Leadership in a VUCA World E-Book

Michael Fuchs

• Herausgeber: Haufe Lexware
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Haufe Fachbuch
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 585

Beschreibung

VUCA is not just another acronym. Originally coined by the American military to describe a situation fraught with a variety of challenges, it now has a permanent place in the realms of strategic leadership. Those who have made it into an enterprise management role are finding that their leadership skills are truly being tried and tested on account of the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment we are in. Agility is now the name of the game. Developing one's leadership skills to match this requirement, and to not only surmount the challenges posed by the VUCA world but do so in a mature and authentic way, is what this book is all about. It gently submerges the reader into an impressive tank of knowledge that the authors, experts in the field of personal development, have amassed during their careers. Psychology, mythology and examples of real-life enterprises are accompanied by the excellent analogy of one of our best-known heroes, Luke Skywalker of the Star Wars films, to illustrate that there is nothing to fear, that we all have the potential to act courageously. At regular intervals throughout the book, the reader is presented with thought-provoking questions and statements, the answers to which will help them eventually resurface with a clear picture of how to use their skills and talents to motivate themselves and others to proceed wisely in the corporate landscape. Contents: - An expert guide from three vastly experienced and accomplished executive coaches - Learn effectively at your own pace, any time and anywhere - Convincing background knowledge and examples

Leseprobe

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Hinweis zum UrheberrechtImpressumPrologue1   Part 1 Management – Preparation for the Way of the Jedi1.1   Business as usual1.1.1   Underlying assumptions of a leader1.1.2   The influence of myths1.1.3   Leadership development as a hero’s journey1.2   A new hope1.2.1   The way of the Jedi - a process of individuation1.2.2   The I and the Self1.3   Call from unknown1.3.1   Obstacles on the way to the Self1.3.2   Four archetypal patterns of preparation1.3.2.1   The Optimist1.3.2.2   The Companion1.3.2.3   The Warrior1.3.2.4   The Caregiver1.4   Meeting the mentor1.4.1   Perceiving instead of judging1.4.2   The mentor as a process guide1.4.3   The foundations of mentoring1.5   Leadership tools of a Jedi1.6   Resistance is futile1.6.1   Recognising projection mechanisms1.6.2   The inner critic1.7   Let go!2   Part 2 Transformation – Becoming a Jedi2.1   Consolidation and discovery2.1.1   Meeting the true Self2.1.2   Four archetypal foundational structures of the journey2.1.2.1   The Seeker2.1.2.2   The Decision Maker2.1.2.3   The Lover2.1.2.4   The Creator2.2   The Force is strong in this one!2.2.1   Assessment centre for heroes2.2.2   The dragons of management2.2.3   Maximal efficiency2.3   Where there is light, there is also shadow2.3.1   Vulnerability as a strength2.3.2   Protection in the shadows2.3.3   Fear and fearlessness2.4   Do. Or do not. There is no try!2.5   The darkest moment2.5.1   Overcoming self-doubt2.5.2   The birth of transpersonal leadership2.6   Renewal of the commitment2.6.1   Unsettled scores2.6.2   Teamwork2.6.3   Transferral into work life2.7   The acid test3   Part 3 Transpersonal Leadership – The Order of the Jedi3.1   Of managers and transpersonal leaders3.2   Living integrity3.2.1   Incompatibility as a success factor3.2.2   The leadership power of transformation3.3   The quaternity principle3.3.1   Four archetypal patterns of transpersonal leadership3.3.1.1   The Ruler3.3.1.2   The Magician3.3.1.3   The Sage3.3.1.4   The Jester3.3.2   The reorganisation of the leadership system3.4   The imperial side of the Force3.4.1   Attention: danger of addiction!3.4.2   Escape from the narcissism trap3.5   In the light of the rebellion3.5.1   The living organisation3.5.2   Leadership in a VUCA world3.5.3   Leading with the Force as an allyEpilogue – The Lord of the Two WorldsAppendixOverview of the Star Wars episodes I-VI:Acknowledgement to the English versionLiterature and further reading

[1]

Hinweis zum Urheberrecht

Haufe-Lexware GmbH & Co. KG, Freiburg

Impressum

Bibliographical Information of the German National Library

The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography. Detailed bibliographical data can be accessed on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

ePub: ISBN 978-3-648-12150-4 Order No. 01605-0100

ePDF: ISBN 978-3-648-12151-1 Order No. 01605-0150

Michael Fuchs/Jochen Messner/Robert Sok

Leadership in a VUCA World

1st edition 2018

© 2018 Haufe-Lexware GmbH & Co. KG, Freiburg, Germany

www.haufe.de

[email protected]

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Copy Editing: Stephanie Shellabear

DTP: Agentur: Satz & Zeichen, Karin Lochmann, Buckenhof

Illustrations and Cover Graphics by Cristian Baßler and Dorothee Dittrich © Baßler/Dittrich/five4success 2018

Cover design: RED GmbH, Krailling

Preprint: kühn & weyh Software GmbH, Satz und Medien, Freiburg

All information/data has been compiled to the best of our knowledge but with no guarantee for its completeness or correctness.

All rights, including but not limited to printing of excerpts, photomechanical reproduction (including microcopy) and analysis using databases, are reserved.

Prologue

„You become mature when you become the authority for your own life.“

Joseph Campbell

It requires constant effort to keep questioning our lives and to continue to develop. Only too happily do we give in to the illusion that our lives are in fixed orbits and that the economic and political situation remains stable and predictable. We simply like the idea that we are in control of our lives and that constant economic growth is only natural. Numerous management theories and business consultants still advertise the idea that our lives, our companies and our societies are predictable and controllable. The leaders of our free market economy are still seen as reliable heralds, conveying an accurate picture of the state of the world. They are hailed as prophets declaring the changes needed to secure our living standards and constant progress.[2]

Therefore, we steer clear of anything messy and unpredictable and spend a considerable amount of our energy on satisfying our need for order, security and predictability. However, in doing so, we often ignore the fact that our world view, our habits and our decision of what we deem reliable information often distort reality. The more closely we examine our experiences, the more we come to realise that we do not control our world. Things only too easily seem to sidestep our efforts of control and appear to very easily spiral into chaos.

