The Power of Dialogue

Complex issues require intelligence beyond that of any individual. Yet in the face of complex, highly conflictual issues, teams typically break down, revert to rigid positions, and cover up deeper views. The result: watered-down compromises and tenuous commitment. Dialogue, however, is a discipline of collective learning and inquiry. It can serve as a cornerstone for organizational learning by providing an environment in which people can reflect together and transform the ground out of which their thinking and acting emerges.

Dialogue is not merely a strategy for helping people talk together. In fact, dialogue often leads to new levels of coordinated action without the artificial, often tedious process of creating action plans and using consensus-based decision-making. Dialogue does not require agreement; instead it encourages people to participate in a pool of shared meaning, which leads to aligned action.

Over the past year, The Dialogue Project at MIT has been conducting a series of practical experiments to create dialogue and explore its impacts. While it is still at an early stage, we have witnessed moving and, at times, profound changes in the individuals and groups with which we have worked. For example, labor and management representatives from a steel mill have discovered dramatic shifts in their ways of thinking and talking together. In a recent presentation by this dialogue group, one union participant said, “We have learned to question fundamental categories and labels that we have applied to each other.”

“Can you give us an example?” one manager asked.

“Yes,” he responded, “labels like management and union.”

This particular group has transformed a 50-year-old adversarial relationship into one where there is genuine and serious inquiry into “taken-for-granted” ways of thinking. The steelworkers, for example, recognized that they had far more in common with management than they had previously realized or expected. “We quit talking about the past,” said the Union President.“ We didn’t bring any of that up, all the hurt and mistrust that we’ve had over the last twenty years.” Another steelworker noticed that the category “union” limited him as much as it protected him.“ It’s important to suspend the word ‘union,’” he said.

In another setting, we brought together major health care providers for a city — hospital CEOs, doctors, nurses, insurance agents, technicians, and a legislator — to create a microcosm of the healthcare system. This group has been inquiring into some of the underlying assumptions and forces that seem to make this field so chaotic.

In one session, participants confronted the collective pain felt when assuming responsibility for all the illnesses of a community. One senior physician said, “I am struck by my schizophrenia: the difference between how I treat my patients and how I treat all of you.” This dialogue has begun to surface the underlying sources of counter-productivity inherent in the healthcare system. In the past, people have sought self-protection against such pain, but this has led to costly isolation, misplaced competitiveness, and lack of coordination.

Dia • logos

Dialogue can be defined as a sustained collective inquiry into the processes, assumptions, and certainties that structure everyday experience. The word “dialogue” comes from two Greek roots, dia and logos, suggesting “meaning flowing through.” This is in marked contrast to what we frequently call dialogue — a mechanistic and unproductive debate between people seeking to defend their views. Dialogue actually involves a willingness not only to suspend defensive exchange but also to probe into the reasons for it. In this sense, dialogue is a strategy aimed at resolving the problems that arise from the subtle and pervasive fragmentation of thought (see “Fragmentation of Thought” below).

Physicist David Bohm has compared dialogue to superconductivity. In superconductivity, electrons cooled to very low temperatures act more like a coherent whole than as separate parts. They flow around obstacles without colliding with one another, creating no resistance and very high energy. At higher temperatures, however, they began to act like separate parts, scattering into a random movement and losing momentum.

Particularly when discussing tough issues, people act more like separate, high-temperature electrons. Dialogue seeks to help people attain high energy and low friction without ruling out differences between them. Negotiation tactics, in contrast, often try to cool down interactions by bypassing the most difficult issues and narrowing the field of exchange to something manageable. They achieve “cooler” interactions, but lose energy and intelligence in the process. In dialogue, the aim is to create a special environment in which a different kind of relationship among the parts can come into play — one that reveals both high energy and high intelligence.

The Practice of Dialogue

The pivotal challenge lies in producing dialogue in practical settings. Dialogue poses a paradox in practice. While it seeks to allow greater coherence among a group of people (note this does not necessarily imply agreement), it does not impose it. Indeed, dialogues surface and explore the very mechanisms by which people try to control and manage the meanings of their interactions.

