How I Met Your Mother

While The Pyramid of Screaming was meant as entertainment, it has an obvious foundation in reality: when we feel that someone has yelled at us unjustly, we have a predilection for passing on that frustration to someone easily within our power. It isn’t a nice human quality, but examples of it are abundant. This habit, of course, speaks to something larger: a dissatisfaction with our ’superiors.’  We are much more likely to feel maligned – that is, unjustly admonished – if we don’t respect the figure performing the act, or his/her position.

With skepticism about someone’s right to admonish us as pervasive as it is, it begs the question whether there is something intrinsically wrong with us (the followers) or them (the leaders)? Are we terrible followers or are they terrible leaders?

Some recent studies suggest what many of us have long suspected: that many of our leaders are not as advertised. Specifically, there is nascent evidence which suggests that – by virtue of their leadership roles – our bosses have increased capacities to fake their own competence and to lie.

As reported by Jeffrey Kluger at Time, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley subjected a number of groups to a series of exercises. After each, participants were asked to rate their fellows on specific qualities. Almost without fail, participants gave higher marks to individuals who spoke out more often and more loudly, whether or not what they said had any merit. In short, the participants demonstrated a tendencies to view someone as a leader based on how confident or competent they made themselves appear.

A study with similar experiences was detailed by the Harvard Business Review just this month. In it, Dana Carney divided participants into two distinct roles: either bosses or employees. They were subsequently given instructions to follow which involved lying to an interviewer. Participants were then studied to see how they dealt with certain biological and psychological results of lying. In Carney’s words,

“Just as kids don’t touch a stove once they learn it burns them, people don’t like to lie because it hurts them emotionally and physiologically. These data suggest that powerful individuals—CEOs, portfolio managers, politicians, elite athletes—don’t get burned when they touch the figurative stove. They seem to be more physiologically “prepared” to lie, which could lead to their lying more often.”

“Just as kids don’t touch a stove once they learn it burns them, people don’t like to lie because it hurts them emotionally and physiologically. These data suggest that powerful individuals—CEOs, portfolio managers, politicians, elite athletes—don’t get burned when they touch the figurative stove. They seem to be more physiologically “prepared” to lie, which could lead to their lying more often.”

After perusing these studies, it is easy to feel some angst towards people in all positions of power. But is that justified? Ask yourself these questions:

1) Who is to blame for this state of affairs?

2) Who can fix it?

The answer to both questions, of course, is “You” – the Everyman of American organizational culture. In a follower role, it is easy to persuade yourself to think you have less responsibility for your organization’s success. But that’s preposterous – followers have just as much responsibility for being good shepherds of their organization as their bosses do. You really are your bosses’ keeper. As Warren Bennis said:

“If I had to reduce the responsibilities of a good follower to a single rule, it would be to speak truth to power.”

“What will distinguish effective leadership…is not just the dissemination of information; it will be the ability to communicate meaning and to translate that meaning into responsible, ethical action.”

Although my personal definition of leadership has evolved over the years, one quality has remained constant: communication. Originally, I think I included communication as a personal skill necessary for someone to become a good leader. That seems rather obvious: of course a leader will need to be able to communicate a vision to followers, communicate progress towards that vision, and communicate what still needs to be done to accomplish it. And that’s just one side to the communication coin – the other being a need to listen to followers. Furthermore, the act of listening need not be a purely physical act; it will also require attentiveness and concern.

Recently, the role of communication in my definition of leadership has grown. Reading the Washington Post’s On Leadership column, I came across an essay which I thought expressed my view on the importance of communication. In an April 9, 2010 column, Katherine Tyler Scott discussed some of the leadership challenges facing the Episcopal church. A board member of the International Leadership Association and a Managing Partner of Ki ThoughtBridge, Scott succinctly summarizes some of the major 21st century issues the Episcopal church is facing and adroitly seizes upon the tools they will need to succeed. She writes,

“What will distinguish effective leadership…is not just the dissemination of information; it will be the ability to communicate meaning and to translate that meaning into responsible, ethical action.”