What in the 20th century still seemed stable and predictable is now dissolving into contradictions and disruptive changes. In the 1990s, the U.S. Army War College came to the same conclusion and they coined the term VUCA to describe the main characteristics of the new world. VUCA (meaning: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) was at that time intended as a framework for the development of strategic leadership in the armed forces, but the description was so fitting for the global changes that the organisational world adopted the term eagerly. In this VUCA world, the confidence in political, economic and financial institutions is at an all time low and fundamental questions are being raised as to why managers and leaders act, and feel empowered to act, in the ways they do, especially considering the increased responsibility that global corporations and therefore their leaders have in our society.[3]

Whereas the main protective and directive forces in the world used to lie with religion and were later taken over by the state and their governments, now, with the decrease in power of church and state, this power in the tragedy of life is shifting more and more to the big corporations. This increasing responsibility has a real and present influence on this and the next generation of leaders.

According to the study „New Quality of Work“, 100 % of the executives identified the ability to remain agile and not be obsessed by previously planned outcomes to be a key component of future leadership. The current paradigm of management by objectives simply does not meet their wishes and requirements any more. In the face of complex market dynamics, decreasing predictability and unexpected development and creating a future that is almost unrelated to the past, most managers have lost their faith in hierarchical management structures. We should be looking at the probable future more than basing our decisions on the statistical past. Instead of constant growth, profit and efficiency maximisation we see concepts like self-organizing networks, cooperation skills, autonomy, values-based decisions and solidarity moving into the spotlight. More than three quarters of the leaders who were interviewed were convinced that a new approach is needed in leadership practice if companies are to stay competitive and attract and retain talent. A growing number of top leaders realise that the war on talent is only just starting to heat up. Notably the young high potentials who grew up with the internet and mobile communication prefer to work in teams rather than in strict hierarchical systems and happily renounce status and prestige for more joy at work, freedom to operate and opportunities for self-development. For them, fun does not start after work; they want to experience meaning and happiness at work.[4]

Classical concepts and dogmas like „unlimited growth“ and „happiness through material wealth“ are losing their attraction in a world that is defined by radical change and uncertainty. On the other hand, topics like „living and working in a connected and finite world“ and „having time“ are trending higher and higher. The old hierarchical command-and-control model has managed to dispirit and frustrate a whole generation of workers, and leaders in all areas of life are calling for a paradigm shift in the way we organise work.

Companies like Semco, Zappos and Patagonia, and leaders like Chip Conley and Ricardo Semler are gaining popularity. In the face of these developments we can almost talk about a re-humanisation of the work environment, where employers and employees support each other to inject value, meaning and self-determination into their professional activities. The „higher-faster-further“ economic strategic theme in management is being replaced by principles coherent with our inner purpose driving true human collaboration. Yet, despite all the doubts about the established economic system and the desire for a reorientation, we have so far failed to come up with a clear response as to how such a fundamental change can succeed.[5]

The reason for our inability to come up with a solution is the ever-increasing acceleration of development, which paralyses us with its overwhelming complexity and speed. Where the transition from the hunter-gatherer society to an agricultural society took thousands of years, the transition to the industrial society happened within a century. And yet, the industrial revolution was slow compared to the transition to the information society, which occurred so quickly that many did not even register it consciously and it has not yet been fully integrated into society. In turn, the transition from the information society to the wisdom society in which we distinguish between „what we can know“ to „what is useful to know“ is happening at such a speed and in a way so unspectacular that only very few consciously realise it is happening.

Unfortunately, because we are blind to the current transition we are also unable to consciously direct it. The classic path of social development (kindergarten, school, university, career, promotion, family, ...) is dissolving, just as the typical industrial career path (leading individual employees, a team, a division, a business unit, ...). At the same time, growing up nowadays means meeting the expectations of society as quickly and quietly as possible. As a result, there is no space or time to mature as a human being at one’s own pace and rhythm. It is almost impossible to enter the community with one’s integrity intact and clear access to one’s own values, critical thinking and courage, ready to help to actively shape society or, if necessary, even help to renew it.[6]

If the different components of our personality which define us as leaders are not deeply connected and all we can do is habitually react to superficial stimuli, it is impossible for us to bring creative, values-based impulses into the world. Only when the inner components come together in a wholesome way will we become able to shape our environment through logically coherent, understandable and meaningful leadership - within a society whose members want to be more than mere passive recipients.

Leadership development - A change of thinking in Human Resource Management

In leadership seminars managers are taught how to best serve the system and how to optimise the efficiency of it. They are not, however, supported in developing fundamental self-knowledge, which would prepare them comprehensively for their management tasks.[7]

Many HR approaches aim at increasing the fit of the employee to the company by moulding the employee into the right shape. Using psychological tools they try to increase the social and personal competencies to match the needs of the organisation and thereby increase the value of the employee. Leadership is mostly seen as a profession that can be learned, for which there are clear principles, tasks, fixed rules and tools, and which enable ordinary people to become excellent leaders. In doing so, we often ignore the fact that leaders are not embodied machines that just focus on maximising profit and efficiency; they are human beings with a sense of purpose, looking for growth and development within a community and as part of a network of meaning. They have a strong need for self-determination and independent action.

An extreme focus within an organisation on function and performance - resulting in completely abstract cybernetic management models in which organisations are seen as massive, linked conglomerates of human machines - has the effect that managers lose respect for themselves and others and allows the virus of narcissism to grow rampant in boardrooms. In environments like these, many try to dull their loss of meaning and alienation by indulging in food, alcohol and drugs or compulsive and frantic activity. This often-lamented speed and distraction of our modern lifestyle, which is by no means unavoidable, perfectly conceals the emptiness: we stay in motion to maintain the illusion of relevance and development. We are driven by restlessness, because we have forgotten to listen with our heart.[8]

Important

Because of the constant pressure to fulfil expectations, we are subtly or less subtly prevented from exploring our real potential and finding our uniqueness. As long as we are busy fulfilling requirements, or confuse self-actualisation with superficial satisfaction of our needs, self-promotion, or image cultivation, we will probably never discover what we have to offer to the world and we will not be able to share this unique gift with others. Instead of finding out how to meet the challenges of life and how to act accordingly, we worry about whether we are studious, sympathetic, intelligent, moralistic, beautiful or healthy enough.

