DEAD vs LIFE Leadership

Dr Kathy Allen made many excellent points when I spoke to her about her work at the intersection of leadership, system change and innovation.

One point was that old paradigms get really ‘loud’ before they fall. I noticed that in 2008 with the last bank crash. Paradigm winners get really greedy as they try to exploit as much as possible before the collapse, because they know they’re not going to be able to keep extracting so ruthlessly for much longer.

I’ve noticed it this time as well. Disaster capitalism loves war and now pandemics because again, the crony politicians and greedy corporates have ruthlessly exploited the situation. There would be no wars if there was no profit. More and more research is being uncovered to show that our earlier ancestors didn’t engage in war until hierarchy and exploitation became the main drivers of colonialism.

This leads to another well-made point by Kathy.

People are often coming up with ‘types’ of leadership such as adaptive, transactional and transformational.

Business owners and managers are often taught them on institutional leadership programmes.

These ‘types’ reflect people’s personalities and/or they described what was happening at a certain time and place in history.

You usually find that ‘great’ leaders emerged from society to overcome the challenge that society was facing i.e., they were the right person, with the right skills and attitude, at the right time and place.

When that time passes, we then find there is another type of leadership required and invented.

Kathy suggested a new way of describing leadership.

How about describing the outcomes of traditional leadership such as polluting, exploitative, cronyism or, as Kathy described, leadership that ‘makes places unliveable’.

At the end of the day, leadership is leading to our demise or it is liberating and life affirming.

#leadership #leaders #regeneration #society #climatechange #socialjustice #sustainabilityleadership #sustainability #businessowners #change

Fascinating talk here: https://youtu.be/8-9fX2uX9hY