How leaders speak
Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future.
Edwin H. Friedman
What kind of leader are you? Do you bore your staff or do you inspire them? Do you generate enthusiasm amongst your staff, or apathy? Does the future shine throughout the practice or is it dulled by business as usual? Is your staff on a mission or are they indifferent? Is your staff charged, revved up, on task? Do they show up early and leave late? Do they do everything they can to be at work, or do they do anything they can to get out of it?
Leadership is a verb. Leadership is action. Leadership is communicating the future - now.
Leadership is speaking - a kind of speaking that imagines a future reality that is seen by all as possible. Leaders articulate this future reality in a way that produces enthusiasm, commitment and loyalty. Leaders speak this future with passion, urgency, high- energy, fire. They care deeply about this future and it shows.
Leadership calls on people to be and do more than they thought possible for themselves. Leaders inspire others to aspire and recognize that the future they envision is one that others would like to embrace. Leaders understand it is only through others that their future vision will be realized.
Leadership is never about ego. Leadership is never about self. Leadership is not about one's own status or stature. Leadership is never about being right or making others wrong. Leaders are obsessively focused on having a future happen, a future reality that is not about them.
One particular speech act that leaders often apply is metaphor. Metaphors have the power to open windows into a future reality. Metaphors are effective at distinguishing the unknown from the known, the novel from the familiar. Metaphors line up what is universally understood and well established with the less well understood.
A metaphor enables us to see something new about reality. A metaphor paints a picture, incorporates an image for comparison, and symbolizes something. A metaphor is a kind of analogy. "A tractor is a machine" is a literal statement about a direct perception. "Life is a machine" is a metaphor. The metaphor anchors a direct experience to something that goes well beyond it.
Different metaphors produce different realities, resulting in different perceptions. You could, for example, use the metaphor that dental practice is a "journey." Or you could use an entirely different metaphor that dental practice is an "organic system." Each metaphor engenders very different ideas and different actions will arise from different metaphors. Here's an example.
A good leader of a dental practice is a gardener who knows how to work with the land. They improve the land seeking ways of drawing out its potential and showing off its strengths. Where necessary they transform it with major reconstruction -- and they know the difference between when to improve and when to reconstruct.
Gardeners have a vision that is evolving and flexible; that is staged to show improvements incrementally. Gardeners have the patience to plant bulbs in fall and not see results to spring. They have the vision to see colors and shapes flow and change over time and that get better over time.
Gardeners know when to add basic nutrition, soil, fertilizer, aeration, lime, or specialty razzle-dazzles such as lakes, gazebos or statuary. Gardeners do the routine work, they trim, mow, prune, deadhead, and weed to keep the garden in shape and showing off its best results as well as maintaining the optimal health of each plant.
Gardeners know how to time their work for best results - planning in the winter, executing new designs in spring and fall, maintaining during the hot summer months. They are knowledgeable about a wide range of related topics from the technical, botany, pest management, fertilizers, to the structural, grading land, hardscape, irrigating, to the artistic, color and design.
They read and study and learn constantly. They plan work in advance and stage the work over time; they work out plans conceptually before beginning to plant. They get feedback from others based on the plan before implementing it. If other people are involved in executing the work, the gardener creates a vision with them, motivates them to help make that vision real, as well as collaborates with them to expand the vision. They work alongside of them to actualize it, and then reward them for their efforts.
As you can see, metaphors enable you to distinguish something not readily seen before. By communicating what is known, what is already understood, and to which people have some direct personal experience, you can create a new future reality for people.
Note: My life partner is a master gardener, so this metaphor results from being with and listening to her.
Dr Marc B. Cooper
The Mastery Company
Copyright © 2004-2010 Marc B. Cooper & The Mastery Company - All Rights Reserved.
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