“Seeing” leadership

When we recognise that competing theories are competing metaphors, we can approach them in a new way. We can learn to see and tap their strengths and be aware of their inevitable weaknesses. We can set the ground for a much more reflective approach to management practice, where people rather than theories are in the driving seat.”
Gareth Morgan (1987)

Part of Amanda Sinclair’s point in Leadership for the Disillusioned is that the whole idea of leadership as some thing or object that can be studied is a “construct”.

I’ll try to illustrate what I think that might mean and why I suspect it is important:

It would appear that the word “lead” has a long etymology going back to the 1300’s. Its original meaning appears to have already been diverse and included “to guide,” (Old English “lædan”), to “cause to go with one,” (the causative of liðan “to travel,” from West Germanic). The  meaning “to be in first place” is from c.1380. The noun is first recorded c.1300 with the sense of “action of leading.” The sense of “the front or leading place” is from 1570. Dr Samuel Johnson (author of the famous dictionary) stigmatized it as “a low, despicable word.” The sense in card-playing is from 1742; in theater, from 1831; in journalism, from 1927; in jazz bands, from 1934. As a shortened form of leading article, as in “prominent newspaper piece giving editorial opinion”, it dates from 1837. The use of the word “leadership” is first attested from 1821.

Consulting just about any dictionary (see for example: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/leader and http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/leader) reveals a multiplicity of meanings, including:

• Any person or thing that leads or conducts; a guide; a conductor.
• One who goes first.
• One having authority to direct; a chief; a commander.
• One who leads a political party or group of elected party members, as Leader of the House of Commons or Senate Majority Leader
• A person or thing that leads in a certain field in terms of excellence, success, etc.
• The dominant animal in a pack of animals, such as wolves or lions.
• An animal placed in advance of others, especially on a team; one of the forward pair of horses.

And a diverse range of contexts, including:

• Music: A performer who leads a band or choir in music; also, in an orchestra, the principal violinist; the one who plays at the head of the first violins; a conductor.
• Botany: A fast-growing terminal shoot of a woody plant.
• Plumbing: A pipe for conducting rain water from a roof to a cistern or to the ground; a conductor.
• At the movies: A piece of blank tape or film at the beginning or end of a reel to allow the material to the threaded onto something, as a reel of film onto a projector.
• Marketing: A loss leader or a popular product sold at a normal price.
• Nautical: A block of hard wood pierced with suitable holes for leading ropes in their proper places.
• Engineering: The drive wheel in any kind of machinery.

What is most interesting to me is that many, if not most, of these meanings, as cited, have a metaphorical, directional sense about them. Whatever the context, there seems to be this sense of something or somebody coming or going ahead and sometimes being above.

It seems to me that our sense of the words “leader” and “leadership” is strongly patterned by this etymological history and particular the everyday sense we have based on the metaphorical use of the words.

I suspect this pattern often sits in a complex and uneasy relationship with the more formal patterns of talk about leadership in many organisations and with the sense of identity and effectiveness many of us have as we take on roles that have expectations of “leadership” attached to them.

Something To Do

During the next week or so pay attention to the pattern of metaphor that is associated with the everyday use of the words “lead”, “leader” and “leadership” in your particular context.

1. To what extent do they enable, and to what extent do they constrain, the formal, espoused and legitimate narratives, propositions and conceptual frameworks about leadership in your organisation?
2. To what extent do they enable/constrain the patterns of your own internal conversation (thinking) about who you are as a leader and what you seek to do?