Is your leadership Reality or Illusion?
The Final Face of Leadership, face Eight, is Reality or Illusion? This is an edited version of the original chapter from the 2017 book by Dave Evans Leadership or Leadershit. We reference and update the initial findings, research and ideas to include updated neuroscience, global pandemic reflections and overall, the ability to ensure that we as RLC Global continue on our learning progress and challenge our thought process, actions and thinking. All integral parts of being “real”,, relevant and also progressive. We pride ourselves on being what we say we are, doing what we coach and consult, and being willing to correct our collective and individual perspectives, boundaries, and understanding.
The Grand Leadership Illusion
In the movie The Truman Show, a man is living his life on the set of a soap opera, where everyone knows he's the star of the show, but he has no idea that his world is not actuality and all created.
Imagine going through such an experience yourself?
How would you feel if you found out the truth?
What would be the impact on you?
Chances are, it would be alarming and also challenging to comprehend. Now imagine this analogy with leadership. Real Leadership bears little resemblance to illusory leadership, and I think we have all been deluded by the latter grand illusion over time.
Due to systemic educational systems, parents, culture, stories, books and the media, most of us have imbued with the word 'leadership' as if it were a proven principle with given laws and set procedures that should never be questioned.
Admittedly, business people have started to review and debate the subject more over the last few decades. Yet, sadly there isn't enough analysis going on, which is why I wanted to contribute to this critical subject if I can do so.
Compelling, practical, strategic, edgy, and successful leadership is perhaps not synonymous with what people generally believe it should be. This doesn’t mean that classically attested leadership roles such as a Prime Minister, President, business owner, and Captain of a vessel, are always leaders. They can be, and often are, but that solely depends on the results. We may have to suspend our core beliefs and everything we were ever fed on the subject of leadership.
When Margaret Thatcher led Britain through the Falklands crisis, I suggest she was in results-leadership mode. However, when she attempted to deploy the poll tax, she was in classic leadership mode, completely missing something she could never envisage. The former example is about collective spirit, powerful messaging, detailed planning and people motivation. The latter was about assuming that a set of leadership principles can be applied to anyone or anything and will always work.
So, someone like Stephen Hawking can be an influential leader, but not everyone sees this. Instead, they prefer the label of cosmologist or similar.
The non-prescribed, non-systemic leadership thinking indicates that the type of leader that produces excellent results is more like an agent in a chemical reaction, a catalyst if you will. He or she may remain unseen and perhaps have no direct interaction with anyone. That's why a good football manager can be a fantastic leader from the sidelines, whereas the team captain could have been failing on the pitch, even though the players and crowd see them as the peak of the pyramid.
What if ultimate leadership is a combined collaboration between the manager, captain, players and supporters? There doesn't always have to be one person leading the way. It can be several or everyone.
Appreciating the difference between illusion and reality in today's world, are we attempting to
Re-invent?
Discover?
Unearth?
Changes what we already know from the past that does work?
Probably all four of these things, but in a recipe that suits your specific needs. Belief in the leadership principle 'persistence' espoused in many a leadership book has been a critical failure component for many business owners over the years.
Referring back to Stephen Hawking, when he tells you what a black hole is, compared to what a sixth former suggests as a passionate amateur astronomer, 99% of people will want to accept the former's view, even though neither of them can know for sure.
For example, Madam Curie was an expert who inadvertently killed herself with her discovery; she had some knowledge but lacked the overall picture. This makes understanding and succeeding in leadership a tricky dilemma. I have already mentioned authenticity, mindset and exploration as things we should consider keeping, but what if these are complete red herrings?
One way to deal with this is to flip the idea. What if we were to set aside everything we ever thought we knew about leadership and instead laid out a different strategy to understand the concept?
7 Leadership Realities
There is no one example of the perfect leader
Leadership Principles are still a matter of opinion and must be personalised
There is a guaranteed success model for leadership
Leadership is of no value without results
Results are always more important than leadership itself and welcomed
Poor leaders like the label 'leader.'
