This is Joe Raelin, the author of the Leaderful Fieldbook.

In this space, we look forward to having a wide-open dialogue with our readers to share comments, questions, experiences, and lessons in bringing leaderful practices into our organizations across the five levels of the Fieldbook – individual, interpersonal, team, organization, and network.

I will review this blog space on a regular basis and respond as quickly as I can to any queries and comments. Occasionally, I will offer my own experiences and thoughts on the leaderful world, including some new activities. Please also offer exercises that you think should be added to the Fieldbook!

Monday, February 14, 2011

Unsticking 'Command-and-Control' Leadership

It appears that the long tradition of humanistic proposals - be they OD, TQM, or learning organizations - have not seemed to stick in our corporate culture. Why haven't they? The reasons have to do with what are called "institutional" forces in our culture that are very tenacious. These forces, which sustain a culture of dominance and control in organizations, are certainly cultural but also legal, historical, economic, and psychological. For example, some accounts suggest that command-and-control leadership is seen as clearer and more responsive to our anxiety. This is why I have suggested the need for change agents who can promote and fortify a culture of participation and engagement within our organizations. My new leaderful fieldbook [http://www.leaderful.org/bookHome.html] is designed to help such change agents (who could be internal managers or external facilitators) by providing them with an array of tools that can be used at multiple levels of change to produce a more leaderful organization. Try it, you'll like it!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment