Leadership Matters

From ‘effective leadership’ to ‘leading humanistically’

sekhiljiMarch 29, 2019August 6, 2019

Photo Credit: Pixaby

How ‘effective leadership’ has failed us and what it means to ‘lead humanistically’

A majority of contemporary organizations are single-mindedly focused on effectiveness and efficiency. What started as the ‘scientific management’ movement in the late 19th century, with a focus on synthesizing workflows, has ended up influencing leadership practice. In my discussions with corporate leaders, I often ask them, “what do you consider to be good leadership”. Many respond by referring to ‘effectiveness’ repeatedly. When I probe further, “what does it mean to lead effectively?” The answer, most often relates to achieving goals, creating shareholder value, developing vision, inspiring, influencing, demonstrating charisma, making smart decisions, and getting things done.

I find the narrative of “effective leadership” problematic at many levels. It is driven by standardization of best practices, control, and profit maximization. It reduces humans to rational and objective beings, and sees them as focused on self-interests. It simplifies their needs, decisions and interactions. It devalues concern for human dignity. It minimizes the role of followers, over-relies on leader-centric approaches, and promotes leaders as immensely powerful transformational individuals. It favors cognitive and behavioral aspects, and underestimates power of the context and the evolving social dynamics within organizations. It has led to romanticizing leaders, and presented them as heroes and/or villains. Most importantly, it has also given rise to naïve leadership development program, that continue to perpetuate the same old narrative. The ‘effective leadership’ narrative is ill-suited in today’s complex environment and bears significantly on examples of self-centered leaders around us. When we begin to reflect on irresponsible leaders and their unethical behaviors, we realize that current approaches to developing leaders have led us to a leadership crisis. We need to do better than that.

What if we focused on leading humanistically?

Leading humanistically requires maintaining a focus on positive aspects of the human nature and fulfilling human needs, not only on attaining material things. Michael Pirson in his book entitled, “Humanistic management: Promoting dignity and promoting well-being” makes a case for writing a new narrative that acknowledges human beings as moral, collaborative, and empathetic; who want to flourish beyond maximizing self-interest.

Leading humanistically begins with a more encompassing leadership philosophy. First and foremost, leadership should be understood as a collective practice. Leadership is not position-centered. It is not in the individual domain. It is social, shared and relational, in which both leaders and followers participate. A relational view helps shift the focus of leaders from self to others and brings different stakeholders (such as society, customers, employees, and followers) into the dynamic. Leadership is also contextual in nature. What works in one industry cannot in another; what succeeds in one country will not succeed in another; and what makes sense today will not make sense tomorrow. Hence, leadership practice varies across organizational, societal, and cultural contexts. Finally, leadership is holistic. It is composed of cognitive, behavioral, as well as affective, and spiritual elements. Indeed, there is power in ‘knowing’. However, there is also power in ‘feeling’ and ‘being’. If we want to find meaning in how we live and lead, we have to strive for congruence between our inner lives and work lives.

When we start viewing leadership as a holistic journey (beyond processes and functional expertise), it opens us up to new possibilities. It broadens the scope of leadership development, beyond skills and competencies, to include life orientation. It incorporates social meaning in leading, and transforms human relationships within organizations. It helps us move beyond objectivity, mind and reason to emotions and subjectivity. It humanizes leaders, and makes humans more humane. By putting the ‘human’ back in leadership, we begin to understand complexities and ambiguities of leading.

What does ‘leading humanistically’ mean?

Beauty lies in eyes of the beholder. So does leadership; in eyes of the leader, followers and other stakeholders. Context also matters. Hence, it is within the broader global context that I would like to see humanistic leadership be embedded within:

Ethics and Responsibility
Social Purpose and Social Impact
Wisdom and Beauty

Many of the problems we face today are wicked, such as poverty and rising levels of global inequalities. These problems are ambiguous, interdependent, inter-disciplinary, and require an understanding of the complex social dynamics along with competing values and interests. These ill-defined problems impact us, our organizations and the world we live in. No one can solve these problems alone. We need leaders with a humanistic frame of mind that is focused on common good.

Ethics and responsibility, therefore, are not by-products of good leadership. These are essential to becoming a good leader. Humanistic leaders are guided by a strong sense of responsibility and incorporate ethics in their daily interactions and decisions. They focus on social purpose and create positive social impact that benefits the global community. They connect with followers and stakeholders holistically. They lead with wisdom, in balancing knowing with doubting, because they know, “in knowing, much is unknown”. Humanistic leaders approach humanity with faith, and with the belief that people are neither super-heroes, nor demigods. They accept “all of humanity” as is, for themselves and others. In acknowledging humanity with its flaws and virtues, they humanize the act of leading. Such an orientation allows them to adopt a ‘developmental’ view, connect more fluently with learning and engage empathetically with others. They appreciate the paradoxes that surround our actions, behaviors and intentions. With followers and stakeholders, they resolve organizational tensions, manage complexities and arrive at more integrative solutions. On a more philosophical level, a learner mindset allows humanistic leaders to lead with kindness, compassion and empathy-or with beauty. In today’s uncertain and complex environment, beauty has much to contribute. We all know that beauty has the ability to move people (and may be organizations and societies). Beyond a sensory and emotional response, beauty also offers leaders an aesthetic experience that involves the whole person- mind, heart and the soul.

My intention is to present the aforementioned framework as life orientation, mindset and frame of thinking. I expect a wide variety with which leaders embark on their personal leadership journey, thus adapt their way of leading in accordance with their own environment. However, positive intent and the focus on common good is necessary.

How do we develop humanistic leaders?

Developing humanistic leaders requires moving beyond a list and position approach. I believe it is the real human experiences that make leaders. In order to make sense of the experiences, leaders must continuously engage in reflection. Reflection is an intentional assessment. It allows leaders to learn pervasively; and move from a position of unawareness to self-awareness and other awareness. Joseph A. Raelin in his book, “Creating leaderful organizations: How to bring out leadership in everyone” argues that reflection is both retrospective and prospective. It helps leaders illuminate what has been experienced and provides the basis for future action. By stepping back to reflect upon their experiences, leaders make meaning of their actions, beliefs and feelings; as well experiment with new ideas, and move to higher levels of awareness. Humanistic leaders make reflection a habit of the mind. They “learn to lead,” and“lead the learning”in their organizations.

In order to overcome follies of the prevailing programs, leadership development efforts should be focused on strengthening leaders’ ability to think critically and reflexively through experimentation and exploration. The myth of failure should be dispelled to foster the habit of learning from mistakes. Leaders should be trained to open up to new perspectives, and challenge their assumptions through discussions and dialogues (such as an action learning approach) with others. They should be exposed to issues-centered problem solving, that mimics the types of social problems organizations are faced with, and be forced to collaborate across disciplines to co-create. They should be encouraged to work with ideas, that they initially oppose, to arrive at integrative solutions. Leadership development efforts should help leaders become “learning leaders” (i.e. focused on learning) and “philosophical leaders” (i.e. problem solving through discussions, experimentation and dialogues with themselves and others). In addition to strengthening reflexivity, these approaches are also helpful in building empathy, and compassion through meaningful interactions with others and highlighting wisdom through exploration, honesty and humility.

I agree that learning to lead humanistically in today’s corporate cultures, that are predominantly focused on effectiveness, is challenging. It requires an immense amount of time, flexibility, high levels of engagement and ease with uncertainty. Having said that, I am also beginning to see many bold leaders slowly shift the leadership practice-landscape. Some of them are leading with social purpose and strong sense of responsibility. While others are leading with beauty and wisdom. Still many more are being trained in programs, such as GW’s Organizational Leadership & Learning (OLL) Program, to think like philosophers, act responsibly and lead with beauty and wisdom. Through my writing, I hope to influence more leadership education and development programs to proliferate aforementioned humanistic leadership philosophy across organizations globally. I am an optimist. May be in a few years, when I ask leaders, “what do you consider to be good leadership”, they would speak of ‘leading humanistically’.

