Winter is Coming ... So Beware Exposure

Yes it is freezing cold here in Milton Keynes. And to quote from one of my favourite works of literature (the Game of Thrones series), winter is indeed coming. So it is perhaps suitable that this post will concern exposure in leadership development.

I see this as the first of several posts in this area over the coming months.

I have spent the week on and off catching up and reminding myself of one of my favourite organisation writers, Yiannis Gabriel. Prof Gabriel is unusual in that his articles, books and chapters read somewhat like a stimulating (if ‘difficult’ in the best possible way) novel. They capture the imagination, challenge perceptions and are really very difficult to put down.

He is also a fascinating blogger:

yiannisgabriel.com

Prof Gabriel came to the attention of the wider organisation studies world as someone who applied a psychoanalytic perspective to his work. And why not? I have never bought the purist Foucauldian argument that absolutely everything is discourse, that we are somehow total prisoners to a regime of discourse. Well, ok I am not even sure that Foucault really believed that either. But that is for another blog post.

The point here is that psychoanalytic perspectives on leadership allow us a glimpse of why people seem to attach to some discourses over others. Sure, not everything is affect and emotion and I would be the last person to overlook the importance of material conditions in people’s identifications with discourse. For example, very real material injustice can in large part account for people’s (largely historic) affinity to trade unions. But let’s not overlook the emotional underbelly of attachment. In the case of trade unions, would they not also appeal to people’s needs for safety, as well as self-esteem (narcissistic enhancement)?

So psychoanalytic perspectives can offer us a glimpse into why people attach to discourses, to leaders, to organisations. To return to Gabriel, a consistent theme in his work has been that of the symbolic importance of the leader figure in our lives. Leaders provide an authority structure. They provide an outlet for our narcissistic identifications. They also provide a convenient scapegoat when things go wrong! Robert Cluley and Keith Grint have also both addressed these issues in their work.

Of course these identifications we hold with such figures can take a turn for the worst, when the priorities of organisations become concerned with pampering the ego of the leader. Nevertheless, psychoanalysis provides one explanation for why the figure of a strong individual leader seems relatively effective in keeping people together.

So you must be wanting to finish your morning coffee or lunchtime sandwich by now, so let’s get to the point. When we talk about the development of collaborative leadership, what is it that we put at risk – what is it that we expose? If leadership development programmes systematically dismantle the figure of the individual leader … What takes its place? What do we unleash by eroding the authority structures within organisations?

The implicit assumption underlying much collaborative leadership writing is that we will enter a kind of democratic idyll. I wonder, though … I mean it is not as if there are too many examples of sustained collaborative leadership practice out there to come to a view on the question of what replaces individual-based authority structures.

I do not pretend to know the answers to these questions. But I am left with several reflections:

First, I am not saying that we should give up on collaborative leadership. Clearly challenging authority and questioning power are vital. Moreover, I think there is an energy to collaboration that is missing when someone just tells us what to do. Such an energy, if channelled well, can undermine corrosive over-identification with authority.

But second, I am not sure that enough thought has been given to the ethical dimension of leadership development design in general. In particular, to the notion of what is left behind when figures of authority are stripped away. Are we left with a mess of paranoid, anchorless individuals scrambling about for meaning? That is clearly one of the dangers. Or else will participants project their authority identification onto a group? Groupthink hardly seems like much of a happy alternative.

These are issues of exposure. Of exposing human participants to the limits of their (and our) identifications.

So third, what comes of the leadership development participant who re-enters her/his organisation full of notions of collaborative leadership models? If they go about attempting to undo the fabric of authority in place in their organisations, then perhaps they should be aware of the risk, of the exposure.

There seems to be a need for balance somehow. That is why the work of Grint and Heifetz appeals so much to me. There is always an agent, or agents, at the heart of a collaboration, providing that need for a figure of credibility who can push others into taking more responsibility for leadership.

Or perhaps there is a certain strength and possibility in creating a kind of authority vacuum in leadership development. As long as we are reflexive about what we do in that space. But that is for another day … For now it’s time to wrap up warm and keep ingesting those vitamins. Winter has indeed arrived and it is time for some good fireside reading. I recommend Yiannis Gabriel’s Organizations in Depth: The Psychoanalysis of Organizations as a great place to start if you are interested in applying psychoanalytic thought to your practice.

