Whatever strategies, tactics or techniques of leadership that may be discovered in leadership research or be offered
in leadership training, I believe that the essential requirement in an effective leader is that leader's commitment
to his/her own spiritual growth.
Short (1998) sees us as the centres of self-created organizations that are made up of the people and relationships
that we bring into and maintain in our lives. How we use, delegate and abdicate responsibility and control of our
organizations is up to us. We are the leaders. In this light, Newstart Life Skills is about training people to
be effective leaders of their personal organizations.
I've been in the field as coach and trainer for 14 years. I started out as a resource gatherer. Books, handouts,
lesson plans, I pulled them together and piled them up and gave them out by the binder-full. I've noticed over
the last few years that I rely on that material less and less. I'm finding that the most useful and important resources
are already in the room in the persons of my students and me. Recently I've even stopped requiring Coaches In Training
to buy the official NewStart theory and lesson manuals. I can give them the basics of NewStart theory in a couple
of days. Lessons they can design for themselves. The important, essential work for us to do is inner work. The
text that I use to help us with that is Heider's The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New
Age (Heider, 1985). In Chapter 48, Heider has Lao Tzu saying:
Unclutter Your Mind
Beginners acquire new theories and techniques until their minds are cluttered with options. Advanced students forget their many options. They allow the theories and techniques that they have learned to recede into the background.
Learn to unclutter your mind. Learn to simplify your work.
As you rely less and less on knowing just what to do, your work will become more direct and more powerful. You will discover that the quality of your consciousness is more potent than any technique or theory or interpretation.
Learn how fruitful the blocked group or individual suddenly becomes when you give up trying to do just the right thing. (p. 95)
There's a thread that runs through current leadership writing that ties many authors, viewpoints and conclusions
together.
· Senge (1990) includes personal mastery as a component of his five-ingredient recipe for leadership and
organizational change.
· Short (1998) says that self-differentiation, " . . . having the ability to be an 'I' in the face
of 'we' pressures" (p. 37) is essential to healthy relationships, with healthy relationships being the key
to healthy organizations.
· Kouzes and Posner (1997), after exhaustive surveying, collating and summarizing, conclude:
We've said that leaders take us to places we've never been before. But there are no freeways to the future, no paved highways to unknown, unexplored destinations. There's only wilderness. To step out into the unknown, begin with the exploration of the inner territory. With that as a base, we can then discover and unleash the leader within us all. (p. 340)
· De Pree (1989) suggests that " - were we to keep 'becoming'
as individuals - we would be better off as persons, as corporations, and as institutions." (p.144).
· Yukl (1998) states "It is difficult to become a sensitive, caring and empowering leader unless you
have reached a high level of emotional and moral development." (p. 485)
· O'Toole (1995) requires a moral leader to deliver values-based leadership.
· Covey (1989) describes the danger in not doing inner work:
If I try to use human influence strategies and tactics of how to get other people to do what I want, to work better, to be more motivated, to like me and each other - while my character is fundamentally flawed, marked by duplicity and insincerity - then, in the long run, I cannot be truly successful. (p. 21)
It's not enough to mimic the qualities of effective leaders (e.g. honesty,
authenticity, humility, respect, courage), those qualities need to be generated from inside. Mimics are soon revealed
and distrusted. The answer is to work from the inside out rather than from the outside in.
Goleman (1995) has investigated what he calls Emotional Intelligence. He makes the point that the quality of our
decisions is not so much dependent on intellectual skills and knowledge as it is on how well we can identify how
we feel about what we know. Peck (1978) recommends psychotherapy as a way to explore our emotions and their sources,
and he defines this inner exploration as spiritual work. De Pree (1989) is explicit in his reference to God when
explaining his theory of leadership. (p. 63 - 66)
Yukl (1998) has summarized the work of hundreds of researchers and writers who have tried with linear methods to
determine the essential qualities of leaders and leadership. They quantify and qualify and in the end there isn't
any kind of reliable consensus on just what to do and how to do it. I suggest that they have the cart before the
horse. I suggest that a spiritually enlightened leader will demonstrate the many attributes and behaviours and
values-based transformational attitudes recommended by the various researchers simply as a matter of course, without
necessarily having studied any of them. I suggest that the more seriously one delves into leadership practice,
the more one finds it to be spiritual practice.
Picard (1999) asks " . . . as people and leaders, how can we afford not to invest time in spiritual development?"
(p. 7-5). Heider (1985) interprets Lao Tzu thus:
72. Spiritual Awareness
Group work must include spiritual awareness if it is to touch the existential anxiety of our times. Without awe, the awful remains unspoken; a diffuse malaise remains.
Be willing to speak of traditional religion, no matter how offended some group members may be. Overcome the bias against the word God. The great force of our spiritual roots lies in tradition, like it or not.
The wise leader models spiritual behavior and lives in harmony with spiritual values. There is a way of knowing, higher than reason; there is a self, greater than egocentricity.
The leader demonstrates the power of selflessness and the unity of all creation. (p. 143)
I think that knowledge of specific leadership and administrative skills and behaviours can be useful, but that
in the long run they go for naught if their practitioners haven't grounded themselves in spiritual practice. Spirit
is central to self, and self is central to leadership.
References
Covey, S. (1989). The seven habits of highly effective people. Fireside, New York, 358 pp.
DePree, M. (1989). Leadership is an art. Doubleday, New York, 148 pp.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. Bantam Books, New York, 352 pp.
Heider, J. (1985). The tao of leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching
adapted for a new age. Humanics New Age, Atlanta, 161 pp.
Kouzes, J., Posner, B. (1997). The leadership challenge. Jossey-Bass Inc., California, 403 pp.
O'Toole, J. (1995). Leading change.
Jossey-Bass Inc., New York, 282 pp.
Peck, M. S. (1978). The road less traveled. Simon & Schuster, New York, 316 pp.
Picard, M. (1999). Classical studies in leadership binder. Victoria, BC, Royal Roads University
Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline. Doubleday, New York, 423 pp.
Short, R. (1998). Learning in relationship. Symmetria, Seattle, 153 pp.
Yukl, G. (1998). Leadership in organizations. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 564 pp.