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Posts by Jim Wolford-Ulrich to the International Leadership Association Listserv
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Part I |
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At 09:37 AM 4/8/2005, you wrote:
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| On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 02:23:16 >barbara_barry
at harvard dot edu wrote: > >Dear Harsh: > >I'd like to invite others to contribute to this discussion about meaning, >because it is so critical. I don't see this as an either/or issue, that >meaning cannot be pursued when there are difficult tasks to be >accomplished. They are going to be there anyway, so that they are >the 'what' facing someone involved in a leadership task - something he or >she has to face and work with. What we can chose is the 'how' and I think >this is what Bennis about so lucidly in 'Geeks and Geezers' and other >books - our ability to 'see into' the problem and come up with inventive >approaches which stem from a strong sense of both understanding the issue >and creative solutions. > >When he talks about older individuals who have retained their energy and >vitality, like Rudolf Serkin, who was learning new piano repertory in his >seventies and eighties - and Warren Bennis is also one of the best >examples of this zest - he is identifying, I believe, two important >aspects that you are raising: one is rethinking our concepts and being >open to learning how to reframe them (the difficult tasks part) and the >other is the openness to being creative and involve others in a joint >enterprise, which I would suggest provides meaning. > >I would be interested how others view this. > >Best wishes, >Barbara >_____________________________ >Barbara Barry >Center for Public Leadership >Kennedy School of Government >Harvard University >79 JFK Street >Cambridge, MA 02138 >tel: (617)495-7575 >email: barbara_barry at harvard dot edu
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| >>> harshver at YAHOO dot COM 3/14/2005 11:52
PM >>> Is there any connection between meaning and
purpose? Are these two
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| Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 18:03:25 -0500 Reply-To: ILA Discussion List <ILA-EXCHANGE@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU> Sender: ILA Discussion List <ILA-EXCHANGE@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU> From: "Harter, Nathan W" <Nwharter at puc.iupui dot edu> Subject: [ILA-EXCHANGE] Leadership and the quest for Meaning To: ILA-EXCHANGE@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU From: Jim Wolford-Ulrich <ulrich at duq dot edu> Subject: Re: [ILA-EXCHANGE] Leadership and the quest for Meaning Betty, Barbara, Harsh, and others - I appreciate your dialogue about leadership and meaning, and I also feel there's something very important here. I read and have long remembered Bennis' encapsulation of one important work leaders do, namely that they "manage meaning" (along with managing self, attention, and trust - Bennis & Nanus, 1985). I would like to share some of my thinking and readings along these lines, and I invite further dialogue and suggestions for where else I might go to find scholarship of a similar vein - that is, people who have specifically focused on these ideas as they manifest themselves in the context of leaders and leadership. I went back to Bennis' & Nanus' book "Leaders: The strategies for taking charge" (1985) to see what they actually wrote. In the chapters in which they discuss what leaders do to manage meaning, they write how leaders (and they meant positional leaders) shape the "social architecture" of the organization. They explain in a footnote (p. 111) that by this they mean (i.e., intend to signify) the organizational culture - norms and values that shape behavior. At a macro-organizational level, they describe three "types" (drawing on Weber) of cultures: collegial, personalistic, and formalistic - which they call "styles." They go on to talk about the tools leaders use to shape and change culture. Without really being explicit about this, I think it's fair to say that Bennis & Nanus focused on communication, particularly of the organizational vision and (espoused) values, as the primary means by which effective leaders manage meaning. I think before going much further in our discussion, it would be helpful to clarify how we are using the word "meaning," because what the word connotes (gee, it's hard to define "meaning" without using the word!) to different people can have different shades or nuances (i.e., of "meaning" - see how hard it is to talk around this?). If we accept that language is symbolic, and that words correspond to a reality apart from the symbol (e.g., "water," the word, is not a clear liquid, but is a symbol that signifies a clear liquid), then "meaning" (the word) signifies at least two, and maybe more, realities: (1) the understanding or sense which is intended, signified, or understood; and (2) significance, importance, or worth. Harsh, when you write of a supervisor making work significant and meaningful for a worker, and Barbara, when you write of creativity and involvement as providing meaning, I think you are both using the word "meaning" in sense no. 2 above. (Do I understand you correctly?) I think this is what McDonald (2000) and Page (2000) intend us to understand when they write that work should be meaningful, i.e., non-alienating and fulfilling. When I teach leadership, I certainly hope the result for my students will be a more meaningful and purposeful, less alienated and less alienating, life. In the same way that educators see their task as a noble enterprise, the best of organizational managers (and positional leaders) do too. Betty, I think the difficult situation you described at your college was resolved through the ability of faculty and administration