A500.3.3.RB - Organizational Leadership as a System


Organizational leadership, as it pertains to a leader's unique position in a unique company, is primarily comprised of information — how the company functions, what it seeks to accomplish, who its employees are, etc. — and choices — how that information drives the leader’s actions. To squeeze the entire discipline within that ideological box, however, would be to confuse a complex philosophy, a way of thinking about a task, with the much simpler task itself: to confuse the discipline of organizational leadership with the job of being a leader, with management.

Organizational leadership as a system of thinking, though, is grander and more idealistic. To smoke it down to just its tasks — hire someone, fire someone, raise morale, order staples — misses the point that, in order to be a good leader, a leader must constantly question his/her own decisions and challenge him/herself to be better. This form of leadership isn’t about numbers on a spreadsheet. It’s about goals: “What type of leader do I want to be?” “Why?” “How do I get there?”

Leadership as a discipline is about questions, critical thinking and an ever-expanding set of self-guided best practices. Leadership as information, on the other hand, is guided by buzzwords and jargon to be simply be memorized and regurgitated. In the same way that accepting a statement as fact can “shut down inquiry rather than promoting it”” (Nosich, p.66), structuring the way we lead around a set of information does little other than turn an art (one that requires abstract thought and is open to interpretation) into a science (one with “right” and “wrong” answers, and little room for experimentation or creativity).

For organizational leadership to be anything more than daily maintenance or to-do list-style overseeing, it needs to contain self-reflection, because “questioning lies at the heart of critical thinking" (Nosich, p.118). Commitment to the ideal of leadership as a system of thinking has greatly changed the way I approach my coursework. Instead of seeing every assignment or principle in terms of a potential quiz question, I try to see them as opportunities to reflect. Memorizing someone else’s best practices, for instance, won’t be the thing that gives a person a sense of purpose in his/her work — but answering core questions and searching for what principles are fundamental and powerful might, because that puts them on a journey.

And that’s why I’m here. I’ve had a handful of jobs in my life, but I’ve never had a career, and especially not anything close to a so-called “life’s work.” I think that starts with questions, though, personal challenges, a pursuit of growth. I think it starts with a commitment to a new way of thinking. The information, though? I’ll pick that up along the way.

References

Nosich, G. M. (2012). Learning to think things through: A guide to critical thinking across the curriculum (4th edition). Boston, MA: Pearson.

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