Reality – Let’s go deeper.

How well do you know yourself? How objective, really, are you about yourself? How rational is your assessment of yourself? How well do you understand what others think of you, how they perceive you, how you come across to them, what emotions and thoughts you trigger in them, what they say behind your back? How does your stress compare to that of others? Your compulsiveness? Your self-respect? Your rigidity? Your fear of authority? Are you a workaholic? How well do you assess others? Are you seduced by their words? Are you deceived by their manipulations of their own images? What do you think of them when they tell you what to think? Do you accept their explanations of themselves? Do you have the skill to see them as they really are? Can you predict their behavior under stress, or in very private circumstances? Can you fathom their true intentions, even those unknown to them? Can you plumb their secret thoughts? Do you see others with compassion? With detachment? With projections of your own issues? Which is it? Which should it be? In short, how in touch are you with your own reality as a human being and with the human reality of others?

“A realistic leader always responds to the facts,

for realism means to have no illusions.”

-Koestenbaum

This whole blog could be a list of questions. The essence of the Reality Strategy is to have no illusions. A realistic leader has a strong grasp of the facts – and comprehends themselves, their family and friends, their culture, their world, their place in the world, their workplace, their marketplace, their competitors. A realistic leader gains an accurate picture through direct contact and connection – they are present, and in touch.

There are four levels or tactics to the Strategy of Reality.

Reality – Professional Level: Meticulous attention to practical details, attending to the precise needs of your immediate and end customers

The essence of quality is attention to detail. A leader in hospitality who comprehends their target premium customer, has plans for scalable international expansion, and correlated financial growth, but does not have methodical processes in place for making sure the ashtrays are empty and the faucets do not leak will fail. At the professional level, a realistic leader is attentive and connected in a very real way to their customers needs.

Reality – Social Level: Commitment to obtain extensive information and maintain a stance of objectivity

Leaders who are realistic at the social level are well informed. The collect information from multiple sources, are aware of their world at all levels, and understand the impact of the changing world on their social circle. Realistic leader are constantly updating their skillset and keeping it relevant. They maintain objectivity when looking at data. A great book to increase a leader’s social level of realism is Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling. It is a book of statistics, lessons learned from the statistics, and what questions we should ask to maintain objectivity when statistics are presented. Wow, I just made an excellent book sound boring. Read it!

Reality – Psychological level: Relentless focus on survival

This tactic is the critical success factor for the strategy of reality, for no one can be a successful leader without a mind riveted on survival. It is a relentless focus on results, the rules of the game, and how the game is scored. “Business is an attitude — the attitude to be totally and fully in touch with the reality of the market and respond to it effectively and successfully.”

Jack Welch, once the CEO of General Electric, overall philosophy of leadership has gone out of style, but regarding his focus on survival, his strategy of realism was spot on:

  • Face reality as it is, not as it was, or as you wish it were.
  • Be candid with everyone.
  • Don’t manage; lead.
  • Change before you have to.
  • If you don’t have the competitive advantage, don’t compete.
  • Control your own destiny, or someone else will.

Also critical to this tactical “survival” level of the reality strategy is the leader’s first obligation to survive – “Take care of yourself.” The realistic leader takes care of their bodies, is in touch with one’s feelings, and takes care of those emotions. Simply put: you are a grownup; act like it.

Reality – Philosophical level: Direct contact and connection to ourselves, to others, and how others perceive ourselves

At the philosophical level, reality is to be connected, to be in touch as an insider and outsider. It is to be in touch with yourself. It means to be in touch with our connections with each other, and a very realistic perspective of how we are perceived by others. It is a direct connection with our connection to society and nature. A realistic leader understands where they start, and end, and at the boundary, what is the seen from the outside.

It is to be in touch with your dreams. Are your hopes and dreams guides, directions, tendencies, trends, or merely illusions? What matters is that they should have a direct line of connection with the reality of your here-and-now. Presence means to be in touch with one’s feelings, hopes, and fears. That is the philosophic level of reality as a leadership strategy.