to co-create meaning - used in sense no. 1. It seemed to me you were collectively engaged in what Fairhurst & Sarr (1996) call "vision-based framing." (Do I understand you correctly?) Bennis and Nanus didn't really write much about managing meaning (in sense no. 1), but focused on the need for leaders to be sensitive to culture and the "social architecture" of the organization. They said it is the social architecture that provides meaning (i.e., sense no. 2): "The effective leader needs to articulate new values and norms, offer new visions, and use a variety of tools in order to transform, support, and institutionalize new meanings and directions" (139). When I wrote my dissertation (an enthnography of an organization's culture), I approached it from an anthropological / semiotic perspective. I.e., what did words, metaphors and extended metaphors, actions and interactions, etc. signify? How did the people in the organization make collective sense / meaning (beginning with sense no. 1, and also including sense no. 2) of their reality? I'd like to suggest that effective leaders need to pay attention to the creation, communication, and sharing of both kinds or levels of meaning, and that the two senses of "meaning" are inter-related. I don't think it's hard to see how sense 1 and sense 2 are intertwined. When an organizational vision for the future is communicated, people have to make sense of it (i.e., understand it - sense no. 1) before they can "buy into" it or allow it to provide meaning (sense no. 2) and purpose or direction for their work. And I think it might be more accurate (i.e., it better reflects the complexity of the phenomenon it purports to describe) to refer to a "meaning system." So leaders help followers connect at multiple levels and in multiple dimensions the work they are doing to a larger system of meanings that they already hold, e.g., their assumptions about the nature and value of their work, and/or their worldview. What fascinates me, and what I think has not yet been given much attention in the leadership literature (but please inform me if you feel otherwise), is how meaning in sense no. 1 is created in the first place. Here, I think other ideas that are closely tied to meaning (in sense no. 1) are perception, interpretation and choice. How leaders "read" (interpret, or frame) a situation is, I think, critical and very close to the essence of what makes leadership possible and effective. An example: If someone comes late to a meeting, I have a choice about what meaning (sense no. 1) to assign to that event. For example, first, I have to perceive that they are "late." No doubt cultural factors about the relative importance of time and punctuality will provide a backdrop for my perception of lateness, and I may also have a personal history with the person who is "late" in the context of a particular work group. I have a choice whether to inquire (was traffic bad? did you have difficulty getting child care again?) in order to get more data, and I have a choice whether to infer motive to the latecomer (they just don't care about this project) or to suspend judgment in this case. Depending on the situation, relational context, and work purposes inherent to the situation, I can see how it might be "leaderly" to confront a latecomer in the hopes of bringing positive outcomes for the individual, the work group, myself, and my relationship with the individual. How I choose to confront the person (in private or in public, using "I statements" or assertions, showing concern to preserve their face, etc) would also depend on how I "read" the particular situation in its cultural, organizational, and personal contexts. But I can also envision contexts in which suspending judgment and extending grace to the person in what may be for them an awkward social situation might also be a "leader-like" thing to do. I can imagine that everyone reading the above scenario will have his or her own way of understanding what may be "going on" here in the mind of the person who perceived a co-worker to be late. And that phenomenon only underscores my point - perceptions, inferences, and assigning meaning to events - as subjective as they are - are central to human decision making in the most mundane and commonplace situations. I think too, that early on it's important to note the role that language plays in how we construe meaning. For example, when I mention "positive outcomes," what might those be? What might "negative outcomes" in the above scenario be, and why might it matter to avoid them? And why is such a situation related at all to leadership? Depending on how we define "leadership," some might see no connection at all to the work leaders do, and are wondering why I would post such an example on this listserv. I think we can also see in this brief sketch of an event (and its significance) what Gadamer (1989) has called the "hermeneutic circle," namely that understanding and explanation are each at the heart of the other. E.g., I can't really explain this person's behavior without some pre-conceived notion (understanding) of what constitutes "late" or "lateness." Why would it even occur to me to label this behavior "lateness" unless I already had a model in my head for what "late" behavior looks like? My mental model (understanding) of lateness is built upon my experience of events in relation to each other in time relative to some perceived norm of what "ought" to be. B (the time of arrival to the meeting) "ought" to be proximate to A (the agreed-upon meeting start time). And in order to arrive at the understanding that this person was late, I need to know facts (explanations, or observations) of what was A, when did B occur, what were the group norms around lateness, does the person in fact need child care, was time A coincident with rush hour traffic, etc. I think other ways of stating this "problem" (interpretive issue to be acknowledged and