Crosby B.C., Bryson J.M. - Leadership for the Common Good (2005)(en)

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Supportive Personal Networks and Balance

Leaders need a supportive personal network (including family, friends, counselors, mentors, and coaches) to cheer them on, give honest feedback, hold them accountable, serve as role models, and furnish emotional sustenance and other resources. If your current network is not strong, you can be proactive in seeking out people who can give the support you need. Of course, to sustain a supportive network, you also need to help those who help you.

This reciprocity is one aspect of needed balance. Generally, the advocates of balance recommend that all of us devote a significant amount of our time to personal renewal and family responsibilities, as well as to our job and community activities. Of course, balance may not be the best metaphor, since it implies an exactitude that escapes most of us. We may choose to be sequentially lopsided, though never for too long (Delbecq and Friedlander, 1995). Weaving the aspects of our lives together into a satisfying whole may be a helpful metaphor.

Position in Social Hierarchies

Each of us is situated in several of the social hierarchies described in the “leadership in context” section of this chapter. Our position in these hierarchies may make it easier for us to influence some groups of people and harder to influence others. If we are in a position of relatively low power and status, we are likely to have insights into the modus operandi of the powerful (because we’ve had to pay attention to them) as well as of our own group. We may have more difficulty understanding the experience of groups when we are in a position of privilege compared to them, and thus able to habitually ignore them.

Exercises 2.6 and 2.7 (part one of the latter) can help you assess the additional strengths and weaknesses described here. Exercise 2.7 lists seven pervasive dimensions of social hierarchy; you may want to add others. A possible resource is the work of Charles Manz and his colleagues on self-leadership (see, for example, Manz and Neck, 1999; and Houghton, Neck, and Manz, 2003). Their methodology suggests how individuals can build on their leadership strengths and overcome their weaknesses. Selfleadership strategies emphasize self-observation, goal setting,

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Exercise 2.6. Assessing Additional Strengths and Weaknesses.

Integrity and Sense of Humor

What are my guiding principles? How well does my behavior match them? Am I honest with myself and others? Can I laugh at my own and others’ foibles?

Ways of Learning and Interacting

What are my preferred or habitual ways of learning? What are my preferred or habitual ways of interacting with people? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches?

Self-Efficacy, Optimism, and Courage

How confident am I that my efforts to promote beneficial change can be successful? Do I have and convey a generally positive outlook and a realistic optimism about the possibility of people’s working successfully together on their common concerns? How willing am I to venture into the unknown, go against the prevailing wisdom, be vulnerable, be radically innovative, keep on in the face of adversity?

Cognitive, Emotional, and Behavioral Complexity

Do I take a systems view? Can I see connections among ideas, people, and organizations? Can I synthesize multiple strands of information? Can I envision new ways of doing things? Am I comfortable with ambiguity and paradox? Do I accept the validity of different perspectives? How good am I at identifying my own feelings? How do I practice selfdiscipline? How well am I able to understand and respond to the feelings of others? How well do I manage my negative perceptions of other people? How well do I balance and integrate multiple roles? How good am I at enacting my roles according to the context, while still being aligned with my core values?

Continuous Learning

How does my formal and informal training (especially in cross-cultural communication) help or hinder me in exercising leadership around my policy passion? Do I seek and accept frank feedback from others?

Authority, Skills, and Connections

What sources, and what amount, of authority can I apply to my leadership work?

1.Authority based on family position, craft, profession, position in organization or community

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Exercise 2.6. Assessing Additional Strengths and Weaknesses, Cont’d.

2. Moral authority rooted in demonstrated integrity or trustworthiness

What general skills and social connections can I apply to my leadership work?

Supportive Spouse, Other Family Members,

Friends, Colleagues, and Mentors

Who among my family, friends, and colleagues can be counted on to support or oppose me in this work? Who can mentor or coach me? Are there people whose example I can follow even if I can’t work with them directly?

Balance

What engagements and attachments do I have to balance with my involvement with public work? How do they help and hinder my leadership?

self-reward, self-correcting feedback, and practice. Self-leadership also includes “natural reward strategies”—methods of finding intrinsic value in the tasks one undertakes—and “constructive thought pattern strategies” (Houghton, Neck, and Manz, 2003, p. 129).

