<p>Learn more about the author, <a href="http://vicdesotelle.com/" title="View Vic's profile"><span>Vic Desotelle</span></a>.</p>
<p>I was reading my LinkedIn Groups this morning and came across Mike Smith’s ‘Life Back West’ thoughts on people, teams, organizations, effectiveness and success (thanks Mike!). Now, it may seem that I jump around here a bit, so buckle your seat belt and see if you can stay with me on this ...</p>
<p>So, after reading his short blurb on leadership that caught my eye, I went to Mike’s blog planning to oppose what I anticipated would be a description of an old belief system that suggests, if we are professional, our feelings are to be suppressed in the workplace. Instead, Mike described how his young son has inspired his professional nature to include expression, compassion, and emotion. Having a young boy myself, I can totally relate to how he and I allow each other space for emotional expression. But then, why is it that we are not allowed too much expression at work without being sited as a problem?</p>
<p>It seems that our society has become afraid of our own human-ness. Have we lost our sense of how to be with each other in the messiness of our humanity? For me, today’s sorely needed emerging leaders can not be likened anymore to the stoic guy on a horse riding off into the sunset after he single-handedly saves the town from Godzilla. Why? Because this guy (usually someone we all aspire to be) rarely shows the kind of emotion that allows for collective transformation. Rather he tends to be about eliminating a problem, along with the people that go with it.</p>
<p>What if instead, we began to choose our leaders based (in part) on how well they have learned to express their emotional selves and how well they are exemplars for others by the way they share the messy parts of their humanity and also be able to hold it for others? I propose that we dare ourselves to allow messiness in the workplace by helping to teach and “lead” groups through spells of negative emotion. Rather than try to find ways to avoid or expel it. Note the key piece here is how to teach groups or teams to hold individuals in their time of need, rather than expecting the so-called leader to do it alone. This is known as collective leadership and I believe that gold can be found within the mines (minds) of our organizations that will generate amazing new forms of innovation. Why? Because the form and function of innovation becomes an expression of the group or company who created it.</p>
<p>I think <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3wyCxHtGd0&amp;eurl=http://discoveryfuel.com/team-building-leadership/a-twist-on-the-idea-of-professionalism-in-leadership/">Daniel Goleman’s talk on TED</a> points to this evolved form of leadership that I speak of. And it often starts with what he called a ‘human moment’, which are the times when we are paying full attention to the person(s) we are with. Additionally, he suggests that there is zero correlation between intelligence and the awareness of another (compassion). Yet we hire our leaders and managers almost completely based on their level of intelligence and rarely rate them based on their ability to express, show compassion, or hold a group through troubling periods. Why is that? Interesting to me is that he also correlates the rapid growth of information to compassion. And it makes sense! This begins to define a true ecology of thought and being and I feel that this is where we are headed - a collaboration of relationships that connect as we become more present moment to moment in our lives. Now, this is a bit of a paradox because our increased access to information so often pulls us away from being present with another, right? Well, both are happening. Now, I am aware that my writing is moving in a number of directions, but hang in there with me.</p>
<p>I am trying to suggest an <strong>ecology of leadership </strong>and the relationships and awareness that make this up. And that the meaning of ‘professionalism’ is morphing into something completely different. In ecological terms, this means that even the idea of “the leader” is old, and that we instead need to consider the possibility of what a collective leadership would look like and how this carried into group dynamics can help to generate a deeper form of authenticity within ourselves and our companies.</p>
<p>I plan to write about this later on in my blogging. But for now, let us all “re”consider and discuss what it means to be a “professional”, and also reconsider what kind of “leadership” we really need in this new interconnected world of ours.</p>
<p>Learn more about the author, <a href="http://vicdesotelle.com/" title="View Vic's profile"><span>Vic Desotelle</span></a>.</p>
2009-03-13T21:01:45Z
2009-03-17T01:13:38Z
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It seems that our society has become afraid of our own human-ness. Have we lost our sense of how to be with each other in the messiness of our humanity?
A Twist on the Idea of Professionalism in Leadership
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2009-07-18T05:59:52Z