perhaps resolved) could be that we build theories upon data but we need to understand each datum relative to a theory first in order to make sense of it, or the social psychology dictum that "believing is seeing" - while, of course, seeing is also believing. Senge's "ladder of inference," including what he calls the "reflexive loop," also provides a practical model for an individual's practice of managing meaning. The skill of dialogue, along with protocols for "balancing advocacy with inquiry," also help people in groups arrive at deeper levels of shared understanding about "what's going on." Etymologically, "dialogue" connotes "pulling meaning (sense no. 1) through" a conversation. A reason why I feel these ideas are central to the work of leaders and to the process of leadership is that, as I understand various definitions of leadership, a common core is the notion that leadership is about "taking responsibility." (Do others agree?) If we agree with Rost (1993) that leaders and followers intend real change, is not the act of intending to make a change an assumption of responsibility that change is needed? It is saying that we (leaders and followers) will act, will do what it takes to bring about change. And by implication, we will not lie passive, waiting for someone else to take responsibility, nor will we blame someone else for the situation in which we find ourselves. If "taking responsibility" (just what exactly that means would be an interesting discussion in itself) is central to the process of leadership, then my point is that leaders (and followers too) ought to take responsibility for their perceptions of events, and for the choices they make in assigning meaning (sense no. 1) to those events. They ought to take responsibility for the language they use and the meanings they intend by their language. It would also be helpful if leaders took responsibility for the effectiveness of their communication, and made attempts to assure that the meaning perceived (e.g., by "followers") was the meaning intended. What do others think about this perspective? An aside: I put in quotes the word "followers" in the final sentence of the last full paragraph to signify that a meaning is assigned in this context, i.e., these are other people whom a "leader" intends to influence. I want to model leadership in writing this post by taking responsibility for my communication (hence this aside). The words "leader" and "follower" are ascriptions, attributions, labels, that I, an observer, choose to assign (in a particular context) to an object (in this case, persons, although in other contexts the words could refer to non-humans). For example, in a discussion of how the world might be a better place if everyone saw himself or herself as a leader, we might avoid the word "follower" altogether. Personally, I contend that all people perceive and interpret events, and at that level, there's no useful distinction between one "kind of person" (leaders) who perceive and interpret events and another kind of person (followers). Having written this, I have no trouble using the words "leader" and "followers" in some contexts (e.g., in an organization that has a hierarchy), although when doing so, I am sensitive to how those words will be understood. If need be, I may find it helpful to make the distinction between leaders and those who hold positions of authority (a la Heifetz), although in some situations in the same organization, I might refrain from making that distinction. For leadership development practitioners, I think it could be a fruitful exploration of why and how an organizational "leader" might make such a choice in their use of language. Or why and how effective leaders exercise care in making attributions. (Does anyone know of an author who has written about this in a leadership context?)
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Part II |
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| Subject: [ILA-EXCHANGE] Leadership and
the quest for Meaning (part II) To: ILA-EXCHANGE@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU From: Jim Wolford-Ulrich <ulrich at duq dot edu> Subject: Re: [ILA-EXCHANGE] Leadership and the quest for Meaning I want to follow up to my previous post by musing on some possible ways of conceptualizing meaning and meaning systems. In trying to make sense of the term "managing meaning," I have my own experience of framing the meaning (sense no. 1 - as explained in my previous post) of events. I am aware of my own perceptive filters, my own personal history in a given social context, of the fact that I can imagine more than one possible interpretation of an event, and that in fact I choose what meaning(s) (sense no. 1) to assign to an event. Perhaps we can call this the "personal management of meaning" (PMM), similar to the self-awareness competence that Goleman (1995) and others include as a component of emotional intelligence. Bennis and Nanus (1985) touched on this too, when they wrote not on the management of meaning, but on the management and deployment of self and the need for "emotional wisdom" (65-67). And although PMM resembles emotional intelligence, it goes beyond it, because it encompasses a volitive dimension: we don't choose our feelings in the same way we choose what meanings to assign to an event - i.e., how to frame it. But PMM only gets us so far, because leaders deal in complex social contexts and realities. PMM might be the main driver of self-management and self-leadership, although to the extent that we re-define and re-design who we are and how we construe the meaning and significance of our identity, our identity is still dependent upon our social relationships and cultural context. Meaning is socially constructed (Berger & Luckman, 1967) - even so-called "personal meanings.". In preparing my thoughts for this post, I ran across another construct, called the "coordinated management of meaning" (CMM), which