Scott wisely emphasizes the primacy of communication not just as a technical act – an item to be checked off a list – but as a  methodology to effecting impactful leadership. Good leadership, then, is a state of being, a relationship in the strictest sense of the word, which is born out of shared meaning. This shared meaning is fostered by an individual (a leader) for the purpose of motivating a group to action.

“Some analysts say that al Qaeda is currently following a strategy of ‘leaderless resistance” and “although it is difficult for authorities to destroy a leaderless enterprise, leaderless resistance is a strategy of weakness.”

When I got home, I found the report online (you can read the full thing here). I’m less concerned with the politics of what he said (which seem sound to me), than the interesting leadership observation he made. He suggested the following:

• al Qaeda is following a strategy of leaderless resistance (“an army of autonomous terrorist operatives, united in a common cause, but not connected organizationally”).
• the strategy of leaderless resistance is particularly hard to defeat.
  
• this strategy is evidence weakness and/or is inherently weak.

This doesn’t sound right to me. My knee-jerk questions are:

• Is this strategy really leaderless? Or is it leader-full? Full of leaders who are able to act independently, authentically, with great (i.e. impactful) result? Maybe when he suggests this movement doesn’t have a leader, he means it doesn’t have a handler. If that’s the case, then…
• Is the strategy really a sign of weakness, or is it a sign of ultimate strength – the height of leadership?

I’ve always been fond of Lao Tzu, who said

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him…But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, ‘We did it ourselves.’”

I think the merits of a leader who can lead from behind are obvious. And, by virtue of such logic, isn’t an organization which accomplishes a single mission (causing strife for the U.S.) without a leader issuing constant commands the perfect form? Conceivably there’s some mastermind behind it all, gently pushing, nudging, inspiring – but the fact that he/she isn’t out on the front lines almost seems a reason to brag.

If this really is a sign of excellent leadership, then I think we have reason to be afraid. Not just because we’re facing an organization with good leadership, but because we’re perceiving it as the opposite – and maybe dismissing it on the merit of that observation.

They certainly can, according to a study recently performed by researchers at the University of California, Berkley and reported on by Jeffrey Kluger at Time.

More on this, later.

I’m not sure what inspired it, but I’m glad Mason indulged himself. A couple of excerpts intrigued me:

• “Religion, as it were, does the thinking for the people who do not have time to think things through for themselves. Philosophy, however, asks people to think for themselves, to question doubtful premises and assumptions using reason, logic, and experience to provide the best arguments for their own position, while being able to put forward objections to rival arguments, and to answer objections to their own.”
• “Finally, there are some people who appear to pursue truth and wisdom rather than pleasure, riches, fame or power. These, of course, are the philosophers. To be honest, when philosophers talk about the good life, they stack the deck in their own favor. Whenever they discuss it, the good life is the philosophical life. This does not mean that they are wrong, but we should be cautious how we receive their arguments. There is no such thing as the good life for everyone, and neither philosophers nor religious expositors have any right to lay down the law about it.”
• Mason mentions how Aristotle suggests the philosophical life begins, which I think would be a good way to begin each morning: “in wonder at the universe and the spectacle of life.”
• “The good life is a life devoted to the discovery and communication of truth within a community of like-minded people possessing moral integrity and a genuine desire to learn.”

That last quotation seems more appropriate to me as the definition of an ideal society: a society of leaders.

What makes that crucial difference between a leader and an effective leader? One study out this month[1] suggests that the key is leadership self-efficacy, which the authors perceive to be

“a person’s judgment that he or she can successfully exert leadership by setting direction for the work group, building relationships with followers in order to gain commitment to change goals, and working with them to overcome obstacles to change.”[2]

This study is predicated on the observation that people with “strong self-efficacy beliefs are likely to be more motivated to pursue action, contribute more effort towards those actions, and persevere to a greater degree in the face of obstacles.”[1]

The authors, having grounded themselves in this vein of leadership theory, set out to develop a taxonomy which systematically deconstructs what constitutes leadership self-efficacy and examine how it can be related to leadership effectiveness.

