LEADING IN A CHANGING WORLD | DISEMBEDDING

Previously on leading in a changing world, I started discussing the five basic phases that any leadership encounters change and the roles the pioneer leader is expected to play in order to have a safe landing within a record time. I looked at the first two, which are STABILITY and DISCONTINUITY. But in today’s essay, I am going to consider the third phase.

At this phase, stability is all but gone. The power of the tradition, so crucial in earlier phases, no longer has the ability to act like glue holding the system in the place where it has been for a long time. Both internal and external pressures become too great for merely maintenance and management of what-has-been. The systems, and the people in it, are now experiencing increasing levels of distress as they try to manage the challenges from within the frameworks of stability and tradition. Stress is everywhere. Relationships are strained. Systems begin breaking down. Power struggles emerge. Conflict and blaming are common.

Now stress is not necessarily a bad thing. When the first child goes off to college or gets married and sets up his/her own home in another city, the family system is being disconnected from its previous place of stability and tradition. This process is called DISEMBEDDING. Disembedding suggests the uprooting of deeply connected relationships, beliefs, practices and values. This is a stressful experience; but, it is also a disconnecting that is developmental and necessary.

Several further observations about this phase need to be noted. If post-modern leadership has any characteristic that has been pivotal in the organization’s loss of place in this culture, it is in the nature of modernity to disconnect all things from the past. The critical turn of mind observes Descartes famous dictum: cogito ergo sum denies tradition or any external source the authority to determine or shape action. The brilliance of postmodernity, in all its questioning and methodologies for examining reality, is based upon a fundamental presupposition of discontinuity and disembedding from past tradition and any authority other than autonomous reason. There are at least two critical results. First, the resultant release of energies, in terms of research and the questioning of reality, has created a period of changes. Second, all of this change has been done without reference or deference to tradition or the past. The resultant disorientation has created the sense, for many people, of being caught up in a whirl of events they do not understand and are outside their control.

THE ROLE OF LEADER

In this third phase, leadership, as management of roles, habits and traditions of the stable period, will not deal with the stress levels within the systems, nor enable any meaningful engagement with the new social context. A different kind of leadership response is required. There must now be a shift from management to other models of leadership. The distinction is important. Managers are, by training and character, people who live comfortably within a stable culture. Leaders anticipate, create and change cultures.

Managers perform best in phases one and two. They are neither equipped nor gifted at leading in the following phases of change. The difference between what is called for and what currently occurs is captured in the following statement. Leadership understands and gives direction in the midst of change and transition. Management administers within a given stable system. The essential problem for pioneer leaders, here, is that they have grown up and learned their skills within stable systems. They have been trained to manage, not lead.

For the pioneer leader not have several casualties in this phase, he must decide to unlearn, learn, and relearn the change-driven ideologies that helps him have a safe landing within a record time.

Elvis C. Umez
Leadership Consultant
IDB Consult