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Love and leadership
“Of all the things that sustain a leader over time, love is the most lasting. It’s hard to imagine leaders getting up day after day, putting in the long hours and hard work it takes to get extraordinary things done, without having their hearts in it. The best kept secret of successful leaders is staying in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with what their organizations produce and with those who honor the organization by using its products and services.” — Barry Z. Posner and Jim Kouzes
Posner and Kouzes speak of love and leadership, love and business. How often do we hear those words used together? Most of us have been introduced to a concept of business in which business is a domain unto itself, in which the primary driver is economic profit: the business of business is to make money for the shareholders. When I earned my MBA, two of my professors presented the relationship between ethics and business as a pragmatic one: if you are in the public eye and you violate the public’s ethical preferences, you can experience negative consequences; for this reason it is necessary to manage this dimension of your business. The premise is that your competitor will be doing everything possible to maximize profits, so if you give more consideration to other stakeholders than is required by government regulation and the market (for labor, capital, etc.) then, you increase risk and reduce shareholder returns. As a relatively recent example, Costco has come under fire for giving employees better benefits than Sam’s Club does.
For many years, the world of business was a man’s world, shaped according to the stereotypically masculine values of rationality unencumbered by human feeling and by competition — both external and internal. The “gamesman” contributes competently to the team, but retains a savvy emotional disconnection from the organization, customers, etc.
To be taken seriously — to be successful — women needed to learn the language and the terrain. Using terms like “love,” “desire,” “care,” etc., according to one professor, whom I like personally but tend to disagree with on a variety of subjects was, “writing like a girl.”
Therefore, it is particularly striking that Posner and Kouzes, luminaries in the subject area of leadership, speak of loving:
- leading
- the people who do the work
- the company’s products and services
- the customers served
Gamesmanship is not about love, but leadership is. True, the ethic of many organizations does not, in fact, reward love or personal commitment. Yet, the transformative leadership that is needed now, to create highly adaptable and creative organizations, expresses a very different paradigm — of vision, commitment, caring. This paradigm presently often co-exists with the classical paradigm in which human values are generally extraneous — “softer,” “feminine,” inappropriate to the business environment. ( The exception, in the classical paradigm, is that human values are employed instrumentally to manipulate stakeholders towards “rational” economic ends — that is, ends that benefit shareholders as purely economic beings).
Having spent the first part of my career in corporations — substantial intact systems — I now have the opportunity as a small business owner, to choose my market, the clients and customers we serve, and our products and services. And I am finding that the business “clicks” — is the most successful — in that intersection between core capabilities, market needs, and passion. I am finding that when we love the clients we serve, our internal and external business partners, and our products and services, we find the greatest success. Mission, human connection, and ethics are at the forefront of the business. In the old paradigm, we might contrast selfishness with selflessness, with the former being a winning position, and the latter a losing position — the first stereotypically equated with masculinity and the second sterotypically equated with a subordinate femininity. In the new paradigm, leadership is about “both-and,” with the “and” serving as a creative dimension in which new possibilities for mutual sustainability arise, and the rewards are diverse and many.
Forms of organization
Interesting article on forms of organization — hierarchal, market, and collaborative ..
http://www.heckscher.us/The%20evolving%20nature%20of%20professional%20work.doc
Category: All Posts, Organization /
Our House
Carman, Thank you, as always, for your post. Your contributions really enrich this forum. The dynamics you describe resonate with what Riane Eisler would call Dominator dynamics, which describe theory x organizations. In a Dominator culture, one is either one up or one down from others. It also invokes the dual-nature you describe (“Who is addressing me?”)
I am also reminded of the psychological dynamics in which people who are abused in some way, often abuse certain others, as a way of regaining their sense of personal power. You shared Freire’s quote, “Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence.” I think we are so accustomed to these more subtle forms of violence (as compared to physical violence) that they tend to be relatively invisible to us. I think it’s helpful for us to broaden our understanding of violence and coercion.
Eisler identifies the fundamental model of human relationships as the family, and that resonates with me. From that perspective, our organizations are, in a sense, the family or community model writ large.
I enjoy hearing about your walks and life. Have a terrific week!