seems to expand upon and illustrate what may be at play when leaders and followers co-create and share meaning. I quote Montgomery (2004), who, writing in the context of a family system, talks about a "meaning hierarchy" that transects multiple, interconnected systems: "Social meaning is seen as organized in a hierarchy in which each level is understood within the context of a higher level, and is also the context for understanding the lower levels. The number, nature, and place of levels in the hierarchy are not predestined, and although they are drawn hierarchically, they are all equally important. Two units of meaning are hierarchically related when one unit constitutes the context for understanding the other. Reflexivity, however, is a natural and necessary part of human meaning systems, and the meaning of each unit has a reflexive influence on the others. CMM talks about a stronger "contextual effect," which works from the higher levels to the lower levels in the hierarchical system, and a weaker "implicative effect," which works the other way. In a system (in this context, a family) in which it is unclear which level is the highest in a concrete condition of life, a contradiction may arise. If it concerns less important conditions, such contradictions have only limited implications. If, however, it concerns more important conditions, it can cause a turnover of the meaning hierarchy so that conditions originally at a lower level in the hierarchy become the context for understanding conditions higher up. Thus, a single episode of a father using foul language toward his child might not change the child's understanding of the loving relationship between him and his father, or the father's view of himself as a lovable person (the relationship is the context of their interpretation of the episode, and the episode only has an implicative effect on the relationship as such). If, however, the episode is repeated many times, these episodes may become a context of a changed view of the relationship and can have a more profound effect on the way that the child sees himself and his father (e.g., the child may start blaming himself-a contextual effect). By engaging in communication with the family and focusing on the connections between different meaning-providing levels, the therapist becomes part of a reflexive process through which new meaning can be cocreated through language." (p. 351) I wonder if PMM and CMM could be useful frameworks for understanding how leaders frame meaning not only when they interpret events and situations (to answer questions such as "what is going on here?" and "what needs to change, and why?"), but also (like the therapist in the preceding quote) when they co-create shared meaning with followers (and/or "co-leaders") - an act which IS change, not just an antecedent to subsequent change? Thanks again, Harsh, for putting your finger on what I think is a central issue in the contemporary study of leadership, and to all the others for their contributions to this interesting thread. |
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| References Bennis, W., & Nanus, B. (1985). Leaders: The strategies for taking charge. New York: Harper & Row. Berger, P. L., & Luckman, T. (1967). The social construction of reality : A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Anchor. Cronen, V. E., Pearce, W. B., & Harris, L. M. (1982). The coordinated management of meaning: A theory of communication. In F. E. X. Dance (ed.)., Human communication theory: Comparative Essays, (pp. 61-89). New York: Harper & Row. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam. Montgomery, E. (2004). Tortured families: A coordinated management of meaning analysis. Family Process, (43):3, 349-371. |
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Part III |
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| At 01:27 PM 4/15/2005, you wrote: Harsh - By quoting an example of the coordinated management of meaning (CMM) set in a family system, I did not mean necessarily to imply that the father or the child described was acting as a leader. The case did illustrate how family members might make sense out of their mutual influence, however, and influence is a social phenomenon not unlike leadership. The family example showed that people interpret the meaning of an action in a broader context, that meaning contexts can shift, and that influence is dynamic and reflexive. Having said this, it might also be interesting to explore whether there are family contexts in which parents lead their children and/or children lead their parents, how leadership emerges and is articulated, and what meanings such leadership may have for the family members so involved. Let me try to supply another example in which leadership at multiple levels both entails and results in the coordinated management of meaning. What I'm thinking of is a traditional strategic planning process in a multi-level organization over time - typically an annual cycle. One way this can happen is for (positional) leaders at the top of the organization to announce a strategic direction or intent. Maybe it's something like continued growth through increased sales in new global markets, plus select acquisitions. Leaders in the 'middle' of the organization, say, heading up divisions, territories, or product lines, interpret this message and make sense out of it in their context. They will no doubt infer how much of the resource pie they may get next year compared to last year. I worked in an R&D firm, for example, where announcing plans for global expansion sent cold shivers through the product houses whose technologies were only compatible with domestic technical standards, even though those products were the company's cash cow. The leaders of those product lines had to find new markets for their products, or find ways to spin off or reposition their technical capabilities in support of the