By PETER SHELDRAKE

For many centuries, the model of leadership that has dominated
thinking has been one based on power and control, and on a very
empirical, rationalistic view of the world.  The 20th century
corporation is the epitome of that view: work is a matter of
plans, and specified tasks, with each person having a specific
task built around a division of labour.  The management of the
organisation plans, controls and directs what is done.  It is a
powerful model and the idea of the hierarchical organisation,
and the right of those in superior positions to direct the work
of others is well embedded in our understanding of the way in
which we work together.

There is much more to be said about these changes and their
consequences, one aspect we are seeing in developing societies
is an underlying shift in the way in which we see things.  There
is a move away from that simplified rationalistic view of the
world to one that is much more exploratory, tentative, and
concerned about relationships rather than 'things'.

One of the most important underlying outcomes of these changes
is to consider our basis of knowledge, where everything in the
world exists in relation to everything else, and that knowledge
is constructed, provisional and tentative (a post-modernist
world view).  This approach to knowledge has a number of
implications, which can be compared with those deriving from a
more positivist view:

- Knowledge is a matter of models and approximations

- The world comprises interdependent 'relationships', which are
always in the process of becoming

- Relationships are constantly being reformed and adapted,
perhaps best understood in terms of open systems, and

- Human being are examples of such self-organising, open
systems, where information, values and needs are all part of the
interacting relationships which are formed with others and with
others systems
	
Further, these lead to two more implications:

- Organisations are another kind of open system, devised by
human beings, and have the same capacity to reform and adapt as
other open systems, and

- Leadership is essentially concerned with adaptation and
enabling relationships and interactions.

Are there alternative approaches to thinking about leadership
that have emerged alongside these wider changes?  There are
several, but they generally seem to address two challenges.  The
first of these is adaptation - the need to understand and
respond to the realities we are facing now, and are likely to
face in the future.  The second is generative - the need to
innovate, and to create new and more meaningful environments.

Among these various explorations concerning the 'new
leadership', those that have based their ideas on the concept of
'stewardship' seem to be of particular relevance, especially
given concerns over the environment, and the responsibilities we
have to all the stakeholders in our endeavours.  A seminal work
in this area has been that of Robert Greenleaf, whose essay on
'servant leadership' is seen by many as one of the most
important texts in the field.

Servant leadership almost appears to be an oxymoron, but, in
explaining his approach, Greenleaf suggests:

The servant-leader is servant first .....  It begins with the
natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.  Then
conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.  That person is
sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because
of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire
material possessions.  For such it will be a later choice to
serve - after leadership is established.  The leader-first and
the servant-first are two extreme types.  Between them there are
shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of
human nature.

The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the
servant-first to make sure that other people's highest priority
needs are being served.  The best test, and difficult to
administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while
being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous,
more likely themselves to become servants?  And, what is the
effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit,
or, at least, not be further deprived?  [Servant Leadership,
pp5-6]

Caring for others, and caring for the environment, is central to
this model of leadership.  Thus the practitioner of servant
leadership is someone who starts from the premise that the most
important person in the leader's set of priorities is the other,
not themselves.  Caring for others, seeking to ensure their
needs are met, and seeking to ensure that others grow and
benefit are the criteria of effective leadership - not achieving
goals and profits (although these may be steps to enable the
growth and benefit of others).  It is an approach that makes it
quite clear that means can never be subordinated to ends: as
such it represents an approach that is quite different from that
that has characterised most writings on leadership over the past
two millennia.  Of course there are some important exceptions to
that tendency (ranging from Confucius to Heifetz), but
Greenleaf's "stake in the ground" is a critical one.

It is tempting to summarise 'The Servant as Leader' - but it is
much more effective to read the essay itself.  However, there
are some points that deserve particular emphasis.  One of the
central concerns of the 'traditional' approach is a desire to
ensure order (order allows control).  Clearly an enabling
approach to leadership has to be one that sets order to one
side, and relies on the 'emergence' of order, rather than this
being imposed.  There has been a great deal of attention paid in
recent years to the capacity of systems to be self-ordering, and
there are a number of thinkers who argue that we should allow
'self-organising' capacities to shape outcomes: Margaret
Wheatley has been a key advocate of this approach.  To emphasise
this point, and quoting from Greenleaf, again, he notes:

This brings us to that critical aspect of realism that confronts
the servant-leader, that of order.  There must be some order
because we know for certain that the great majority of people
will choose some kind of order over chaos even if it is
delivered by a brutal non-servant and even if, in the process,
they lose much of their freedom.  Therefore the servant-leader
will beware of pursuing an idealistic path regardless of its
impact on order.  The big question is: What kind of order?  This
is the great challenge to the emerging generation of leaders:
Can they build better order?

Older people who grew up in a period when values were more
settled and the future seemed more secure will be disturbed by
much they find today.  But one firm note of hope comes through -
loud and clear; we are at a turn of history in which people are
growing up faster and some extraordinarily able, mature,
servant-disposed men and women are emerging in their early and
middle twenties.  The percentage may be small, and, again, it
may be larger than we think.  Moreover, it is not an elite; it
is all sorts of people.  Most of them could be ready for some
large society-shaping responsibility by the time they are thirty
if they are encouraged to prepare for leadership as soon as
their potential as builders is identified, which is possible for
many of them by age eighteen or twenty.  Preparation to lead
need not be at the complete expense of vocational or scholarly
preparation, but it must be the first priority.  And it may take
some difficult bending of resources and some unusual initiatives
to accomplish all that should be accomplished in these critical
years and give leadership preparation first priority.  But
whatever it takes, it must be done.  For a while at least, until
a better-led society is assured, some other important goals
should take a subordinate place.  [Servant Leadership, p 27]

___________________________ 

This is the first of a two-part article extract from "The
Changing Leadership Agenda" by Peter Sheldrake.  Part 2 will
look at servant leadership in practice.  For more information,
please call MIM Customer Service at 03-2164 4611, e-mail
enquiries@mim.edu or visit our website www.mim.edu.