Vision – Let’s go deeper.

This blog about leadership is inspired by, and often directly lifted from Peter Koestenbaum’s book: Leadership, The Inner Side of Greatness. The impact the book had on my life, and leadership, was magnified by discussions in a class I took at St. Thomas University, and of course, many great examples of leadership in my own life.

In the next 4 blogs, I intend to dig a little deeper into the 4 strategies, and the four corresponding tactics of leadership greatness. In this blog, we will dig into the strategy and tactics of Vision. Remember that this is a blog about THINKING NEW, and new thinking changes your actions, ultimately changing your life.

“A visionary leader always sees the larger perspective, for visioning means to think big and new.”

Peter Koestenbaum

Vision – Professional Level: abstract reasoning and analysis

The professional level tactic of vision is about logical intelligence, as measured on intelligence tests.  Not so much book smart, but ability to decipher code, recognize patterns, and think clearly.  Consider keep your mind in shape by stretching it with puzzles.  As a component- visionary thinking is not only “looking at” carefully, but also stepping back and looking at “looking at.”

Vision – Social Level: systemic and strategic thinking

The social level tactic is the critical success factor of vision. Without this level, your vision will be dramatically handicapped.Think big. Step back. What is the big picture. It is to see the world from a satellite. It is to look a little closer and see the world from a helicopter. It is to fly back in time and see a medieval city with all the houses clustered around a church. It is to fly over a present day city and see a small church surrounded by tall skyscrapers- corporations, insurance companies, and banks. It is to fly into the future and envision the city of the future.

This level of thinking (systemic) combined with abstract reasoning and analysis gets at assumptions. Examine the assumptions behind your actions. Practice finding the assumptions behind your actions by recognizing the assumptions in advertisements (selling games to children is really selling friends, food that is validated by associating with a foreign country, automobiles that promise freedom.)

Systemic thinking is to be able to digest large amounts of data at once.  It is systemic thinking that allows a conductor to glance at an immensely complex score and play it immediately on the piano.  It is systemic thinking that allows speed-readers to take in a full paragraph and see a single massive statement.  It is taking reality and breaking it up into a mosaic and picturing how it can be systemized, how it can be re-arranged, what are the trends, what are the inter-dependent relationships?  Realize that the mosaic pieces are not fixed, but changing constantly as well, and be comfortable with it.  The prerequisite to strategic intelligence is to have enough space in the mind to see a plethora of possibilities.

To train your mind to think this way, constantly look for examples.  Look back through history and see “what ifs?”  Try comparing military history with economic cycles or similar exercises.  Spend time with people who think this way and imitate them.  Invert your perception of time.  Not, “I am now here and will, in the future, go there.” But, “I am already there, I came from here, and now I must recall how I did it.”

Systems thinking also means developing new languages. A new language changes our perspective.  A realtor says, “I do not sell homes, I help customers buy them.”  An industrial company sells hard goods, a knowledge company sells information. What value do you bring – to your company, to your family, to your community, to yourself?

It is not the subject matter or content that determines whether your thinking is big; it is the way your mind works.  You can think big about a pebble, and you can think small about world history.

Vision – Psychological level: creativity and the unconscious

Always monitor, review, and access what you are doing, and ascertain how you could do better and what you could do differently, especially when you think you are doing well.  “There is a better way, find it!” -Thomas Edison.  It is a relentless concern for results (also part of reality strategy.)  It is being innovative.

“that kind of change arising from within the system which so displaces its equilibrium point that the new one cannot be reached from the old one by infinitesimal steps.  Add successively as many mail coaches as you please, you will never get a railway thereby.”

Joseph Schumpeter 1934

Connect to your unconscious to tap into creativity in seeing the future. 

  1. First insight: follow your intuitions.
  2. Preparation: saturate yourself in the problem.  See internally what you want to create.  Be committed to the solution.
  3. Incubation: trust your unconscious, change your pace, rest.
  4. Illumination: be receptive to the solution when it comes.
  5. Verification: test your hypothesis.  Maybe it was a false start, maybe it needs modifications.