Lisa
“We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.”
Hello Lisa,
Thank you for your discussion of consciousness in the context of organizational transformation. The sunshine of such examination shining through the tears of my lived experience has generated a rainbow of emotions and ideas. I will attempt to integrate some of these from your spectrum.
I especially enjoy the reference to Socrates who seemed to equate quality of life with self-examination. Freire put it this way, “Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p.66).
Your post includes references to “supports,” “connections,” and “foundations.” The image of the house or “dwelling that shapes us” comes to mind. Freire likewise speaks about “the structure of thought” in the context of oppression. Speaking about the oppressed, Freire says, “their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors” (p.27). He suggests that employees actually “house” the boss and that this habitation both determines their identity as men and women, and dictates their actions towards one another. Freire describes this process as “hosting” the oppressor (p.30).
Elsewhere he says that the “boss” is “inside them” (p. 46). The consequence is “adhesion” to the employer (p.27) within a colonized consciousness which renders us dual beings, “they are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized” (p30). In this state we might ‘strike out at our comrades [or loved ones] for the pettiest reasons’ (p.44).
“It is a rare peasant who, once “promoted” to overseer, does not become more of a tyrant towards his former comrades than the owner himself” (p.28) “Their ideal is to be men [sic]; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity” (p.27). According to this logic, we invariably take our work home with us because we house the “boss” within us. We are dual beings.
While I do concede that Freire is speaking about “peasants,” I also believe that the principles are applicable across a range of organizational experience. I am not suggesting that all employers are “oppressors.” Freire is primarily thinking about those who dehumanize others by treating them as “objects,” “things,” “inferiors,” “possessions.” Periodically, when a ‘comrade’ speaks about the work they are doing, or what “needs to be done” I want to ask, “Who is addressing me?” “Who is speaking to me?” because I sense that I am addressing a dual being. I confess that it’s difficult at times to know whose “voice” I am hearing—or what voice I am using. Many of us will, in fact, say “we” when speaking about our organization and its policies.
At times when I witness emotional fissures and interpersonal frictions I wonder to what extent we are expressing the duality dynamic Freire addresses. I also wonder to what extent sickness and stress are expressions of a conscious or subconscious inner battle between the individual and the employer?
Freire says, “The task of the humanists is to see that the oppressed become aware of the fact that as dual beings, “housing” the oppressors within themselves, they cannot be truly human” (p.70). He says that “liberation” is a childbirth, and a painful one (p.31). I am grateful to have a “midwife” like you Lisa to assist with such delivery.
Bye for now!
p.s. “we” are going for a seawall walk now.
Carman
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2007.
The Unconscious in Organizational Transformation
Readers and writers who visit this blog are engaging with facinating and powerful questions and ideas.
One recent search term that brought someone to this blog was, “the role of the unconscious in organizational transformation.” It raises the topic of the unconscious in both personal, organizational and cultural dynamics and transformation.
What do we mean by unconscious? We’ve learned that unconscious patients perceive and process information — they hear what is said and what they hear can positively or negatively affect their recovery. So the unconscious is part of our experience, but it is unexamined experience. The unconscious also contains the connections between experiences. If you touch a hot surface and are burned, that information is there; and such connections are the raw components of belief. We also develop attitudes and orientations towards our experience: life is an adventure; life is an ordeal; people will help you or hurt you, etc. The connections we make are influenced by the events themselves, our orientation/attitudes — or interpretative lenses, pre-existing clusters of associations, and our received cultural beliefs — both explicit and implied. We look for evidence to support our existing beliefs; and receive biological rewards when we find them.
However, like the proverbial iceburg, most of our beliefs, including our interpretative lenses, are below our conscious awareness. And many of the foundations for these beliefs were set at in our earliest experiences, a time when we lacked our present insight and experience. Yet it’s these beliefs, orientations, lenses that are the locomotives of our lives. Hence, Carl G. Jung’s assertion that until we make the unconscious conscious, it will rule our lives and we will call it fate. This also resonates with Socrates’ “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Although I think Socrates overstates his case a bit, as a coach, I can testify that the examined life can become a great adventure, because when we examine many of our limiting beiefs, we find that they are actually not true.
