The Science of Leading Yourself (Wiley W. Souba, 2013) PDF
The Science of Leading Yourself (Wiley W. Souba, 2013) PDF
The Science of Leading Yourself (Wiley W. Souba, 2013) PDF
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojl.2013.23006
Personal transformation is a prerequisite for sustainable transformation of our health care system. Integrating research from the language sciences, phenomenology, psychology and neurobiology, this article
reviews the science of leading oneself. Because this inward journey can be alien and disorienting, the
Language Leadership Performance Model is helpful in illustrating the relationship between the circumstances the leader is dealing with (the leadership challenge), the context (point of view) the leader brings
to that challenge, and the leaders way of being and acting (the definitive source of the leaders performance). Using language, effective leaders reframe their leadership challenges such that their naturally correlated ways of being and acting provide them with new opportunity sets for exercising exemplary leadership. Using a house metaphor (The House of Leadership), a foundation for being a leader and a framework for exercising leadership are constructed. Laying the foundation of the model involves mastering the
four pillars of being a leader. Erecting the framework entails building a contextual schema, which, when
mastered, becomes a construct that in any leadership situation gives one the power to lead effectively as
ones natural self-expression. Both of these activitieslaying the foundation and erecting the frameworkinvolve a deconstruction of ones existing leadership paradigm. Finally, A Heuristic for Leading
Oneself is offered as a useful guide or owners manual as one embarks on this inward journey. Leading
oneself is a uniquely human activitystudying it and how it works is a vital piece in solving the health
care transformation puzzle.
Keywords: Leadership; Language; Health Care Reform; Ontology; Phenomenology; Academic Medicine
Introduction
Progress is impossible without change, wrote George Bernard Shaw, and those who cannot change their minds cannot
change anything (Shaw, 1920). This is, perhaps, our greatest
leadership challenge in medicine. Virtually everyone acknowledges that the status quo isnt working and that a radical overhaul of our health care system is needed. But when it comes to
changing, we often overlook a fundamental truth: systems dont
change in any meaningful kind of way until and unless people
change first (Wind & Crook, 2006; Souba, 2009; Souba, 2011a).
In Peter Blocks words, If there is no transformation inside
each of us, all the structural change in the world will have no
impact on our institutions (Block, 1996). We cannot solve our
quality, cost and access challenges with technical solutions
alone. We, too, must change. We must change how we think
about health care, how we speak about its future, and how we
work together to correct its failings. In order to reframe how we
approach our health care challenges, a renewed context for leadership is needed, one that distinguishes being a leader as the
foundation for what leaders know and do (Souba, 2011a; Souba,
2011b). If youre not being a leader, it is impossible to act like
*
Funding/Support: None.
Other disclosures: None.
Ethical approval: Not applicable.
W. W. SOUBA
To get beyond their ordinary, reactive ego, effective leaders relentlessly work on unconcealing the prevailing mental
maps that they carry around in their heads (Souba, 2011a;
Souba, 2011b; Erhard, Jensen, & Granger, 2011; Erhard, Jensen,
Zaffron, & Granger, 2011). This unveiling is critical because
leaders are more effective when they are not limited by their
hidden frames of reference and taken-for-granted worldviews.
This new way of understanding leadership requires that leaders
spend more time learning about and leading themselves. Eriksen (2008) expounds:
Too often, leaders of organizational change see the organization as an object separate of themselves To be an effective
leader, one must understand the nature of leadership, ones self,
and [the] organization within the unfolding of ones day-to-day
experience [It is] clear how important it is for a leader to be
the organizational change he or she seeks.
Socrates reminds us that the unexamined life is not worth
living (Plato, 1998). To lead effectively, we must begin by examining ourselves. In this essay, I review the science of leading
oneself, integrating research from the language sciences, phenomenology, psychology and neurobiology, disciplines that
have advanced our understanding of this inward aspect of leadership. Leading oneself is a uniquely human activitystudying
it and how it works is a vital piece in solving the health care
transformation puzzle.
