LSW#26 📝Nine Leadership Propositions
How philosophy informs your leadership
Your leadership philosophy
When you start a newsletter on Substack, it asks you to select the categories of your publication. For mine, given the focus on leadership, business was the obvious one. But I also chose a second category: philosophy.
At first, business and philosophy might sound like disparate choices, but look closely and they are very much intertwined.
Most business training, and writing, focuses more on psychology and tactics. But philosophy lies further upstream — not just a school of philosophy, but also the one that you are operating from. This goes under the names of — stance, being, or the more commonly used, and misused, term of mindset.
Philosophy tends to be richer terrain with longer-lasting results.
What is philosophy? Philosophy deals with the purely human, with the eternal questions…
Philosophy represents the in-depth mind-set required for leadership. At the level of behavior, we resort to the techniques developed by the behavioral sciences, among which are psychology and sociology. But to understand them, we must return to the regions of depth explored in philosophy. The actions recommended or taken by this process are strategies and practices.
…The fundamental rule of health is that problems are created at the philosophical level of depth, and it is there that they are resolved. Significant change, therefore, can occur only to the degree that the mind returns to its philosophical source.
— from Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness by Peter Koestenbaum
Lately, Stoicism has gotten traction in business settings. But there’s another school, even more relevant, that has not gotten as much attention — the existential philosophers.
In Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness, Peter Koestenbaum uses the basic tenets of existentialism to delve into the challenges and opportunity of leadership. He gives a set of leadership propositions that are consistent with aspects of my own practice.
The leadership propositions
Proposition 1: Be effective. Emphasize results, both through management by objectives and by process.
This is the overall meaning of leadership. If one word can summarize leadership, it is effectiveness—results. Rather than choose one style of management over another, the suggestion here is to use both. Whether you plan exactly how to achieve a precise goal or concern yourself with ongoing improvements may matter little. Each approach has its merits and is radical in its own way.
Proposition 2: Understand that leadership is a mind-set and a pattern of behaviors. It is to have made a habit of a new way of thinking and a new way of acting.
Leadership is a way of thinking and a way of acting, and it is new. It is an attitude, a mind-set. The Leadership Diamond suggests not so much specific leadership practices as a direction to the mind.
It is like health. Medical practice does not tell you what to do with a healthy life; it promotes health, period. But that is enough. So it is with a philosophy of leadership. You will be a leader in all you do. Exactly what you do is less relevant; you will figure that out yourself. But whatever that is, you will do it better.
Proposition 3: Be prepared to wake up and to change your perceptions and concepts radically (transformation, conversion) with respect to the human potential and to cultures (corporate, ethnic, national).
Leadership is a conversion to experience. It is a new alertness. It is a “snap” in the mind to a fresh reality. This is the breakthrough theme. Its models are religion, art, politics, and love. The focus is on breaking through to new worlds, on thinking differently, in dramatic ways.
Proposition 4: Lead by teaching leadership, by empowering (releasing people’s volcanic energy and creativity), by fostering autonomy, providing direction, and lending support. A teacher is an experienced and relentless learner.
Proposition 5: Have faith that leadership can be learned and that it can be taught.
Too many people say that leadership cannot be taught. That may be true, but it is irrelevant. It may be better to agree that leadership cannot be taught but insist that it can be learned! The helpful technique is to know that you lead by empowering people, and empowerment is a form of teaching. In fact, it is the best way to teach.
… There is no room in modern organizations for people not prepared to make the decision to think and act as leaders do. More and more CEOs are saying just that and letting their organizations know that they mean it.
Proposition 6: Know that the leadership mind can hold opposing ideas and contradictory feelings at one and the same time. It can achieve comfort with the tensions of ambiguity, polarity, and uncertainty. The leadership strategies are instruments of an orchestra, playing different melodies to create one symphony.
For many executives, this point is central. This is the principle of polarity. It comes as a relief to know that confusion is in the nature of things. Lifelong efforts to remove frustrating contradictions suddenly cease to be a worry. A weight is lifted. Managing is no longer arduous but actually becomes easy and is even fun.
Proposition 7: Be a leader in all six arenas of life: work, family, self, ecological responsibility, social responsibility, and financial strength.
This seems exceptionally important. Leadership is holistic. It is, in your life, a global need. Many people have an “A-ha!” experience when challenged with this point. Why financial strength? Is that not out of character? Perhaps. But we are dealing here with business, and business is all about money. And for most people in this world, financial strength is their first concern. If that part of their life works, so can everything else. But if that fails, the rest is of little use.
Proposition 8: Inform your products and services with a leadership- teaching component. You do not sell a product or service; you help customers buy leadership in their affairs.
Selling anything means helping customers buy leadership in support of their own values. That is the first principle of business. Teaching leadership—empowering—is not only a principle of management. It goes deeper. It is a principle of marketing. It is the heart of the business. If you teach leadership to your customers, then you will prosper, for you will have created a satisfied customer. If you merely sell something to your customer, they will feel exploited and become hostile.
Proposition 9: Use both reasons or models (living from the “outside in”) and instincts or intuition (living from the “inside out”).
… To create a model of success and then train your mind to follow it is surely effective. It is the yoga of business. The mind’s discipline is the body’s success. This approach is used in the performing arts, in athletic competition, in public speaking, and in salesmanship. But if we are to be truly multicultural, we must acknowledge that there is another way.
“Going with the flow” may be too simplistic, but it means not imposing anything on your mind—not disciplining it …but presuming that it has its own secret inner voice, silenced for too long. Once the chatter ceases and the interference stops, the mind may talk back with its original, pristine needs. These may be quite different from what business has learned to prize. Intuition means that you listen to this inner voice.
There’s a tenth proposition, but I’ve left it out for focus and clarity.
Leader’s library
📚 Book: Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness, A Philosophy for Leaders by Peter Koestenbaum.
Koestenbaum’s book is not for the faint-hearted. It’s not your typical what I call “recipes and prescriptions” book, and instead goes much deeper from an existential perspective.
If you are early in your journey, you might not benefit as much. But if you are further along, and have had your own share of ups and downs, you will get a lot more out of it.
Don’t try to read it cover to cover either. It’s fairly dense and can come across as obtuse in certain sections. But it will reward you over time as you revisit it. Read whatever interests you the most, and keep coming back to it.
🌈 For an easier, more entertaining, introduction to the existentialists, try Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails. It’s not written in the context of leadership, but you’ll pick up the nuances.
That’s a wrap for this week’s edition. Have a great week ahead!