Published Date: March 29, 2019

This article is not a solo effort. It has been influenced by several authors (referenced in the article and others mentioned below), shaped by my decade-long research, modeled after the design of GW’s Organizational Leadership and Learning (OLL) program, and inspired by my enthusiastic students (who enrolled in my classes either by choice and/or because they had no choice). I take full responsibility of all mistakes.

Some authors have been directly mentioned in the article. Other are as follows: Amy Edmonson; Alex Mathers; David Collinson & Dennis Tourish; John A. Meacham; Julie Nelsen; Gianpiero Petriglieri & Jennifer Louis Petriglieri; Katrin Muff; and Gustavo Razzaetti

For full reference of their work, please contact me directly.

Jacinda Ardern- Emerging as the picture of a humanistic leader

sekhiljiMarch 23, 2019August 6, 2019

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand Prime Minister — Photo Credit: commons.wikipedia.com

I am an academic. I like to think that I am driven by facts and evidence. However, I am also an idealist. I search for hope and optimism around me, despite the ‘global leadership crisis’ in which we find ourselves. In my classes, I talk about shifting, dissolving realities and the complexities of issues. I remind students of the importance of wisdomover knowledge and practice. I talk about humanizing leaders.

Despite my caution, since the Christchurch mosques shooting, I have watched Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister, with curiosity and awe. Her actions are swift and appropriate. She wasted no time in making a commitment to fix the lax gun laws in New Zealand. In fact, she promised to announce reforms within 10 days of shooting. She did not hesitate to condemn terrorism. She refused to utter the shooter’s name, simply calling him an extremist, terrorist and criminal.

In an environment where public confidence with political leaders is at its lowest globally, Jacinda has reminded us what it means to be a humanistic leader. In her response to the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, she has demonstrated strong positive values in embracing the victims and in defining New Zealand to the world. She has argued that New Zealand was targeted because of its values of diversity, kindness, compassion, “a home for those who share it and a refuge for those who need it”. In an interview with BBC, she has stood firm on New Zealand's record on accepting refugees, saying: "We are a welcoming country. I utterly reject the idea that in any way in trying to ensure that we have a system that looks after those who choose to call New Zealand home, that we have perpetuated an environment where this kind of ideology can exist." She has called for a united global action and stated, "What New Zealand experienced here was violence brought against us by someone who grew up and learned their ideology somewhere else. If we want to make sure globally that we are a safe and tolerant and inclusive world we cannot think about this in terms of boundaries."

She has not fudged the main issues, rather pushed for the necessary change. In this moment, she has united the nation (and the world) in grief. She has hugged Muslim women as she visited the mosque and victims; held them tight, listened to them intently and whispered comforting words. She has shown us the authenticity with which leaders need to interact with their followers.

Jacinda said last August: “You can be pragmatic and grow an economy and improve well-being and do all of the things you have an expectation governments do, but do it with a bit of heart.” As I review her words and actions, she has come across a leader who integrates idealism with pragmatism. In doing so, she has left me with hope, and inspiration. She has established high moral values and given us the possibility of positive social change, and transformation.

I remain cautious. I don’t see her as a super hero, nor is it my intention to present her as one. However, in the past week or so, I have seen her playing the role of a culture builder, peace keeper, and using her leadership power to protect the less privileged as well as promote social change. I have seen her speak with a purpose. I have seen her engage with the local and global audience with a great sense of responsibility. Craving for authenticity, responsibility and humanism from our leaders, would I be wrong in stating: we need more leaders like her globally? It may be the Women Power or Jacinda-mania sweeping over me.

lnlaurieApril 20, 2018October 23, 2018

Matthias Ripp via Compfight

Conceptualizing Responsible and Humanistic Leadership within the Asian Context- and Why

Leaders around the world are faced with pressing challenges. Growing levels of inequality, corruption and poverty, and challenges of peace, justice, and sustainable economic growth are complex and widespread. It is within this backdrop that disappointment with ‘how organizations and societies are being led’ has been growing globally. The 2017 Edleman Trust Barometer, an instrument that has been measuring global confidence in institutions, businesses and governments since 2012, indicated general public distrust with all 4 major institutions, business, NGO, media and the government. Many commentators and academics have attributed the worldwide rise of populism to this distrust (Khilji, 2017). People’s concerns with the social challenges they face, have begun to show up as their fears and in their anger.

