The Leader-Follower

Liberative Leadership and The Implied Potential of the Follower-Leader

2011-10-20T15:14:00.000-07:00

Of course, if we can have a leader-follower, why not a follower-leader?

The idea intrinsic to the model "A Vision for Leadership and Collaboration" is that in a healthy process of leading and following the leader and follower roles alternate or are exchanged, and I continue to believe that's a good paradigm. However, if we identify two, momentarily distinct roles, leader-follower and follower-leader, more powerful descriptive possibilities arise. The implications are:

As has always been the case in this model, when someone is leading in a healthy fashion, they will inevitably also find themselves following - an involving and participatory action that permits further development of the leadership role and contribution.
With the addition of a follower-leader role, not only does the one who is momentarily leading explicitly contain the potential to follow, but the person who is momentarily following, explicitly contains the potential to lead! (Remember how each part of the yin-yang symbol contains a dot having the same color as its counterpart?)

This expanded leader-follower/follower-leader paradigm, portrays the ongoing dialogical relationship between leader and follower in what for the moment I'm calling, a healthy relationship.

This perspective arose while I was reading, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire, 1996, Continuum Publishing (a translation from Spanish, and originally published in 1970). The author offers an alternative to the banking model of education in which teacher and student roles are permanently, hierarchically separated and the teaching process oppressive, the leader investing in delivering his/her information which the student "learns" by valuing and acceptance. Freire's proposal is that we consider teacher-student and student-teacher in a dialogical relationship of mutual learning and liberation!

If mutual learning is the product of the the teacher-student/student-teacher dialog, the question that must be answered to complete the analogy is, "What is the product of the leader-follower/follower-leader dialog?" The best answer that presently comes to mind is "creativity." The paradigm shift provided by the model now becomes very clear. It is from the mechanistic, mutually oppressive roles of leading and following, transformed by dialog into the co-creative and liberating roles of leader-follower and follower-leader.

(Now "health" becomes clear; oppression is unhealthy and liberation is healthy!)

The Model: A Vision of Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation, Visual Refinements

2009-07-28T17:40:00.000-07:00

It has been 18 months since my last post. Even so, there is still a modest stream of visitors to The Leader-Follower and the site of the leadership model, A Vision of Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation.

Although some new ideas are emerging about the model, it is very largely unchanged. The exceptions are general refinements to details in its presentation and most usefully I hope, is a new, introductory, manipulable, three dimensional representation. My intention is that a new visitor can quickly understand the model's physical shape and layout and be better prepared to explore its details and apply them to real situations.

Innovation within a call center - how are team members provided with guidance and coaching?

2007-12-11T20:20:00.000-08:00

If you are asking about innovation in how team members handle calls here are some suggestions about behaviors that are important to develop: RESPONDING, IMPROVISING and REALIZING.

RESPONDING is about following what callers have to say, receiving, clarifying and understanding the information they provide and the needs they express.

IMPROVISING is about leading callers despite their often unpredictable way of communicating their needs and their unpredictable responses to questions.

REALIZING is about implementing the objectives of the call center however they are defined in terms of productivity, quality and service, for example.

Coaching these behaviors together will develop the important competency, innovation. These and other behaviors and competencies are shown in their interrelationships in the self-coaching model, Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation.

How does religious diversity impact team performance?

2007-12-06T16:40:00.001-08:00

The person who asked this question explained, "I am doing a group project on Management class and there is not much information on this topic. We have 4 people in group and their parts are age, culture, gender. Mine is religion, religion's impact on teamwork, that's team performance." Here's my answer.

Rather than a complete answer, here's a potential starting point.

I have concluded that team performance is something to do with competences in visualization, organization, collaboration and contribution for team success. The performance of a religiously diverse team will be impacted according to the degree to which the values of the traditions represented in the team can be used to support these competencies.

The same is true for differences in age, culture and gender. I suspect there is "not much on this topic" because there is not too much to be learned from generalizations. What you need it a case study! To get to the specifics for religion, try turning your "group" into a team! Explore everyone's religious affiliation and see how each supports visualization, organization, collaboration and contribution for team success.

I referred the questioner to the self-coaching model, Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation. The same competencies are in this model, so I expect the questioner's project will quickly reveal the leadership challenges and opportunities in a religiously diverse team.