From Logos to Mythos

Where can we turn? How can we shape our lives in a constructive and responsible way? How do we find clarity, true conviction and a deep sense of identity? How can we manage the balancing act between undeceived pure reason and deep and primal feelings? How do we navigate life themes, like gain and loss, praise and criticism, growth and decay, cooperation and conflict? How can we keep an eye on the bigger picture in our lives and still remain competitive? How do we develop and keep a balanced perspective when leading an organisation? It may sound surprising, but the way to do this is not new. The approach has actually been around since the dawn of mankind and its use has been passed on from generation to generation. Of course, we are talking about archetypal myths. Narratives that carry innate universal meaning based on our common experience. If we listen closely, mythological stories actually express proven guidance and psychosocial instructions for our life’s transitions and crisis situations.[9]

Apart from their symbolic meaning, myths are the foundation of human existence. Mythical fantasies are the mind’s creative means of putting experiences with the unknown, the inexplicable and the unpredictable, into stories and images. Myths allow us to speak about a reality that we cannot directly perceive and intellectually grasp. And, when we are talking about our inner life and our relationships - the pillars of modern leadership - we are talking about something intangible.

Even when such psychological realities are hard to quantify, they are no less real than that which we can measure and easily determine. The fact that we cannot directly perceive this reality does not mean that their results are harmless. The imperceptible is like a car hurtling towards us in the fog: the contours are hard to make out, but it is as real as when it happens in clear daylight (and importantly: because we might not notice the car in the fog, the risk of being hit by it is increased).

Myths are in their essence not illusory or unreal, but they are pointers towards our so-called reality. In ancient times, therefore, myths would have had binding power over all members of the society. Even now, where logos is prevailing in science and technology, mythos has the power to carry us in the search for meaning, in coping with alienation, nihilism, egotism, despair and fear. Sometimes as personal scripts, at other times as patterns of identity or life design.[10]

The modern form of mythical storytelling is through blockbusters and television series. Hollywood has been using the mythological story structure to great effect since its inception. They have realised that these structures deeply resonate with our human experience and this is exactly what makes them so successful.

One illustration of modern-day mythical storytelling is the Star Wars saga, an epic film series created by George Lucas that maps the personal development of Luke Skywalker to a Jedi master, a full-fledged leader. In episodes I to III (which were filmed later), the story details how the development of his father Anakin Skywalker from student to master fails and how he transforms into „Darth Vader“, a narcissistic, bureaucratic underling of the Empire. The following episodes IV to VI show how Anakin Skywalker’s son, Luke, decides to follow his own strength and truth and as a result becomes a charismatic leadership figure. As a consequence, he can evoke strong motivation, values and qualities in those around him, which enables him to develop stable and trustworthy relationships. Because of his new-found inner maturity he is able to use situations as triggers for developmental processes and adapt his behaviour to the new requirements. He sees conflicts as opportunities to develop himself and others and as a result bring their collaboration to a whole new level.[11]

Of course, as the hero of this journey, Luke Skywalker shows his courage throughout this exciting adventure. Luke’s real courage, however, is his willingness to see the truth for what it is and not conceal it from those around him, but to be touched and influenced by whatever is happening. Instead of protecting himself from direct contact with the situation through prefabricated concepts and assessments, he is always in touch with what is actually going on. He is aware of his own potential and at the same time mindful of the truths of others around him. With that, he embodies the leadership ideal of an organisation that is shaped by individuality and active engagement (republic), which permits and supports innovative problem solving. In episode VII we see the start of a very similar development path - albeit in a slightly different, more „feminine“ way - for the main character Rey, another great example of the mythical hero’s journey.

Important

Luke Skywalker and other heroes like him are so inspirational for us because they represent ideal states. They are committed to their cause and therefore we can identify with them. We recognise ourselves in their fears, their victories and their defeats. In difficult times they are our idols; we can pin our hopes on them and they show us how to overcome challenges and adversity.[12]

The way to becoming a hero

We can identify three stages of development on our way to becoming a hero:

The solid preparation, enabling you to move through the outer world; that is, preparing the tools for managing the system.

The initiation, the journey into the unknown, where you meet your potential and learn to creatively use the vital (leadership) force, but also learn to meet your inner challenges and fears; where you learn to evolve, adapt and innovate.

The integration of your new-found qualities, through which you can comprehensively unite perception, thinking and acting and apply them in your organisation and other areas of your life; creating authentic leadership which promotes personal responsibility and human qualities to strengthen individuals, create high performance teams and successful organisations.

Every phase contains specific challenges and conflicts in the inner and outer world, which will help you to gauge your level of development as a leader. At the same time, you will develop the capacity to disentangle yourself from old, non-functioning strategies and develop new and more effective behavioural patterns. With a healthy sense of humour, the ability to laugh about yourself, this allows the dissolution of internal dissonance, feelings of inferiority and behavioural patterns that no longer correspond to your current needs and wishes. These can then be replaced with more effective, powerful and natural patterns. Your creativity, vitality and sense of community returns, which develops into a natural integrity from which you can powerfully lead others.[13]

This is the development from student to teacher, from manager to leader and mentor, from feeling overwhelmed to having confidence and clarity. The way of the Jedi offers you a path to regaining your sense of meaning as a leader, which, in our performance-oriented society, is greatly needed. Through sets of directed questions at all the pivotal points of your development, practical guidance throughout and suggestions to reflect on in your own personal situation as a leader and human being, we will help you to develop new insights and your own personal script1 for your leadership story.

