Leadership as Meaning-MakingThe Evolution of the Leadership Principle
in the Post-Industrial Era:Dominance to Meaning-Making
Guest Lecturer
American Studies & Interdisciplinary Studies
University of California at Berkeley
Summer 2010
Carlos F. Camargo, PhD
Taken-for-granted Assumptions
Leadership is a quality or ability of a person
Leadership & authority are closely linked: authority confers leadership, while leadership is the exercise of authority
When leadership needs to change, it is leaders who change
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Difficult ideas
shared leadership
everyone is a leader
distributed leadership
leadership teams
self-managing teams
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Questions raised by the junction of new ideas and old assumptions
If everyone is a leader, does this mean that everyone needs to possess special leadership qualities and abilities?
If leadership is shared, what happens to authority and accountability?
If leadership is a function of teams, how do you change leadership?
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Evolving Leadership Principles
Carlos F. Camargo, PhD
dominance influencemeaning-making
Personal Leadership
Relational Leadership5
Dominance
Most basic of all leadership frames
Master of the House
Protection and guidance
“authoritative utterance”
Controls & limits conflict
Leadership is what the leader does
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Some Limits of Dominance
The ability of the leader to provide guidance and protection is limited
The ability of people to believe in the leader’s personal power is limited
The capacity of people to rely on someone else for guidance and protection is limited
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Overcoming the Limits of Dominance
Take into account the limitations of the leader
Connect the leader to the concerns of followers
Include followers in the process of leadership
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Influence
Flowing from leader to follower
Interpersonal negotiation
Human reason, empiricism replaces “authoritative utterance”
“Leader should first serve as a follower to understand the follower’s mind” -- Hegel
Get others to do what they don’t want to do & like it
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Some Limits of Influence
• The ability of any one person to understand multiple meaning-making “worlds”
• The ability of any one person to influence people in different “worlds”
• The ability of people to be influenced by ideas, feelings, and values based on a “world” different from their own
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Overcoming the Limits of Influence
• See meaning as a shared creation of people working together
• De-center leadership from the person to the process of shared meaning-making
• See people as taking part in leadership together
• Learn to make leadership work across “worlds”
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Meaning Making• Brings meaning into being
• Meaning, knowledge, & reality are shared creations
• Leadership is the shared search for and construction of meaning and understanding
• People participate in leadership together
• “Leader” & “follower” represent ways of participating in leadership and do not define it
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Assumptions of the Meaning-Making Principle
• An individual person cannot create meaning alone
• Meaning is a shared, reciprocal achievement
• Meaning is embedded in communities and cultures
• power, authority, influence, & values are outcomes of a meaning-making process
• Therefore, leadership creates leaders, not the other way around.
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Not Assumptions of the Meaning-Making Principle
• That leadership is always distributed
• That power, authority, & responsibility are always distributed
• That everyone is equally capable of participating in leadership
• That strong personal leadership is ruled out
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Shifts in Leadership Development• Dominance principle = Prepare the leader for
the challenges of mastery
• Influence principle = Enhance Self-knowledge and interpersonal skill to enable the person to effectively exercise leadership
• Meaning-making principle = Increase the capacity of the community to make meaning through inter-relationships
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Highly Developed Leadership Participants of the Future . . .
• will understand the “self” as incomplete & interdependent
• will be able to appreciate multiple and conflicting “worlds”
• will be able to link differing perspectives and translate among “worlds”
• will have the capacity to engage in dialogue
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To evolve to the next principle, ideas that need letting go . . .
• That an individual is the source of leadership
• That authority & power are sources of leadership
• That some people have more leadership than others
• That individuals develop “their” leadership
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& ideas that need taking on . . .
• That the work of every person includes participating in leadership in some way
• That authority & power, as community resources, are open to inquiry and contingent on need
• That people are responsible for their job in relation to the whole
• That dialogue is a key tool of leadership
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