Embodied Leadership

Donna Ladkin and Steven Taylor have written about a form of leadership that they’ve called, “Authentic Embodied Leadership.” While their work has meaning for all leaders it seems especially fitting for clergy leaders. The premise is simple: the leader’s ability to convey authenticity enhances the follower’s experience of the leader/led relationship. Although in the field of leadership studies no agreed upon definition exists as to when our leadership is authentic, Ladkin and Taylor have discovered three themes that run throughout. They are: a) authentic leadership is an expression of the leader’s true self; b) the leader must be aware of his or her self to express it authentically; and c) since the self is inclined toward virtue, authentic leadership is closely linked to moral leadership. However, leaders and followers may be equally as challenged to find the true self.

The difficulty is two-fold: For the leader it is to find the mechanisms that bring awareness of their self. For followers it is to discern when the leader is expressing his/her true self. What followers can see, however, is the leader’s body and how s/he uses it. It is upon this that follower’s perceptions are keyed. Though unable to know the inner thoughts of their leaders, follower’s awareness of them as knowing themselves and thus revealing through their body what is genuinely and truly self forms the basis of followership. In short, our bodies become the method by which our invisible intents are manifest and the follower’s perception of the leader’s authenticity founded.

For this embodied leadership to remain authentic to both leader and follower the leader must be aware, if not give expression, to what s/he actually feels. Doing so is to engage in the awareness of self that occurs between our bodily clues and the larger world’s affirmation of our identity, but how is that done? These two, our bodily clues and the world’s affirmation of our identity, are referred to as our somatic and symbolic states. The somatic holds the existence of a firm, stable, and fixed self as a matter of fact while the symbolic sees the self as constructed from the stories that comprise our living and created depending upon the context. In the somatic view the sense of self can be thought of as grounded in our bodily reactions. This can be, among others, an inner sense about a decision; a “feeling” that arises in our emotions or that is felt in our body. If listened to it takes us closer to the “real” us. In the symbolic view others validate our real self by their response to our actions as we interact with them through language and gesture. In effect, the world tells us who we are.

So which is it? In reality it’s both. Because our self changes as we learn and age, we use both clues to determine our real self at a given point in time. Rigorous self-examination isn’t needed but awareness of what our inner clues tell us about ourselves and what others affirm about us are. This embodied leadership will enable us to lead authentically and followers realize the stability that authenticity brings.

Ladkin, D., Taylor, S. (2010). Enacting the ‘true self’: Towards a theory of embodied authentic leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 21:64-74.

Public Leadership: The Art of Leading Responsively

Leadership in a not-for-profit enterprise can differ from that in a for-profit venture. Without the motivation of market wages to entice cooperation people are motivated by another sense, often the altruism of helping accomplish the organization’s mission. However, recognizing that not-for-profit members respond to a different motivation isn’t all that’s required of leadership: the appeal for cooperation also has to be packaged differently. In other words, taking a “do as I say” approach may satisfy the drive for corporateness but if we're to retain members our involvement in their cause must be the medium of our communication.

Newer thought on the topic of Public Leadership can benefit those who lead not-for-profit enterprise. Although in a traditional sense Public Leadership has had more to do with elected leaders and those who work in government service, the term has expanded to include those entities oriented toward the common good within not-for-profit leadership, corporate leadership, and community leadership including religious, health, and social care. This broader definition moves Public Leadership from the nexus of politics and funding by taxation that once anchored it to the recognition that the common good may be interpreted by public entities chosen in forums not associated with political office. Consideration from two areas of human experience has enabled the expansion. These are the notion that leadership to be called such must be responsive to those it serves and that human emotion is intelligent. Both offer helpful insight.

The assertion that leadership must be responsive to those it serves is in some sense a refutation of the “great man” school of thought where leaders are seen as “be all” and “end all” beings. It recognizes that instead of located in a person called “leader,” leadership can be both specific to the context and co-created with members. What this new responsiveness entails is an understanding that we will not be “on point” in every situation, that other members are equally or more qualified to express the interests of the group and enable the achievement of its goal. It also holds that our leadership is a give and take of influence between leader and member and not by virtue of any title. These thoughts fix our service in irrevocable fashion to those we serve redefining it as “one among” and not merely as “one.”

The second consideration to influence Public Leadership is that emotions are intelligent and contrasts with the philosophy of Max Weber that public servants should maintain formal distance and in the execution of their duties be passionless. This emotional antiseptic came to be seen as a source of greater control and less initiative for some who work within and are served by public agencies, bureaucracy, and process: Its result was thought visible in a leadership concerned with the public more in name than fact. With the advent of New Public Management and its openness to modeling public service after the marketplace and recent thought calling for leaders “to take account of the complex processes of co-creation between producers and users” (John Benington, From Private Choice to Public Value?), the need for an intelligence beyond mental prowess has come to the fore.

The proponents of emotional intelligence present it as at least one possibility beyond what mental acuity can produce. They may be right. Robert Kramer (Beyond Max Weber: Emotional Intelligence and Public Leadership) begins with the premise that intelligence doesn’t cover all knowledge, that an entire world of knowing exists beyond the boundary of logic. He refers to this as our intelligent emotions and the source for building both group intelligence and social capital.

