. The transition step to these novel, more effective and efficient organization designs is personal transformation and practice in leading from the heart. When people genuinely and effectively lead from the heart, they discover how competent and capable people are at every level of an organization. They witness the power of shared purpose that unites and inspires everyone. And they come to appreciate how instrumental organization structure is in freeing up the creative potential of individuals and teams. As these leaders learn to trust, it will become a simple and logical step to reinvent the organization as a living system; in fact, they will probably already be part way there.
To move into this aspirational future that only a few organizations have dared to travel, it requires conscious leaders. Those who venture forward will grow and evolve in their awareness of their own and others’ potential as they lead from this new paradigm. These leaders will elegantly, gently and lovingly ignite transformation at every level of an organization. Those leaders who see the potential and have the courage to break the shackles of their current leadership identity will become the greatest asset for any organization. Are you one of them?
Join us for TheSami Experience. SAMI is the creative energy that creates good for the self and others. Sami Experiences are highly experiential, immersive programs designed to transform your worldview and develop your capabilities as a conscious leader.
© 2022 by Cheri Torres and Andrea Falconi, The SAMI Project