Do leaders act differently than others?
What sets effective leaders apart?
Endless Enigma
One of my favourite artists is the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. And last week I promised to use his art in an article, so here we are.
For me, Dalí’s paintings represent a world that we can imagine and project on reality, whilst -at the same time - making a mockery of that reality. I like the inherently paradoxical nature of that idea, since it seems to resonate with my own experience of the world I live in. Perhaps, things are not always what they seem. Or, by looking at these things differently, we can attribute different meaning to them. Indeed, for me, his art represents the paradoxical nature of the world we live in. In earlier postings I suggest we can try to express that paradox in the Wicked Questions that have the potential greatly enhance the quality of the conversations in our organisations.
Dalí, of course, deliberately manipulated conventional images to encourage this discovery (art experts call this the paranoiac critical technique). In his own words:
These double images are the representation of an object that, without the slightest figurative or anatomical modification, is at the same time the representation of another absolutely different subject - Salvador Dalí - see here.
What makes Dalí’s painting Endless Enigma, that I included above, so mesmerising is that it includes 6 different representations, superbly blending into one riddle. The painting was first shown in 1939 at the Julien Levy Gallery on East 57th Street in New York. There, Dalí himself showed six different stages of his work to help people see how the painting was conceived.
The picture below shows the disentanglement of this great painting. I think it is amazing in its complexity, both from a design point of view and the eventual execution.
So, how does leadership come into the equation?
Impressed as we should be with the intention and execution of Dalí’s work here, I am using it as a hook to talk about leadership.
I politely ask you to imagine that we are all visiting the Museo Reina Sofia (where we can find Endless Enigma today) together. Our collective task is to find the various images that Dalí has included in this enigmatic painting (pardon the pun). Note that the disentanglement outlined in the image above is not present in the museum, so trying to make sense of it, is a lot more difficult and depends on our collective sense making! We need to study the picture without it, together. At some stage, one of us, let’s call her Laia, will say “I see a greyhound! Look, there!”. She will then draw attention to the outline, describing why it is a greyhound (in her eyes) and suddenly we can all see it! This is the first leadership attribute I would like to call out.
LEADERSHIP ATTRIBUTE 1 - Leaders are able to see patterns that are important to all, and are able to draw attention to those patterns in ways that resonate with the day-to-day experience of others.
Without Laia’s observation and ability to call it out to us, we may never have been able to see the image (or know it could be a greyhound). Laia, at this moment in time, chose to take up a leadership position and with that moved our collective task (identifying the various images in Endless Enigma) significantly forward.
Whilst studying the picture, others might identify other elements. But, this process could be less straight-forward than Laia’s intervention.
For instance, our companion Rudy might say “That here looks a bit like a boat” and point it out on the painting. His friend Louis then says “it’s like a sail is draped over it, look!”, after which Laia’s friend Núria says “and this could well be a woman, sitting with her back to us, mending that sail!”
Collectively, we now have identified another image in the painting.
LEADERSHIP ATTRIBUTE 2 - The leadership role can move through a group, moving from one person to the other in conversation, to identify complex patterns, building on each other’s observations.
There comes a point in which we collectively have managed to decipher the painting to our best, collective knowledge and sense making.
Perhaps there was someone in our group, let’s call him Salvador, who knew exactly where and what the images were in the painting (perhaps because he was the original creator, or perhaps because he had seen the disentanglement above?). But, Salvador decided to not stop the interesting conversation happening in the rest of our group, because he believed that in order to make the group as effective as possible as an art-riddle-solving team, standing back and letting the conversation unfold, was the best possible course of action. And, who knows, he might have learned something himself from it!
LEADERSHIP ATTRIBUTE 3 - Leaders should consider not to close down conversations, but letting them unfold, in order for the team to develop its own effective ways of communicating and sense making,
and…
LEADERSHIP ATTRIBUTE 4 - … deciding to do nothing can in itself be a powerful leadership intervention.
Is there a cultural impact?
Having pulled out some key leadership attributes and expressions thereof, it is helpful to consider that how and when we draw attention to emerging patterns (that are important enough for us as a team), can very much depend on our own culture and background.
And, as we have discussed before, cultures are inherently linguistic (and vice versa)
Let’s now pretend that we are at Geneva airport and we cannot find our umbrella. And it rains outside! We are sure we took the umbrella from the aeroplane when we landed 30 minutes ago.
If we are English, we would then look out for a sign for the Lost Property desk. After all, we seem to have lost our cherished brolly!
If, on the other hand, we would be French, German or Italian, we would be looking for Objets Trouvés, the Fundbureau or Oggetti Trovati. And in my native Netherlands we would look for Gevonden Voorwerpen. In other words items that have been found. After all, we might have lost our parapluie, Regenschirm or ombrello, but going to a desk is no use to us if it has not been found (yet).
This may sound like a contrived example (and, admittedly, it is a bit), but there is a key message in here. If no one in our group understands these (possibly subtle) cultural and/or linguistic differences, it could well be that we would never be able to get our item back (assuming that, indeed, it would have been handed in to the correct desk in the first place).
Without the helpful sign above in four languages (my native Dutch sadly not there) that I saw on Geneva airport, it is very well possible that our English person would have struggled to understand that their Lost Property might have ended up in the Fundbureau counter.
LEADERSHIP ATTRIBUTE 5 - Leaders need to understand how each of the team members see things and phrase things in order for them to be able to act.
Concluding…
This week, led by Salvador Dalí and a rainy Geneva Airport, we have looked at various attributes of what could be leadership.
It is clear that if we look at organisations as conversations, as suggested in previous postings, initially introducing it here and later here (when talking about AI), the suggested Leadership Attributes we discussed here are important.
Which leads me to the last leadership related statement.
Leadership attributes are essential in groups to create the converging reality in any organisational conversation that can lead to effective action towards our overall, collective goals.
Without active leadership, what process would there be to ensure that any conversation leads to effective action?
What are your ideas about leadership?
How much time is being spent in your organisation in understanding and developing leadership attributes?
What examples of good (and less good) leadership practices have you seen?