The ground beneath us has been shifting steadily. As management scholars, we have tolerated and oftentimes perpetuated a gap between society and organizations and their leaders. For decades, we have held on to misconceived assumptions about good leadership, which has been focused primarily on personality or psychological traits and their development. Pirson (2017) in his book, Humanistic Management, argues for a ‘fundamental rethinking of how we organize at the global political level, the societal level, the economic level, and the organizational level’ (p. 1). Kempster & Carroll (2016) contend that the problems we face today require a ‘big picture, multiple party, long term-process’ (p. 1). Inherent in these statements is the call for business leaders to consider social problems. Pless (2007) defines leadership as the ‘…motivation and commitment for achieving sustainable values creation and social change” (p. 438).

In recent years, the idea of responsible leadership, with its emphasis on values-based and principles-driven relation between leader and the stakeholders, has gained prominence, particularly because of the enactment of UN Global Compact (UNGC) (Stahl & De Luque, 2014). One may ask: in what ways are responsible leadership and humanistic leadership relevant in Asia; and how do Asian organizations/ leaders contribute to the idea of global responsibility. In my address, I adopt a romantic view to emphasize responsible and humanistic leadership as a multi-level practice that connects individual, organizational and institutional factors, while highlighting the need for a paradigmatic shift in leadership. In conclusion, I present a variety of questions for the audience to engage them in research and informed practice.

This keynote was presented at a conference in March 2018. For a complete paper, please contact the author directly at sekhilji@gwu.edu

Leadership Matters

lnlaurieApril 12, 2018October 23, 2018

Matthias Ripp via Compfight

The Global Leadership Crisis

Within today’s global, complex and uncertain environment, leadership has emerged as a critical issue in contemporary organizations and societies. Scholarly and practitioner journals are replete with tips on “what makes a good leader”; and “what is good leadership.” Despite increased recognition and interest in the idea of “effective leadership”, it is very hard to find. Examples of modern-day exemplary leaders are rare around the world. Instead, there is much evidence to suggest leaders are lacking in how they lead their followers, and organizations or countries. In recent years, we have witnessed a litany of scandals globally (including Enron, Worldcom, Lehman Brothers, AIG and Saytam), which have highlighted persistent self-serving interests of corporate and political leaders (Mumford, 2010). We have also been witnessing rising levels of inequality, which have framed the “1 percent versus 99 percent” discourse in public (Bapuji, 2016). For example, assertions like: the 85 richest people in the world hold as much wealth as the poorest half of the world, have dominated discussions at many international forums, including the World Economic Forum (Oxfam, 2015)”. Stiglitz (2012), a noble laureate in Economics, argues that the world is growing apart. Milanovich, another renowned Economist, states that the gains of globalization are not evenly distributed globally. These statements are all symptomatic of a crucial social problem that continues to negatively impact societies and individual well-being.

Let me give you some recent examples of inequality from around the world: In China, the government is struggling to spread wealth more evenly (The Economist, 2016). A recent Economist report states that as China’s economy slows, convergence between richer and poorer provinces is stalling. China’s Shenghai is five times wealthier than Gansu, which has a similar sized population. Brazil’s Sao Paolo is four times richer than its poorest, Piaui (The Economist, 2016). The income inequality in United States has been growing rapidly for the past 30 years. In fact, income inequality is the highest in NY and CT, states that happen to lie right in the shadows of a wealthy Wall Street (Tritch, 2016). Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality (2016) reports, that recent decades have seen a clear increase in the difference between CEO compensation and that of the average worker. CEOs in 1965 made 24 times more than the average production worker, whereas in 2009 they made 185 times more. Globally, inequality is much worse than we can imagine. 1% of the world’s population has more wealth than the world’s 99% combined. The world’s 4 billion people, at the bottom of the pyramid, predominantly constitute an invisible and forgotten community.

