Robert W. Terry introduced his second, and last, book with a statement of personal conviction: “Authenticity hovers over me like a palpable presence, demanding that I probe the truth of a situation, challenging me to go deeper, ask more questions, live more profoundly in the truths I have discovered. Truth even grabs me, from time time (sic) to time� (Terry, 2001).

Truths grabbed me, too, finally, on the last of a five-day struggle to comprehend what Terry’s work means in the context of my public policy practice and personal leadership journey. The public commitment to post a reflection on Terry’s work challenged me to go deeper, ask more questions, and probe the truths of my own authenticity. The motivation was partly embarrassment; for as much as I always said I admired Terry’s work, from Saturday until Thursday morning I couldn’t figure out how I would ever use this material in real situations.

It wasn’t Terry’s fault. His credentials as a consultant were just as strong as his in academia. For 10 years he served as director of the University of Minnesota’s Reflective Leadership Center and affiliated with Zobius Leadership International, described as a “guild of seasoned leadership architects and educators� in the introduction to the book. The roots of his zone leadership philosophy tapped down to two bachelor’s degrees, one in science and the other in divinity. Seven Zones of Leadership is a bridge between evidence-based scholarship on leadership theory and Terry’s recognition that there is a place for “dimensions of life just below the conscious surface, tugging, pressing, and informing personal behavior,� (p. 14).

After 18 months in the Masters of Public Affairs program, it was time to pick up a trowel and see if I, too, could “construct an edifice I would like to inhabit� (p. 43) from the pile of bricks I’ve acquired about leadership, spirituality, resilience, and innovation research. In “Getting Started� on p. 17, Terry indicated that readers would find his book most helpful if we kept our own organization in mind while we reflected. Unfortunately, I complicated my own situation when I attempted to use organizations from the past.

One after another, I tried Terry’s model on four situations from my past work life (pp. 45-46, on time) that I hadn’t figured out. These were complex situations identified in September 2006 during a “highs and lows� exercise to map personal and professional timelines in Leadership for the Common Good (Crosby & Bryson, 2005, exercise 2.5 on page 50). I followed directions and worked through Terry’s list of questions from the action wheel to frame each situation: the existence (history), resources, structure, power, mission, meaning, and the fulfillment of the event in its completed action (Terry, 2001, p. 5). In some cases, I lacked evidence to quantify or qualify my opinions. However, these self-imposed exercises did frame out four situations that have weighed on me.

I was rewarded with an “’aha!’ that opens up new possibilities� (Chopra, 2000) when I decided to use my nuclear family as the organization of interest on Wednesday afternoon, and set my sights firmly on the present. I started reading again, and saw a truth that grabbed me: “Theory without practice is irrelevant, soaring into empty skies; practice without theory is meaningless, acting on ignorance, change, and guesswork� (Terry, 2001, p. 1). In my view, parenting is leadership, and Terry’s words were divinely timed to arrive at a time when there are definite “stirrings� (p. 14) that our household is in a period of high uncertainty and low agreement.

Terry’s admonition about using research speaks directly to the most profound learning of my graduate school experience to date: that it’s incumbent upon me to gather research-based ideas, processes, and tools, master use of them in practice, and then be able to discern why, how, or when to use each one. This includes parenting, although many fewer practical resources seem to exist for the complexities of adolescence than for the early childhood developmental years.

Terry developed zone mapping as a tool to help individuals and organizations make sense of the “realities of the past and anticipations for the future (that) never cease to inform our response to what is happening in the immediacy of life,� (Terry, 2001, p. 45). That’s a tall order, but an intriguing potential for our family since I am always looking for ways to expose my children to methods for making sense of the world that I had to learn as an adult.