Appreciating Diversity and Commonality

All human beings have much in common; just to begin with, we are all natal and mortal. Yet each of us is unique, and this will remain true even if scientists are able to produce humans who are genetic clones of each other. Just debriefing an assessment such as the MBTI or the “personal highs and lows” exercise in a small group can reveal numerous commonalities and differences in the group. Sharing autobiographies is also revealing. Since conversation about difference can be extremely uncomfortable (especially when the differences are linked to oppression or discrimination), participants should be especially ready to engage in respectful dialogue characterized by active listening (described in the “team leadership” section of the next chapter) and by other means of ensuring that less powerful participants can safely express their experiences.

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Exercise 2.7. Analyzing Social Group Membership

and Means of Bridging Differences.

Part One

How do these personal conditions affect your leadership?

Part Two

Bridging differences:

1.What are the causes of negative stereotypes about members of a group other than one’s own?

2.What methods can be used to overcome prejudice and discrimination?

3.What strategies have you found effective for understanding and connecting with people who are different from you?

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Prejudice and stereotypes about groups of people we see as different develop out of ignorance and distance, as well as from the desire to feel secure in our own group and to see people like us as good and admirable (Allport, 1954; Stephan, 1985). Prejudice and negative stereotypes also help us rationalize oppression of other groups.

To deepen your appreciation of cultural difference, you may want to visit other cultures, engage in formal intercultural education programs, or join a project that requires culturally diverse people to work together. (Ideally you will plan visits that move beyond the tourist view, and become involved in programs and projects led by people with excellent multicultural competency.)

Exercise 2.7 prompts you to reflect on your own diversity and ways you’ve found to build bridges between diverse groups. When skillfully debriefed in a group, the exercise can promote considerable learning about participants’ diverse experiences and crosscultural bridging.

Understanding oneself and diverse others is hard but rewarding work. Leaders use this knowledge to put together productive work groups, nurture organizations, and help constituents engage in “public work” (Boyte and Kari, 1996) and achieve regimes of mutual gain.

Summary

People seeking to achieve beneficial change in a shared-power world need to understand and draw on eight main leadership capabilities. This chapter has explored the two capabilities—leader- ship in context and personal leadership—that are the foundation for all the others. Team and organizational leadership are the focus of the next chapter.

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Teams of gay activists and health professionals organized the conferences and public demonstrations aimed at focusing the attention of medical researchers and public officials on the emerging AIDS crisis. Teams organized stakeholder consultations sponsored by the World Business Council on Sustainable Development and put together council publications. A steering committee oversaw the African American Men Project; teams prepared reports and organized events. Teams helped organize the Vital Aging Summit.

Teams may have an appointed leader or leaders, such as a coordinator, project director, or cochairs. They may choose their own coordinator, director, or chair and parcel out other leadership functions among themselves. They may also rotate leadership functions.

To create and sustain productive work groups, leaders should attend to the satisfaction of individual group members, group cohesion, and task achievement (Johnson and Johnson, 2003). Many authors refer to this work as facilitation and coaching (Bacon, 1996; Rees, 1997; Schwarz, 2002). Let’s consider how leaders accomplish this through recruitment, communication, empowerment, and leadership development of team members.

Recruitment

Team members should be diverse enough to bring needed perspectives, skills, connections, and other resources to the team’s work, yet they should share commitment to the team’s purpose and be willing to cooperate to achieve it. An especially important skill in diverse teams is the ability to accommodate various communication and work styles (DiTomaso and Hooijberg, 1996).

When assembling a team to initiate or oversee a change effort, leaders would be wise to conduct a basic stakeholder analysis. The first step is identifying the key individuals and groups affected by proposed changes or having access to needed resources. The second is clarifying what stake these people have in the change. What exactly is their interest? What expectations might they have of any change effort? Team members can then be systematically recruited to represent, or at least connect with, those stakeholders. (Additional advice on using stakeholder analysis to organize groups involved in a change effort is in Chapter Six.)

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For example, as Gary Cunningham put together his recommendations for members of the citizen group that would oversee the African American Men Project, he knew he needed African Americans who had rich connections and credibility in their own ethnic community. He needed businesspeople interested in a diverse workforce, representatives of government agencies, executives of nonprofit organizations that worked with African American families, respected academics, and people with political clout. He obtained commitment from accomplished individuals from all these categories. The result was a steering committee that had prestige in the eyes of many stakeholders and access to important networks for implementing project recommendations. As he assembled teams to work on research reports, he sought out academic partners with a reputation for sound research and a commitment to achieving better outcomes for African American men. Members of these teams could be expected to produce research seen as legitimate by many stakeholders.