The same principles apply with respect to organizations. It’s interesting to think in terms of a personal unconscious and a collective unconscious, the interaction amongst our unconscious beliefs, shaped by our personal and organizational histories. This is potentially a very fruitful area for organizational transformation. Thank you to our visitor for raising the topic.
Silence and speaking in organizations
Hi Carman,
I apologize that it has been taking me so long to respond to your thoughtful and insightful posts. I appreciate your ongoing contributions to this endeavor!
Thank you (first) for your discussion of cultures of silence. The quote you chose from Charles Davis was a very apt illustration of how we internalize the power structures in which we participate:
“Exterior un-freedom causes interior un-freedom. A child first learns to talk or think aloud, then afterwards to think without voicing its thought.”
Deconstructive postmodernists (with whom I share both agreement and disagreement) have observed that assertions of truth are acts of power. This is very evident in a court of law, where attorneys put forth a view of reality which serves them and their clients. This is also true in dominator organizations, where authority and power are often perceived to arise (in part) from being “right” and where, in a circular way, might makes right. Certain views and positions become “legitimate” and others, which question or challenge these perspectives may be viewed as heritical or a power play. (1)
In the same way that in a dominator family, a child is shusshed for “talking back” or challenging parental authority, in dominator organizations, members may be admonished for raising perspectives and positions that challenge organizational orthodoxy. (This seems to come back to your post on orgaizations as theocracies…). And what is true of families and organizations is also true with respect to our larger institutions and culture.
So, in dominator organizations, organizational members learn to silence themselves, effectively internalizing the outer controls, so as to avoid “punishment.” This self-silencing can become so automatic, that we are barely consciously aware of it.
Further, it is also taboo to discuss the silencing itself. Because it pulls back the covers on power relationships, challenges the legitimacy and absoluteness of existing truth claims, and because there is the sensibility that “that war” was already fought and won,” raising the existance of the taboo tends to both threaten and irritate people. A very successful control structure maintains both the silence and suppression of awareness or discussion of the silence itself.
Conversely, speaking in our own voice is a form of self-assertion, of “power-from-within.” And, when we share our truths an perspectives as part of a mutually-respectful dialogue or larger conversation, this sharing can become the co-creative “power-with” in which the flow of energy and ideas in the group gives rise to broader insights and more powerful ideas than would be the case of a person acting singly. Master coach Karen Capello calls this the power of authenticity: http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2009/01/03/power-of-authenticity/
It is the empowering, creative energy that organizations want and need. The challenge, as I see it, is that to be truly creative, many organizations need to rethink their assumptions about power and knowledge, and the role of leadership.
(1) This is not always true, of course. Alternative ideas may be considered within certain bounds, depending on both the idea and the speaker. (This speaks to the concept of rhetorical communities).
Constraints on upwards communication in traditional organizations
Category: All Posts, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Culture, Diversity, Innovation, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Philosophy, Teams /
Making objects of people and the ethos of domination
Submitted on 2009/05/30 at 8:37am
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for the opportunity to engage in creative communion–and to make the “unconscious conscious.” I believe it was systems scholar Bela Banathy who said, “the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.”
I have begun to question the traditional labor market [employer-employee] nomenclature as an example of such mislabeling. When we strip away the legal lacquer and peel back the political politeness a master-slave paradigm appears to be the underlying animus.
Freire calls “domination” a “fundamental” phenomenon:
“I consider the fundamental theme of our epoch to be that of domination—which implies its opposite, the theme of liberation, as the objective to be achieved. In order to achieve humanization, which presupposes the elimination of de-humanizing oppression, it is absolutely necessary to surmount the limit-situations in which people are reduced to things.” Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p.84.
I contest the confining of domination to “our epoch.” The myth of Erysichthon and Ceres suggests that slavery is more ubiquitous and persistent than many may want to concede:
Erysichthon [Earth-tearer] was a rich and impious man who cut down a tree from the sacred grove of Ceres [mother earth] for his banqueting hall. By cutting down the tree, he had killed a dryad nymph [oak tree productive force]. The other dryads called upon Ceres [mother earth] to avenge their sister.
