5.3.5 Leadership And Courage

In the last post I referred to different kinds of courage and I will give that topic a little more attention now.

Good enough community leadership has a substantial emotional dimension.  This is not often thought to be important – but it is.

Emotion is yet another element that is a bonus in other forms of leadership but essential in us community leaders, who need to be emotionally present to our task on an ongoing basis.

I believe that emotional presence, should, through thorough training and good supervision, become second nature.  We need to base much of our decision-making on how we and others feel as a result of our decisions.

This is not necessary, really, in the corporate world – except if it will have negative consequences on profits.  Think of all the decisions taken by corporate leaders where people’s livelihoods are put at risk because of redundancies imposed not because the company is not viable, but just to make greater profits!

And in military leadership worrying about how others feel could be very dangerous – after all if I, a leader, worry too much about how a soldier’s children would feel about their Dad being killed it might make me reluctant to send him into battle.

(It is important for me to discriminate between different forms of leadership here because of the influence of the corporate world on leadership in organisations within the Pillars).

I believe that if we are emotionally present we will be far more alert to potential leadership which can be applied and encouraged at all levels of our organisation.  This is because we have bodily awareness of what is going on around us as well as cognitive awareness. We use our intuition a lot more and this in turn encourages others to use their intuition also.

Attending to the essentials is easy to write down but when people have strong feelings (emotions) about what should be done, attended to, not attended to, etc. maintaining the focus of our mission and vision can be very challenging.

It requires clear thinking, confident articulation, fair dollops of moral courage and above all the ability and willingness to take responsibility for decisions we make.

Our emotions play an important role in recognising gifts that people have.

I always know when I am ready to take a risk, because risk-taking involves my emotions, and I may feel afraid, excited, hopeful, confident etc. at such times.

And it is a risk to encourage autonomy and a sense of adventure in others.

Motivation also involves our emotions, and encouraging potential is far more motivating than pointing out deficiencies and continually pestering people to change. (Both of the words emotion and motivation actually share the term movement; in that motivate comes from motive, and emotion implies motion).

It is good for morale in an organisation to focus on what people can do, not on what they cannot, or should not, or are not allowed to do.  An atmosphere where we find it easy to ask to take the lead in something that we are interested in, or are good at (within a healthy and boundaried structure), offers us a sense of power, autonomy and belonging.

If I am leading emotionally I am shaking the environment around me up a little, so taking the risk and feeling the slight trepidation that all leaders feel in allowing someone else take the lead is part and parcel of encouraging future leaders at all levels.  It is also a form of letting go – which is, of course, another emotional element of leadership.

I believe that emotional leadership can enable amazing things to happen that cognitive-only leadership may miss out on.

Our emotions, above all else, make a huge contribution to our personality.  That is, how people recognise us.  There are so many positive aspects to having personality in leadership that it is important not to, so to speak, iron out wrinkles when we are encouraging others to take the lead.  It is in our imperfections that we are good enough – and genuineness, passion and imbuing confidence in taking responsible risks should always be the goal.

To paraphrase Éamon de Valera (also known as Dev), in emotional leadership I believe that there is an element of looking into my heart and seeing what’s good for whatever I am leading, as Dev apparently did from time to time when he was deciding what was good for Ireland).

Having looked into our heart, however, we then need to look for and find support for what is in there.  Perhaps there will be no support.  In such a case wisdom is needed to acknowledge that indeed what is in our heart is at variance with what people around us seem to want.  (Slowing down our speed of processing is helpful here).

The looking into my heart bit is probably a bit old fashioned now in these days of hiring consultants, doing surveys, opinion polls and the like and then employing spin doctors to explain to people the benefits of something that they initially didn’t know they wanted.  (Something that I don’t think Dev would have been too bothered with in fairness to him)!

So we might imagine community leadership to be a bit like sailing.  We know where we want to go but we need to be aware of what way the winds are blowing and then plot a course to get there.  The destination might be the same, but the journey might have many more twists and turns and ups and downs than we first thought.

And it may also involve slowing down so that others won’t be left behind.

Above all, community leadership should be about real change, that is, adaptive change. I referenced a link to this topic earlier and here it is again.  As I mentioned already, leadership is about spelling out in clear, assertive and respectful terms what needs to be done, i.e. what needs to change.

And change is an emotional project.  Think of the emotions involved in even relatively small changes in our own lives – and then consider the emotions involved in others who we are encouraging to change.

Yes, it takes courage to change and even more courage to promote positive change in those around us if we really believe in our vision.

In this context, the day I won’t take a stand on change (or the day I can’t see what needs to be done) is, perhaps, the day I need to check in with myself to see do I still want to lead.

In respect of change, and making things happen, I believe that the highest form of courage in leadership, whether it is within a family (where parents are leaders), community, or society at large is acknowledging that the reason things are not as I’d like them is down to me – the leader.

Akin to this is a kind of honest appraisal. That is, in assessing courses of action that I choose, and seeing what others see as well as what I want to see.

Alternatively, the highest form of irresponsibility in leadership is to assert that things are not as I’d like them because of others. This is very tempting for the inadequate leader.

