I have been interested in the subject of leadership for several decades and have been privileged to have had many opportunities to develop a number of national and state wide leadership education programs.
The Lilly Endowment Leadership Education Program, a statewide initiative with a vision of making Indiana a hallmark state, noted for its programs and services to young adolescents, was one of them. During the selection process for Lilly Fellows I asked applicants one question they all still remember, “Why do you think you are a leader?” The long silence that followed indicated that this was not a question they had thought about. Some expressed a belief that leader was a presumptuous label to them; they didn’t want to call themselves this and preferred to let others do so. Others equated leadership with power over others, and this was anathema to them. At first I thought that these reactions were due to a lack of clear definitions or consensus about the meaning of leader or leadership. After all, even with decades of research and years of experience we have over 350 definitions. I now think that the discomfort with this identity was because of a lack of being reflective about ourselves and the reason for our actions as well as an absence of language to explain and legitimize our inner most thoughts and being, a dismissal of the deeper well of our motivations and minimal understanding of what is required to serve in the face of often intractable problems. My attempt to understand the reluctance and ambivalence about accepting the identity of leader fueled my search. Why was there such discomfort about claiming leadership? So I went back to the history of our traditions of serving and leading.
The strong tradition of voluntary activity is equated with a form of leadership concerned with the common good, as expressed in the 1620 Pilgrim's Social Compact. This was a covenant of leadership that bound America’s early settlers to be, "strictly tied to all care of each other’s good and of the whole."
We can find this same level of individual care and communal responsibility in the words of John Winthrop in his sermon of 1630 in Salem Harbor:
“We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body.”
One hundred years after the Pilgrim's Compact, Alexis de Tocqueville observed the uniquely American trait of voluntarily responding to the needs of neighbors and community through the establishment of associations. He marveled at the ways in which Americans cared for others and used voluntary action for the common good.
He also recognized another uniquely American trait, which seemed to be in stark contrast and which he feared could eventually undermine the health, vitality, and the very existence of democracy. The trait is individualism.
The language of individualism is deeply embedded in our culture and is unquestionably perceived by most Americans as a prized "right." Tocqueville’s concern was that individualism could isolate Americans from one another and undermine the conditions for freedom. There is an inextricable connection between the character of its citizens, the quality of its leaders, and the health of a community.
In the early history of the country, this fierce streak of individualism was tempered by what Robert Bellah describes as “second languages.” These languages were religious and civic. Religious conviction and civic virtue were the sources of tradition, social mores - what Bellah calls "habits of the heart." It was these "second languages" that united individuals, bonded them, and fostered a strong sense of mutual responsibility and commitment.
Civic involvement and engagement create the networks and norms for the development of cohesive communities capable of providing a quality of life considerate of individual interests and of the common good. They constitute what has been termed social capital and civic trust. The capacity to resolve the social challenges we face is directly linked to our capacity to foster these conditions.
There is a widening gap between the wealthy and those who are middle class and poor. The “fortunate fifth” make more money and have economic resources that total more than the 4/5’s of the population combined. Those in the top income bracket are creating their own communities. Excluded from their circle of concern are those most in need.[1] (Reich, p. 16)
Studies show that the economic top tier (individuals and companies) give mostly to art museums, opera houses, theaters, orchestras, ballet companies, private hospitals, and elite universities, not to the poor or the organizations that serve them. They also give disproportionately less of their income to charitable causes.
(“American households with incomes of less than $10,000 a year gave an average of 5.5% of their earnings to charity or a religious organization. Those making more than $100,000 a year gave 2.9%.[2])
We have economically segregated neighborhoods and two separate school systems – one private and one public- in most of our communities. As we move from the industrial age into an information society in which the knowledge worker will be the majority of the labor force, education is less of a choice. Advanced education and opportunities for continued learning will be essential additions to the resumes of those who aspire to be successful. An inadequate education threatens to cordon off a number of Americans and isolate them from participation in their communities. The shift in responsibility for public services to local governments with few resources seems to increase these divisions and disparities.
Robert Reich writes, “The secession (of the successful) from the rest of the population raises fundamental questions about the future of American society…The stark political challenge in the decades ahead will be to reaffirm that, even though America is no longer a separate and distinct economy, it is still a society whose members have abiding obligations to one another.” (Reich, p. 45)
The growing divides have caused many to question “have we lost the habits of the heart?”
In a democracy in which there has been historical tension between individualism and the common good, the leadership challenge is to maintain a healthy balance between them.
This is more than a political challenge. It is a leadership challenge.
Bridging the divides and repairing the fabric of community will require an integrated approach to leading, an approach that prepares leaders who have an ability to balance individual self-interest with the larger interests of community. This ability will need to be cultivated through multiple experiences of "depth education," education that provides individuals, organizations, and communities with language and skills that bridge the divides between public and private spheres; between those in the center and those in the margins.
As Craig Dykstra, former Vice President, Religion at the Lilly Endowment said, “Leadership demands vision in two senses. It requires both perception and foresight. What is crucial is that both forms be marked by clarity and charity rather than self-defensive fantasy. Such quality of vision requires not just technical expertise, but moral virtue and even spiritual strength. And that is why those who think leadership is a matter of character are exactly right.”
I, too, believe that effective leadership is a profound act of courage as well as manifestation of sound character. It is leadership that embraces the wholeness of reality with all of its complexity, ambiguity and tension; and it enables others to embrace and manage paradox. It is dependent upon the capacity for internal work toward wholeness - the ability to traverse and transform the internal divides while seeking to bring together those that are external.
A new form of leadership is emerging, one that will include the disciplined practice of the integrated work of leadership. It will be a discipline that forms and informs a leader’s identity, and moral authority, and that exemplifies honesty and integrity. It will cultivate an ability to honestly encounter the self and to move to deeper levels of understanding making it possible to lead others through times in which the habits of the heart are restored so that transformational change can occur.
Related Topics: Adaptive Leadership