You can purchase a copy here, although I have yet to find a university library worth its salt which does not hold a copy.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Organizations-Depth-The-Psychoanalysis/dp/0761952616/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1385751969&sr=8-5&keywords=yiannis+gabriel

- Owain

Farewell … And thanks for all the Foucault: Why the New Zealand Leadership Institute is at the Cutting Edge of Leadership R&D

Perhaps borrowing one of Douglas Adams’ better known lines was not entirely appropriate for this post. Adams’ iconic ‘thanks for all the fish statement’ is delivered by the departing dolphin intelligentsia as Earth faces ‘demolition’. I left the New Zealand Leadership Institute (NZLI) only two weeks ago as a quite inferior intelligent life form and with the organisation in rude health, plotting its trajectory into the future.

What I experienced at NZLI as a research fellow and facilitator over the past couple of years is worth capturing, as many of my experiences there go against the grain of what is regarded as conventional leadership development. So what is it that makes NZLI unique and special?

First, it is committed to an R&D of leadership development. The mantra of the Institute is that really we should remove the ‘&’ in the equation because the research and development conducted there is so interwoven. Perhaps a case of ‘revelopmerch’? It does help of course that the employees of the Institute are people who naturally think across and between the research and practice domains.

Either the researchers (who are leaders in their field, people like Brigid Carroll and Brad Jackson) also think in terms of practice relevance, or the facilitators (people like Joline Francoeur and Sarah Bowman) value the role of developing theory in developing leadership. Then there is the hybrid, Fiona Kennedy, who finds it difficult to ascertain whether she is a ‘practitioner’ or ‘researcher’ – a true pracademic, something I aspire to. Delve just slightly in the background and you encounter Phil Collins, Ann Moore and Josh Firth – it is a mark of a great organisation when every member of the team is just as enthusiastic about learning and leadership. And of course let’s not forget the energetic and challenging presence of Lester Levy, who founded NZLI almost a decade ago now. Lester is a man who has achieved a lot in his life and could easily now just kick back and enjoy his well-earned material comfort, but instead has decided to direct an ambitious university research institute.

The NZLI team in 2012

The overlap of R&D can be witnessed in the Institute’s continuous design meetings. I say continuous because the conversations never really end and stretch across media and time. These are what are commonly referred to as ‘generative conversations’, little practiced but oft written about. Not just soft conversations, although they can be, but also ‘rattling good rows’, as Brigid Carroll refers to them: that getting out in the open passionately held views concerning the progress of a programme or direction of theory. Both are essential.

Second, the Institute is selective in terms of who it takes on as a client. It is run as a not-for-profit charitable trust within the University of Auckland. This is surely a key differentiator – remove the overriding money element and you arrive in a zone where better understanding of leadership becomes the paramount concern. I have taken the notion of bespoke leadership development to heart as a result of working with NZLI – careful research in the context of the organisation followed by a programme targeted at appropriate participants and linked to experience. How often the two apparently straightforward words ‘appropriate participants’ haunt development programmes – people who were sent and don’t want to be there; people who are there expecting something quite different (charisma lessons or management training anyone?); people who are there because it will look good for future promotions; even people sent along as punishment, to be straightened out!

Third, NZLI is committed to critical theory. This is not the poke-your-tongue-out, holier and-purer-than-thou stuff which often plagues critical theory. NZLI tries to learn core lessons from critical thinking – constructionist thought, critical identity theory, discourse analysis and political theory – to shape design of development interventions.

Finally, the development and research work is linked closely to purpose. Developing more humane, as well as robust and relevant leadership is the goal. So this is best described as collaboration with a hard edge. The classic iron fist in a velvet glove. Collaborative leadership is so important when tackling intractable and complex problems. But it is not a case of group hugs and endless discussions about feelings – it can be a hard process of challenging dominant discourses.

Interventions which deal with the realities of local power relations rather than wishful thinking. Interventions which ask participants to re-evaluate the identity they carry in their work – to enact ‘wicked’ leadership you can’t carry around a managerial mindset! It takes guts to pursue this kind of pedagogy. The early programme evaluations and feedback can reveal some participant discomfort as their dominant constructions of what constitutes leadership are challenged and they begin to grapple with the implications of this challenge for their everyday work. This is not edutainment, folks. Surely if a development programme results in comfort and entertainment, it is not really a development programme but a passive, detached, if interesting, experience.

Leadership confronts: a characteristic calling card of NZLI

So as we think into the future about the possibilities for leadership development, of an open-source leadership development, then I offer the following four points as absolutely key. A development agenda rooted in:

• Crossover between theory and practice to the extent that they are almost indistinguishable and participants who embrace this challenge.
• The adoption of participating groups and individuals who are prepared to be unsettled.
• A commitment to relevant critical theory.
• Leadership development for a purpose: the development of more humane, creative and relevant organisations.

These are all lessons I will take with me into the future and into Our Leadership. So farewell NZLI and thank you indeed for all of that Foucault – you made him relevant and essential.

- Owain

You can explore the NZLI world here:
http://nzli.co.nz/