Readers who are looking for insight into their own leadership brand and how they regard themselves as leaders might find this study moderately interesting. Of course, this text’s true moxie will be realized by those investigating how they can help those around them (or “below” them) develop as leaders. If you take to heart that the greater the sense of self-efficacy, the greater the effectiveness of the leader, you’re bound to realize that the simplest tactic to leadership development is to provide more opportunities to develop a strong sense of self-efficacy, which in turn helps one to mature as a leader.

This study, of course, goes beyond these broad generalizations and drives down to the basic atoms of leadership self-efficacy and leadership effectiveness, providing savvy readers the intellectual capital they need to start building leaders from scratch.

From a rhetorical perspective, this study also begs the question: how much of leadership is confidence? Or, can false confidence translate into authentic leadership effectiveness? Are these authors the first to discover what could become known as the leadership placebo?

—–

[1] David Anderson, et al., “A leadership self-efficacy taxonomy and its relation to effective leadership,” Leadership Quarterly 19, no. 5 (2008). {Link}

[2] Paglis, L. L., & Green, S. G. (2002). Leadership self-efficacy and managers’ motivation for leading change. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23, 215?235. {Link}

Religion is losing its hold on our lives. This realization is inescapable, given the marked decline in the number of people attending church services. In 1996 the Barna Research Group released a report which illustrated church attendance was declining steadily and that churches were losing “entire segments of the population: men, singles, empty nesters…” In 2006, Keith Barltrop wagged a cautionary finger towards a 2004 ecumenical survey which showed that 73% of those surveyed believed that the “clergy failed to prepare congregations for the challenges to their faith that the culture of our times throws up.” In that same year AgapePress covered a study which concluded that only about 20% of Americans go to a church on Sunday, which is a much lower figure than previously anticipated. More recently, Rebecca Ryan of the Carolina Reporter quoted a poll which “suggests that 30% of Americans are either changing their religion or abandoning it [sic] all together.”

Based on these striking figures, the obvious question is: why are pews emptying? Are people losing faith in their god(s)? In their priests? In their fellow humans? Or could it be that congregations’ demands are becoming more sophisticated, and that churches simply are not measuring up to these advancing standards. As I explain below, my perspective leads me to believe that there is a direct correlation between the leadership provided through the church and the level of interest congregations display in attending services.

For full disclosure, I am historically a non-religious person (in a way, a product of the trends I illustrated previously). I have never attended a church for any sustained period of time, and before this year could probably count my visits on both hands. Nevertheless I have been, rather non-traditionally, spiritual. I have been especially eager to find the right answers, or even the right questions, to some of life’s more esoteric issues. Some people find solace in reason, some in religion. With several significant changes in my life recently, I chose to investigate the church as a possible way to enrich my intellectual and spiritual sides. To this end, I have been visiting a different church, of a different denomination, each week. This experience has been interesting and educational. I recommend it highly to anyone.

But back to the issue at hand: my survey of churches led me to consider why the services I attended always felt so (physically) empty. I began asking members of each congregation: is the church always this empty on a Sunday, or is it just an off week? Invariably the responses I received suggested that every year, the church loses another family, or two, or three. In my personal experience, the vast majority of attendees are those who are elderly or terminally ill. And, of course, as parents or those who are near to becoming parents stop attending church, it follows that their children will be less likely start of their own accord.

In the recent weeks, my consideration of why people were abandoning the religious ship intersected with my passion for the study of leadership. Assuming that people are not losing their faith wholesale at the same rate that church attendance is dropping, the obvious reason why congregations are diminishing is because people are not getting something they need out of their church experience – there is an x-factor that is simply missing. So what is that x-factor? I suggested that the answer, the x-factor, is leadership.

In this process of surveying churches and religions, I have observed some church practices which do not make sense to me. The attendees arrive, are directed to sing far too many songs (few of them of intellectual or musical worth), listen to uncredentialed individuals pray, hear a short sermon by a usually lackluster priest, sing another half-dozen songs and then depart for an after-church service or for home. Pardon my broad-brush strokes here, which I have probably overloaded with hyperbole. Nevertheless, the point I am getting at is that very rarely (in fact, not at all in the past two months for me), do church services seem to provide much in the way of guidance for attendees. Instead, it seems that the point of today’s sermons are to paraphrase a biblical tale, maybe show how a parallel event is occurring in today’s society, and to praise the lord.