If only we got rid of A we’d be able to do B.  In other words, we try and find a scapegoat and blame him, or her, or them for our lack of success, effectiveness, luck, productivity etc.

This kind of thinking, may lead to 1): in a family, one child being labelled the black sheep, 2): in community or society, one section of the population being subjected to racism, discrimination etc. and 3): globally, terrible and horrific events such as war and/or ethnic cleansing.

So it is very important to build courage to be responsible into a team. How do we do this?

Courage is at the root of the word encourage and our aim is to encourage vulnerable people to make healthier life choices for themselves and their families.

In families in our Focus Group, making healthier life choices very often involves substantial change, and takes courage in respect of taking responsibility for our situation, and thereafter commitment to change.

So, obviously, this needs to be modelled at all levels of the organisation.  And it starts with the leader!

Taking responsibility for our difficulties might not always be the most popular thing a leader will do – so in addition to courage it takes clarity and confidence.

I have experienced many false dawns in this area of work, where initial promise and enthusiasm for change is replaced very quickly by more of the same.  This is summed up of course by the saying already quoted the more things change the more they stay the same.

This was about the French Revolution but it was partly true in Ireland also – as evidenced by the joke when I was young about the Irish Free State painting the post boxes green implying that this was all that really changed when the new Irish Government took over from the British in 1922.

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I will digress a little here to ponder on courage and responsibility at a wider level.

Are there any leaders that tried to bring about, enable, or facilitate real change?  Not just a paint-the-post-boxes-green kind of change – and then took responsibility for all successes and failures within their area of change.

You may have knowledge of such leaders.

In my lifetime I can think of a few.  I believe that Dr. Martin Luther King knew what real change was, and he had it thought through very well.  Personally I am inspired by his ability to turn his life’s dream into reality.  In this, he could recognise the huge potential that is often dormant in people, and he knew how to harness it by appealing to both sides of the brain (that is, the thinking and emotional parts), encouraging people that he led to choose good actions that would have a positive effect on their well-being rather than actions that would have a detrimental effect on someone else, e.g. a perceived enemy.

He did this by encouraging responsive rather than reactive behaviour, and placed spirituality, compassion and idealism on an equal footing with ambition, enthusiasm, and excellent organisation.

Perhaps the Pillars in the USA in the 1960’s did not know how to counter this non-violent campaign. After all – racism was rife, and, in addition to racism, there was glaring class prejudice. (I remember reading somewhere that the attitude of the corporate world changed when MLK began to encourage poor white people to join poor black people in the struggle for freedom and justice).

Were they afraid that things would not stay the same after they changed?  Were they afraid that what MLK was initiating was real change, not a mere ripple in the pattern that would soon reassert itself again – as happens in most revolutions?  Were they afraid that he was not the opposite side of the coin, but that he was a new coin altogether?

I don’t know why he was assassinated – but sometimes I think that it may have been because he not only saw this so clearly, but had the emotional intelligence and organisational ability to turn it into a popular non-violent movement.

Perhaps you might think that this is a little off point, but I think that it would be interesting, in respect of courage and responsibility, to look at the polar opposite.

While I was writing the earlier parts of this website many of the commemorative events of the First World War were in full swing. Looking at some of them led me to ponder on the terms courage, a term often used at these commemorations to describe those who fought and died in the war, and responsibility – i.e. who took responsibility for starting/perpetuating the war – pouring fuel on the fire so to speak.

I will recall the Sub-Chapter on Power and Control in Society and ask you to ponder on who suffers because of war, and who is courageous and responsible in wartime? 

Surely it requires enormous courage to say I will not be bullied into fighting your war for you; I do not believe your propaganda, I, or my family have little or nothing to gain from it.

Now, this thinking may have been virtually impossible in the group-think that prevailed in almost all countries in Europe over a hundred years ago, but with the amount of awareness nowadays it is a lot easier to figure out who gains and who loses in wars.

Sad to relate, even a small amount of digging and a brief study of real facts nowadays will reveal that the unjust world economic order – driven by vast, global multinational military-industrial corporations and amoral financial interests – is mostly responsible for the wars that are being fought as you are reading this!

In a much more local way than the last post, courage and responsibility have relevance for leadership in organisations that are set up to assist those most in distress here in Ireland – families in the Focus Group.

It is easy to be swept away in a wave of compliance when the vast majority think in one direction only.  And it takes courage to take a different stance to that.

For example Martin Luther King had the courage (and confidence) to encourage non-violence rather than the more militant Black Power movement that wanted to react to injustice with violence.  John Hume did the same in the Troubles in Northern Ireland a few decades later. Promoting real change is on the one hand very inspiring and on the other a little scary.

In our endeavour to be something different, and not a mirror image of what is already there, and, in turn, avoid the repetition of the same old patterns after the initial period of wild enthusiasm, we need to be very aware of the forces that might potentially be lined up to inhibit change.

Some of those will be external, but some will be within our organisation, and indeed, some will be within us, the leaders!

In being aware of those forces we need to determine which ones we ignore and which ones we try to get on board.

As I stated elsewhere, change is covered in the Chapter on Organisational Matters – I mention it here because it is a leadership responsibility.