Compliance vs Commitment LO8817

jack hirschfeld (jack@his.com)
Thu, 1 Aug 1996 23:14:30 -0400

Replying to LO8761 --

As usual, Michael McMaster makes an important contribution to the
conversation by providing a mind-expanding way of (re)viewing the
familiar. The concept of leader as attractor in a potentially generative
process places leadership exactly where it belongs: as one of a number of
possible generative forces in any primal soup. The characteristics that
we associate with "good" or "strong" leadership are so easily
recognizable, that they are LIKELY to evoke energy and activity from
people in the neighborhood. For this reason, I think, even people who
should know better often posit "leadership" as a pre-condition for the
"success" of an enterprise... that is, the emergence of a productive
organization... when "all" it takes (so easily said!) is ANY attractor
which generates a positive loop.

The general pattern, so often repeated, of responding to the cues of
leadership creates a field of human practice so strong that many can not
see beyond it. Thanks, Michael, for holding the searchlight steady on
alternate pathways.

Michael wrote:

>Consider the idea that once a group, team or project has started, it has a
>force of its own that is either strong enough to continue or will die.
>The thing that we call individual commitment will occur naturally if
>certain conditions are present and will not if they are not. What are
>these conditions? What needs to occur for commitment to occur in a team?
>
>Complexity theory suggests that the energy and information available will
>flow towards and around "attractors". These attractors will create
>positive returns. That is, they will continue and even build on their own
>if they are sufficiently strong and function within the system.
>
>The attractors may be values, principles, goals, theories, emotion - many
>things. We can probably only focus on a few of them.
>
>There is another very important attractor that has been neglected because
>it's been made into a matter of personality, psychology and authority.
>That is, someone with a clear intention, a great deal of energy, etc. is
>an attractor.
>
>In this sense a project can certainly use a leader to continue
>successfully. Once the leader (or team) has been effective at replacing
>the leader in individual form with strong attractors which are independent
>of the leader, then the team can be expected to continue on its own.
>
>It's not a matter of "commitment". It's much less personal and individual
>than that - given this model.
>
>Try viewing leadership as "being an attractor" and see what it gives you.

--

Jack Hirschfeld Where have all the young men gone? jack@his.com Gone for soldiers, every one! When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

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