Attention

Whether a leader operates from an insight into his qualities, abilities and limits, or from an illusory image based on expectations and pretence, has a massive impact on his effectiveness as a leader. He needs to understand that the source of destructive power in people, relationships and organisations is not negative thinking or actions but it is actually the denial of them. It is useless to tell employees that they should show more initiative, or that they seem arrogant or destructive, when the leader does not recognise these aspects in himself and in his own behaviour. If this is the case, he only has two options left: deny and fight the tendencies in himself and punish it extra hard in others, or silently condone them and work through ‚accountability contracts’: „I won’t complain about it with you, if you ignore it in me“ - both are equally useless and damaging to the organisation.[14]

For a leader, it is therefore imperative to understand one’s own inclinations and personality traits and to have conceptual tools to recognise and manage one’s own tendencies and impulses and the habits of others. People who at one time act from one personality aspect and at other times from another are generally seen as „weak“, whereas those in which the self is in tune with all aspects of one’s personality are seen as „strong“.

„I am not bound to win,

but I am bound to be true.

I am not bound to succeed,

but I am bound to live up

To what light I have“

Abraham Lincoln

It is important to understand that the contradictions, paradoxes and conflicts in your daily life will not disappear through developing in this way, but your way of dealing with them will change. The basic concept is not about creating some warm fuzzy harmony, but about using the dynamics that appear from the tension and riding on the wave of this potential. Using the example of yin and yang, it is not about melting the opposites into an even grey, but about understanding and utilising both the light and the dark. Logic versus intuition, stability versus change, control versus autonomy; none of these dualities will make you feel insecure, overwhelmed or conflicted any more.

Image 1: Two ways of dealing with duality

To put it another way: this book is not a run-of-the-mill instruction manual. It does not offer „fail-proof recipes“ or clever psychological diagnoses or interventions. This is not a book for those leaders who want to stay emotionally disengaged or who, for fear of understanding themselves, would rather stay in their narcissistic ivory tower. This book could, however, be your inspiration or travel guide to a higher level of inner consistency and inner maturity, beyond fixed role descriptions and environmental conditioning.[15]

Much that is presented may seem obvious because it is common sense. Other ideas may take you beyond the obvious, especially when you thoroughly investigate them and integrate the understanding into your daily (leadership) experience. It opens up an avenue to your own unique leadership qualities and skills and shows you how you can initiate autonomous, honest and joyful activities and lead inclusively, instead of behaving according to the expectations of others. You will learn to become familiar with and use the dynamic energies of interpersonal and organisational relationships and start to recognise them as part of your inner richness.

Instead of wasting your energy on interpersonal conflict or on the suppression of emotions like anger, frustration, disappointment or fear, it will be available for creative purposes. Where previously single-sided actions led to undesirable effects, now you will learn to bring the polarities into balance and, as a leader, act with foresight and insight. This enables a rekindling of the meaning in your leadership practice through positive and systemic action and smooths the way to an evolutionary organisation2[16].

Before we start the journey, we would like to briefly address the issue of gender. You will have discovered that in the text we have chosen to use the generic „he“, which is meant to reflect both sexes, instead of making the texts more cumbersome and less readable with explicit statements like „he/she“ or „him/her“. This should by no means reflect that this book is less applicable to women than it is to men. In actual fact, as you will see, we think that it is extremely important for an individual, as well as for institutions, to combine the feminine and the masculine principles into an integrated whole.

The feminine principle plays a very important role in the developmental journey of every man, just as the masculine principle does in the development of every woman. And as we have seen in many recent examples of our economic system, the typical patriarchal, male-dominated, upper echelon of our institutions around the world can surely do with an injection of female qualities. This is one reason why we think it is unfortunate to see that many women still embrace a dominantly male style of leadership and often forgo many of their unique feminine qualities on their way to the top of the ladder. We are therefore excited that Disney has decided on a female hero in the continuation of the Star Wars saga, in which we hope to see Rey develop along a typical female hero’s journey.[17]

We also understand that the medium of language, and in particular the linear form of narrative used in texts like this, limits the expression of the much more subtle female aspects. We believe that this can only truly be transferred in direct contact and relationships. Here the focus is less on the content of the written words and more about the space that the relationship creates which is merely underpinned by language. It can be likened to the Japanese concept of ishin-denshin, which is a form of interpersonal communication through unspoken mutual understanding and literally translates as „what the mind thinks, the heart transmits.“3 Therefore, rest assured that we will address the female aspects in much more detail in our courses.

Now that we have clarified this, we are almost ready to start our journey. Of course, we realise that there are many ways to address the concept of leadership. We have chosen to expound the psychology of current management theory with the mythical hero journey of Luke Skywalker. Hopefully this will also connect you with your force. Therefore ...

„May the Force be with you!“

1Together, the answers you collect to the questions, your ideas, inspirations, notes and doodles can become a rich source of reflection and learning: your own Jedi logbook.

2An evolutionary organisation is one in which the hierarchical structure is replaced by self-organisation and self-management. The organisation is more likened to a living entity than to a machine. It has its own creative potential and evolutionary purpose. It functions through distributed leadership with purpose and a sense of meaning as its primary motivators. See Frederic Laloux (2014). Reinventing Organisations. Nelson Parker.[18]

3Ishin-denshin, Wikipedia; retrieved February 2017.

1   Part 1 Management - Preparation for the Way of the Jedi

Leadership in a VUCA world consists of three stages with the ultimate goal being the development into a mature authentic leader. The Jedi way starts with solid management, then building skills to initiate and successfully provide support for innovation and change processes and finally the development of what we call a top manager. A top manager in this sense is a personally mature human being with deep experience, solidly anchored in his own calling and ready to support others in their work. He is always looking for further personal development opportunities, leading the organisation into the future with stability and agility, while always keeping the whole of society and the global economic dependencies in mind.

