This post explores the third part of an integral reconstruction of leadership that I have been exploring in recent posts on authenticity and responsiveness.
After first unsettling the notions that leadership require a certain position like CEO or President and then, after unsettling the notion that leadership requires certain personality traits and attributes we begin to open up the possibility that anyone can lead regardless of their position or personality.
We take for granted that leaders require followers. But if anyone can lead, perhaps our usual distinction between leader and follower must also be revisited. What is it that makes a leader? a follower?
At the heart of this part of the reconstruction is that leadership is fundamentally an action, not a certain position and not a certain personality. And further, the kind of action that leadership is is an offer. Leadership is an offer of service to others. This is a reversal of our common understanding of leadership in which it is the followers who serve the leader. And within this interpretation of leadership, a follower is anyone who accepts the leader's offer.
This interpretation opens the way for a much more complex and dynamic interpretation of leadership and followership - one in which who is a leader and who is a follower changes over time depending on who steps forward with a leadership offer and who accepts it.
What is a leadership offer an offer of? Leadership is an offer of service to produce a certain future situation that meets certain conditions of satisfaction that address core concerns that a would-be follower has in the face of tough realities. That's a mouthful! Let's look at this one piece at a time.
"Leadership is an offer of service to produce a certain future situation ..." - leadership is an offer to produce outcomes and results.
"... that meet certain conditions of satisfaction ..." - not any outcomes, but certain outcomes that generate assessments of satisfaction (at least for now).
"... that address core concerns that a would-be followers has ..." - the offer is spoken into the "concernful" listening of would-be followers as a way to address those concerns.
"... in the face of tough realities." - when things aren't turning out, and our situation is tough to face, and we don't know what to do, we look for leaders. Leadership (and therefore followership) are two of the practices that our culture has learned over time for coping with the difficulties and instabilities in life.
Extending this kind of service offer from a centered foundation of authenticity and responsiveness is a powerful act of leadership.
Take care,
-Steve
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