A visionary leader is instinctive, intuitive, and experienced.  Practice relying on your intuition for decision making.  Observe others who are successful in making sound decisions on more than just analysis and research.  Experience can be developed only through more experience.  Leaders grow by accelerating experience, live through more experiences, live more in each experience.

Vision – Philosophical level: expanding and exploring inner or subjective space-time; awareness of your possibilities

Visioning at this level is the ability to shift from the natural to the reflective attitude (like meditation,) from being who you are (“looking along”) to reflecting on who you are (“looking at”), from acting out who you are to observing and evaluating who you are, from seeing the world from within your subjective ego to seeing yourself objectively within the world, from acting to examining your actions. Contradictory simultaneous thoughts: You are fully present and engaged and also non-attached, distant, objective, observant.

Visioning at this internal level allows you to see the cloud but to know behind the cloud is the mountain. To be reflective means to look at yourself; to be transcendent, means to look beyond yourself.

Some questions cannot be solved with ordinary logic. They require logic about the logic you are using. In making a conscious shift from agent to observer, your attitudes and intentions change, and what was once a problem no longer exists as such. Speaking literally, you may not solve anything, but the problem itself dissolves. It turns out to have been a pseudo-problem.

Here is a radical example of new philosophical thinking: Time management.

The sense of time is produced by the anticipation of death.

Time can be experienced as a reality outside of me, within which I exist, and which limits and constricts me. This kind of time is called clock time. The only solution to the pressures of clock time is to fragment it, set priorities, and to marshal fierce self-discipline. Although necessary, this produces technical efficiency, which is laudable but is not really living.
Time can also be experience as a reality inside of me. While I am alive, I am generating time. I can never feel pressure from what I am, only from what I am not. To the degree that one’s life is fully authentic- clearly in tune with what one experiences as one’s deepest inward source- one has no problems with time, for then there is meaning in everything one does, and there is fulfillment in every expenditure of time. One lives from the inside out, as time ) and not, unnaturally, in time, from the outside in.)

Time management is a pseudo-problem. Problems with time are ultimately problems with authenticity.

If you are up to thinking new about time management, as practice for thinking new about vision, here are some exercises for meditations about time:

  • Catch 22’s main character is always seeking to be bored, because when he is board, time passes slower, resulting in a longer life. Does time have a velocity?
  • The White Queen says to Alice in Wonderland, “It is a sorry memory that works only backwards.” Can we healthy enough to remember the future?
  • In what units do you think of with respect to time: an hour, a day, a week, a month, six months, a year, 5, 10, 25 years? Draw your life as a line. Put an X on the line to where you project yourself to when you think ahead. What happens if you move the X?

Stretch your vision, grow your greatness.

4 Strategies of Leadership, and 4 Supporting Tactics

The measurement of Leadership is the size of a diamond bounded by the 4 principles: Vision, Reality, Ethics, and Courage. Not only size, but the shape of the diamond is also critical; as we covered in the previous blog, it is important not to have a “collapsed mind.” Let’s dive a little deeper into this Leadership Diamond model.

Instead of calling Vision, Reality, Ethics, and Courage “principles,” consider them as “strategies” in greatness. Strategies are the “what” or the desired outcome; it is the flag planted at the top of the mountain. It is very important to have a clear picture of the end-goal, but without a map of “how” we are going to get there, we will get lost and easily side-tracked. The map is tactical. So an appropriate inquiry is “what are the supporting tactics to Leadership Greatness?”

In Koestenbaum’s book: Leadership, The Inner Side of Greatness, the author’s intent was to find common thought patterns (philosophic structures) among leaders. For each principle, or strategy, there are 4 corresponding supporting tactics: Professional, Social, Psychological, and Philosophical. The order of the strategies is important. It starts with the simple – the professional level is visible and measurable, and moves down into deeper foundations. The deeper we go, the more root-causes are uncovered, and in resolving them, the greater the leverage we have in increasing our Leadership Greatness.