It felt more relevant to work on the family organization, perhaps because I am actively invested authentically in the outcome. After working through the baseline action questions, I invited my husband to join me. It took us about two hours to talk through the zone leadership model. It was helpful as a test to see if I had internalized it well enough to explain it to someone else. We specifically worked through the following vis-Ă -vis our family:

• Identifying our world view along Terry’s continuum from “fixable and knowable� to “understandable� to “unfixable and unknowable,�) (p. 8, 47); • The respective “high to low� levels of certainty and agreement on various key issues (pp. 10-11, 46); • “Stirrings� we each perceive and whether those serve as positive or troublesome signals of change (p. 14);
• The Seven Zones of Leadership, one by one.

Terry borrows heavily from Stacey to remind us that “unified agreement exists when members of an organization are moving in a shared direction, whether with a shared vision, mission, or set of tested principles and procedures�(Stacey, 1996). That described our family accurately until, abruptly, it didn’t late this fall. On the holiday break, there were stirrings of differences with two increasingly autonomous adolescents in the house. The decisions that loom ahead involve all of the factors that Terry identified, including and especially the need for resources. There was a spiritual component to our concern, too, for neither of us wished to provoke further disharmony yet respect for our parental leadership was noticeably lacking by the 17-year-old.

Perhaps Terry’s model will prove itself more productive than parent-practitioners bumbling on gut instinct. I will purchase the book tomorrow and read it entirely, paying particular attention to the actual tools for diagnosis that these readings lacked. It will also be helpful to correlate various leadership studies to each of the zones, as Terry promised in these excerpts.

Did anyone else in the class struggle to evaluate the efficacy of Terry’s model without access to the concrete, diagnostic tools? For me, it was a challenge to imagine how access to a philosophical construct would sway my son, no matter who wrote it. My husband understood the concepts but, as a scientist who works with data to prove efficacy to federal regulators, felt he would need to see the entire “program� in order to decide whether a full family gathering would be productive.

I tend to believe it would be productive, and the diagnostics could only help. Terry’s model began to come alive with the real example of our family. We are linked through: the from which of our shared past; the with which resources that make our individual and family actions possible; the through which processes and procedures that we need to get things done; the by which power of energy, or spirit, or beliefs that fuel our motivation and creativity; the toward which mission that directs our actions as individuals or a family even in the middle of “permanent white water� (Vaill, 1996); the for which significance or rationale that gives meaning to what we do each day; and, ultimately, into which fulfillment that allows us to make “comprehensive choices, ask comprehensive questions, and face the most devastating aspects of human life� (Terry, 2001, p. 51).

Are there any more worthy guideposts for living than that?

On the flip-side, Stacey adds, “Diverse agreement exists when there is scant alignment of objectives, direction, goals, processes, or principles� (ibid). My family is squarely in Zone 6: “As the world becomes more unknowable and unfixable, as shared meaning is wrenched apart, leadership shifts again (to) process wisdom and improvisational skills. No one is in charge,� (p. 51). We are not a hierarchical house run by parents with rigid rules, nor have ever been. Yet we would benefit from recapturing a shared identity (Zone Three) in order to become a living system that can adapt to our new realities (p. 49).

Now and then, I suffer pangs of regret that I didn’t pursue a graduate education sooner. Direct access to Terry as a mid-career mentor is no longer possible. Lou Gehrig’s Disease stole his gregarious laugh and skill as a wordsmith, and then stole him, too soon for anyone’s liking. He knew his time was terribly short, yet chose to spend it preparing this second book for publication one short year before he passed away.

Terry obviously believed deeply in the importance of his work to challenge himself through all the limitations imposed involuntarily by the disease process. Somehow, that one truth grabs me and makes me remember that nothing is an insurmountable challenge unless we imagine it to be so.
References

Chopra, D. (2000). How to know god : The soul's journey into the mystery of mysteries. New York: Crown Publishers. Crosby, B. C., & Bryson, J. M. (2005). Leadership for the common good : Tackling public problems in a shared-power world (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Stacey, R. D. (1996). Complexity and creativity in organizations (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Terry, R. W. (2001). Seven zones for leadership : Acting authentically in stability and chaos (1st ed.). Palo Alto, Calif.: Davies-Black Pub. Vaill, P. B. (1996). Learning as a way of being : Strategies for survival in a world of permanent white water (1st ed.). San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.