worldly leadership -uncovering ancient and indigenous ......swaraj (self-government)....
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Worldly Leadership - uncovering ancient
and indigenous leadership wisdoms for a
more sustainable world
Professor Sharon Turnbull
The Leadership Trust Foundation
Official Leadership Development Provider to the Olympic Council of
Ireland
• Global heating
• Global economic crisis
• The „flattening‟ of the business world
• Unpredictability
• The communications revolution
• Materialism and greed
• Crisis of ethics - Compliance not conscience
A Crisis of Leadership?
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• Dominant ideology of the firm has contributed to a crisis of ethics in a globalised world
• Reveres wealth creation, free trade, profit, and financial orthodoxy over global sustainability and social justice
• Recent scandals focus on identifying breaches of integrity and trust BUT retain rules that preserve the status quo
Philippe de Woot‟s (2009)
Should Prometheus be Bound
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• An ethic of conviction focusing on the type of society we wish to build
• An ethic of responsibility that challenges the instrumental logic of today‟s society.
• „Permanent collective questioning‟
• „Good leadership is required at every level‟
De Woot‟s solution…
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• The Leadership Trust
• The International Masters in Practicing
Management programme (IMPM)
• Global leadership theory
My research journey…
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Vast majority of empirical leadership research has been undertaken by US and British scholars
(Mendenhall, 2008)
Leadership theory has for a long time
been trapped in a western mindset..
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62,709 Leadership
books on Amazon.com
(27 September, 2010)
„Most leadership theories are domestic theories masquerading as universal theories‟
(Adler, 1997)
Global leadership
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Global leadership
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Obsession with
leadership attributes,
traits and competencies
Joyce Osland (2008)
found 56 so-called
„global‟ leadership
competencies distilled to
six core categories
• Harvard case studies in Korean and Indian business schools
• But western leadership is currently failing to address the critical social environmental and economic problems facing the world
Western management education is driving out eastern
and indigenous wisdoms from many societies
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Contrasting „worldly‟ with global
leadership wisdom
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To uncover from close-up important leadership wisdoms in oral or ancient cultures hitherto overlooked and hidden by more dominant western voices
To rediscover how these ancient, indigenous and eastern leadership wisdoms can help the world to come through the crises it faces – both locally and globally
Aim of Research Programme
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To engage at close
proximity in the many
different worlds within
worlds that make up
our globe and enrich
our experience – and
act. (Mintzberg, 2004;
Gosling and Mintzberg,
2003).
Towards worldly leadership wisdom
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Seeks to understand:
•„Particular responses to specific conditions‟
•„A plurality of worldviews‟
•„The patchwork that makes up the world‟
(Gosling and Mintzberg, 2003)
Worldly leadership research
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•Values and seeks
heterogeneity
•Predominantly
„emic‟ research
approaches
Worldly leadership research
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Worldly leadership research…
• Interviews with NGO and community
leaders – Africa and Asia
• Interviews with 17 Indian business leaders
– India and UK
• Interviews with 26 Russian leaders
• Leadership workshops with Chinese,
Middle Eastern and African leaders
(forthcoming)© The Leadership Trust Foundation
Researching ancient, eastern and
indigenous wisdoms…
Combining ancient literatures with
contemporary anthropological study in
Eastern and indigenous cultures
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Eastern Leadership Wisdoms
Ancient and modern
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"There is enough in the world for everybody's
need, but not enough for anybody's greed"
Gandhian principles
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1. Satyagraha (soul force) Sacrifice of self, leading by example
2. Sarvodaya (upliftment of all). To serve the interests of each and everyone including the care of the earth; of animals, forests, rivers and land.
3. Swaraj (self-government). Self-transformation, self-discipline and self-restraint. And social transformation through small-scale, decentralised and participatory structures.
4. Swadesi (local economy). Local production by all.
Gandhi‟s principles
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Modern Indian leader on social responsibility:
„I have to make enough money to put bread on my family‟s table; I don‟t have to have a Rolls Royce to go around in as long as I'm mobile I'm okay. And then I will do all this, you know, as though I'm the Prime Minister of my country, I'm not going to wait for the politicians to what do what they have to do, I will go within the sphere of my influence I will do it‟.
„I just feel that every little drop that we do, you know, don‟t wait for the Government to do this, or so and so to do this…whatever we can do on our own‟
Modern Gandhian leadership
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„Some of us are lucky to earn a lot of money, but treat it as pure luck. And what you do with the money is… as Ghandi says, business people are trustees for society, you know. Society has allowed you to make money so never give that away to your children, that‟s most damaging. If I was a Prime Minister I would have an inheritance tax of 90%. (Indian leader)
Modern Gandhian leadership
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The Bhagavad Gita
(5000 year old text –
Lord Krishna
and Prince Arjuna)
Humanistic and inclusive leadership:
Duty, acting with purity; and acting in the common good; acting as teacher.
