In the process of bringing about more orderly and creditable city services, the city manager temporarily created a system that was less ordered and less creditable (at least among employees):
. . . communication became strained and fragmented to manifest as “turfing” or a type of “them versus us” phenomenon. This was most apparent within the top Executive Management team’s ineptness in honest, direct discussions across function. Effective, productive communication simply did not exist. . . Managers were afraid to talk candidly with certain others due to some “fear of consequence.” . . . Departments blamed other departments for their inefficiency to deliver service on time. . . .Some departments . . . felt like and acted as if they were in a war zone. Cliques whispered about their manager and made other cliques their enemy. In addition, lots of complaining occurred revolving around the so-called “imposed changes” they were forced to undergo. Fragmentation in allegiance to the boss and to client service was quite evident.
This isn’t the whole story. The city manager was very effective in creating a public image of the new changes as being responsive to public needs. He had gained the full support of the mayor and the media in his efforts to decentralize the operations of the city. He offered a portrait of order to the public. Thus, at one level and from one perspective there is order. At another level and from another perspective there is chaos. A similar story can be told in many public and private organizations.
The Appreciative Leader: From A Traditional Perspective
How does one address this interplay between order and chaos? How does one move beyond the contextual model of leadership to a more fully appreciative model? I propose that contemporary leaders must not only embrace multiple roles and functions in their organization. They must embrace a multitude of roles that come from different eras in our society and that represent a complex interweaving of order and chaos.
Some of these roles and functions are decidedly traditional in nature and build on a sense of community. These roles tend to be effective in addressing the challenges of order. Other roles and functions are appreciative and reflect shifting notions about organizational life in contemporary society. These roles and functions tend to be aligned with the dynamic chaos in contemporary organizations. I turn first, in this essay, to traditional roles to be played by leaders.
In looking at traditional concepts of leadership that might be of value to contemporary leaders, I turn to an unusual source, Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard was a renegade priest, scientist and philosopher who wrote during the first half of the 20th Century. His vision and analysis is remarkably relevant to 21st Century realities—especially with regard to appreciative leadership.
Teilhard’s notion of leadership takes the form not of directing or even managing; rather, Teilhard believes that effective leadership builds on a process of synthesis: the synthesis of ideas and the synthesis or uniting of people. This appreciative and holistic emphasis on synthesis contrasts sharply with the emphasis in modern society on deficit and analysis. In modern management theory we break things down into their constituent parts and identify problems that justify dominating control of discrete entities. In Teilhard’s world we put things together and grow to appreciate them.
Leader As Lover
Love is a key word for Teilhard in examining this synthesizing relationship between the individual and collective: “considered in its full biological reality, love—that is to say, the affinity of being with being—is not peculiar to man. It is a general property of all life and as such it embraces, in its varieties and degrees, all the forms successively adopted by organized matter.”viii In emphasizing the role of leader as lover, Teilhard states that:ix
. . . love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. This is a fact of daily experience. At what moment do lovers come into the most complete possession of themselves if not when they say they are lost in each other? In truth, does not love every instant achieve all around us, in the couple or the team, the magic feat, the feat reputed to be contradictory, of ‘personalising’ by totalising? And if that is what it can achieve daily on a small scale, why should it not repeat this one day on world-wide dimensions?
