CAN'T LOSE FOR WINNING

The virtues of building communities by leading them from behind. (Mark Randell, June 18, 2003, Online Opinion)

In one of my children's books, the lion is made fun of for "leading from behind" while searching for the monster of the story. Subtly, it is implied that cowardice is behind the move, and the lion loses and regains his voice with the ebb and flow of his courage and his position in the pack.

Yet I would argue "leading from behind" - or at least by walking beside, rather than in-front of your charges - is exactly what is needed for leaders of all kinds (corporate, governmental, community) in the new century.

This is hardly a new idea. The notion is referred to directly in the Tao te Ching, that 1000-year old classic of Chinese literature: "When a good leader is finished, the people think they did it themselves". That is, lead through empowerment of the people, rather than by undertaking all tasks yourself - or at least make it look that way, make people believe they are making the decisions, providing the solutions. [...]

I was once asked by a CEO, in a meeting with his executive, what kind of leadership would be necessary in the 21st century. My reply - met with blank stares from the gathered management team - was "Taoist leadership". I was referring to the quote I have already made from the Tao te Ching. The type of leadership we need from all quarters is "facilitative" leadership, "empowering" leadership, humble leadership, Taoist leadership. We need leadership from those who would build us up and stand aside, insisting that we take all the credit. We need leaders who truly understand the first principle of community development: "Work yourself out of a job". If a good leader does good work, they render themselves virtually obsolete: the workers, the community, the team becomes self-sufficient.

Yet few of today's leaders - particularly in government - would be willing to "hand the credit" to others; they all want their moment in the spotlight, their 15 minutes. Credit is necessary to their continuing success as politicians, bureaucrats. Indeed, we set the entire "system" up that way from the beginning: We believe in the heroic leader, we build hierarchical enterprises where "the boss" is the only public face of the enterprise, we clammer for "doorstop" interviews with the leader, the Minister, the head honcho, as the only one who can give us the pearls of wisdom we crave. We focus our media on the people, we subscribe to the twin cults of personality and celebrity.

President Bush has actually carried this to a level beyond zen, wherein his opponents claim victory even as he gets his way. So, for instance, the Democrats won on Campaign Finance Reform, guaranteeing their annihilation on 2004; Ted Kennedy's Education bill leads inevitably to vouchers; the French win in the UN Security Council destroyed the institution; and the Democrats, after drawing a line in the sand on taxes, proceeded to insist on an immediate third round of tax cuts "for the poor", effectively bleeding the very government budgets they claim to defend. If you let your foes "win" you can apparently get away with anything. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 26, 2003 8:48 AM