Ceres inflicted Erysichthon with insatiable hunger. No matter what Erysichthon ate, he could quell his hunger for more food. Erysichthon sold everything he had, for food, until he had nothing left but his daughter, Mestra [teacher]. He sold her too!
While on the seashore awaiting possession by her owner, Mestra prayed to Poseidon [the sea] to save her from slavery. She was then given the ability to shift-change—first a fisherman, then a mare, an ox, a bird, and so on.
Mestra escaped from her master and returned to her father who saw endless opportunity to make money by her. Driven by hunger, Erysichthon sold his daughter off, like livestock, into slavery, for a great deal of money to buy more food. But all the money she earned was not enough. Finally, driven to despair, he consumed himself.
Some observations and questions:
1. Is “domination” the exception or the rule? I suspect scholars have been tip-toeing around this issue.
2. The Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1996) defines slave thus: 1) captive 2) person owned by and has to serve another, 3) machine or part of one, directly controlled by another—Morgan’s Machine Metaphor immediately comes to mind.
3) Erysichthon sold his daughter off, like livestock. Our word chattel [movable “property”] originally meant livestock.
4) Moderns recoil at the suggestion of slavery as an organizational norm. “You are always free to leave,” they say. But if the assumptions underlying the master-slave, owner-owned, subject-object relationship greet the “runaway,” then how is that liberating?
Your thoughts Lisa?
Reference
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2007.
Cultures of Silence
Another beautifully insightful post from Carman. 🙂
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for discussing Dominator Cultures. As I write, the morning sun is penetrating my living room window both to dominate the day and to challenge me to respond to Emerson’s question, ‘What are you going to do with it?’ (the day)
My mind has been awash all week with your observations and questions. Your discussion of the Dominator Culture helps me to contrast it with the Partnership Perspective.
Your statement, “A Dominator culture shapes psychologies and social structures in ways that are dysfunctional in that they limit potential and cause unnecessary suffering,” acutely reflects my own experience. Regrettably, Dominator Cultures are all I have ever known.
Returning to the example of the child, not as a repository of wisdom but, rather as an embodiment of certain ideals, I recall a comment by Charles Davis (A Question of Conscience) who said,
“Exterior un-freedom causes interior un-freedom. A child first learns to talk or think aloud, then afterwards to think without voicing its thought.”
In an organization (Dominator Culture) with which I am familiar an enforced infantilizing silence characterizes each weekly meeting. Questions are forbidden and discussion is discouraged. Employees are thus banished to conversational catacombs to express their ideas and concerns.
Canadian historian Michael Welton (one of my professors at Athabasca University) has examined such systemic silence. He concludes that organizational silence is produced in four ways:
1) Managers’ fear of negative feedback and their belief systems. You and I have discussed Theory X assumptions wherein workers are believed to be untrustworthy and self-interested and responsive only to incentive or sanction. Managers, he holds, will implicitly or explicitly discourage “upward” communication.
2) An ideology that managers must lead, direct and control.
3) An unstated belief that unity and consensus are signs of organizational health, whereas disagreement and dissent should be avoided.
4) The distance between leaders and the led once they ascend the hierarchy. Welton suggests that “top” managers who have been together for a long time tend to blend their assumptions into a shared world-view. Senge terms this pathology (learning disability) “The Myth of the Management Team.”
Senge and Argyris, like Deming, lay the blame at the school which “trains us never to admit that we do not know the answer” (The Fifth Discipline p.25)
Welton says that workers “without a voice” will seek control through other means that may be destructive to the organization, such as stress, sickness, and little motivation.
Managers, in turn, may interpret the pathologies as evidence of hostility and willingness to contribute just to get by. Managers’ beliefs turn into self-fulfilling prophecies.
Someone once described “play” as the very essence of thought. I’m grateful for both the free and creative communion of your site and for the “creative play” it affords. I enjoy the opportunity to “voice” my thought—to hear and be heard and to sense in your comments the message “I see you” (The Fifth Discipline Field Book).
