The New Leader: Writer and Written

This is not just psychological gobbledygook. There are echos of this perspective from diverse schools of thought.

In Moby Dick, Captain Ahab waxes: "Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike."

Now talk of God tends to make a lot of people nervous, especially when it's crazy people like Captain Ahab doing the talking.

Here is another view, from the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh: "If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow: and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are."

Still too much woo-woo for you? How about the late, physicist and card-carrying empiricist, Carl Sagan: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

What did Sagan mean by this? Look at all the forces acting on a wave on the ocean: underwater structures, changing ocean temperatures, atmospheric conditions, wind, tides, gravitational pulls, lunar forces, planetary motion, and on and on. A single wave literally comes into and goes out of existence because of all those forces. If asked, "when did that wave begin and when will it end," I think Sagan would say: It began when the universe began and it will cease when the universe ceases.

The New Leaders

The complex, fast-moving times we live in demand new leaders who don't walk around drunk on agency...thinking if I don't do it, no one will.  The new leaders know they are the writer and the written and that everything around them is co-created.

I hear you out there...please, Dennis, say something practical.

Here's what that means. A leader in a meeting might have a sense of what she wants to do. She hears the opposing viewpoints and doesn't see them as annoying and distracting and start looking for a path to impose her will, She thinks: those other viewpoints and the stakeholders expressing them are, not only, not against me, they are part of what is creating who I am and am becoming! And I need to let them shape what we do and how we do it.

The new leaders then are radically inclusive. They are willing to release the tiller because they recognize that Leadership is a role in a field of complexity, not a fixed position. They follow the flow and let the voices and perspectives of emergent leadership take over. They know there is a win-for-all somewhere in the mix and they tack towards it and bring others along.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

You are not separate.  Just as light is both particle and wave, you are both the writer...making conscious choices...and the written...shaped by people, events and forces. seen and unseen.

If you want to experience this co-creation and fundamental unity more frequently, you don't need an extended retreat or a cosmic epiphany.

The first step is to just stop acting as if you're separate.

Dennis Adsit, Ph.D. is the President of Adsum Insights and designer of The First 100 Days and Beyond, a consulting service for leaders in transition who need to get off to the best possible start in their new jobs.