Brought to you by Jeff Thoren, DVM, ACC  

Like all leaders, sometimes you’re “on,” and sometimes you’re not. So how can you tip the scale toward excellence and away from mere competence?

Management and leadership books are naturally preoccupied with the search for behaviors, tools, techniques, and practices that can be exported and imitated elsewhere. However, when leaders do their best work, they don’t copy anyone. Instead, they draw on their own fundamental values and capabilities.

Personal and organizational excellence is not a function of imitation. It’s a function of origination. We can all enter our own fundamental state of leadership - a creative personal state that gives rise to a more creative and productive organizational community.

Here’s this month’s feature ...

Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership by Robert E. Quinn and Gretchen M. Spreitzer

Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship - University of Michigan - May 2005

Highlights from the article:

• The fundamental state of leadership is a state of optimal balance in which we are more likely to challenge others to envision possibility, engage reality, build community, and move forward in learning.
   

• To lead is to be adaptive, to make personal change and to help others change. People who effectively self-transform follow a pattern in which their commitment to change is preceded by increased consciousness, increased awareness of alternatives, and self-reevaluation.
   

• As human beings, we seek to reduce uncertainty and create conditions of equilibrium. In what’s referred to as the Normal State, we tend to know how to do what we need to do. Any learning that is required tends to be incremental in nature, and we feel a relative sense of comfort and control. Under such conditions, relationships tend to be organized around assumptions of instrumental exchange and we employ self-interested strategies of resource acquisition. We tend to resist making any significant changes to our existing roles, identities, concepts and theories. In the normal state, we tend to become increasingly comfort-centered, externally-driven, self-focused, and internally closed.
   

• How we develop is determined by how we allocate our attention. There are four crucial questions that can help us change our self-perspective and lead to more effective thinking and action. Asking these four questions can help us deliberately shift from the Normal State to The Fundamental State of Leadership:

1. What result do I want to create? In answering this question, we are challenged to think outside of our comfort zone and consider where we seek to contribute and make a difference. It allows a shift from a reactive to a proactive orientation and is likely to result in an increased sense of commitment, purpose, and intrinsic motivation.

2. Am I internally-driven? Instead of only attending to the expectations of others, this question directs us to clarify and act on our personal values. In the process of values clarification, we reorganize our self-concept and become more self-aware and better able to regulate our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. We are more naturally able to present an integrated, authentic self.

3. Am I other-focused? To ask this question is to increase our awareness of our isolating self-interest and our need to operate from the good of the relationship, group, organization, or society. To do so is to recognize our interdependence and to build deep, engaging relationships that go beyond the basic notions of exchange and ego-centric control strategies.

4. Am I externally open? Asking this question helps increase awareness of the fact that we are not moving forward into the uncertainty and anxiety associated with real time learning and constant adaptation in a world of continuous change. If we commit to move forward, we are usually forced to shift from an orientation of knowing, to an orientation of exploration. In exploration, we are also likely to recognize the necessity for interdependence and realize that our success is dependent upon giving and receiving accurate feedback.

• The fundamental state of leadership framework offers deep insight into how we can each better tap our transformational potential. The framework challenges each of us to see our own possibilities for greatness. Many leadership theories look across people for attributes of greatness. This framework directs us to look for greatness within.

  
For the full text article, go to ...
http://www.giftedleaders.com/PDFs/Entering-the-Fundamental-State-of-Leadership.pdf

   
Are You in the Fundamental State of Leadership?

When we’re in the fundamental state, we take on various positive characteristics, such as clarity of vision, self-empowerment, empathy, and creative thinking. Most of us would like to say we display these characteristics at all times, but we really do so only sporadically.

Think of a time when you reached the fundamental state of leadership - that is, when you were at your best as a leader. Use the checklist below to identify the qualities you displayed. Now, ask yourself, “What do I need to do to display these qualities more consistently?”

Being Results-Centered

• Knowing what result I’d like to create

• Holding high standards

• Initiating actions

• Challenging people

• Disrupting the status quo

• Capturing people’s attention

• Feeling a sense of shared purpose

• Engaging in urgent conversations

Being Internally Directed

• Operating from my core values

• Finding motivation from within

• Feeling self-empowered

• Leading courageously

• Brining hidden conflicts to the surface

• Expressing what I really believe

• Feeling a sense of shared reality

• Engaging in authentic conversations

Being Other-Focused

• Sacrificing personal interests for the common good

• Seeing the potential in everyone

• Trusting others and fostering interdependence

• Empathizing with people’s needs

• Expressing concern

• Supporting people

• Feeling a sense of shared identity

• Engaging in participative conversations

Being Externally Open

• Moving forward into uncertainty

• Inviting feedback

• Paying deep attention to what’s unfolding

• Learning exponentially

• Watching for new opportunities

• Growing continually

• Feeling a sense of shared contribution

• Engaging in creative conversations

Another simple suggestion is to ask yourself the four questions mindfully and regularly.

Source: Moments of Greatness: Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership by Robert E. Quinn, Harvard Business Review, July-August 2005

 
Next Month

Many educational and business environments emphasize the importance of performance, results, achievement, and success. All good things, right? But is it possible that when we focus so much on how well we’re doing that we lose intrinsic interest in what we’re doing? What are the potential costs of overemphasizing achievement?

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