Leadership and Change

I'll say at the outset that I particularly appreciated the description and elucidation of the leadership paradoxes far more than the rest of the chapter. They have been personal "stirrings" that have troubled me. It is a relief to have someone organize them and so clearly define them.

As the chapter proceeded, however, I felt it moved further and further from the realms of possibility to a kind of creepy place. Not an eloquent description, I know, but that's how it left me feeling. I've chosen three points as discussion possibilities. The first is the "separate self" vs. the "self-in-relation" discussion. I believe it is a given that no one can be an island, that no one achieves success without help along the way. However as the authors moved through the Characteristics, Conditions, Skills and Outcomes I felt more and more like I was being guided - almost herded - to a vanishing point at which my unique individuality would be gone in the name of shared leadership and the need for us all to behave in keeping with the self-in-relation model. I tried hard to compare these characteristics with other models we've read - does "zest" equate to finding one's own voice? "empowered action" to shared values? I couldn't force them into a coherent diagram.

The authors state on page 29 that "...if one party is not moved to empowered action but instead wants to avoid future connection or feels disempowered or exploited, or if one party does not achieve new knowledge or does not desire more connection, this is an indication that the ideal of generative or transformative growth has not occurred." I found this statement to be in direct conflict with K&P's assertion in Chapter 5 that you can't make people travel where they don't want to go. It strikes me as having gone to the far end of the spectrum - from respecting others' perspectives and inviting their participation - to enforcing and requiring people to change so that the process can be successful.

This leads to my final point, the authors' discussion of "rewriting the image of self" (p.31). Frankly, this part made me a little nuts. It reminds me of the "not keeping score" theory employed with young children in sports. If there is no score book, no one wins or loses. They know whether they won or lost and so do their parents and coaches. Similarly, if we all adopted the self-in-relation model, there would still be leaders and those being led would know who they were. Artificially infusing self-esteem or self-efficacy into an organization or process without having individuality entirely subsumed will not succeed. The level of competitiveness is different for everyone and those who have the drive and the desire will not willingly give it up to a herd mentality.

Sarah Waldemar