Good leaders have no interest in any label
If you look at this list of 'realities', you can also work out the illusions. We can philosophise and deliberate on anything for decades, but sadly we all have this leadership factor called time, and it drives us to decide, act, and win, or fabricate, waits, and lose. So, at some point, we have to make the best of it. I had the same tussle just before I started writing. Let’s explore the illusory element of leadership
Leadership Illusions
The Outward Bound Leader
Imagine Mahatma Gandhi. Seen by millions as a classic leader, but now imagine him being sent on an outward-bound course as a way to become more successful.
Do you see the challenge with this?
Would go on an outward-bound course on the British Bodmin Moors have made him any more resilient, focused, or ultimately more successful than history tells us he was?
He was not prepared to fight, renounced violence and created an impetus that fired up a nation, finally defeating the British in 1948. Gandhi's methodology was probably an afterthought rather than a critical strategic choice. The way he handled things seemed to him the right thing to do, even though he would probably have never believed he could defeat a superpower simply with protest, without the use of violence. Yet when you think about it, choosing to do nothing was a significant form of impetus, even when the temptation would have been to do the exact opposite.
Leadership paradigms are rife in our fractious and fragile world, particularly in military communities that are responsible for many illusory myths, and it's not about aligning with pacifism or renouncing acts of heroism in the fight for freedom. It's disengaging one's thinking from paradigms that imprison our more effective thinking. Thinking that is so powerful that it can free us from 'The Grand Illusion'.
The classic Military Leader
In the Falklands War, 1982, Colonel Harry 'H' Jones gave his life in an extraordinary act of heroism, winning him the Victoria Cross for valour posthumously. There's no question that he showed classic leadership qualities. In a military context, it could be seen as crass to question his contribution to the war, which was undoubtedly enormous.
However, even in military circles, a conversation ripples around this selfless act of courage and questionable leadership choices. Ben Fenton of the Telegraph newspaper reported:
The best-known Victoria Cross award [a] of the post-war era was surrounded by controversy from the earliest days and questioned at the military's highest levels. Newly released documents have revealed that Lt Col Herbert Jones, universally known as 'H', was awarded the Victoria Cross for charging Argentine Positions whilst defending Goose Green during the first land battle of the Falklands conflict. He died in the act, but his men, the 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment (2 Para), went on to take all of their objectives against heavy odds. Sometime later, authors and historians began to report doubts about the award, suggesting that his actions were ill-judged and rash, much to his friends and many former comrades' anger. But files show that even by the time the first recommendations for medals were received in London, less than six weeks after the Falklands' final recapture, these doubts were already circulating.
At first, the point here is that what at first appears as 'obvious' leadership, linked with courage and bravery, is no longer 'obvious' when it becomes blurred with the future's leadership ideals.
Leadership and Paradigms
Defining paradigms, our set beliefs, as we say “set in stone”, assume they are true without question.
We experience paradigms as an integral part of coaching and consulting. Our experiences across workshops and coaching sessions are that people resort back to a paradigm's comfort rather than change it and create a paradigm shift. I've taken people through the tortuous journey of understanding what paradigms are, only to get an agreement upon their understanding and then watch them slip back into the paradigm they are fervently living.
It is like proving to someone that sugar is bad for you, as they reach for a tin of cola, saying: "that's really interesting".
I have yet to come across a great definition for the word paradigm. We get descriptions like 'model' and 'accepted of something'. I like to think of a paradigm as an illusion of potential truth. It's an alternative perception that others may see but not yourself. The whole point is that by realising what is potentially false versus what you perceive to be accurate, making definitive change allows you to get closer to your dreams and goals. One person's paradigm is another person's truth.
Who is to say that anyone really knows the difference?
Five years ago, coffee was bad for you, but now it's accepted that 4 cups of coffee a day apparently reduce the chance of early death by 66%.
It's also true that some paradigms save lives. Others take lives. We are on dangerous territory when we try to make sense of it all. We all succumb to paradigms in life. The key is to check for paradigms around important decisions and solve a problem that appears excessively large.
