The Heart of Engagement : Leadership Development & Executive Coaching : Mike Cook of Vitalwork Inc. / The AMJ Group : Management Education, Retreat Facilitation

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Last Friday night my wife and I had occasion to meet and have dinner with four people I may never see again, yet my life would be poorer had the experience not taken place. Each of the four, is a good deal younger than I am, a fact which itself was a source of inspiration since they have more years in front of them to make their contribution than I likely do. They were as a group and individually quite remarkable and what I’d call “leaders in the process of becoming.” Each, already accomplished in their own right, will likely be recognized as a leader on a broader stage sometime in the future.

I expect as I mention these folks by name they are recognizable among their existing audiences as “already leaders”, an assertion I will not dispute because each one has achieved in their chosen field and is undoubtedly well known. My thesis as regards each is that they will eventually be well recognized outside their immediate field as social as well as business leaders and it is purely a function of their engagement with their own vision that this possibility exists. They are agents for their vision.

Our hostess for the evening and the ringleader of this group was Christen Lien. An independent musician, viola is her primary instrument though she is rapidly mastering the harmonica as well. As her website offers, “Christen Lien’s unique fusion of East and West, classical and postmodern, acoustic and electronic, has created an entirely new sound that is both uncannily ancient and reassuringly contemporary.” She has also recently discovered her inner eco-activist and is preparing herself for a full frontal assault in support of the needs of the Amazon’s indigenous peoples.

Danielle Barnett, a photographer who lives in San Francisco’s Mission District, has combined her passion for photography, love of city life and the counter culture to take her into the heart of the hip hop world. Her natural passion now supports her as she serves as advocate for young aspiring hip-hop artists as they tumble their way through a business structure that would have them sign away their artistic rights without batting an eye.

When David McConville introduced himself Friday evening he said his firm specialized in Immersive Projection Design. Hello! For those of us from the “nuts and bolts” business world this expression did not register cognitively so I went with the intuitive and that turned out to be on the money. Short version, he does projector shows in domed environments. Longer and more accurate version, better a question than an explanation; how would you like to take a ride to the edge of the universe and back without leaving the room? David also sits as a member of the Board of Directors of the Buckminster Fuller Institute and through BFI he collaborates with numerous community initiatives to develop systems-oriented solutions to energy, environmental, and educational challenges.

Monica Niess is President of The Write Choice Network, a full-service social change organization that brings to bear broad expertise in resource development, strategic communication, organizational development, and social enterprise. Shorthand; if you are a not-for-profit and in need of funding these guys will find it or raise it for you. In November 2009 Monica had the great good fortune to meet up with Christen Lien in the Ecuadorian rain forest on a trip sponsored by the Pachamama Alliance. Not that Monica needed any inspiration, now she has new partners and the fun can really begin.

There can of course be events that intervene and you’ll never hear of any of these people again after this post but that is always true in this life, nothing and no one is guaranteed an outcome. However, it was a privilege to meet each of them even if briefly as they paused along their journeys to share an evening with my wife and me. By the way, none of these people needs a leader; they have their vision to guide them.

When I meet people like these four, I am certain that we know very little in the business world about how to cause leaders. How could we when we are so focused on what we want done rather than on what might be possible?

 Based on everything I have read, heard or experienced over the past twenty years I think it fair to say that what we know about leaders in the business environment starts after they either have success or have followers. This may seem obvious and like a lot of topics I bring up it raises the question, "Why are you talking about this?" Honestly, I find the field of leadership studies to be  limited by its focus on success, numbers and prescription and I think it is time to expose the shortcomings we all recognize are there in current modeling practices. How about we barbecue a few sacred cows forthwith? Let’s start with the following and you are welcome to add your own favorites:

• Addressing managers as though they are de facto leaders is irresponsible organizational behavior.
• Putting anyone through a one week "leadership intensive" and expecting "leaders" to emerge mirrors the wisdom of "spitting into the wind" and is tantamount to saying that when it comes to causing leaders for our organization doing something is better than doing nothing, and hey, who knows we might get lucky!
• Some of any organizations best leadership takes place in middle management and the people involved should not be promoted just because they are solid in the middle.

I can of course go on and so can you. The point I am pursuing here is that leadership is likely studied more effectively before the fact as an emergent phenomenon spawned by vision rather than afterwards as a behavioral pattern.

What is it like in your organization; are you searching for people with passion and imagination or just for those who produce results?