Balanced Leadership There can be no doubt that the challenges facing business leaders are changing. The traditional styles of leadership do not work too well for creating the adaptive, innovative and sustaining organisations needed to successfully compete today. Business leaders and writers are giving some indication of what’s important for leaders and leadership in this new time (their full quotations are at the end): “you must also master listening to your heart” “to include stakeholders, to evoke followership, to empower others” “what a person is (character) and what a person does (competence)” “the virtuoso in interpersonal skills is the corporate future” “the world will belong to passionate, driven leaders who can energize those whom they lead.” “senior executives know they cannot command commitment” “their convictions, their clarity, their personal commitment to their own cultivation” Much of what is being asked of leaders today cannot be found through the intellect alone – the focus of much of our leadership development over the last 40 years. It requires leaders to bring more of who they are as human beings to their work. However, character is only part of the equation. Leaders of character must also have a strong, deeply integrated leadership framework, philosophy and practice to meet tomorrow’s leadership demands. Gandhi said you have to be the change you want to see in the world. While many leaders speak of creativity, innovation, commitment, empowerment and self-management, many organisations are still waiting for the exemplary role models. In many ways what is being asked of leaders is counter-cultural. It is the complete opposite of what they have learned creates success for them. Many have to face the fact that not only is the basis for their current success no longer valid, it may even be a distinct handicap unless they can unlearn quickly and put new and more powerful behaviours in place. But what is the basis for these new behaviours? Two things are apparent: Leadership is as much about who you are as what you do. It is about ‘being’ as well as ‘doing’, internal and external, intention and behaviour. And any exploration of this requires us to consider what it is to be a human being. In the past we have emphasised intellect at the expense of other parts of our humanness – our heart, body, spirit and emotions. Only a continuing development in our level of consciousness can restore this balance. And, to shift our ‘being’ requires a different type of development than most of us are used to, it requires a deep personal development (what Senge calls cultivation) of self-knowledge. From this different ‘being’ we begin to naturally behave differently and no longer need to remember the ‘tricks’ we have learned on so many training courses. A Balanced Leader Much of what we think constitutes good leadership comes from our observations of leaders. We say they must have vision, lead from the front, inspire, etc. We end up with a list of so many characteristics that it is hard to hold them all in our mind let alone understand how to manifest them. Our models of leadership have come from researching ‘what is’. But when things change, this is no longer adequate. The old maps do not work when the territory shifts. There has been a practice of balanced leadership among the old cultures of tribal life that enabled the people to act as a unified whole, and at the same time honour individual uniqueness and diversity. This practice manifested most completely in the way of the old chiefs. They held the vision and the care for the whole of the people as their first priority. These are essential qualities of a balanced leader and hold the key to the next century of organisational success. In our search for a pattern or design that holds the image of leadership, balancing all the elements needed for success today, we have drawn on an ancient body of self-knowledge and wisdom teachings held by EHAMA Institute of California and, specifically, a model of ‘eight intelligences’. The Wheel of Balanced Intelligence © The eight intelligences have evolved out of an ancient design for wholeness and balance in humans and communities. These ancient ways have been translated to be relevant in today’s culture. We often see one or more of these intelligences well developed in people but, in the old ways, it was seen that individuals have the capability to develop and call on all of these intelligences in their life. By adapting old ways of seeing what is needed for humans and communities to live and grow in wholeness and balance, EHAMA have distilled eight intelligences that are required for balanced leadership: Creation Intelligence - fostering generative growth, creativity and innovation, Perceptual Intelligence - sensing the emergent needs in your organization, Emotional Intelligence - a resilience and responsiveness, informed by emotions, to meet challenges in a powerful way, Pathfinding Intelligence - bringing individual and organisational action into alignment with a larger sense of purpose, Sustaining Intelligence - supporting, maintaining and balancing organisational health, structures and new initiatives, Predictive Intelligence - discerning patterns and trends of coming cycles, Decisive Intelligence - awakening the simple clarity of right action, Energia Intelligence - perceiving what is needed to arouse vitality and integrity within the organisation. Our Western cultured has tended to focus on the development of Decisive Intelligence – that ability to identify and gather resources, develop strategy and take decisive action. Increasingly we see, however, that a leader’s capability in this area is interconnected with his/her capability in the other seven domains. It is these that we now need to pay attention to also. Creating Mastery The good news for leaders is that all of these intelligences are an innate part of our humanness. As we look around at people we admire today, or in history, we see these intelligences exemplified: the creative/expressive intelligence of Leonardo da Vinci, for example. The emotional intelligence of the great explorers with a high sense of adventure coupled with the resilience to keep going. The sustaining intelligence of Mother Teresa and the decisive intelligence of many war heroes past and present. We may not be able to be another Leonardo da Vinci, but we all of us have vast untapped creative potential. As we have with all of the other intelligences. If we are to further cultivate our intelligences we must look to new and innovative development practices. It requires a learning journey of increasing self-knowledge that is not achieved just by book or classroom learning. To develop our creative intelligence, for example, we need to call forward and experience that creative/ expressive energy that is within us. We need to reconnect with this energy and nurture it daily by conscious practices in our life and work until it blossoms and grows and becomes an integral part of who we are. Developing each intelligence alone is not sufficient, however. True mastery comes from holding all eight in balance and calling each forward when it is needed. For example, seeing a need or opportunity emerging in our business or market (perceptual intelligence), aligning this with the business’s purpose and direction (pathfinding), weighing the future implications (predictive) and then generating the enthusiasm and agreement in the business to develop the opportunity (energia). Whilst at the same time ensuring a creative atmosphere, a sense of adventure, a caring for the whole and decisive action. When any of these intelligences are not fully present then the results are less than we hoped. Reflect on your experience. Take a successful leadership outcome, can you see the presence of eight intelligences? Take a less successful situation, which of the eight intelligences was not fully present? Our business world is changing fast. New technology is generating new information and making possible innovative partnerships, collaborations and alliances that create competitive advantage. A new culture is required in organisations if the full benefit is to be reaped. Where are the advances in our personal and social ‘technology’ that will develop the balanced leaders, at all levels, who can create sustainable success in our organisations and communities? Mike Bell © August 2001 If you would like to explore balanced leadership in your business or organisation, please contact Mike Bell Leadership Quotations used in the Article I often say that leadership is deeply personal and inherently collective. That’s a paradox that effective leaders have to embrace. It does depend on them. It does depend on their convictions, their clarity, their personal commitment to their own cultivation. And on the other hand, it doesn’t depend on them. It’s an inherently collective phenomenon. Peter Senge from "Changing How We Work Together”, Shambhala Sun, Jan. 2001 "Corporations have gone through a radical revolution within this century, and with this has come a corresponding transformation of the emotional landscape. There was a long period of managerial domination of the corporate hierarchy when the manipulative, jungle-fighter boss was rewarded. But that rigid hierarchy started breaking down in the 1980s under the twin pressures of globalization and information technology. The jungle fighter symbolizes where the corporations have been; the virtuoso in interpersonal skills is the corporate future." Shoshona Zuboff, Harvard Business School, author of In the Age of Smart Machines "Intellect alone won't lead you to make the right choices--won't, in fact, take you down the right path. You have to master not only the art of listening to your head, you must also master listening to your heart." Carly Fiorina—Hewlett Packard CEO- in her MIT commencement speech, 2000 “A different understanding of leadership has emerged recently. Leaders are being encouraged to include stakeholders, to evoke followership, to empower others. We cannot help to influence any situation without respect for the complex network of people who contribute to our organizations.” Meg Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science. "Effective leadership is the only competitive advantage that will endure. That's because leadership has two sides - what a person is (character) and what a person does (competence)." - Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People "The world of the 1990s and beyond will not belong to 'managers' or those who can make the numbers dance. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders—people who not only have enormous amounts of energy but who can energize those whom they lead." Jack Welch, ex-CEO of General Electric “More than ever, senior executives know they cannot command commitment, for the generation now entering the workforce is the most authority adverse than any in history.” Gary Hamel, Leading the Revolution Top © The Wisdom Meme 2007