People often come to a dialogue with the intention of understanding their fundamental concerns in a new way. Yet in contrast with more familiar modes of inquiry, it is helpful to begin without an agenda, without a “leader” (although a facilitator is essential) and without a task or decision to make. By deliberately not trying to solve familiar problems in a familiar way, dialogue opens a new possibility for shared thinking.

One story illustrates the power of this kind of exchange. In the late 1960s, the dean of a major U.S. business school was appointed to chair a committee to examine whether the university, which had major government contracts, should continue to design and build nuclear bombs on campus. People were in an uproar over the issue. The committee was somewhat like Noah’s ark: two of every species of political position on the campus. The chairman had no idea how to bring all these people together to agree on anything, so he changed some of the rules. The committee would meet, he said, every day until it had produced a report. Every day meant exactly that — weekends, holidays, everything. People objected, but he persisted.

The group eventually met for 36 days straight. Critically, for the first two weeks, they had no agenda. People just talked about anything they wanted to talk about: the purpose of the university, how upset they were, their deepest fears and their noblest aims. They eventually turned to the report they were supposed to write. By this time, they had become quite close. In the corner you might have seen two people conferring who previously had intensely clashing views. To the surprise of many, the group eventually produced a unanimous report. What was striking was they agreed on a direction, but for different reasons. They did not need to have the same reasons to agree with the direction that emerged.

Levels and Stages of Dialogue

Dialogue requires creating a series of increasingly conscious environments in which a special kind of “cool inquiry” can take place. These environments, which we call “containers,” can develop as a group of people become aware of the requirements and discipline needed to create them (see “Initial Guidelines for Dialogue”). A container can be understood as the sum of the assumptions, shared intentions, and beliefs of a group. These create a collective “atmosphere” or climate. The core of the theory of dialogue builds on the premise that changes in people’s shared attention can alter the quality and level of inquiry that is possible.

The evolution of a dialogue among a group of people consists of both levels and stages. They tend to be sequential, although once one moves through a stage, one can return to it (see “Evolution of Dialogue”). Passing through a level usually involves facing different types of individual and collective crises. The process is demanding, and at times frustrating, but also deeply rewarding.

1. Instability of the Container

When any group of individuals comes together, each person brings a wide range of tacit, unexpressed differences in paradigms and perspectives. The first challenge in a dialogue is to recognize this, and to accept that the purpose of the dialogue is not to hide them, but to find a way of allowing the differences to be explored. These implicit views are often inconsistent with one another. Since we generally deal with inconsistencies in rigid and mechanistic ways, the “container” or environment for dialogue at this stage is unstable.

Dialogue begins with conversation (the root of the word means “to turn together”). People begin by speaking together, and from that flows deliberation (“to weigh out”). Consciously and unconsciously people weigh out different views, agreeing with some and disliking others. They selectively pay attention, noticing some things, missing others.

At this point people face the first crisis and choice of the dialogue process, one that can either lead to the further refinement and evolution of the dialogue environment, or can lead to greater instability. This “initiatory crisis” occurs as people recognize that despite their best intentions, they cannot force dialogue. People find they cannot comprehend, much less impose coherence, on the diversity of views. They must choose either to defend their point of view, or suspend (not suppress) their view and begin to listen without judgment, loosening the grip of certainty about all views (including their own).

2. Instability in the Container

A recognition of this “initiatory” crisis begins to create an environment in which people know they are seeking to do something different. At this point, groups often begin to oscillate between suspending views and discussing them. People will feel the tendency at this point to fall into the familiar habit of analyzing the parts, instead of focusing on the whole.

At this stage, people may find themselves feeling frustrated. Others may defend their views despite evidence that they may be wrong. They may make definitive statements about what is or is not happening, but fail to explore their assumptions or other possibilities. They may see their behavior as a function of how others think and act, and discount their own responsibility for it. Normally all this is either taken for granted or kept below the surface. But in dialogue we deliberately seek to make these general patterns of thought observable and accessible and surface the tacit influences that sustain them.

At this point in the dialogue people begin to see and explore the range of assumptions that are present. They ask: Which are true? Which are false? How far is the group willing to go to expose itself? This leads to a second crisis, namely the “crisis of suspension.” Points of view that used to make sense no longer do. The direction of the group is unclear. Some people experience disorientation or perhaps feel marginalized and constrained by others. Polarization occurs as extreme views become stated and defended. The fragmentation that has been hidden is appearing, now in the container.

