In the words of Olivia Newton John – almost – “Let’s get metaphysical, metaphysical, we wanna get metaphysical, let us hear Christ’s body talk…” (or something like that).
I’m in the process of writing a short paper on leadership.
I have trouble answering the question of “who is a leader?” or “what is the being of a leader?” In starting with the “being” of a leader I always seem to end up back at the being a “self.”
In almost every book on leadership or management i have ever seen, the emphasis is on the functions, actions, values, vision, etc of a leader – almost nothing on WHO a leader is.
So I am led to conclude that leadership is a function. And functions are carried out in response to need – I guess I’m getting to a “summoned to lead” idea here. A friend of mine named Pete often reminds me that leadership is influence; and since everyone has influence, what we think of as leadership seems to be a determined by scale of influence. How much influence does a person wield?
One of the challenges with this scale of influence – as we’re seeing in Sync and with Small World Theory and the Butterfly Effect, etc – is that we have little understanding of the impact of one’s influence on others. In fact I think it would be interesting to see if the case could be made, that the higher the profile a perceived leader may have, the less influence they actually have.
All that to say is, I’m wondering if we should throw out understandings of “self as leader” altogether? I may lead but I am not a leader, at least not in any ontological sense. I am who I am and influence is inevitable. I may be summed to what sometimes appears to look like a leadership function, while at others times I may be summed to what appears to look like a following function.
Peace, dwight