W. W. SOUBA
Figure 1.
Flipping the prevailing model of leadership. In the current prevailing
(epistemological) model of leadership, knowing is the anchoring foundation of leading effectively. By contrast, the emerging model anchors
effective leadership in the leaders way of being. Said somewhat poetically, if youre not being a leader, it is impossible to act like a leader.
W. W. SOUBA
Figure 2.
The Language Leadership Performance Model (LLPM). The model describes the relationship between the leadership challenge (the circumstances the leader is dealing with),
the context the leader brings to that challenge, and the leaders being and acting (the ultimate source of the leaders performance). In contrast to the popular model of leadership, which presupposes the leaders performance is due largely to his/her knowledge,
the LLPM proposes that the leaders performance is firstly a function of his/her way of
being and acting with those circumstances. The model stresses the role of language in
shifting certain of our prevailing (yet hidden) contexts as key to exercising more effective leadership. Adapted from Souba, 2011b.
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W. W. SOUBA
Figure 3.
The House of Leadership. The house metaphor provides the leader with
a solid foundation for being a leader and a practical framework for
exercising leadership effectively. The leaders know-how and knowwhat serve to inform the leader in making choices and decisions.
W. W. SOUBA
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scriptions since, in practice, leadership in not linear or formulaic. A heuristic for leading yourself (Table 1) can also be a
useful guide as you take on this work.
Recontextualization is a process that extracts content from its
original context and embeds it into a new context. This reframing process, which is always a linguistically-mediated event,
entails a change of meaningin other words, a change in the
way in which your leadership challenge occurs for you. However, before you can create a new context, you must first unconceal your prevailing context. Exposing your reigning (hidden) context(s) involves identifying your unexamined beliefs,
taken-for-granted assumptions, and already always listening
relative to what it is to be a leader and what it is to exercise
effective leadership so as to free yourself from the confines
imposed by them (Souba, 2010; Souba, 2011a; Souba, 2011b;
Erhard, Jensen, & Granger, 2011; Erhard, Jensen, Zaffron, &
Granger, 2011). When your contexts become revealed, you will
begin to see the inadvertent process by which they were created
and the degree to which they govern your leadership decisions.
You will discover that you have a choice about who you can be,
independent from these contexts.
Master leaders use language to recontextualize their leader-
Table 1.
A heuristic for leading yourself.
Step
Distinction/Comment
A leadership challenge exists when you are not realizing the outcome you want for the
circumstances youre dealing with and, without some intervention (a different approach or
set of tactics), the same unwanted outcome will persist.
The term occur refers to the way in which what you are dealing with (the occurring) is
present (shows up) in some way for you (e.g., frustrating, unfair, difficult, hopeless) and
the way in which you occur for yourself in dealing with it (e.g., confident, incompetent,
awkward)
Your effectiveness as a leader is a function of your ways of being and your actions (or
inactions). You must unconceal these limiting ways of being and acting that constrain
your freedom to lead effectively as your natural self-expression. What gets in the way of
your natural self-expression are the encumbering ways you wound up being.
Given the natural correlation between the occurring and your way of being and acting,
without a shift in the way in which your leadership challenge occurs for you, your actions
and the results they produce (the future) will be the same.
Who you are being moment to moment is a function of your listening. Each of us is a
listening (a conversation with ourselves) that uses us by providing us with a point of
view (a context) from which we make sense of our circumstances and orient our actions.
When youre able to separate the facts (e.g., my budget got cut) from your interpretation
(thats not fair, it cant be balanced), youll discover that much of what you believed to be
the case was just your story. What you thought was unalterable now becomes open to
change.
Take into consideration universal, all-purpose ways of being and acting that would leave
you more effective (e.g., optimistic, respectful, curious) as well as more distinctive
cognitive and emotional states and actions (e.g., vigilant, analytical, pragmatic, setting
expectations). Recall that the source of your as lived performance is most fundamentally
a product of your way of being, and your matched actions.