Professional Tactic: The professional level is what you practice everyday on the job. It is visible. It is your skillset.

Social Tactic: The social level are the social skills required to interact with community. It requires maturity.

Psychological Tactic: The psychological level is the realm of intuition, the culmination of a lifetime of your experiences that drive your behavior.

Philosophical Tactic: The philosophical level is the deepest of all. It is the essence of YOU, exercising your will. It is at this level that you have intrinsic value.

In the next 4 blogs, we will discuss in depth, each Strategy, and the four supporting tactics.

A Picture of Greatness

In the last blog, I made the claim that it is possible to measure greatness.  In this blog, I hope to help you visualize greatness.  Let me be clear – these are not my ideas, but are copied from Koestenbaum’s book Leadership, The Inner Side of Greatness.  Per Koestenbaum’s Leadership Diamond model, the picture of greatness looks like this:1

The bigger the diamond, the better the leadership.  However, it is critical to expand all principles of greatness.  If a single principle is collapsed, Koestenbaum refers to it as a “collapsed mind.”  For example, Hitler had vision, was grounded in reality, and acted in courage, BUT Hitler had no principle of ethics.  Hitler’s leadership diamond would look like this:

Here are some other leadership diamonds to consider.

Since I am engineer by training, a generalization that could be made is that many engineers are strongly grounded in reality and ethics, but less strong in vision and courage.  That leadership diamond would look like this:

Here is a person has with great visions, collects endless facts, and is a nice person. But when it comes to courage – to initiative, to taking action – they are on vacation.

This person is friendly enough and, unfortunately, also courageous. However, since they have no sense of reality, they are also dangerous. In fact, they are the one who spends all your money.

This person is an s.o.b. – great vision, relentlessly pragmatic – but people, what are they? People are numbers, objects, instruments, things – not souls and centers of feelings.

This person has courage, the team spirit, and the facts for leadership, but does not know where they are going! Complaints against this kind of boss are very frequent.

So how about you? Which picture describes you as a leader? Can you draw your leadership diamond?

1. Peter Koestenbaum, Leadership, The Inner Side of Greatness (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1991) 35

Measuring the Greatness of a Leader

In the first blog of this series, I asked the question: “Is it possible to learn leadership?”

Some insight came from 2 different perspectives: “looking at” and “looking along.” I believe there are many books and people teaching from the “looking at” perspective.

In the second blog, I “looked at” leadership, compared it to management, and highlighted the most important role of a leader: changing culture.

In the third blog, finally, I introduced a book that I believe “looks along” leadership: Leadership, The Inner Side Of Greatness, by Peter Koestenbaum. As I dug back into this book, I find it truly a great book, and recommend it as a shared experience, a group reading and discussion.

Let’s go back to the initial question: “Is it possible to learn leadership?” Externally, leadership requires a change in how you act. It is what people see when they “look at” you. Internally, how you act, is the result of a transformation in how you think. Transformational thinking first starts with you taking charge of how your mind thinks. (You might want to read that again.)

In Koestenbaum’s book, he builds a mature analysis of the transformed leadership mind and calls it “The Leadership Diamond model.” The Leadership Diamond can be used as a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to measure your greatness as a leader. A tool to measure greatness! Is it any wonder that an engineer like me thinks this is really cool?

Per Koestenbaum’s Leadership Diamond model, the 4 principle ways of expressing greatness in thought and action are:

  • Vision: a visionary leader always sees the larger perspective, for visioning means to think big and new.
  • Reality: a realistic leader always responds to the facts, for realism means to have no illusions.
  • Ethics: an ethical leader is always sensitive to people, for ethics means to be of service.
  • Courage: a courageous leader always claims the power to initiate, act, and risk, for courage means to act with sustained initiative. 1

When you review these 4 principles, where is your thought and action the strongest? Where is your thought and action the weakest?