"We should measure corporations by their impact on all their constituencies."

2007-04-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

As someone who has long maintained that an enterprise is sustainable so long as all its stakeholders are satisfied, I was delighted to read this from the Nation, "The Establishment Re-Thinks Globalization," which comments on Ralph Gomory's book, "Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests.

"Gomory's vision of reformation actually goes beyond the trading system and America's economic deterioration. He wants to re-create an understanding of the corporation's obligations to society, the social perspective that flourished for a time in the last century but is now nearly extinct. The old idea was that the corporation is a trust, not only for shareholders but for the benefit of the country, the employees and the people who use the product. "That attitude was the attitude I grew up on in IBM," Gomory explains. "That's the way we thought--good for the country, good for the people, good for the shareholders--and I hope we will get back to it.... We should measure corporations by their impact on all their constituencies."

I found two item of good news in this piece. One is a challenge to the wisdom of "free trade" as an inevitable good and the other is the recognition of the necessity to include all constituencies or, as I described them, all stakeholders.

The specific problem Gormory is addressing and for which he is proposing solutions, is America's loss of economic strength and the general impoverishment that occurs when corporations acting globally fail to support the needs of their local stakeholders. In the context of leadership, these leaders who (un)consciously ignore a constituency have a narrowed vision and (un)consciously externalize costs to the neglected constituency. As can be seen in the first figure, any stakeholder that is excluded has no part in improvising, structuring and realizing solutions.

The general phenomenon is the same whether the externalized costs appear as auto industry unemployment and subsequent family and community dislocation, Enron employees' lost pensions or the pain of the Iraqi population. The institutions and their leaders lose these stakeholders' respect, their interest in conforming and willingness to respond. The second figure underscores how these potentially enthusiastic followers are excluded from the organization, are thus unable to contribute or collaborate with other stakeholders in finding solutions.

There appears to be a growing population who consider factors beyond stock price in their assessment of corporations as potential employers, good citizens and investment vehicles. This re-examination of Ralph Gomory's work is very timely.

Chief Responsibility Officer - CXO of the Month?

2007-04-10T20:52:00.001-07:00

Almost exactly a year ago, in my post Chief Innovation Officer I identified how CXOs are being named according to a variety of core corporate values like quality, information, learning and, at that time, innovation. Today the latest flavor is CRO or Chief Responsibility Officer which is so real that there is a magazine, "CRO" which is hosting its second (already) annual meeting of CROs in April.

A couple of things come to mind. Although I have not plotted the introduction rate of CXO functions over time I have the impression it is accelerating and wonder what that might mean. The other is that if there is a trend, what does it suggests about the next CXO function?

What is the job of the CRO? I'm not going to try to exhaustively define this but rather observe that its origins appear in the ideas around corporate social responsibility, i.e. that corporations should be good citizens and care for the environment, underprivileged and so on. As in the emergence of the earlier CXO functions it certainly appears the right thing to do, to ensure a corporation fulfills all its responsibilities beyond making money for its investors. But what are these responsibilities?

It is necessary that a corporation accepts the responsibility to satisfy all its stakeholders: investors, employees, customers, providers, partners, governments, local communities, and now including the environment, global communities. If any one of these stakeholders is unsatisfied the business is unsustainable, which becomes obvious earlier with dissatisfied investors and later with a dissatisfied global community, although those cycle-times may be-a-changin'.

There is a downside, however. It takes an individual to respond. Responsibility can only be taken, i.e. the commitment to respond can only be made, by an individual and it is a pretense to believe one person can take responsibility for the actions of another. The buck stops in the corner office because the occupant is expected to ensure that people in his/her organization do take responsibility and if they do not s/he has failed in managing and/or leading.

So, if someone else is in charge of others behaving responsibly with respect to a corporation's stakeholders, what does the CEO do? Meanwhile, does the CRO position open the door for thinking, "although I don't like what I see, I need not worry about it because that's the CRO's responsibility?"

A Leader-Follower can always be helped by good examples and role models. However, as this edge of the tetrahedral model "A Vision of Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation" shows,responding is about doing something new,innovating, as an action following some sort of stimulus, in a collaboratively negotiated fashion so the resulting contribution is satisfactory to all concerned.