Bye for now,
Carman
Reference
Welton, M. Designing the Just Learning Society: A Critical Inquiry. Leicester: NIACE, 2005.
Unlearning that which doesn’t serve us
Hi Carman,
Yes, I think your discussion of children’s openness to learning is an excellent reminder that some of personal and organizational capacities that we wish to develop are natural endowments that have either been substantially suppressed or remained undeveloped due to the particularities of our culture.
Personally, I find this reassuring that this capacities are natural in that it points us not to new and alien place, but an original place from which we are able to see with fresh and creative eyes.
It’s not that children have all of the insights and abilities to which we aspire, but they don’t have as much to unlearn 🙂
I very much appreciated your quote from W. Edwards Deming: “People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with the toddlers—a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars—and on up through the university.”
It’s interesting how Deming refers to external rewards as undermining a natural, intrinsic love of learning for the pleasure it gives. It seems that there is a shift from a substantial internal orientation to our own experience to a primarily external orientation toward outside standards and the approval or disapproval of others.
A Partnership perspective agrees that we are substantially (but not exclusively) shaped by our social situation. Riane Eisler also observes how the structure of social relationships in the immediate family/community very powerfully communicate our most fundamental assumptions about the world, relationships, and the nature of power.
Is the world safe? Can we trust that our physical, emotional and spiritual needs will be met? Do we have power, if so, what is its nature — how does it “work”? Is there a “right” way and a “wrong” way to be, to think? And if so, Who is “right”? Are we OK or not OK?
In a Dominator culture, these questions tend to be answered in a particular way (so that they form a pattern or paradigm) that shape psychologies and social structures etc. that are dysfunctional in that they limit potential and cause unncessary suffering.
Towards a solution, I think Dominator culture can be unlearned, and that the language and concepts of recovery are useful in this regard…
Hope you are having a great week.
Bye for now,
Lisa
Category: All Posts /
Becoming Like Children
Here is another terrific post from Carman. Carman’s discussion of a child’s natural propensity to learn and grow is a good reminder that we are all naturally creative and open learners. Sometimes to move forward, we need to unlearn some of the things we learned in the past…
Hi Lisa,
Your previous posting “We never know the impact we have on the lives of others” started me thinking about the child—as person, symbol and ideal. While walking Robson Street yesterday I noticed a little girl holding her mother’s hand and singing as she walked. So beautiful! I thereupon wondered at what point adults cease to sing.
The references to the child in academic and sacred writings are astounding aren’t they? Only today I watched a co-worker’s PowerPoint presentation containing the expression, “If my heart can become pure and simple like that of a child, I think there can probably be no greater happiness than this.”
That aphorism reminded me of an example in the Christian Scriptures:
Matthew 18:1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, 3 and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (NKJV)
It’s interesting that grown men (teachers in training) were told that passing their final examination would hinge upon their becoming like “little children.” I suspect their Rabbi meant that they should be humble, modest and emphasize equality rather than “greatness” or superiority. But the example may also suggest eagerness to learn and receptivity to new ideas.
I believe young children may be the ideal of a better workplace and world in general. Page 3 of the Fifth Discipline says, “From a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world…We can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our intrinsic sense of connection to a larger whole.”
The next page says: “Learning organizations are possible because deep down, we are all learners. No one has to teach an infant to learn. In fact, no one has to teach infants anything. They are intrinsically inquisitive, masterful learners who learn to walk, speak, and pretty much run their households all on their own.”
In terms of Personal Mastery, I believe children are naturally creative (versus competitive and dominant). They have no mental models (“deeply held internal images of how the world works”). And who are more “dialogic” than children? (Team Learning)
I love the way W. Edwards Deming says, “People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with the toddlers—a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars—and on up through the university.”
Lisa, I am wondering how “Participation” views the child?
Bye for now!
Carman
Category: All Posts /
Another beautifully written post by Carman de Voer:
Hi Lisa,
For the last few weeks I’ve been pruning a figurative olive tree http://www.freewebs.com/gwencarm/–a Promethean task, to say the least, but one, I hope, will also “light up the mind.”
