Michael Shiel (in the final chapter of ‘Complexity and the Experience of Leading Organizations’) recommends leaders respond to meanings arising in group conversations. He explains, ‘leadership is particularly concerned with assisting a group to move purposefully into an unknown future, and … this is a creative act requiring the constant emergence of new meaning.’ Agreeing with Ralph Stacey, he writes ‘Leaders as powerful and skilful participants play a major role in the patterning that emerges, although they cannot know in advance what will emerge.’ He adds, ‘This is not an existing “unknown” awaiting discovery; it is an act of creation in the moment.’
Shiel also states ‘To the extent that an individual is experienced by a group as being skilled in drawing attention to what is emerging, he or she will be recognized as a leader.’ If one can accept Shiel’s proposals, leadership therefore involves: (1) being fully present as a participant in joint exploratory learning; (2) noticing and drawing attention to emerging meaning in group conversation; and (3) using appropriate gestures to influence the responses of others, thereby influencing the emerging pattern of knowing.
As a Christian leader I will continue to affirm known meanings that emerge as well as new meanings in new language that do not contradict known meanings.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