In this first part you will learn the foundations for the aspiring Jedi. These are tasks that a confident manager needs to master: clear goal setting, careful execution planning, delegation and negotiation. Tools that you need to deliver solid results. Through exercises and questions we will prompt you to explore your basic assumptions, become familiar with the management tools of a Jedi and experience what Jedi masters like Obi-Wan Kenobi or Master Yoda mean by mentoring. The Star Wars saga will function as an analogy to the challenges of modern managers. We will use it as the backdrop for your development path from manager to mentor. To this end we will combine aspects from mythology, psychology and management theory to create an adventure of personal maturation. The structure of the three stages of development, from manager to mentor, comprises the different phases of the hero’s journey that we also see in the Star Wars movies: departure (management) - initiation (reconnect to your potential) - integration (leading and mentoring). We accompany Luke Skywalker on his journey to becoming a Jedi and, through this, describe the different levels of guiding yourself and others in business.[19]

In each of the three parts you will encounter four „archetypes“, powerful universal themes or primal images. You can look at them as psychological apps that will help you solve developmental issues and leadership challenges or enhance your focus and action-capabilities of your leadership software. In this first part we will describe the following four archetypes: the optimist, the companion, the warrior and the caregiver. The combined qualities of these four archetypes are the foundation of solid management practice. However, they will only show their full potential when you also acknowledge the negative manifestations of these archetypes. Otherwise it might come to a „system crash“. And this is where the adventure of the art of leadership of a Jedi starts: do you follow the light or rather the dark side of the Force?[20]

Overview of the development in three phases.

Phase 1Phase 2Phase 3Level of developmentManagerTransformerLeader Leadership modelTransactionalTransrationalTranspersonalSystemMechanicalBiologicalTransformativeLeadership taskGoal settingExploreRenewControlCreateTranscendentGoalsStabilitySensitivityAgilityPerfectionFree the potentialFitControlCreativityRelationshipFocusOutcomeProgressInterdependenceStar WarsAspiring JediJedi PadawanJedi MasterHero’s JourneyPreparationInitiationIntegrationArchetypesOptimistSeekerRulerCompanionDecision MakerMagicianWarriorLoverSageCaregiverCreatorJesterPsychology (C. G. Jung )Stabilizing of SelfIndividuationEgo-Self-ReunionDimension of MeaningOuterInnerUltimateActivityDoBecomingBe

Image 2: Luke Skywalker’s stages of the hero’s journey

1.1   Business as usual

Star Wars is science fiction, adventure, mythology, far away in another time, and is set in another galaxy. Nevertheless, Star Wars also exactly matches the world you live in. Already the famous opening of the movie, the text slowly rolling away from you into space, gives you an idea of the movie’s fundamental conflict4. You immediately get the impression that there is a glimmer of hope in the midst of this conflict of galactic proportions. We have civil war, a rebellion, spaceships, an evil empire, spies, secret plans, an utterly deadly weapon the size of a star, dark agents and a princess who wants to save her people and restore peace. Then two droids emerge, one in humanoid form, the other more cylindrically shaped, both of whom appear substantially more human than many others we will encounter in the story. The Stormtroopers of the Empire are masked and without expression, whereas the Rebels’ faces are visible and express fear and tension. At this point in the story the imagery is largely black and white, the gracious Princess Leia in white and the anti-hero, the dark lord, Darth Vader, in black.[21]

At the outer level, Star Wars here tells the story of general conflicts and the state of our current society: the dominance and rule of the patriarchate which, in a massive all-powerful star ship, attacks the small Rebel ships, which are a symbol of a process-oriented and vibrant social system. On the inner - psychological - level the story is about the over-emphasis of the conscious, reason, outward focus and control over the unconscious5 (the intuitive, introspective and multifaceted aspects of our lives) - in other words, a world where ratio has gained an unhealthy dominance over intuition.

This imbalance can also be found in the well-known economic institutions of our professional world. Many organisations still insist that the causes and solutions of their problems can be found somewhere out there. These organisations subconsciously project their unresolved conflicts and difficulties on their staff, partners or clients. They look for answers to questions like, „how do we become more important and more effective,“ in the outer world. They forget to take the inner dimension, the human dimension, into account.[22]

The leaders of these organisations, both men and women, defend a lopsided collection of beliefs, in the form of lists of prescriptions and prohibitions, to somehow ensure growth and survival of the organisation. Interpersonal relationships are represented by organisational charts, and steady economic growth is seen as a suitable long-term strategy for society. This represents a Newtonian model of linearity, simple cause and effect relationships and reductionist logic, so well known in our technological society. This mental model is based on the idea that only one view is the correct view. It tries to ignore the other side of our reality: complex dynamic relationships and interconnections, endless variations, diversity and synchronicity - the VUCA world.

Important

The drama of what we term the modern times is that our naive rationalism does not take into account the complex reality that we have created.

We think that the world can be understood; that everything can be planned and categorised. Using numbers and statistics we try to control the world. We have forgotten that our world is full of mysteries that we may never understand completely. In the past, all cultures had useful teachings about the divine to which we ceded a part of our power to protect us from overestimating ourselves and our abilities. In this way, self-organizing and self-regulating principles could unfold themselves without our interference. Today our destiny is controlled by representatives of the rational economic model who rely on questionable statistics and probability models. They forget that every measurement is, to a smaller or larger extent, incorrect and that many important aspects of the system cannot be measured at all. The illusory assumption that one can control the world by using statistics leads to excessive risk taking. The result of this overestimation could clearly be felt by all of us a few years ago in the first global financial crisis.[23]

This „we have everything under control“ attitude makes our world even more fragile. We have to open up to another type of reality in which we trust that many physical processes can indeed be predicted to a sufficient level of accuracy, but that not all events of our social systems, which shape our world, are in any way predictable. These black swan events6 are events that escape our ability to predict and have the power to upend our whole society. Fortunately, the acceptance that highly complex systems can never be completely understood and controlled seems to be, more and more, returning to the consciousness of social institutions and commercial organisations.