The opposite, complementary edge of the model is about structuring, i.e. leading for implementation by providing vision and organization! We could jump to the conclusion that is the CRO's role. Wrong! It is the individual's responsibility to self-manage by visualizing and organizing thoughts, values and actions to implement what responsibility means to to him/her.

Technorati Tags: A Vision of Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation, Chief Responsibility Officer, CRO, CXO, responding, responsibility, stakeholder satisfaction, The Leader-Follower

A Vision of Leadership is now named Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation

2006-11-20T13:57:00.000-08:00

The name of the model, A Vision of Leadership has been changed to Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation. All references in this blog will be amended.

Technorati Tags: Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation, A Vision of Leadership

A Vision of Leadership - Access to the Interactive Model

2006-11-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

The domain name www.avisionofleadership.com has become unavailable as the url for the model. The interactive version will therefore be inaccessible until new arrangements are made. Unfortunately, the links from this blog to the model will not function as intended.

Meanwhile, The Leader-Follower incorporates full details of the model. Entry pages include:

Features of the Leadership Model
Leadership and: Collaboration, Implementation, Innovation, Vision.

Interactive Leadership, the Associate and the Leader-Follower

2006-10-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

Business Week 10/2/06 cites a study by CO2 Partners: Managers seeking advice tend to ignore lower grade workers, the one's who "actually make the stuff or are dealing with customers," which conclusion is supported by survey data.

Employees who say their bosses "often" ask them for advice:

Those with high school diploma or less, 24%
College graduates, 54%
Those earning less than $25,000 annually, 30%
Those earning more than $75,000 annually, 52%

These results reminded me of some of my observations in an earlier post, Interactive Leadership and how that relates to the concept of The Leader-Follower.

I'm associating a boss's "often asking for advice" with the boss stopping leading for a while and by inquiring, placing the employee in a temporary position of leadership. By drawing on some aspect of the employee's expertise and experience, by asking for advice and listening, the boss is adopting a follower role. Without this flexibility on the part of the boss, we get into a "chain of command" process in which the boss protects his power of position, using it to control the employee who does whatever appears appropriate to retain his or her job.

As I write, I am recognizing yet again the power our language holds over us and how it can promote the declining values of our culture rather than those which are new and vibrant. "Boss" and "employee" are incongruent. The only boss I know who is not an employee is a board member - a CEO is an employee and so is a Vice President or Director even while they can also be described as bosses. Ideally, every employee is a leader-follower, giving advice and receiving it as necessary to accomplish the organizational or team objectives. Fortunately, there is new language emerging. W.L. Gore among others now use the term "associate," de-emphasizing distinctions of positional power and highlighting the association brought about by shared objectives.

I believe the associate role implies interactive leadership and I want to briefly explore that in reference to A Vision of Leadership (now Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation).

In the "associate" concept, the values lead and follow are united by respect which permits the interchangeability of leader and follower roles, the interaction of leader and follower or interactive leadership. An associate is a leader-follower.

In an organization in which position power differentials still exist, interactive leadership supports healthier information exchanges than are possible with pure command and control or transactional leadership. In a collaboration or leaderless team where position power is absent, however, contributions become even more effective. In this way, interactive leadership can occur both in an organization and a collaboration and in each case this is possible when those involved perceive themselves as leader-followers.

Technorati Tags: leadership, leader, follower, leader-follower, Associate, interactive leadership, organization ,

Free Leadership Coaching !!!

2006-09-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

(A Vision of) Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation is already a reference in two university courses but there's nothing like testing a leadership model using real workplace issues and have the users themselves report the results. Hence this experiment and offer.

You are a candidate for free, confidential, leadership coaching if you:

Face a personal leadership challenge that you are ready to discuss with me in private.
Can devote one uninterrupted hour at your computer on a weekday, between 7 am and 6 pm PST.
Use Skype (or audio IM) + Webcam or can support my remote access to your video-conference system.

I am committed to:

Respond to every request. (If there are too many I will announce that.)
Make my best efforts, using A Vision of Leadership, to help you find a way to address the leadership challenge you face.
Keep the content of our conversation confidential.

To participate:

Email to my personal mailbox, a short (100 to 300 words) description of the issue you wish to address, including alternate dates and times for one hour of coaching together with your videoconference information.
During the 5 working days following your coaching session, apply what you discover.
Afterwards, enter a comment (anonymously if you wish) into this blog, including: the challenge, lessons from coaching, results in the workplace and observations about A Vision of Leadership.