Indian leadership wisdoms
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„Perfection is achieved when
each attends diligently to his duty‟
„A good leader is one who is incapable of hatred towards any human being, who is kind and compassionate, free from selfishness, without pride, calm in pleasure and in pain, and is forgiving‟
Indian leadership wisdoms
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„Lord Krishna says in our Gita „Your job is to work
without any expectations, with all humility, with
sincerity and full concentration on your work. If
you do this you will get your just desserts‟
Indian leader -
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„Give better opportunity to the other person to grow, and take that team along with them as a family.‟( Indian leader)
„So we've got to make everyone understand and sit with them, you know, talk to them, explain things in detail so that, you know, they understand‟. (Indian leader)
Raj-rishi (Leader as guru/teacher)
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„O almighty God, you protect both of us (the teacher and the student) together; you bear both of us together, may both earn the shakti (power of learning) together, may our learning be luminous (impressive); may we never bear ill-will towards each other‟ (The Upanishads)
Leader follower relationship
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Confucian values:
• Benevolence (ren)
• Righteousness (yi)
• Rites (li)
• Intellect (zhi)
• Heart/feelings (xin)
• Courage (rong)
• Faithfulness (chung)
• Altruism (shu)
Junzi (Refined man) should never cease learning on the road to perfection (Sage)
Junzi character = ‘action’
Learning - character training more than vocational
Confucian leadership wisdom
(551-479 BC)
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Confucian leadership wisdom
(551-479 BC)
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• „Man of ethical humanity must also
practice what he has learnt. When
he wishes to establish himself, he
must at the same time establish the
others. When he wishes to be
prominent, he must also help others
to be prominent‟
(Confucius, The Analects)
„Confucius says, learning should go hand in hand with thinking and self-reflections. So a wise entrepreneur must learn and reflect at the same time, which is also the way towards enterprise success.‟
(From Practically Confucian wisdom for Chinese entrepreneurship, Yunxia Zhu, 2009)
Confucian leadership wisdom
(551-479 BC)
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Daoism
Laozi (6th century BC) the father of Daoism, used water many times to explain the ideal form of leadership (Lee et al in Chen and Lee, 2008)
• Water is altruistic because it supports life.
• Water is modest and humble because it always takes the lowest ground
• Water is adaptable and flexible because it can stay in a container of any shape
• Water is transparent and clear
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“A good leader is defined as acting like the nature of water. The reasons are as follows:
Water gets joined together and becomes one.
Water flows from up to down, interconnected together.
Water purifies everything, even if any muddiness.”
(Korean leader from LG, 2008)
Contemporary Korean leader
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• A shared space for
emerging relationships
• A platform for
advancing individual and
collective knowledge
• Knowledge creation
that transcends the self
The Japanese idea of „Ba‟
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African wisdoms
Examples
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“Africans have this thing called UBUNTU.
It is about the essence of being human, it is part of the gift that Africa will give the world.
It embraces hospitality, caring about others, being able to go the extra mile for the sake of others. We believe that a person is a person through another person, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours”.
— Desmond TutuArchbishop Emeritus of Cape Town
•
Ubuntu
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„Leadership for sustainability can only be achieved when there is shared leadership. So we identify the champions, and so each champion will have sub-champions. So at every turn it‟s almost like you have a cascade. You have a cascade there in the system‟.
(Martin Dery, ProNet, NGO leader, Ghana)
Shared Leadership
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• Pride
• Responsibility
• Respect
• Community
• Contribution
• Courage
• Honesty
• Wisdom
Masai leadership
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„How long will you be
chief warrior?‟
„For as long a time
as it takes me to find a
better one than me‟
Masai Leadership
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Responsibility
„In your arms is the future food for our community. Tend it well and we live, let it die and we die with it‟
Wisdom
„A young pair of eyes
will spot a lion before an
old pair of eyes‟
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Responsibility, humanity, honesty, benevolence, custody of community and society, trusteeship, teaching of knowledge and wisdom, contribution, honesty, and action
Worldly Leadership
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„Wisdom =
knowledge + ethics
+ action‟(Rowley, 2006)
Towards worldly leadership wisdom
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• deep immersion and encounters at close
proximity in new and „alien‟ settings,
• encounters with leaders who themselves
exemplify and embody these qualities.
• a shared reflective sense-making process,
ideally within a culturally rich and diverse group,
• collaborative translation of the ideas into action
Developing „worldly leadership‟
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A field visit to
one of
ITC‟s „e-choupals‟
Deep immersion in worlds within worlds
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“Leadership is a continuous process that involves living by example, displaying the highest levels of honesty, humble presentation without imposing oneself or intimidating others and being constantly present‟.
(Japanese leader)
Worldly leadership
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Ethical leadership
• Usually framed with western capitalist
norms e.g. trust, transparency.
• Often framed around knowledge and
skills (Hind et al, 2009)
•Individualistic orientation (Knights and
O‟Leary, 2006)
From ethical to responsible leadership
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Responsible leadership (Maak and Pless):
„a socio-relational and ethical phenomenon which occurs in social processes of interaction‟
– Relational intelligence
– Leaders as agents of world benefit‟
– Leader as weaver
– Leaders a world citizens
From ethical to responsible leadership
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• An ethic of conviction focusing on the type of society we wish to build together
• An ethic of responsibility that challenges the instrumental logic of today‟s society.
•Not „profit for what?‟ - but „progress for what?‟ e.g. alleviation of poverty, inequities, health and climate change problems
Toward de Woot‟s solution…
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• Worldly leadership goes beyond knowledge, to include ethics and action
• Emphasises shared leadership at community and societal levels
• Gives voice to the disenfranchised or marginalised
• Focuses on global prosperity and sustainability
Conclusions
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Questions
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