My Master’s work in Organizational Behavior was heavily focused on leadership, as the strength and future of any organization, or group of people. We learned that the model of strong and effective leadership is what creates additional leaders, the next generation of the group. One of the keys to organizations’ success is leaders’ ability to recognize and align individuals’ gifts and talents to roles in which they can use them for the good of the team.
We analyzed what it takes for a leader to put aside their own emotions and comforts, for the good of the whole. Clarity and objectivity is an absolute necessity. One of the greatest portrayals of this was through the movie, Abandon Ship, a 1957 British film of a disaster at sea. The newly appointed leader of the small survival boat was faced with countless difficult decisions under the clear direction to save as many lives as possible. His objectivity was flawless.
Leadership of this capacity seems to be a lost art in many areas. Population, and organizations (educational, business, religious, and political) have grown to such an extent that leadership has become an expected norm, though the skill set to do it well has not kept up with the demand. As I interact and provide coaching in a variety of organizations, there seems to be a wave of affective leadership, those in positions of power moving from their emotions instead of the objective, and often hard, decisions that will promote greater strength and clarity for all.
Perhaps there is a call to action within this shift. Perhaps, it is a quiet leadership that is required most now. To recognize that those in positions of authority and power may no longer be our best model of how to act. To accept that our own conscience and purest intentions for what we see as needed in our organizations (or world at large) must guide us. To be so in tuned with a higher consciousness, that we are led by that most of all.
