Leadership and Martial Arts – Anything in Common?

The globalization process has an impact on all of us and almost everything we do. It impacts the environment and consequently the way how organizations are structured, teams lead and managed. People work together and embody a variety of personalities, as well as a range of ways of doing things. A modern leader is supposed to grasp all of it to lead forward and to predict behaviors, but never to give or take offence due to misunderstanding the cultural issues.

Can such an old wisdom that is hidden in martial arts philosophy point to the culturally independent way in the leadership? Why, precisely, martial arts? Because martial arts do not differentiate! Being thought all over the globe philosophy remains the same regardless of personal believes, skin color, gender, ability …

Effortless leadership

In the Nature everything seems to be done effortlessly, or with the smallest effort, the same that is genuinely used in martial arts. Nature, in spite of dealing with extremely huge things and events, conserves ‘energy’ e.g. big tree growth with little ‘effort’, the seas do not get tired of waving, birds fly with ease, an ant can hold 100 times its weight and appears to carry it effortlessly. The same principle is used in martial arts: in a fight there is simply not enough time to recuperate unwisely spent energy. You tire, you lose.

Overexertion is damaging also in the leadership process: to spend more energy that is needed is often harmful not only because it represents a physical and intellectual hindrance. When things are done effortlessly the impression is that everything runs smoothly and harmoniously, there is no stopping, no fuss, no dissatisfaction. Most importantly, all and everything is achieved without resorting to give orders or spend time on extensive persuasion. A well led team should not be a battlefield of egos. In teamwork there is no place for individual ‘victories’ or ‘defeats’.

For more please read at: http://www.toddnielsen.com/international-leadership-blogathon/leadership-virtue-martial-arts/

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Leadership: More Intelligence or Emotions

Should a leader use mostly intelligence or should the emotions be primary in dealing with people, decision making…?

Some of the definitions of intelligence say:

• Merriam-Webster: the ability to learn or understand things or to deal with new or difficult situations; the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations.
• Dictionary.com: capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.
• The free dictionary: The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge; capacity for learning, reasoning, and understanding; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.

And emotions are defined as:

• Merriam-Webster: a conscious mental reaction (as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.
• Dictionary.com: any strong agitation of the feelings actuated by experiencing love, hate, fear, etc., and usually accompanied by certain physiological changes, as increased heartbeat or respiration, and often overt manifestation, as crying or shaking.
• The free dictionary: A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes; a feeling: the emotions of joy, sorrow, reverence, hate, and love.

Atypical views on Leadership - 2

An outstanding Leadership for cross cultural team(s)

(Continues from Atypical views on Leadership – 1)

As the organization grows larger and more complex, management at the top begin to lead and decide less by firsthand experience, but more and more on heavily processed data. From their position they rarely see the business flowing in the same way as do the people down in production or on the sales floor. Four decades ago, IBM tried to unify corporate culture in its subsidiaries all over the world. Geert Hofstede carried out a world-wide survey on employee values. The result was very informative and demonstrative. There were other researchers of the same topic too. A common conclusion of all those studies is that “we are definitely different”.

Back to Adam Smith. He characterized economy as three orders in society: those who live by the rent, by their labor, and by the profits. Joseph Schumpeter described economy also as three-folded: monetary, interests, and value theory within a natural-law perspective. And they were not alone in dividing economy in three parts. One does not need to be an outstanding expert to deduct: a (free) market, which by definition is something imaginary, can be perceived as a Holy Ghost; a (private) property, which equals to omnipotence – the God; and a labor, which can be linked to a sacrifice for higher capital gains – Jesus Christ. Is then the economy just a new “global religion” with all needed attributes? If you remove fundamental attribute of any religion -“trust”- from all economics factors, what do you get? A meltdown of today currencies, companies values, stock markets … Or choose a next attribute – “permanent growth” of profits which is in collision with all natural laws (even Universe is limited). The focal point of economy driven capitalism paradigm is the accumulation of capital or wealth. It propels uncontrollably, destroying the natural environment and exploitation of resources beyond recovery. There is also no room for other ‘opinions’ than economic measures that drive our lives today. Is this a kind of a “medieval” way of thinking?

Atypical views on Leadership - 1

An outstanding Leadership for cross cultural team(s)

Have you met a person that was thinking in a completely different way to yours? What kind of impression does it leave on you? Do you dismiss it immediately, or you find it worthy, erroneous  …? 