In absolute seriousness, I think the last thing any god would want for his or her worshippers is to stand around and, inanely, offer an interminable amount of praise each week. Isn’t praising your god something you can do privately? Can’t you allow your actions speak your praise for you, rather than empty words? The answer is, of course, yes. And I think more and more people – especially those who belong to the millennial generation – feel this way.

So what does this mean for the church? It means that the church must live up to its proclaimed role as “spiritual leaders.” What is the fundamental reason people go to church? It is not to learn about the bible. That can be done on one’s own, or through Sunday school. It is to find inspiration and instruction for our lives.

How are churches to provide this leadership, this inspiration and instruction? Really, it is simply a question of leadership. The presiding spiritual leader must be our twenty-first century shepherd. This is accomplished by

• The preacher (obviously) being a role-model; showing others how life is to be lived through example.
• The preacher constructing sermons which are not sustained hero-worship (what hero wants to be worshiped, and what worship-hungry hero is worthy of it?). Rather, sermons must explore existential issues which we struggle with and offer instruction, inspiration, or open a path of spiritual exploration with the aim of individuals resolving or coming to terms with these issues. The best sermons will focus on the individual and challenge them, will be opportunities for the individual to learn about him/herself. Of course, these sermons will rely on adeptly chosen scriptural material in order to highlight a particularly valuable apercu or to present something for the individual to reconcile with.
• The preacher treating him or herself like leader of a business. Don’t have a new or worthwhile sermon? Why in god’s name would you have your congregation meet to hear something less than stellar? So that they can become more disinterested? So that you damage your ethos as a preacher? This simply isn’t a good idea. Preachers must evaluate themselves and their church regularly and adapt. Perhaps some churches will only meet once every two weeks. Perhaps some will gather for a religious service once every two weeks and in the off weeks meet for fellowship, community service, or some other activity where the congregation puts its money where its mouth is. This sort of adaptation is not bad, but can constitute a positive and value-add change. Sure the congregation will not have as much “face time” with their god, but they are more likely to remain worshippers for a longer period when they feel their time is invested well and that they are making an impact in their community.

Although I realize the irony in quoting such a figure, in the end the state of the world is much as Oscar Wilde described it:

“The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion – these are the two things that govern us. ”

People’s souls are starving  and churches are not providing the leadership they hunger for. Too many churches falter when it comes to creativity and seek to fill an hour’s worship with jingles, repetitious prayer, and empty sermons. If the pews are to be filled, religious leaders must begin to focus on the true needs of their flock: the need to know themselves, the need to belong, the need to develop one’s individual faith. In short, they must make their services matter to the individual which, as statistics shows, they simply don’t.

_____

See

Barna Research Group, “Church Attendance,” 1996. [Click here.]

Keith Barltrop, “Why are Fewer People Going to Church?” The Universe Newspaper, April 6, 2006. [Click here].

Fred Jackson and Jody Brown, “Fewer Americans Than Thought Going to Church, Says Study,” AgapePress, 2006. [Click here].

Kirk Hadaway and Penny Marler, “Did you Really Go To Church This Week?” The Christian Century, May 6, 1998, pages 472-475. [Click here].

Rebecca Ryan, “Fewer People Filling Up Pews,” The Carolina Reporter, August 10, 2008. [Click here].

]]> http://ashleywollam.com/archives/147/feed 0 http://ashleywollam.com/archives/90 http://ashleywollam.com/archives/90#comments Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:20:36 +0000 Ashley Wollam http://ashleywollam.com/?p=90 Over the last few weeks, I have been asked to participate in interview luncheons for candidates to the Assistant Professor in Leadership position open at the McDonough Center. Each candidate has been posed the question, “What is your definition of leadership?”

This question is interesting, and problematic to me for a variety of reasons – not the least of which is the underlying assumption that such a concept needs distilled down to basic, elemental parts; an assumption which seems to be relentlessly compulsory.

Although I seem to contradict myself, one definition attracted me more than any others. Dr. Bechtold, of the University of Hawaii (I believe), suggested that “Leadership is the process in which a leader creates a message which followers can endorse.”

Food for thought.