growth markets. They knew the strategic direction of the overall company meant for them a hiring freeze, for example. And although they would have to take steps to retain key talent, they would have fewer resources to do it with. As the message filtered farther down the organization, unit managers or department heads similarly re-aligned themselves. At the same time, they were interpreting the message in light of their local context. While the overall direction might be good news for most of the sales organizations in Latin America, it might be bad news in one or two countries because of a poor economy, adverse political or regulatory environment, or lack of infrastructure. So then the unit managers and department heads started creating operational and tactical plans, and they got passed back up the organization for review and coordination. By the time the proposed plans made it back to the top, there were always adjustments and exceptions to be made. If a line manager felt the strategy was the wrong one for their organizational unit, and had the courage to voice this concern all the way to the top, the result could be that the CEO qualified or modified the strategy to accommodate the exception or perhaps even slightly shift the force or direction of the earlier message. I recall one situation in particular following the announcement of a strategic decision that was fraught with ambiguities and conflicting messages that had to be 'sorted out' at multiple levels over time. Top management announced its intent to acquire a small competitor. This competitor's product line was in competition with an in house R&D unit whose revenues were only 5% of the company's total. That internal unit produced the product line on which the company was founded, but which had long since been eclipsed by newer, sexier technologies. So the positive message they understood from the top was, "we still believe in you and will continue to invest in your product lines." The bad news was that the acquisition meant there would be duplication of functions (marketing and product testing, for example), and raised the question whether people's jobs would be protected. And the good-bad news was that the company to be acquired had products that sold better overseas, so the new, combined unit would continue to grow, but domestic sales had flattened. A bottom-middle-top flow of information and planning would repeat in a budget planning cycle, followed by a top-middle-bottom flow in a budget approval cycle. Budgets (plans for resource allocation) had implicit in them assumptions about reality, as well as relative priorities. Yet as proposed and approved budgets are communicated, people construct various meanings (sense no. 1) associated with them: what will we be expected to do, how much will we have to do it with, will it be more or less / easier or harder than last year, etc.? And from such meanings, they may also draw higher order meanings (sense no. 2) of greater significance, for example: does top management value our contribution, do we have a future here, etc? (Note too that at every level, individuals are simultaneously and continually exercising the personal management of meaning, PMM, described in my earlier post.) One could see CMM taking place throughout, as the organization-wide context (coupled with external market realities) provided the frame for interpretation at lower levels, while various and different local meanings were created and had to be managed in light of function-specific or country-specific contexts. As these local meanings (adaptations, plans, micro-strategies) filtered back up, they informed and changed the context of the global strategy, although the impact was less than the top-down impact. Nevertheless, as people at all levels worked together to create shared meanings and purposes and to intend real changes that would be significant to the entire enterprise, leadership (i.e., defined by Rost) was being exercised at multiple levels in multiple contexts. In this example, followers (I prefer to call them leaders at lower levels of the organization) do not take the meanings given to them by leaders at the top - they create their own meanings, which may or may not be in total alignment with the intended meanings and messages of more senior leaders. CMM does not imply that anyone is totally dependent on anyone else for how they construct meaning in a given context, but it does acknowledge that some contexts have a stronger influence on how meanings may be created. And, as people create the meanings in different contexts, those contexts can come to dominate, or influence more heavily, the meanings of other parts of the system. I don't believe any leader can 'give' meaning (i.e., a particular understanding, "meaning" in sense no. 1) or significance ("meaning" in sense no. 2) to anyone. People create meaning for themselves in a given context, although the strength of influence or perceived social dominance of other people may have a disproportionate influence on the meanings created. I'm suggesting CMM may be a 'lens' that helps us understand the dynamics of how meaning is collectively created and shared in a complex social setting. Does this example begin to illustrate how people, acting individually and collaborating together, manage meaning, and in so doing, provide collective leadership for an organization? Jim |
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| References Cronen, V. E., Pearce, W. B., & Harris, L. M. (1982). The coordinated management of meaning: A theory of communication. In F. E. X. Dance (ed.)., Human communication theory: Comparative Essays, (pp. 61-89). New York: Harper & Row. Montgomery, E. (2004, September). Tortured families: A coordinated management of meaning analysis. Family Process, (43)3, 349-371. Rost, J. P. (1993). Leadership for the twenty-first century. New York: Praeger. |
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