Of course, leaders cannot always control the membership of their teams. Team membership may be mandated in general terms or quite specifically by law, policy, or someone with authority over the team. Even then, however, it may be possible to add members, or at least bring in consultants when their special perspectives or skills are needed. Regardless of how people are recruited for the team, the leader should take time to build a shared understanding of the group’s mission and ways of working together. Sometimes it will become clear that a group member cannot agree with the others on mission or methods, and it is time to part. For example, gay activist Larry Kramer finally resigned from the Gay Men’s Health Crisis board in 1983 after his prolonged and unsuccessful effort to convince other board members to be more confrontational in pressuring New York City officials to provide AIDS services.

In general, the size of a working group should be small; seven to nine members is ideal. If the group has to be larger—in order to represent all the key stakeholders, for example—subgroups are needed to carry out many of the team’s tasks. Also important is bringing in new members as needed. Team leaders need to ensure that new members are brought up to speed on what the team has accomplished, how it operates, and what it plans to do. They may consciously mentor newcomers for a time.

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Communication

The most essential team leadership skill is fostering communication that aligns and coordinates members’ actions, builds mutual understanding and trust, and fosters creative problem solving and commitment. Such communication requires an atmosphere of openness, information sharing, and respect (see Kouzes and Posner, 2002). It combines seriousness and playfulness. It requires attention to verbal and nonverbal communication, to message sending and message receiving. We recommend several methods. Regardless of the method chosen, a team leader should be sensitive to right timing and right setting. As an example, a leader should ensure that seating arrangements facilitate free and equal exchange of ideas.

Active Listening and Dialogue

Traditionally, leaders have been advised to concentrate on the messages they send—make them clear, consistent, positive, credible, and tailored to audience members. The advice is still important, but increasingly those who study groups and organizations advise leaders to become exemplary “active listeners” and practitioners of dialogue. Active listeners concentrate more on receiving messages. They use questions, body language, and verbal feedback to encourage others to express their ideas, feelings, and concerns. They check with the speaker to be sure their understanding is accurate. They seek out information about the person’s needs, about the team’s cohesion, and about the tasks the team is trying to accomplish. They seek to understand how the person’s ties to various groups and cultures affect his or her participation (Stivers, 1994).

Practitioners of dialogue set up team conversations with simple ground rules (Schein, 1993; Senge and others, 1994; see also Senge, 1994). First, group members are asked to take turns presenting their ideas or proposals. Second, as an individual participant presents an idea or proposal, the other members are expected to practice suspension, hearing a speaker out instead of offering judgment or other reactions. As part of suspension, they also try to reflect on their reactions and examine the assumptions on which they are based. Third, once all the ideas have been presented, group members might be encouraged to talk about the

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assumptions they found themselves making and seek clarification. Finally, participants are invited to advocate a particular course of action and come to consensus on what should be done.

Joyce Fletcher and Katrin Kaüfer explain how leaders can help groups move to “generative dialogue,” in which group members cocreate ideas (Fletcher and Kaüfer, 2003, p. 24). Typically, they say, groups begin by “talking nice” to each other and then move to “talking tough,” in which members offer their perspectives and engage in debate. By practicing the skills of “self-in-relation”—empathy, listening, relational inquiry, revelation of personal vulnerability, and tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty—leaders can move the group through these stages to “reflective dialogue,” in which participants reflect on their own perspectives and begin to realize they can learn from the other group members, and then finally to generative dialogue.

The Institute of Cultural Affairs recommends a process that moves from focusing on facts about a situation to reflecting on related emotions, feelings, and associations, thence to considering the values and meaning of the subject, and finally to deciding on a response to the situation. For additional information, see http:// www.icaworld.org and http://www.icaworld.org/usa/usa.html.

Managing Conflict

Leaders of diverse teams can expect conflict to occur within the group. Indeed, leaders will want to encourage a clash of views and ideas, with the aim of developing the most effective and synergistic problem solutions. What they don’t want is personalized conflict that results in group members’ discounting each other’s ideas and motives and mistrusting each other. The active listening and dialogue methods presented here can help prevent such destructive conflict. Other methods include Tom Rusk’s ethical persuasion process (Rusk and Miller, 1993; Crosby, 1999, p. 68), Marshall Rosenberg’s nonviolent communication process (1999), simulations and role plays (Mikolic and others, 1992), and the reconciliation process developed by the National Coalition Building Institute in Washington, D.C. (see Brown and Mazza, 1991; Crosby, 1999). The NCBI process should be especially helpful for teams that include members from social groups with widely differing power and status. Tom Fiutak, our colleague at the University of Minnesota, recom-