Now let us look at gender inequality in terms of pay gaps. In United States, women get paid 78% to 82% to every dollar a man earns. In Sweden, the gap between men and women’s salaries, which had progressively narrowed over recent years, has grown between 2010 and 2012. The gender gap is worse for women of color, women who are mothers and it only grows with age (Miller, 2016). According to many reports, this pay gap will not close until 2152. Swedish women earn on average 18.9% less than men with the same profile. In Iceland, which is considered the world leader in gender equity, women make 14 to 18 cents less than men. Women in Asian, African and Latin American countries, including Pakistan and India, still face the worst gender inequality in terms of access to healthcare, education and work.

John Maxwell (2002) argued, “Everything rises and falls on leadership”. Hence, if we look at all of these forms of inequalities from a macro level, one can argue that leadership at the corporate and political level has failed. As I said before, growing levels of socio-economic income equalities have negative implications for individual well-being, organizations, and political systems (Bapuji, 2015; Jayadev & Bowles, 2006; Khilji, 2017; Stiglitz, 2012; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). Excessive inequalities devalue human dignity, and have led to educational under-achievement, and lack of access to capital and education. The recent rise of nationalism and populism in the West, such as the US, UK, Spain, Italy, France, have been explained on the basis of the increasing gaps between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots”. Overall, there is a pressing global need to address social imbalances that our political and business leaders have failed at (or may have also created and/or tolerated).

Morgenson (2014), a Pulitzer Prize winning business editor stated that, “True leadership is sorely lacking” globally. This is not a hidden fact, but experienced and talked-about around the world. Over a period of time, public distrust with corporate and political leaders has grown. The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, based upon thousands of respondents in 26 countries, attests to a serious crisis of confidence in leaders among its respondents (Edelman, 2017). The Edelman survey reveals the CEO credibility dropped 12 points globally to an all-time low of 37 percent, and government leaders (at 29 percent) remain least credible. The Edelman report argues, “Current populist movements are fueled by a lack of trust in the system and economic and societal fears, including corruption (40 percent), immigration (28 percent), globalization (27 percent), eroding social values (25 percent) and the pace of innovation (22 percent). Countries coupling a lack of faith in the system with deep fears, such as the U.S., U.K. and Italy have seen the election of Donald Trump, the Brexit vote and the failed Italian referendum.” This may be referred to as the ‘global leadership crisis”.

At the same time, there is a ray of light for the business leaders here. The Edelman survey also indicates business is viewed as the only one that can make a difference. Three out of four respondents agree business leaders can take actions to both increase profits and improve economic and social conditions in the community where it operates. Yet it is also the case that businesses also find themselves on the brink of distrust, and perhaps most concerning for business is its perceived role by the public. A majority of the global population surveyed worries about losing their jobs due to the impacts of globalization (60 percent), lack of training or skills (60 percent), immigrants who work for less (58 percent), jobs moving to cheaper markets (55 percent) and automation (54 percent). Despite this distrust, some argue that “business is the last retaining wall for trust,” (Kathryn Beiser, global chair of Edelman’s corporate practice). There is a consensus that corporate leaders must step up on the issues that matter for society.

Indeed, at this point in human history, leadership matters more than ever in that it is crucial for stimulating economic, social and political changes that promote human development (Rodinelli, 2009). Human development is ‘a process of enlarging people’s choices’ (Human Development Report [HDR], 1990: 9). It is true that the choices themselves may be infinite, change overtime, and may vary across nations. However, it is leaders (with their immense power and influence) who can begin to establish a culture that promotes collective well-being and protects human dignity.

The world is at a turning point. We need leaders with a sense of purpose- those who take a keen interest in addressing social concerns and possess a strong ability to make change happen. We need leaders who understand the complexity of the environment within which we operate, and are aware of the ‘crisis of mistrust’. I would argue that this should be the essence of contemporary leadership.

A longer version of this paper was presented in 2016 at a conference in Asia. For full paper, contact Prof Khilji at sekhilji@gwu.edu