I look forward working with you.

Technorati Tags: leadership, leadership model, leadership challenge, coach, coaching, leadership coaching, free coaching, A Vision of Leadership, collaboration, innovation

A Story of Power

2006-09-11T11:27:00.000-07:00

I was recently told about gentleman living in a city in another country, who carried a concealed pistol. There, it is very rare for a civilian to legally carry a firearm in public and, indeed, he had obtained the appropriate permit. When he was asked by a visitor what he was protecting himself against his reply was unexpected. "I am protecting myself from myself."

As I understand it, this gentleman is using the pistol as a reminder of how powerful he is, how easy it is to call on his power, how potentially dangerous his power can be and therefore how circumspect he must be in its use.

I might have been skeptical except that the story was told me by the visitor, who is someone I tend to believe. As I thought further I realized that the gentleman had provided a wonderful example. It is not that I am proposing we all carry handguns but it does make a lot of sense, before we use our power to serve an objective, to consider the downside that can come from its even accidental misuse.

Leadership Quotes

2006-08-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

This is a compilation of quotes to which I add from time to time.

RELATIONSHIPS
In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of the relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles and positions.

- Margaret Wheatley

GOOD LEADERS
Good Leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that's what gives their work meaning.

- Warren Bennis

FRIENDSHIP
Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.

Can Respect Survive the Bad Times?

2006-08-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

In her 8/18/06 article in wsws.org, Joanne Laurier describes an extreme case of lack of respect between leaders and followers: Northwest Airlines to laid-off workers: rummage through the trash. Workers who have already made substantial concessions and are now to be laid off as their jobs are outsourced, received a company published book, "Preparing for Financial Setback," which contained this and other unusual recommendations. Meanwhile it is reported that executive earnings exceed $20m and prior to Northwest's bankruptcy filing the chairman dumped stock worth $26m.

The Vision of Leadership (now Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation) shows how, in the name of effective organization and collaboration, respecting binds together leader and follower. The leader is usually the person or people who take an initiative. Over the years Northwestern employees have lead by striking (disrupting organization and collaboration) in the hope of retaining benefits. In the present case management leads by publishing "Preparing for Financial Setback" against a background of pocket lining by executives. At this point any residue of mutual respect is likely to have evaporated, creating yet more obstacles to organization and collaboration.

Before airline industry deregulation Northwestern had a very successful business model and since then the company has been adapting to the new circumstances. The news item highlights how respect between leaders and followers is probably more important and harder to sustain in the bad times than in the good. In the good times organization and collaboration appear to be effective. In the bad times, with the stress of change, assumptions are challenged and small, misplaced actions can be potently negative. Without basic respect, an enterprise's survival through bad times appears less probable and if that culture continues, longer term success appears improbable.

Return on Leadership Investment

2006-08-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

The Boss's Paycheck

CEO compensation policy is "not rocket science" yet it "remains remarkably disparate" at major U.S. corporations, according to two studies by The Corporate Library, an independent research firm.

The first study, Pay for Failure, highlighted 11 companies that authorized a total of $865 million in pay to CEOs who presided over an aggregate loss of $640 billion in shareholder value.

"Pay for Failure"

AT&T Inc.
BellSouth Corporation
Hewlett-Packard Company
Home Depot, Inc.
Lucent Technologies Inc.
Merck & Co., Inc.
Pfizer Inc.
Safeway Inc.
Time Warner Inc.
Verizon Communications Inc.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

The second study, Pay for Success, highlighted 10 companies that awarded $190 million in pay to CEOs who presided over $82.7 billion in gains.

"Pay for Success"

AutoNation, Inc.
AutoZone, Inc.
Express Scripts, Inc.
Franklin Resources, Inc.
Humana Inc.
NCR Corporation
Nordstrom, Inc.
Nucor Corporation
Progressive Corporation
Whole Foods Market, Inc.

Source: BusinessEthicsBuzz, August 2006

Relationships

2006-07-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of the relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles and positions.