Still, what do an innocent princess and an embittered war strategist have to do with all of this? For one, we see that the Empire, with its first order solutions for controlling the galaxy or predicting the outcome of a battle, constantly fails. Over and over the unpredictable actions of one brave individual or a small group of friends disrupt the plans of the all-powerful Empire. Of course, the reality of the corporate world is seldom as glossy and simple as depicted in the movies, but this simplified model helps us to understand the fundamental dynamics of complex phenomena and non-equilibrium processes.[24]

Every complex dynamic system fundamentally consists of four levels, layers or energies: on the top, we have the visible features, comparable to the tip of an iceberg. Below the surface we find the hidden features. In organisations, these four levels represent the organisational psyche or the organisational culture:

Image 3: Levels of organisational psyche

At the first level we have the visible features, the observable behaviour and visible cultural artefacts. For example, how people greet and address each other, dress code, or the design and organisation of the workspace.

The second level comprises processes and relationships, from which the quality of the connections between mission statements, strategies and goals can be deduced,

while the even deeper level of developmental processes expresses the values of an organisation.

At the fourth and deepest level, the unconscious level, we find the foundational assumptions of the organisation about the world, the market or the employees.

These third and fourth levels are of fundamental importance for understanding the integrity of the organisation. Without understanding the core processes and the underlying assumptions of your organisation (fourth level), you will not know to what extent the corresponding values and relationship patterns (second level) are viable. In other words: the essence of a culture lies in the fabric of their assumptions - and only when you have properly understood these will you be able to understand the more superficial levels and deal with them appropriately. The members of the Empire, for example, see the construction of a functional Death Star as evidence of the superiority of their organisation. The values behind these artefacts and the way they treat each other are themes like „winning“, „power“ and „security“. The purpose of their core processes is exploitation, and the use of victim mentality. If you further questioned the underlying assumptions of this system however, you would probably be confronted with themes like „the world is a battlefield“ and „individual freedom needs to be destroyed“.[25]

1.1.1   Underlying assumptions of a leader

A crucial role in this process lies with the leaders in the system. Their values and convictions can prompt family, friends or employees to deal with their internal and external problems in certain ways. When a leader inspires his sphere of influence to look at a situation in a particular way, then his assumptions will become the common assumption. When a series of fundamental convictions successfully gets validated, it will, at some point, form the character and identity of the whole group and can become their individual and common defence mechanism towards the outside. This is because we - groups as well as individuals - seek direction, stability and meaning. Once we have found this, we are very quick to reject or block alternative points of view. We deny their validity, project our problems onto them, rationalise our way out of them and use many other interesting defence mechanisms, so that we do not have to change our existing assumptions.[26]

Cultural change, in the sense of confrontation and challenging assumptions, is hard. Sustainable development takes time and is likely to inspire fear and anxiety. As a leader it is good to be aware of this, because the more you are involved in shaping an organisation, the more you will be confronted by the „invisible“ forces, demons and shadow aspects of the organisation. The more familiar you are with your personal assumptions and you have integrated your shadow aspects, the less you will become absorbed by the shadow aspects of the organisation. It starts with you; the rest will follow. In this way you can see the development of your hidden human qualities as a sort of „re-vitalisation“. You are reactivating the hidden holistic image of yourself as a rational and at the same time deeply mysterious being.

This means nothing less than to be aware of yourself as a multifaceted being, complete with that which is uncomfortable, which makes you sick, which demotivates you and which drains your sense of purpose. You can only then perform a task with vigour when it is deeply fulfilling and is personally significant for you. If you do not find purpose in your life and in your profession, when you do not have the optimal conditions to fulfil your potential, then you will only do what is needed and nothing more. And, if you’re a manager working under these conditions, the question can be raised as to how you, as a leader without a sense of purpose, can still motivate your team, or even help to shape the organisational culture.[27]

The development of your sense of meaning and purpose, and your own personal truths are the foundation and stable middle from which you can support others in their quests. When you, as a leader, are determined to develop honest relationships with others, really value their opinion and want to invite more vitality and intensity into your life, then you will have no alternative other than to embark on a journey into the deeper levels of your personality.

Important

Personal development, the way we see it, is one of the most important tasks of our time. Faster and faster, specialisations are becoming obsolete. Increasingly, they are being taken over by algorithms and automation. What remains for us as leaders is the role of the generalist. This increasingly important role implies social competence and the ability to work as part of a team. It means managing complex development and innovation processes; making intuitive decisions in multifaceted situations under time pressure - in other words: complexity management. This is a holistic quality of a highly complex and well-integrated personality.[28]

Self-management, in this light, is therefore less a question of following the right procedures, and more a function of the totality of a well-integrated person.

The different levels of your psyche can be illustrated using the same structural model that was described before.

Image 4: Three-level model of the psyche

Looking at our inner psychological structure, Carl Gustav Jung, the well-known depth psychologist, suggests using the term „consciousness“ for the apparent aspects of our being (the tip of the iceberg), and the term „unconscious“ and „collective unconscious“ for the aspects below the surface. The unconscious contains undifferentiable impressions; it is impossible to tell which elements belong to you and which do not.

The main characteristic of the consciousness is the ability to differentiate between impressions. When we become aware of something bubbling up from our unconscious, we start to, with the help of our thought and imagination processes, give meaning to the complex and possibly contradicting impressions and integrate them into the „person“; they become part of „me“. To be able to survive in the world, the conscious and unconscious create a sort of homeostatic balance. Like a semi-permeable membrane, elements are introduced and expelled. A healthy psyche is defined by a balance between consciously differentiated and the unconsciously undifferentiated energies.[29]

Outer impressions, experiences and events that enter our consciousness from the outer world condense into a collection of dogmas, values or general assumptions about the world; these are then made available for future use, or stored, in the unconscious. The individual elements of our experience therefore are represented in our psyche as complexes and shadows - positive as well as negative: collections of feelings, images, thoughts and imaginations, bound together by the emotional colouring of the moment.

The collective unconscious patterns of experience, on the other hand, are called archetypes7. They are situated in much deeper levels of the psyche. Suppression and denial, projection and complexes, dreams and archetypal energies are the raw materials that need to be recognised and honoured, and subsequently integrated in our lives so that psychological wholeness can be achieved. Jung called this the process of individuation (see section 1.2.1).

