The third reason we are ambivalent relates to the role of leader as visionary. The visionary leader only has credibility as long as the vision is not yet realized. We are ambivalent because we need to keep our dreams intact. Therefore, we never want these dreams to be successfully enacted or modified by reality. Yet, if the dreams are never realized, then when will we be satisfied and how will we know if the dream was really worth the sacrifice?
So, in sum, we want the wise leader to appear foolish at times and in certain ways. When this happens, we don’t always have to feel so foolish ourselves. We want the brave leader to lose to the powerful enemy, for the enemy defines the identity of our noble and just group. We want the vision or dream to remain unrealized, and the leader who is in charge of the dream to fail, because we want the dream to remain a pure, unrealized, always present, wish.
We act like jerks in our contemporary world for yet another reason. This reason concerns the ways in which leaders learn in an organization. Chris Argyris, Donald Schon and Peter Senge suggest that the models of leadership and management we identify as our working beliefs (espoused theories) are incompatible with our actual behavior and the assumptions that underlie our actual behavior (theories-in-use). vi We exist in organizations that never or rarely encourage the disclosure and discussion of these discrepancies between espoused theories and theories-in-use; hence, leaders continue to act without personal insight, and in a manner that is counterproductive and incompatible with their personal values and goals.
Both the Tavistock and Organizational Learning explanations are credible. Neither set of explanations, however, does full justice to the complex and demanding conditions that most leaders face in our 21st Century world. We are in a world that is shifting so rapidly and in such unpredictable ways that a group’s collusion in the creation of incompetence among leaders must constantly shift. Leaders must continually be incompetent or untrustworthy in whole new ways! Sometimes the group helps the leader become an ineffective communicator. At other times, the group helps the leader become a great communicator who is highly manipulative and can no longer be trusted, as in the case of our city manager.
Organizational learning theory must adjust to the times. Espoused theory and the theories-in-use must be reconciled in our contemporary world. They must also be adjusted frequently to keep up with shifting conditions. A visionary president may initially believe that his visionary concerns, at times of crisis, help the employee’s morale. He is then confronted with contradictory evidence. His behavior, in fact, lowers morale. Should he immediately change his behavior? A few days later, the president introduces a new vision because the crisis is itself caused by a lack of vision or long-term perspectives. Maybe the president is correct. Under these shifting 21st Century conditions, how will the president and his organization learn how to operate in an environment that is constantly changing and making new and often contradictory demands? How do they make sense of things in a world that is filled with ambiguity, complexity and volatility?