- Margaret Wheatley

Courtesy of HeartQuotes

Good Leaders

2006-07-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

Good Leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that's what gives their work meaning. - Warren Bennis

- Courtesy of HeartQuotes

Editorial - If a person is to be included he/she must be able to make a contribution, i.e. to lead, at least at the time of contributing in a way that makes a difference. So, organizationally, it is fair to say that "feeling centered" is experiencing that one is neither solely a leader nor a follower but a complete leader-follower.

A Nice Angle on the Innovative Process

2006-06-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

"The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created--created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination."

- John Schaar

Courtesy of HeartMath

Friendship

2006-05-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.

Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.

-Albert Camus

Courtesy of Heart Quotes

The Next Big Thing

2006-05-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

I found myself reading Alex Cameron's post, "If we don’t know where we are going – then where is The Next Big Thing?" on EDS's Next Big Thing Blog and was stimulated to comment as follows.

The Next Big Thing is indeed a technological manifestation of leading and innovating. No, we cannot we predict what TNBT will be or from where it will come except that the source will be a person (or group of people) and quite often not the person we might expect. A person who appears to have been following will surprise us by taking the lead and solving the problem while immediately before, s/he had been implementing rather than innovating. If all this is true we have some important clues to the source of TNBT.

Let's make a shift in our assumptions and propose that all followers are potential leaders and that all implementers are potential innovators. Also let's also propose that with respect to others a person can only be leading or following and with respect to their work they can only be innovating or implementing. This takes us to the idea that any person in the workplace is exhibiting at a given time some combination of leading or following and innovating or implementing.

As each of these is a desirable activity and the implied versatility is very desirable. For lack of a better name lets say this person is exhibiting leadership! Yes, this is a different model of leadership but test it. Just imagine if this or something similar was pervasive in your organizations!

Leadership and Implementation

2006-04-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

This is an ongoing list of posts that have a focus on implementation:

Technorati tags: Leadership, Implementation

Leadership and Innovation

2006-04-22T14:53:00.000-07:00

An ongoing list of posts from this blog and my website that focus on innovation.

Innovation Distinguishes Between a Leader and a Follower
Innovation vs Implementation
Chief Innovation Officer
Realizing Drives Innovation and Implementation
Responding - Follow and Innovate?
Improvising - Lead and Innovate
Collaboration and Innovation (model)
Innovation Occurs on a Foundation of Organization
Collaboration and Innovation (program)
Articulating a Vision for Collaboration and Innovation (program)

Updated 4/22/06

Success

2006-04-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

If I could write like this I would not be bothering with a model.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Success

Leadership and Vision

2006-04-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

The idea of 'vision' is important to all human behavior because, as recent research has confirmed, our brains cannot always distinguish between an experience we are having, a memory of a prior experience (deja vu etc.) or a memory of a prior visualization.

A vision is important to leadership for a couple of reasons. A person with vision is empowered by mental maps s/he has developed that extend beyond the field of immediate experience and suggest new possibilities for action and can be acted upon as 'real' extensions of the field of immediate experience. In other words this person can create his or her own future. This individual capacity becomes massively multiplied when the vision is shared by others. The relevant leadership attributes therefore, are to envision, create/share a vision in a meaningful way with others and act upon it.

This is an ongoing list of posts that focus on vision or visualization:

Articulating a Vision
(A Vision of) Leadership for Collaboration and Innovation (Interactive model)
A Vision of Leadership - A Heartfelt Vision
Visualization - the First Face of Leadership

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Vision, Leadership Vision, Visualization

Leadership and Collaboration

2006-04-05T18:15:00.000-07:00

This is an ongoing list of posts with a focus on collaboration.

Leader vs Follower
Chief Innovation Officer
Collaboration for Innovation (model)
Implementation Energized by Collaboration
Improvising, Lead and Innovate
Articulating a Vision for Collaboration and Innovation (program)
Collaboration for Innovation (program)

(Last updated 4/22/06)

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Collaboration

Transactional Leadership

2006-04-05T11:52:00.000-07:00

In two earlier posts this subject was discussed but not made explicit in the title.

" . . . Transactional leadership it is about the power of position and interactive leadership is about the power of relationships. . , " from Interactive Leadership.
". . . Where this leads-follows is that of transactional and interactive leadership, neither is inherently superior. . ," from Leadership and Gender.

Technorati tags: Leadership, Management, Organizational Development, Business, Work, Leadership, Gender, Interactive Leadership, Transactional Leadership