1.1.2   The influence of myths

Myths play an important role in this process. The different forms of myths - from Homer’s Odyssey to Grimm’s fairy tales, Disney adventures to the world of superheroes - are much more than just distractions from everyday life. Myths are more than mere invented stories or fantasies; they are the cornerstones of our world of experiences, the grammar of our existence in this world. In the beyond personal images and symbols of these myths we recognise deeply personal and individual themes that fascinate us, frighten us, or simply resonate with our current views and our behavioural patterns.[30]

Unfortunately, by the stories and narratives modern man has chosen to concentrate on, we have created an overly rational and completely outwardly focused perspective of the world. Because of this orientation we have lost the connection to the archetypal myths, to our own detriment.

The great thinker Plato already admitted, at the end of his life, that where thinking fails, myths speak. Ultimately, myths are stories about the bigger picture: where we come from, where we go to and who we, as human beings, really are. Themes like birth and death, heaven and hell, heroes and villains are the very fabric of myth. Mythological stories offer us, through the language of symbols and dualities, a useful direction in our seemingly unmanageable world. In myths we find answers to the question of how we personally negotiate life’s crises so that we can enrich the outer world with our new-found maturity and wisdom.

Another function of myths is to act as a carrier of tradition - to pass the accumulated wisdom of a culture on to the next generation. However, nowadays our lives are changing faster than ever before, and because of this, our myths have become fragmented and lopsided. The myths that we currently live by no longer seem to apply to the whole of society and therefore promote alienation and confusion. The myth of „rags to riches“, for example, describes personal freedom in industrial society and is of great importance, in particular to the middle class of our society. In principle this modern mini-myth says „you are what you have“, and it is only one amongst similar myths of our times, like „absolute tolerance towards others“, or the myths of „zero mistake quality“ and „eternal youth“. Many people not only feel excluded by these myths, but because of their prominence, feel marginalised in their own society.[31]

Important

The overemphasis on the „all-or-nothing“ mentality, which is common to the aforementioned myths, discounts the sense of „becoming whole“, or the search for meaning of the individual with the responsibility to serve and protect the community with the new-found insights and realisations. The more we, as a society, move away from the universal myths, the more important it is to find our own personal mythology, allowing us to again give direction to our organisations and society.

One of the main causes of this unbalanced development at the personal and societal levels is our avoidance of tension. True vitality, however, comes from the recognition and appreciative acceptance of polarities, the acknowledgement of opposing energies. Polarities like logic and intuition, outer and inner, stability and change, control and freedom seem irreconcilable. It seems easier to choose one over the other.

These opposites are in conflict because, in our prevalent myths, they are not equally appreciated and therefore not in a healthy equilibrium. One leadership myth, for example, tells us to see innovation as an important creative process. The natural opposite of this, destruction, is, however, rejected at a personal and organisational level. Decision makers in change processes applaud the development of new stable situations, but they fear destabilisation, friction and destruction - which is, however, just as necessary.[32]

„Tension, a lack of honesty, a sense of unreality come from following the wrong force in your life.“

Joseph Campbell

When we take on a more liberated view we can see tension and conflict as natural indications of change and development, as the other side of the coin. Again and again, unresolved conflicts surface in our life and in our organisations, and keep us from focusing on what is needed for our further development. Therefore, we should see them as our best friends, who remind us who we really are or what the organisation really means.

Log book entry: conflict signals

To start a true developmental journey and let go of the safe „optimisation process“, it is necessary to discover the unknown parts of your life and stop going into „repair mode“ when something is unpleasant. Insecurity and feelings of uneasiness are hurdles that challenge us to leap over them into a state of pure, unlimited flow; a flow of expressing our basic goodness and individual potential. To be able to do this, it is necessary to embrace conflict signals and to learn to perceive them as a call to deepen our development. To start this process, ask yourself these questions:[33]

In what situations do I feel insecure, uncomfortable or inappropriate?

What situations or steps in my life do I avoid?

Which thoughts, assumptions etc. keep me back?

Which, from my point of view unfounded, criticism do I hear again and again?

In which situations do I react confused, ambivalent or displeased?

In which situations do I exhibit physical stress symptoms or exaggerated, unrealistic fears?

Which thought and behavioural patterns are uncommon for me? In which situations do I keep acting differently to how I intended to?

What did I never want to become?

„Which three or four watershed moments in my life have given me a new perspective in life? What changed at those moments and what meaning do they have for me now?“

All these signals help us to gain clarity about our personal blind spots. To get a good sense for the „field of transformation“ you can create a mind map, a word cloud or another type of visualisation. An open attitude based on radical acceptance and curiosity towards our themes and basic assumptions will significantly increase our management performance, as avoiding inner and outer conflicts and tension costs more energy than courageously facing them. The same, of course, goes for your teams and the whole organisation. Therefore, you can use similar questions in your team: which situations or steps in our team development do we avoid? Which, from our point of view unfounded, criticism do we hear again and again, etc.?[34]

It is good to revisit the mind map or word cloud from time to time and ask yourself what, in this field of transformation, still fits, but you still struggle with.

1.1.3   Leadership development as a hero’s journey

If you are now ready to jump into your process of self-discovery, full of conviction and drive - you might even have already jotted down your project plan, full of S.M.A.R.T. goals, which will bring you to management-master level quickly and effectively - then you definitely have the right level of Jedi warrior energy, and ... have already fallen into the trap of another over-simplified myth of our times: the myth that human maturation processes proceed in a structured way by means of reachable goals and targets. Coming into existence, growth and decay, however, are living processes; they have natural phases and their own rhythms - rhythms that go through loops, which experience feedback and are governed by complex interdependencies.