In order to access your leadership challenge so that it occurs for you as hittable rather than
unhittable, you must reframe (recontextualize) it. Recall that the way you choose to speak
to and listen to yourself and to others (i.e., your language) about the challenge you are
dealing with shapes and colors the way those challenges occur for you.
What can you say (to yourself and others) about the
future you are committed to such that your stand for that
future will grant you the being and acting in the present
required to take on your leadership challenge and the
obstacles you will encounter along the way?
In committing to a future that is bigger than you are, the realization of which fulfills on what
is important to you and what you truly care about, you will re-wire neural networks in your
brain in such a way that they generate the correlated ways of being and acting necessary to
realize that future as your natural self-expression. Such a potent relationship with language
will give you the power to speak the future you are committed to into existence.
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Table 2.
Who are we? What does it mean to be human?
Prevailing Understanding
An Object with Properties
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Meredith Bartelstein, Kathi Becker, James
Borchert, Joe DiMaggio, Werner Erhard, Faith Goodness, Kari
Copyright 2013 SciRes.
Emerging Understanding
A Clearing of Intelligibility
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W. W. SOUBA
Imagine what it would be like if you met (for the first time)
your greatest hero and you didnt have to figure out in your
head how to be with that person. You didnt have to concern
yourself with impressing that person or winning him or her
over or looking good as you became acquainted. In other words,
the you that showed up was your natural, spontaneous and
inherent way of being and acting. Your natural self-expression
was just there. By natural self-expression we mean that way
of being and acting that is an intuitive and effortless response to
whatever set of circumstances one is dealing with (Souba,
2011b).
Suppose you werent limited to those automatic, ineffective
ways of being that often show up when youre confronted with
a difficult challenge such as a budget shortfall or poor performer? What if you werent stuck with your kneejerk predisposition to raising your voice, making excuses, blaming others,
or disengaging when the going gets tough? What if you had
access to a much wider range of possible ways of being and
acting rather than being confined to those default ways of being
that have become so engrained yet are so unhelpful and unproductive? What if your natural self-expression prevailed regardless of what was thrown at you in life? What if you were free to
just be at any and all times with no limitations? What would
it be like to always have access to your best self, leading as
your natural self-expression rather than from some compendium of theories or concepts?
In dealing with any leadership situation, what if that thing
(voice) that was already always there watching you, judging
you, keeping score wasnt there? What if that I, your identity, that you think defines you wasnt there either? What would
it be like to experience life inside a context such that you were
always fully present to life and your natural self-expression was
one of being fully engaged with whatever you were dealing
with, to include the disappointments, and the defeats?
Your effectiveness (performance) as a leader is largely a
function of your ways of being and your actions (or inactions)
(Souba, 2011b; Erhard, Jensen, & Granger, 2011; Erhard, Jensen, Zaffron, & Granger, 2011). In order to gain access to leading as your natural self-expression, you must first expose your
engrained beliefs and worldviews about leadership (e.g., I have
to look good; If I fail, Ill look incompetent; I have to be in
charge) that are holding you back. This will allow you to loosen
up those limiting (and often hidden) ways of being and acting
that have become your automatic go-to winning formulas (e.g.,
micromanaging, avoiding tough conversations, blaming others)
that actually constrain your freedom to lead effectively.
When Michelangelo was asked how he went about creating
his masterpiece David out of a massive block of marble, he said,
David was inside the rock all along. My only job was to remove the unnecessary rock from around him so he could escape. (Watts, 2011). In a sense, Michelangelo removed the
barriers to the marbles natural expression of itself. Similarly,
what gets in the way of our natural self-expression is the encumbering ways we wound up being. When we relax their hold
on us, we make room to create a new context (a new, wider
leadership lens) that has the power in any leadership situation to
shape the circumstances were dealing with such that our way
of being and acting will be consistent with being a leader and
exercising leadership effectively (Souba, 2011b; Erhard, Jensen,
& Granger, 2011; Erhard, Jensen, Zaffron, & Granger, 2011).
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