1993 feels like a century ago, but I can assure you what I saw back then inspired me, even if it did the opposite for my father. As I cast my mind there, flicking through a file I’ve keep ever since — the Hamersley Iron Pty Ltd Team Leadership and Membership course — I’m reminded that the teaching in this philosophy of ‘teams’ is superior to everything I learned in doing both a frontline management diploma (1998-1999) and the leadership and management unit I’ve done in a seminary context (2016) — and everything in between, with only a few fleeting exceptions.
Almost everything else I’ve studied in terms of leadership never really hit the mark regarding culture — the absolute heart of leadership and membership.
True leadership appreciates and works with culture, even as it endeavours to shift culture.
But back in 1993, the world was different. I worked in mining and the unions were strong. I remember picketing the previous year, yet by the following year through masterstrokes in industrial relations practice, the company had basically rendered the unions null-and-void. They did this by completely adopting inspirational leadership and management practice. And it all pivoted on safety.
The company literally poured multi-millions into the safety effort, and employees by and large were convinced that the company was trustworthy. What a way to shift the culture!
One project I was put in charge of — and I was just a young tradesman — was worth over $1 million ($1.9 million today) in tools and tool lockers for nearly 100 tradespeople. But there were several of these projects occurring at the same time, and the company won the hearts of most employees through their commitment to spend big on improving safety — they won the hearts of most; except many of the older ones.
One of the exceptions was my father — a diligent metal lathe operator, a skilled craftsman with metal. My Dad disliked the direction the company was going in because it no longer valued employees who just did their job. It was a quandary for me as a 26-year-old tradesman, because I wanted extra responsibility, and the opportunities to lead.
Dad and I saw things quite differently yet we both respected the others’ point of view. I think Dad definitely saw me thriving in this environment, even if he refused to do the ‘Rambo course’.
If you take a look at the text in the photo for this article you may see truly the heart of the power for change in any context.
If only the powerful — the boss, the church, the government — can be humble enough to equalise power differentials and take the lead in apologising for mistakes made, seeking first to understand rather than insist on being understood, they win over their employees, parishioners, constituents.
It seems well before its time that this article quoted how important women are in executive roles, because they “are often better at understanding social processes than men.”
It talked about the importance of leaders predicting people’s behaviour and likely responses to situations. Creating a culture, this method says, is all about working with the social dynamics that are already at play and working to harmonise the social cohesion already present.
This is the antithesis of control we often find in diabolical leadership. It says, “the leader depends upon the initiative of the group members.” What? No manipulation, coercion, manoeuvring an agenda? ... the leader DEPENDS...?
The leadership I was exposed to in the early 1990s backed up its words with action. There was a consistent fruit that could always be seen. Another initiative the company put in place was to communicate what the Executive were doing through all strata of the organisation, every week, within 48 hours. Managers at all levels were held accountable to ensure the consistent message was communicated.
And, how’s this, just as an example of the ethos:
“If the group perceives the leader’s actions and instructions as unfair, dishonest, or cowardly, they will not follow for long. This does not imply outright insubordination, rebellion, or mutiny. There is a myriad of ways in which people who feel untrusted and devalued can grind the group or organisation to a halt.”
There is the admission here that in business, force always backfires. “The power of asking versus the force of telling,” David Deane-Spread has been heard to say.
This isn’t rocket science. It’s working smartly in tune with human nature.
What the early 1990s taught me in terms of leadership is this: people are won over to good leadership, which is inherently servant leadership. Whenever any of us gives ourselves to another, with a heart that is FOR them and never against them, we are in fact leading, because we are in fact loving.
So why is it that the more common way people lead is by lording it over those they lead?
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