For example, in an ongoing dialogue with a group of labor and management representatives from a steel mill, the “same old kind” of conflicts emerged. Some participants felt helpless and defeated, others went “ballistic.” Yet they did not walk out. They stayed to explore the ways in which they had all contributed to the unproductive dynamics. Likewise, in the healthcare dialogue, suppressed conflict, anger, and long-time simmering “myths” about one another began to surface.

To manage the crisis of collective suspension, everyone must be aware of what is happening. Rather than panic, withdraw, or fight, people may choose to inquire. Listening here is not just listening to others, but listening to oneself. And people may ask: Where am I listening from? What can I learn if I slow things down and inquire?

Skilled facilitation is critical at this point. The facilitator, however, is not seeking to “correct” or impose order on what is happening, but to show how to suspend what is happening to allow greater insight into the order that is present. The facilitator might point out the polarization and the limiting categories of thought that are rapidly gaining momentum in the group.

3. Inquiry in the Container

If a critical mass of people stay with the process beyond this point, the conversation begins to flow in a new way. In this “cool” environment people begin to inquire together as a whole. New insights often emerge. The energy that had been trapped in rigid and habitual patterns of thought and interaction begins to be freed.

When we facilitated a dialogue in South Africa, people began reflecting on apartheid in ways that surprised them. They were able to stand beside the tension of the topic without being identified with it. Similarly, in the healthcare dialogue, it was at this point that people began to discuss their status as “gods” and stopped blaming others in the “system” for the difficulties they saw.

As people participate, they also begin to watch the session in a new way. One participant from a group of urban leaders in Boston compared it to seeing the inside of their minds performing together in a theatre. People become sensitive to how habitual patterns of interaction can limit creative inquiry.

This phase can be playful and penetrating. Yet it also leads to crisis. People begin to feel the impact that fragmented ways of thinking has had on themselves, their organizations, and their culture. They sense their isolation. Such awareness brings pain — both from the loss of comforting beliefs and by exercising new cognitive and emotional muscles. The “crisis of collective pain” is the challenge of embracing these self-created limits of human experience. It is a deep and challenging crisis, one that requires considerable discipline and collective trust.

4. Creativity in the Container

If the crisis of collective pain can be navigated, a new level of awareness opens. People begin to sense that they are participating in a pool of common meaning because they have sufficiently explored each other’s views. They still may not agree, but their thinking takes on an entirely different rhythm and pace.

At this point, the distinction between memory and fresh thinking becomes apparent. People may find it hard to talk together using the rigid categories of previous understanding. The net of their thought is not fine enough to capture the subtle and delicate understandings that begin to emerge. People may find they do not have adequate words and fall silent. Yet the silence is not an empty void, but one replete with richness. Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet, captures this experience:

“Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrongdoing There is a field I will meet you there When the soul lies down in that grass The world is too full to talk about.”

In this experience, the world is too full to talk about; too full to use language to analyze it. Yet words can also be evocative — narratives that convey richness of meaning. Though we may have few words for such experiences, dialogue raises the possibility of speech that clothes meaning, instead of words merely pointing towards it. I call this kind of experience metalogue, meaning “moving or flowing with.”

Metalogue reveals a conscious, intimate and subtle relationship between the structure and content of an exchange and its meaning. The medium and the message are linked: information from the process conveys as much meaning as the content of the words exchanged. The group does not “have” meaning, it is its meaning. Loosening rigid patterns of thought frees energy that now permits new levels of intelligence and creativity in the container.

Dialogue is not intended to be a problem-solving technique, but a means to explore the underlying incoherence of thought and action that gives rise to the problems we face. It balances more structured problem-solving approaches with the exploration of fundamental habits of attention and assumption behind traditional thinking. By providing a setting in which these subtle and tacit influences on our thinking can be altered, dialogue holds the potential for allowing entirely new kinds of collective intelligence to appear.

William Isaacs is the director of The Dialogue Project, which is a part of the Organizational Learning Center at MIT. He is currently conducting research on dialogue and organizational learning in corporate, political, and social settings around the world.