It is not without reason that most cultures use the metaphor of a river to explain life. These are seldom straight; they meander through the landscape, marked by erosion and deposition; sometimes rising out of their banks or plunging down a hill at white-water speeds. In the same way, birth, puberty, mid-life transition and death have their own time, speed, depth and dynamics. Every forced intervention comes with more or less obvious risks, whose results might later neatly fit into the business model of some spiritual community or at least provide something to discuss with a psychotherapist or coach.[35]

In archaic cultures you were much more closely aligned with your community and therefore you could not that easily get lost on your personal development path. You were bound in the common rituals that punctuated key phases and transitions; personal as well as those of the community. Because the way of life was so deeply interwoven, these communities reached transition times together, or they were led by a medicine man or woman, who had a good sense of what was in the air. Whereas in tightly community-driven cultures the subconscious was reflected in the group, the more individual people became, the more it shifted to the personal sphere of experience. As soon as we started to couple rituals to an individual’s age, we lost the feeling for the rhythms of life; we changed from time quality to time quantity. In many ways, we are in need of a medicine man or a mentor to help us find our way through the meandering complexities of our lives. In Star Wars, the role of the „medicine man“ or „mentor“ is portrayed by characters like Maz Kanata, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. They make sure to avoid extremes and do not try to control situations. They trust the process of transformation. For them, there is no need to force a particular development, as they have understood that development will take place in its own time, in its own way, thereby teaching us to trust the process.[36]

For your maturation process as a leader, the goal is to constantly align the way that you present yourself and how you act in the world with yourself and your environment. Most personal development interventions, like the standard leadership development programmes, do not support, let alone teach, the employee to put emotionally charged initiatives into place which have the power to affect a whole community. Instead of strengthening the core of our being, reinforcing and building our network of bonds, internally as well as externally, the focus seems to be on superficial development efforts, short-range goals and means-and-ends thinking. The result is that you will not act from the centre of your being, but from prescribed or recommended behavioural patterns; you design a goal and you move towards it without looking left or right.

In situation A, with an employee of type X, you do B, so that he does C. If you want to be like executive Y, then you follow certain fixed steps to develop certain skills and experience; you use the available resources, tools and procedures in prescribed ways and you expect that once you have reached your goal, you have somehow „grown in value“. With an approach like this, you’re even likely to have initial successes. Ultimately, however, this development strategy solidifies into a tight, confining cocoon or straitjacket.

While Anakin Skywalker tries exactly this during his Jedi training (and eventually crashes because of it), Luke recognises, with the help of his mentor, that human activity takes place in irreversible time. This means that you do not get to traverse the development steps forwards and backwards as needed. All assumptions about fixed developmental stages and goals are purely hypothetical. A clear definition of outcomes and results is not possible in personal development, even if HR departments and personal development trainers still like to sell us exactly that image.[37]

Archetypes as Inner Systems of Order

Even though the unfolding of our personality does not go linearly, it is by no means chaotic. Deep down inside we find a reliable power, a sort of ordering principle, which knows about the next step in our development and intuits how to express it. C. G. Jung named these in-built patterns of our psyche, which have a structuring effect on our psychological development, „archetypes“. The word comes from arche, which means source, or principle, and typus, which means image or gestalt. Through these archetypes, we all, according to Jung, have access to the totality of experiences of human history.

Common experiences, like the experience „mother“, has, in the course of history, condensed into a basic pattern of experience, which is stored in the collective unconscious and structures our experience.

In Star Wars we meet many of these archetypes. For example, we meet Luke Skywalker as „the hero“, Yoda as „the wise one“ or „the sage“. Chewbacca is the „the wild man“, Leia „the lover“, and Han Solo as „the explorer“. We also meet the shadow aspects of some archetypes. Darth Vader, as „the tyrant“, for example, embodies the shadow aspect of „the ruler“, although he, like all characters, changes and develops during the story.[38]

Important

Archetypes describe an inner map of the territory of human development. They pervade us, and their inner patterns are waiting for us to be discovered at the right time; ready to be realised and integrated into our personality.

Archetypes are carriers of very strong and, at times, overwhelming energies that, depending on our stage of development and level of awareness, can be hard to resist. The energy of the „warrior“ archetype, for example, is activated when we step into an ice-cold shower in the morning, and when we lock all the doors before we go to sleep. The same warrior energy can, however, overwhelm us when a burglar enters our house at night through one of these locked doors. The power that these psychological primordial patterns release in us cannot be underestimated, even though, for most of us, they are very difficult to access consciously. An archetype is an integrative concept that connects body, psyche, instincts and symbols with each other. Therefore, we can see the effect of these archetypes in our behaviour and our physical-psychological symptoms. Conscious contact with their contents is, however, only possible through symbols and imagery, like in dreams and myths.

Important

As we have described above, myths can be seen as stories about archetypal events or as metaphors for how archetypes function. Since beginningless time we have been re-staging classical dramas that are based on archetypal themes, and will do so until we are able to free ourselves from their confines through the recognition of their patterns and structures. Even when we think we are masters of our own destiny, we often play roles in myths that shape us. Often, we live stories instead of our lives.[39]

Log book entry: archetypes in myths

If you want to start looking at the fundamental archetypes in the myths of your life, ask yourself these questions:

Which values and what stories inspired me as a kid, teen, young adult? Which ones have endured?

Which novels, movies, pieces of music, plays, or biographies have shaped and supported my development? In what way am I living this myth? (If it has been a while since you’ve seen the movie or read the book, we would suggest revisiting it and evaluating in what way you are living this myth.)

If my life were a movie, what would it be called? What genre would it belong to?

What stories about leadership have I heard and been impressed by?

What story defines me when I am sentimental or stressed, compulsive or lose control?

Which traditions or rituals do I uphold in my family, clique, team or organisation?

The answers to these questions, along with what you will learn throughout this book about the different archetypes, will show you which of the archetypes are most active in your life.[40]

Nowadays, our myths are mostly conveyed in movies. They are the modern way of telling the archetypal story. As such, they have the potential to address the deep hidden basic patterns of our development. And they do so in particular when they form a sequence of functions that the American mythologist Joseph Campbell labelled „the hero’s journey“.

The Hero’s Journey

Joseph Campbell recognised, in his comparison of the myths of many religions, that there are underlying universal experiential patterns. These elemental thoughts about the structure of human lives, starting with the power in humans (kundalini, chi), the balance between sun (male, fire) and moon (female, water), up to the maturation process (hero’s journey), can be found in all cultures and have developed independently in all cultures. They transcend generations, cultures and lifestyles and are therefore contained in many popular and influential movies and novels.