1. Peter Koestenbaum, Leadership, The Inner Side of Greatness (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1991) 7

Looking Along Leadership

In the first blog of this series, I differentiated between “looking at” and “looking along.”  Both are valid perspectives, and both are important to understand the true essence of a thing.  In the second blog, I quickly “looked at” leadership, and gave several metaphors for what leadership looks like, and why it is needed today.

I am not going to spend any more time “looking at” leadership, because this is the perspective that most leadership books teach from – What challenge did the leader encounter? How did the leader respond? What was the outcome? What can we learn and how should we gain wisdom from this leader’s experience?

In my experience, very few leadership books are written from the “looking along” perspective.  Some memoirs and biographies touch on this perspective – I am thinking of Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight the founder of Nike, who’s narrative of his life, AND introspections of his passions is both a good example, and a wonderful read.  Although I loved the book, the leadership applications are not immediately obvious.

One leadership book that does “look along” leadership is Leadership, the inner side of GREATNESS, a philosophy for leaders, by Peter Koestenbaum.  Rather than “looking at” what leaders do, Koestenbaum systematizes how leaders think, and their philosophical approach to life.  It is a wonderful, mind-binding, thought provoking read, (and I never would have successfully navigated it except that it was required reading for a university class.)

I hope to spend the next several blogs summarizing Peter Koestenbaum’s philosophy of leadership, so that you too can gain the perspective of “looking along” leadership, and possibly be inspired to share your thoughts about leadership.

So, what books have you learned leadership lessons from?  What was the main perspective of the book – “looking at” or “looking along?”

First, Looking AT Leadership

Leadership is critically important, now more than ever. A leadership metaphor:

When my grandmother passed away, she could remember life before radio, refrigeration, movies with sound, cars, television, computers, microwave ovens, personal computers, internet, cellular phones… To say that the world has changed in the last 100 years would be a dramatic understatement.  We have exchanged nomadic wandering for the horse and buggy, the horse and buggy for the track guided steam engine, the steam engine for the passenger car, and the passenger car for jet airplane travel, with commercial tickets already sold for space travel. The acceleration of innovation has left many in the world paralyzed, pinned to their seat.  So what does this have to do with leadership?

The world of the past could be managed.  Managers of the steam engine were guaranteed safe arrival at the final destination provided they didn’t derail the train.  Managers of the automobile could be more flexible but the majority never left the predictable highway. Periodic references to a road map allowed the manager to successfully navigate to a destination.  The leaders of the past world had the luxury of climbing into hot air balloons and dirigibles of long-range planning and overseeing the progress, providing direction and encouragement.  Today’s “jet-age” leaders require split second decisions between infinite choices.  React too slowly and the jet misses the correct destination, arrives late, runs out of fuel, or worst of all—crashes.  Change direction too quickly and the external stresses on the airplane cause it to disintegrate.

The new successful paradigm for leadership is more likely to be compared to jet fighters flying in a tight formation.  The leader in the squadron has earned the respect of the other pilots and the success of the mission is based on the combined skills of all the pilots working to fulfill their role.  The leader has given up control to other pilots and has gained maneuverability. 

With the increased maneuverability comes the ability to make mistakes faster, and also recover from mistakes faster.  And although this paradigm “fighter-pilot” leadership style has not widely been adopted in practice, some forward thinking leaders have evolved further into “learning” organizations.  Learning organizations could be compared to a flock of birds:  many interdependent living organisms working together, staying true to an internal compass, buoying one another up, driven by ingrained cultural “rules.”

Managers Vs. Leaders

Good managers expend resources judiciously to efficiently accomplish given tasks.  They make slight course adjustments to stay true to the mapped out course.  Their authority to manage the resources, including people, is delegated to them.  Managers are sufficient when there is a clear destination, a road, and a map.  But what if there is an unclear destination, no road, or map? What if the world around the organization is changing faster than the organization?

Differentiated from managers, good leaders MOST important role is to: 1.) recognize that the status quo organization is not prepared for the future environment that is coming 2.) and change the culture of the organization to keep pace with the coming change in environment.1

Managers are delegated authority; leaders earn it. Managers are crucial for success; great management is tactically critical. Leadership does not require a title; leadership is a force, which can be used for good or evil. The clearest test of leadership is to turn around and see if anyone is following you.