20 Top Leadership Paradigms
I now intend to be totally tongue in cheek with 20 ideas, some of which I reverently believe in, yet I want to flip it around to give you leadership paradigms. So, when reading you can test your perceptual positioning skills too when I argue against what I have already said the opposite about.
This list of 20 paradigms are words we have all spoken at some time, this is just the tip of the list. It’s important to understand ourselves first. Check out our RLC 7 Daily Leadership Principles here on what is possible and how to make them effective in your daily leadership role.
Summary
We emphasise the need for leaders to work out their reality from illusion.
Far too often, leadership and management books appear to be laying out a definitive model or way forward, and with leadership, in particular, this can be very unsafe.
The very notion about leading is that you are the tip of that apex to the virtual pyramid. You have got there by your actions, intuition and choices. I am not deliberately messing with your mind here, just asking you to step back in the final analysis and appreciate that you must take what you feel you need and discard the rest, even when it runs contrary to what is believed to work or not work.
I remember watching an old black and white movie, years ago, on a rainy Sunday afternoon. It was about an early flight test pilot. One was acutely aware that his predecessors had crashed and burned, quite literally because, at a certain speed, their controls had failed and stopped doing what they were designed to do. He had a hunch that at a certain speed, rather than pulling back on the joystick on a nosedive, he had to push the joystick, which was the exact opposite of what was he was taught.
In the last scenes of the movie, he was suddenly unable to pull up from a nosedive.
He had to either pull back, as he was taught or use his intuition and push forward. He did the latter and saved both himself and the aircraft.
This always sticks in my mind as a real leadership example. In times of complexity, challenge, diversity, or difficulty, we have to choose to forget how we may have been taught and allow our instinct to reflect. What is your “third mind” gut telling you that you should do in XY situation?
13 leadership questions to question reality or illusion.
It’s essential to apply reality and not illusory thoughts or bias. Some great questions to explore are:
Do you know why you think this?
What is your customer/client outcome or impact?
Does the decision sit within the values and culture of the business? If not, why not?
Is it a bias of self-validation?
Is there a pro and con analysis taken place?
Have you thought about all perspectives (try perceptual positioning activity for this)[10]?
Have you applied 4MAT (why, what, how, what if?)
Are you taking the person you like the most perspective?
The person you like the least perspective?
Have you got feedback? If not, why not? If so, who and why them?
Is it worth the risk? Is there a real risk, or is this emotional vs factual risk?
Is it a do? If we fail, can you move on, or do you have a blame culture?
Are you applying ego and status to a decision- if so, why? If not, how do you know?
The ability to take a real explorative all option perspective, we believe, non-illusory and creates real leadership.
Check out our Best Version Business Framework that allows you to build REAL leadership across every aspect of your business and make decisions value and culturally led. or chat with us and be curious with us.
Research, References and notes
[a] The Victoria Cross or VC is awarded only on the Queen's recommendation by the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary. They act only on the recommendation of the VC committee for the relevant service. This committee comprises three senior officers and the deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Defence. In turn, they act on recommendations made through the chain of command, when senior officers can offer various support levels for an award, from a general recommendation through to a firm recommendation.
[1] https://language-and-innovation.com/2020/04/15/coronaspeak-part-2-the-language-of-covid-19-goes-viral/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
[3] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/16/top-10-recent-examples-cancel-culture/
[4] Authenticity is a oxymoron topic in leadership, as reality is we have to be inauthentic at times to deal with the situations that occur. Stepping out, leaning in, calling in and calling out others is not a natural authenticity action- its intentional action. Seth Godin writes about authenticity so well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbJtuaFebtA
[5] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/203258 also https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1973-22126-001
[7] https://aboutlearning.com/about/
[8] https://www.verywellmind.com/negative-bias-4589618 also https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-negative-thoughts-alzheimer-disease.html
[9] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6041499/ and https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11409-019-09189-5
[10] This is an NLP technique to consider every perspective a minimum of 3 is required, sit in each seat and only apply their thinking and responses, this will expand your thoughts and allow you to test and query all for a “nearly” unbiased perspective if done correctly