For me it is exciting, definitely because my life path is somehow atypical, too. In our core we people are similar no matter where we come from. Not long ago I had a TEDx talk about the human behavior that surpasses “the cultural background noise” – “the noise” that accompanies us throughout our life and normally influences our values, ethics and morals, mentally and subconsciously. Unfortunately, this kind of reasoning I find that is still missing in common stances and leadership practices. Let me try to show some examples which are going to be based on atypical views.

From the management’s perspective, managers perform tasks, manage people and do business. Accordingly, there are numerous methodologies and tools helping to manage business and people: Just In Time Production, Kobayashi’s 20 keys, Six Sigma, Business Process Reengineering … to name some. In business environment, do all these methodologies and tools really come out the way we need them to? Current economic and financial situation makes us doubt it. If these tools were as efficient and as great as claimed, then we should not see companies struggling and vanishing. Why it is then so?

The future of leadership

I came across an article discussing “What Leadership Will Look Like In 20 Years” by Rick Smith. He discusses six major shifts he believes will mark how the most effective leaders will behave in twenty years. Reading the list I was kind of disappointed that future of leadership is pretty much the same as today with minor, technical, changes. Not that I’m good in predicting a future (who is?) but I would like to challenge you with my thoughts and brief explanation on what I think about our future leadership issues.

It is not a technology that will be the driver any more. The technological doctrine present today will be upgraded with social subjects /dimensions/ that are today missing especially within a business context. Due to technology evolution in semantic web  in future the focus would be shifted from today's “right questions” to more complicated topics. It will be important to have a proper education to know how to interpret answers, data, information  instantly gotten over the Internet.

Ancient knowledge about leadership

Last post about “Different views on leadership” discussed the differences between Western and Eastern leadership views. In searching for those dissimilarities I came across text from Spring and Autumn - Warring States, chapter Yao Yue describing discussion between Confucius and his apprentice Zi Zhang. Discussion is obviously focused on a leadership principles and attitudes:

Zi Zhang asked Confucius: "In what way should a person in authority act in order that he may conduct government properly?"

The Master replied: "Let him honor the five excellent, and banish away the four bad, things; then may he conduct government properly."

Zi then said: "What is meant by the five excellent things?"

The Master: "When the person in authority is beneficent without great expenditure; when he lays tasks on the people without their repining; when he pursues what he desires without being covetous; when he maintains a dignified ease without being proud; when he is majestic without being fierce."

Zi: "What is meant by being beneficent without great expenditure?"

The Master replied: "When the person in authority makes more beneficial to the people the things from which they naturally derive benefit; -- is not this being beneficent without great expenditure? When he chooses the labors which are proper, and makes them labor on them, who will repine? When his desires are set on benevolent government, and he secures it, who will accuse him of covetousness? Whether he has to do with many people or few, or with things great or small, he does not dare to indicate any disrespect - is not this to maintain a dignified ease without any pride? He adjusts his clothes and cap, and throws a dignity into his looks, so that, thus dignified, he is looked at with awe - is not this to be majestic without being fierce?"

Zi then asked: "What is meant by the four bad things?"

Different views on leadership

There are probably more studies, articles and books on “how to lead a team and building a team” than you can ever read. Therefore, I’m not going to or daring to repeat the same matters. But I would rather post a challenge - “Have you ever been a part of an international /inter-cultural team”?

If yes, what kind of experience did you get? Where there any obstacles to leadership, any misunderstanding because of different perceptions of team members coming from different cultural background? Well, I had had such an opportunity to work in and lead a multicultural environment.

In this post I would like to show and compare western approaches to team leading with eastern ones. They are so different in styles and philosophies that it is interesting to demonstrate and to share them with you.

West mostly always describes “five/seven/ten… keys to leading a team”. You are probably very much accustomed with them and have read about those as well as other instructions dealing with leading, team and expected characteristics of a leader. Most of the time authors offer some of the great (repeated) suggestions and topics shown below which are then further appropriately elaborated into strong rooted believes of properness:

• Keep things in perspective / define the purpose of the team; 
• Establish team objectives / focus on results and productivity; 
• Keep the team focused / align people with the stuff they are good at or passionate about; 
• Get the right people on-and-off the bus / demonstrate your commitment; 
• Be a team player or allow others to shine / a leader must mobilize team members; 
• Leading by example means following rules / leader cannot exempt himself from the rules; 
• Leaders people will follow are accountable and trustworthy / leaders of teams take the responsibility; 
• Characteristics of a successful leadership is to trust your people -- and let them know it;
• Don’t provide all the answers -- make your employees think; 
• etc.

For more please read at: http://peopledevelopmentmagazine.com/leading-with-virtue-not-beliefs/.

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