Part III: Independent Interdependence without Codependency

As a leader you are totally and dynamically reliant upon God and your fellow human beings for your well-being and continued existence. Nonetheless, you remain irreducibly distinctive, independent, and irreplaceable with even greater individual capacity, influence, and significance, finding the center of your existence and significance in God and others.

Should you really be surprised that the quality of products and services decline when people are undervalued and treated like machines?

Contrary to popular belief, effective leaders are not hard-nosed, cigar-chomping, commandeering, uncaring, individualistic, take-charge, lone wolves. Effective leaders are interdependent.

This is a difficult concept for us rugged, individualistic Americans to accept, much less to put into practice. Leaders, true leaders, learned a long time ago that they can not be successful doing it their way. Even so, there is more to effective leadership than simply learning how to get along with others by attending team-building seminars, implementing participative management teams, or keeping up with the latest Japanese leadership fad.

Leaders truly understand that there is a complete, mutual, and dynamic reciprocity between all members of the team. It is this reciprocity that simultaneously increases organizational effectiveness while offering individuality and synergistic togetherness. Leadership is a perichoretic dance – a circle of shared life. It’s not all about me. It is independent interdependence without codependency.

The antiquated, individualized, independent, lone-wolf approach to leadership of the 1960s is reflected in too many of the current top-selling books and articles on leadership.

Far too many leadership books and articles being written today completely miss the vital interdependent dimension to effective leadership. There is so much more to leadership than identifying individual traits and characteristics, learning how one can exercise power, or building participative management teams. These kinds of approaches, though popular, fall far short because they do not tap into the ultimate depth and reality of interdependence. You become a truly effective leader when you become interdependent upon the people you are leading. Effective leaders are interdependent.

Pathetic Views of Leadership

Too many notions about leadership are based upon pathetically undignified (i.e. mechanistic) views of personhood. There is little to no willingness to recognize that people have rational minds and that they observe, think, value, and make judgments. Rather, the human mind is viewed as nothing more than a machine. Therefore, these machines are to be managed in much the same way one would manage any machine. “Machines” can be programmed to work in particular ways –in accordance with prescribed, engineered specifications.

Thankfully, these mechanistic approaches to leadership have been shown to be outdated and ineffective. Nevertheless, the scientific approach to management continues to be the driving force behind many leadership strategies promoted by today’s leadership gurus. Such depersonalizing approaches irresponsibly lead to the development of such things as policy manuals that attempt to force employees to perform tasks in narrowly prescribed, repeatable, machine-like fashion – all in the name of efficiency. As one employee told me, “We are not paid to think around here.”

Leadership by policymaking is the lowest form of human behavior.

Don’t misunderstand me, policies can be important. But, in my judgment, leadership by policy-making is dehumanizing and dangerous. Leading by policy-making is driven by the behavioristic philosophies discussed earlier on this blog. Such philosophies tend toward the devaluing of the individual and the undervaluing of the dignity and worth of each person as an image bearer of God. There is little to no regard for how people think, perceive, value, or process the world around them. Though this approach to leadership is antiquated and unproductive, the pressures of volatile economic, political, and global competition perpetuate its use by the illusion of repeatable production, consistent output, or increased productivity. We are beginning to witness the negative consequences of its use. Even as production has increased, the quality of goods and services has suffered.

So I ask you again – should you really be surprised that the quality of products and services decline when people are undervalued and treated like machines? Leading by policy making is the lowest form of human behavior.

You are interdependent.

You are a leader.

This is the truth about leadership.

This is the Genesis Principle of Leadership.

Now go out and lead!