Walking the Talk

"Toward Old Leadership"
Daniel Pryfogle

What do you call it when a leader notices possibilities and not just problems? What name do you give to a leader who sees resources in a bleak situation, notices the seeds of peace amid conflict, or observes movement in a place that appears stuck? What would you call this capacity to frame any situation in a positive way -- not a Polly-Annish framing, as if to ignore the problems, the challenges, those harsh realities, but a way that recognizes and acts upon more reality, our individual and collective ability?

My questions are somewhat rhetorical. Today I am not looking for another word. I'm sure we are not lacking in adjectives to stick in front of leader, as in "servant leader," or "visionary leader," or "authentic leader." The bookshelves are full of such titles. What I am puzzling over is why the kind of leadership I contemplate above is so rare as to not be easily understood.

How did leadership become something other than the capacity to call forth what's already present? Humanity has known for ages that the good teacher, the good parent, the good artist and the good farmer were the ones who could see and summon gifts already present. We have known that the work of leaders is to name, interpret, raise to consciousness, make explicit, cultivate, leverage what already is, what's waiting in some instances, what's hidden even, but what already is. Somewhere along the way, however, leadership became a task of producing what's absent. And it became a technique of getting people to do what they are not inclined to do. Leadership became management: a bag of tricks to make up for what's missing and to motivate people who'd rather be doing something else.

What would it take to reacquaint ourselves with that older understanding of leadership? For starters, we would have to let go of the bag of tricks. We would have to let go of the "fix-it" role that can be quite satisfying to play, the role that boosts the ego when we're the only ones with the answer. We would have to let go of being the "only ones."

We would also have to let go of some cherished dichotomies. I'm talking about the division between "hard" and "soft" issues; the division between "abstract" and "practical"; the division between "mission" and "margin"; the division between "reflection" and "action"; etc. -- all of the divisions we make to justify our definition of "true leadership" when this narrowing of options, this narrowing of reality, has no more to do with leading people than turning out the lights causes the day to end.

Consider a potter at the wheel. Is she being abstract or practical as she works with the clay? Is she privileging reflection over action, or vice versa? The dichotomies mean nothing in the creative task. The artist is after something whole, a way of being whole in the moment and a creation that will express as much of the whole as possible. The dichotomies are irrelevant to the work at hand. At best, they are a distraction. That doesn't mean the potter neglects being practical, to take one side in these divisions. Impracticality may result in a piece that doesn't hold together or can't endure the kiln's fire. But she does not cut off other parts of her ability, her capacity, her vision of the whole, in order to be just practical. She's after something more.

Something more: That's what I seek as well. Something larger, something grander. It is the potential that thrills me, and thrills me all the more in that it is already present, as the ancients understood a tree is present in a seed. I want the whole thing, and I yearn for kindred spirits, perhaps "old souls," who seek the same, who sense this whole thing is something worth working for.

To reacquaint ourselves with an older understanding of leadership, the kind that is related to an older definition of education -- from the Latin "ex ducere," meaning to draw out, to bring forth, to lead from - we would have to let go of some habits and techniques we have acquired over time, the baggage of modern leadership. Indeed, we would have to find a way to let go of the fever to acquire, that compulsion to chase solutions beyond our knowledge and experience and instincts, the fever that is perhaps the chief characteristic of our modern way which keeps the "how-to" presses rolling, the talking heads talking, and, of course, consultants in business.

But the older way is gracious. Difficult as it is to cast off these accumulations of so-called leadership, the older way offers respite as well as inspiration. This way begins simply and generously with a question that is also an invitation: What is already here?