I’m not at all surprised that you would integrate love and leadership. Though we have never met I believe you are “unconditionally committed to another’s completion, to another being all that she or he can and wants to be”—The Fifth Discipline, p.285 (Senge’s defininition of love is superb, don’t you think?)
Leadership, like many ideas, has deteriorated into a mere synonym for management. The story of Prometheus speaks to what leadership really means. Prior to his rebellion, Prometheus and Epimetheus [his brother] were, I propose, managers, in that they enacted the goals of the Olympian Establishment. Essentially, they were “chosen” to perpetuate the status quo. At some point Prometheus became a leader—a radical, a [peaceful] revolutionary whose learning program became an indirect attack on the prerogatives of power-holders.
Prometheus the Leader
Prometheus envisaged a new race of beings of higher intelligence fitted to worship and serve the gods in a manner pleasing to their greatness. Prometheus and Epimetheus were chosen to complete the creation. “We will make the new beings in the likeness of the gods themselves. They shall not bend their face to the earth, but shall stand erect and turn their eyes heavenward.” Prometheus shaped the clay into a figure in the likeness of the gods. Eros imbued it with life and Athena imparted to it wisdom.
Prometheus longed to give humanity more and greater gifts, to light up the mind within it that might glow with a noble ardor; to make it lord of the lower creation; to enable the new god-like race to attain to greater heights of wisdom and knowledge and power. But no fire existed on the earth. He remembered the divine fire which could help to make humanity all-powerful—the sacred fire of Zeus.
Prometheus asked himself, “Could I steal it from the abode of the gods?” The very thought brought terror. Swift and merciless would be the vengeance of Zeus upon such a thief. More fearful would be his agonies than those inflicted upon the rebellious Titans.
Prometheus the Designer, Steward, Teacher
The thought of humanity inspired and ennobled by the divine fire quenched the reality of his own inevitable punishment and on a night heavy with clouds he stealthily ascended the holy mountain and lit the reed he carried with the divine fire. He had counted the cost and was prepared to pay it.
Prometheus revealed to humankind the divine fire and showed them
• how it would help them in their labors;
• how it would melt metals and fashion tools;
• how it would cook food and make life bearable in the bronze days of winter;
• how it would give light in darkness so that humankind might labour and travel in the night-time as well as by day.
• how to dig the fields and grow corn and herbs;
• how to build houses and cover their roofs with thatch;
• how to tame the beasts of the forests and make them serve them.
The sacred flame also gave inspiration and enthusiasm, and urged humanity on to achieve increasingly higher and greater things. The whole earth thrilled with their activities, and in their midst moved Prometheus, teaching, guiding, opening out before humanity’s delighted eyes fresh fields for effort and attainment.
Prometheus the Radical
There came a day when the points of light scattered over the surface of the earth. Zeus thundered, “Who is it that has stolen the fire from heaven?” “It is I” answered Prometheus calmly. “Why did you do this thing?” “Because I loved humankind! I longed to give them some gift that would raise them above the brute creation and bring them nearer the gods. Not all your power, Ruler of heaven and earth, can put out these fires.”
As Zeus listened to these words his rage turned to hatred of the being who dared defy his power. Zeus summoned his son Hephaestus, the god of the forge, and ordered him, “make a chain that nothing can break, and chain him to a cliff. I will send an eagle who each day shall devour his liver, causing him horrible torments day and night; each day it shall devour his liver; and each night it shall grow again, so that in the morning his suffering may be renewed.”
Prometheus replied, “So be it, O tyrant. Because you are strong, you are merciless. My theft has done you no harm; there is still fire to spare on Olympus. In your selfishness you will not share a privilege though it would advance the whole race of mankind. It may not be for long that you will sit in the high seat of the gods!”
The myth teaches me that “transformational leadership” comes with great cost. The myth’s core issue is control! The myth teaches me that the nexus of love and leadership does not take place in a cultural or organizational vacuum. The values and ideologies of power-holders will invariably be threatened. Those like Prometheus and “the good shepherd” [translation=the ideal leader John Chapter 10: 1-20] who desire humanity to have higher quality of life will pay dearly—possibly with their own lives.
Bye for now!
Carman