Without the intelligent guidance of emotions, human beings cannot respond to situations very flexibly, take advantage of the right time and right place, make sense of ambiguous or contradictory messages, recognize the importance of different elements of a situation, find similarities between situations despite differences that may separate them, draw distinctions between situations despite similarities that may link them, synthesize new concepts by taking old concepts and combining in new ways, or develop ideas that are novel. Without the guidance of emotions we cannot be intelligent. Without the guidance of emotions we cannot be rational. (p.5)

Central to the inquiry is if leaders will continue to see people as things to be directed or as potential to be discerned? Emotion in our leadership makes us vulnerable and sensing and instills a listening posture. Its lack robs us of the contribution of people and the good sense they could have made to the endeavor. While this is applicable for all forms of leadership even if not for all situations, not-for-profit leadership can especially benefit by the increased sensitivity to its members, their concerns, and cause available in emotional intelligence.

Clearly, not all who serve publicly are unresponsive and must change. The malady of leaders disconnecting from members is universal to all forms of leadership but can be corrected by seeing our work as influence and not position and through a willingness to explore the messiness of emotions. Although behavior seems generally to fall within known areas, still, the variableness of we humans along with the need of successive generations to express knowledge in familiar frames of reference make the work of research never complete. In this vein, leadership as a topic continues to be studied, analyzed, and categorized. This has produced multiple theories about leading and given the several forms that leadership is thought to take. Public Leadership is one of those forms.

Neo Institutional Theory and Leading Change

Currie, Lockett, and Suhomlinova have completed research that underscores the role of environment upon our leadership. In their article, "Leadership and Institutional Change in the Public Sector: The Case of Secondary Schools in England" (The Leadership Quarterly, 20, (2009), 664-679), they make the case that rather than being isolated to either personal characteristics or situation, leadership can be an amalgam of these but with another added: the environment in which the leader serves.

Their work is grounded in neo-institutional theory, a theory that posits the practices of our organizations are affected by the institutions within society. Among these are institutions with power to regulate and thus manipulate conformance and those that reify values and define what is normal. The use of the word "institutions" doesn't refer first to buildings or organizations but to an idea or ideal through which the accumulation of permissions to wield influence over human agency has become a structure of power over that agency. Examples of two such can be government and culture.

In a study that tracked the work of school principles tasked with introducing a "results oriented" leadership to their schools, they noted that the preferred and commonly accepted form of leadership for principles was a "moral" leadership that valued "wider social goals" over test scores. These two, results oriented leadership and moral leadership, in effect, reflected the public face of two institutions: the former representing the government and the latter the educational culture. Though the principle's had good reason to conform to the government's demands - such as sanctions against their schools - in those settings where students were socially deprived, principles chose to express leadership in support of the environment that fostered them: the educational culture and its insistence upon a moral approach to education.

It should not be concluded that the principles sole reason for rejecting the government legitimating their leadership was an unconscious need for acceptance by their faculties. Yet it does underscore the importance of environment upon our leadership and as importantly what we believe about the ultimate goal of that leadership. Further, it suggests that not only are we are a product of the environment that shaped our beliefs but also of the one in which we serve and from which we take cues regarding that service.

For those leading organizational change the implications can be sobering. In this instance, the principles were to counter the culture of their organization and in the process effectively negate decades of permissions that had come to govern human agency. Not all organizational change is so dramatic yet leading people to create a new story about themselves and the organization that defines them can be. To say it requires sensitivity of the leader is not fair to the tremendous strain s/he is placed under. Rather, it is essential for the leader to know themselves and in that knowing be fully aware of their values and what animates them.

Robin Dunbar's "Grooming and Gossip: The Evolution of Language" is an informative read about the dynamics of social interaction. It's helpful for the narrative leader by providing insight into language and its power to form social networks - issues that are key to Narrative Leadership.

Narrative and Implicit Leadership Theory

People are narrative beings. We express this in a number of ways but one that is poignant is how we make sense of activity and thought. The human way, our way, is to do so by the story line of past and immediate experience and the greater story of permissions and identity that culture provides. This makes the derivation of meaning and the experience that grounds it contextual. The necessity then is that if we are to derive meaning from stimuli it must have some comparable in experience.

This makes it essential that the leader have understanding of the stories that give shape to the lives of those s/he purports to lead. It also requires that the narrative undertaking be entered into aware that leadership will mean something different to each member. There is acknowledgement of this possibility in Implicit Leadership Theory where members determine the effectiveness of leadership by comparing the leader’s effort against their own internal model of what an effective leader is. Keller (1999) held that such models of leadership likely arise in the family unit where as a child we observe the first instances of leading and following.

The stories of our life do produce memories but also templates by which we know and understand. Learning them before attempting change, while slowing our effort to “get there,” helps make the transition a more humane affair.
William Salyards Copyright 2009 All Rights Reserved.

Keller, T. (1999). Images of the familiar: Individual differences and implicit leadership theories. Leadership Quarterly, 10(4), 590-607.

Paul Cobley gives an excellent survey of narrative and provides a basis for understanding why narrative is critical for leadership. For the person interested in narrative and its integration with sociality this is the place to start.

Storytelling in Organizations

In the debate between organizations as rational or relational, Yiannis Gabriel shows the role of stories in organizational culture. His work is helpful for those who seek to lead while sensitive to the influence of story in and upon our everyday life and living.