Are you a manger or a leader? What kind of an organization do you work for– a train, a automobile, a jumbo-jet, a fighter plane, or a “learning organization?” What kind of leader are you? Where are you leading your followers?

Enough of looking AT Leadership; in the next blog, I want to shift my perspective and look ALONG Leadership.

1 This is not my original idea, but I cannot find the source of this idea. I believe it is from Organizational Culture and Leadership by Schein, but I loaned out my book and cannot reference it.

Looking Along Vs Looking At Leadership

Is it possible to teach leadership? More importantly, how does one learn leadership?

MOST importantly, if I learn leadership, will it make me a leader?

From one of my favorite authors, C. S. Lewis, I found some insight into this question.

Looking along and looking at

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood, that beam of light, with the specs of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in an irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of the tree outside and beyond that, ninety-odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

But this is only a very simple example of the difference between looking at and looking along. A young man meets a girl. The whole world looks different when he sees her. Her voice reminds him of something he has been trying to remember all his life, and ten minutes’ casual chat with her is more precious than all the favors that any other woman in the world could grant. He is, as they say, ‘in love’. Now comes a scientist and describes this young man’s experience from the outside. For him it is all an affair of the young man’s genes and a recognized biological stimulus. That is the difference between looking along the sexual impulse and looking at it.

Which tells you the most about the thing?

When you have got into the habit of making this distinction you will find examples of it all day long. The mathematicians sits thinking, and to him it seems that he is contemplating timeless and spaceless truths about quantity. But the cerebral physiologist, if he could look inside the mathematician’s head, would find nothing timeless and spaceless there– only tiny movements in the gray matter. The savage dances in ecstasy at midnight before Nyonga and feels with every muscle that his dance is helping to bring the new green crops and the spring rain and the babies. The anthropologist, observing that savage, records that he is performing the fertility ritual of the type so-and-so. The girl cries over her broken doll and feels that she’s lost a real friend; the psychologist says that her nascent maternal instinct has been temporarily lavished onto a bit of shaped and colored wax.

As soon as you have grasped this simple distinction, it raises a question. You get one experience of the thing when you look along it and another when you look at it. Which is the ‘true’ or ‘valid’ experience? Which tells you the most about the thing? And you can hardly ask that question without noticing that for the last 50 years or so everyone has been taking the answer for granted. It has been assumed without discussion that if you want the true account of religion you must go, not to religious people, but to anthropologists; that if you want the true account of sexual love you must go, not to lovers, but the psychologists; that if you want to understand some ‘ideology’ (such as medieval chivalry or the 19th-century idea of a gentleman), you must listen not to those who lived inside it, but to sociologists.

“Meditation in a Toolshed.” The Business of Heaven 1984 by C. S. Lewis Pte Ltd.

Of course, this is a brief excerpt. I recommend googling “Meditation in a Toolshed” if you wish to read the rest. C.S. Lewis writes “When you have got into the habit of making this distinction you will find examples of it all day long.” I have found this to be true, and this approach into seeing is not unique to C.S. Lewis. Ken Wilbur makes this same distinction of views in A Brief History of Everything, and even Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, discusses similar alternate viewpoints in The Island.

C. S. Lewis concludes that it is imperative to both look along and look at, before a thing can be comprehended. This blog is an attempt to do just that with leadership.  However, to simply regurgitate accurately the volumes of knowledge about leadership that I have consumed would be a foolhardy effort.  I would find this effort tedious, and my reader would find it boring.  I hope to both look at leadership AND look along leadership.

At the point that I personally began to look along leadership, two very predictable things happened: 1) my perspective of the world radically changed—I realized the world is bigger than the toolshed, and  2) of course with the realization that the world is bigger than the toolshed, I realized that I comprehended so very little.

What do you think? Can leadership be learned, or is it providentially gifted? When you are looking at Leadership, what inspiration have you found?