The concern that men are up to something nefarious when in a clump, is understandable. Most of the mass destruction in the world by military, religious, governmental, and corporate idiocy was hatched by white guys gathered in some back room. And these decisions are often made by the most emotionally immature and psychologically unconscious of [...]
When parents are confronted with a crisis regarding their children, they often bring their adolescents to psychotherapists to be “fixed”. If the facilitator is experienced, the adults are confronted with the need to do some family of origin work in order to look at the unconscious reality driving the dysfunction. Organizations work the same way, [...]
In this blog post, I’m sharing with you some of the results from my PhD dissertation, entitled, “Senior Leaders' Experiences With Vulnerability: A Multiple Case Study”, to show you the place of vulnerability in leadership and its impact in professional settings. The leaders in this study, whose names have been altered to protect their identity, [...]
Bernard Bass (2008) writes, “Successful leaders share values with those they lead” (p. 197). Unintentionally, the author has identified an aspect of the problem: leaders who model immaturity and limited self-awareness breed immature and unconscious values in their followers. Conversely, many leaders attempt to manipulate their followers by researching their values, and pretending to share [...]
Bernard Bass (2008), in his Handbook of Leadership, suggests that leadership values depend on occupational and societal influences and that the differences in values “range from education to nationality” (p. 197). There is little suggestion in the text, though, that personal and family history is important in the formulation or the transformation of leadership values. [...]
An authentic leader’s style refers to a personal way of being. Landy and Conte describe the authentic leader as “genuine” and as a good “listener” (p. 567). This is congruent with most references (styles, models, and theories) to authentic leaders as being self-aware and other-aware. Bernard Bass (2008) reports, “Herb Kelleher, the highly rated CEO [...]
Nearly every aspect of leadership is affected by culture. Bernard Bass said, “The values, beliefs, norms and ideals embedded in a culture affect leadership behavior, goals, and strategies of organizations.” For example, North Americans emphasize individual ability and effort as a basis for promotions. In India, advancement is attributed to externalities such as marriage, friends, [...]
All of us involved in transformational leadership – coaches, therapists, consultants, conscious leaders – are in the business of creating opportunities for our clients and employees to awaken to another level of growth. Life itself is a pretty good facilitator and will present situations from which we grow naturally. But some situations demand an intentional [...]
Bernard Bass in his Handbook of Leadership defines social power as “the force less power underlying social exchanges in which the dependent person in the exchange relationship has and the person with more power is able to obtain compliance with his or her wishes” (p. 263). This is more of a definition of control than [...]
Conflict is rooted in unconscious projections of leaders, peers, or followers, and conflict resolution is a result of personal ownership (or the retraction) of previously unconscious projections. Bernard Bass (2008), in his Handbook of Leadership, writes, "conflict has a tendency to escalate and to be exacerbated by mirror imaging-attributing opposite qualities to the opposition in [...]