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Trust and Community

The year before Marianne took office, the division developed a new strategy to ensure that customers’ orders were filled in an optimal way. This initiative had significant organizational consequences, because business units had to cooperate in a way they had not done before. Up to this point, they had operated independently from different countries and locations. To support this strategy, the company installed an integrated IS-IT system, which required a standardization of work processes and a change in mindset for employees.

The financial function mirrored the complexity of the division. A year after this change was introduced, staff members still resisted aligning their work processes with those of other business units and utilizing the IT system’s full capacity. For them to share their knowledge and competency more effectively with each other, the financial group needed to reduce internal competition, establish greater trust, and feel as if they belonged to a community that served the whole division.

The Power of And

To address these challenges, we decided to promote the power of “and.” In all of our activities, we linked seemingly disparate concepts, such as vision/values and reengineering systems/practices; creativity and complex financial issues; fun and tough business problems; and individual growth and team empowerment.

When people understand and identify with the whole, they recognize the importance of their contribution and can better align their unit’s vision with that of the company as a whole.

Behind this double focus were some core beliefs and assumptions:

• People offer the highest leverage for bettering an organization. When individuals become aware of the potential for improvement and are involved in setting the direction and establishing the values they want to live by, they naturally move in that direction.
• To be engaged, people must have a clear image of what they want to create. In addition, they do best by starting with small steps and achieving results quickly.
• When people understand and identify with the whole, they recognize the importance of their contribution and can better align their unit’s vision with that of the company as a whole.

We decided that the best way to put these beliefs into action was through large-group events. Twice a year, we conducted two-day gatherings where people worked on specific, ongoing organizational goals. The setting was informal, and people were invited, not ordered, to attend. To attract participants, we worked to establish a reputation for providing challenging, fun, and result-oriented activities. Before each gathering, we clarified the results we wanted and looked for ways to incorporate creativity, play, and an element of surprise. Throughout the event, we carefully monitored activities and changed the program’s content if people became tired or disinterested.

At every event, one or two top executives talked about the main strategy and development plans for the division, often using material prepared by the financial group in this larger context. These presentations gave the group a sense of the big picture and signaled the importance of their individual contributions. We kept employees who didn’t attend informed of the results through an intranet newsletter.

Vision/Values AND Reengineering Systems/Practices. Before we began conducting these events, the financial group had only a vague idea of its role within the company, which many perceived as simply providing financial reports and business analysis to management. When people came together as a community, a new vision emerged: to create value for the division by being a proactive team player in business decisions, seeing the big picture, focusing on the future, being flexible and energetic, and continually seeking improvement.

To reach this vision, during one of the gatherings, the group decided it needed to establish a culture characterized by respecting the individual, sharing knowledge, challenging each other, and recognizing and rewarding success. As they began to work together differently, based on these values, new opportunities became visible. The group was able to identify “low-hanging fruit,” that is, easy-to-do actions that yield high-leverage consequences. No one could see these possibilities before because work processes had been fragmented.

Creativity AND Complex Financial Issues. To keep energy high and encourage innovative ideas during the events, we employed creative methodologies, including the World Café. In the World Café, four to six people from different functions, levels, and locations sat at each of dozens of small tables scattered throughout a large room. The tables were covered with sheets of paper, and participants used colored pens to record the ideas that emerged from their conversation. Members from each group then moved to other tables, carrying the “seeds” from their conversation with them to share with others.

The method’s success lies in coming up with a question that “travels well” (see “The World Café: Living Knowledge Through Conversations That Matter,” V12N5). Some questions we used were: What does it mean to create value for the division? How can we make the new business system the heart of the financial community? The café setting created a relaxed atmosphere in which people felt at ease sharing their thoughts and listening to others. Losing much of their defensiveness, participants began to appreciate diverse perspectives and engage in intense business-oriented discussions that often yielded remarkable discoveries and insights.

Fun AND Tough Business Problems. We wanted our team-building efforts to be tied directly to increased productivity and results. As such, the games we used related specifically to strategic initiatives and were grounded in daily tasks. For example, to help participants understand process thinking, we gave each group a set of papers, each marked with an element involved in cake baking. Participants had to arrange them in a flow chart, indicating inputs, outputs, activities, and tools. As a result, many felt they finally understood what process thinking was all about.

Another favorite activity was learning how to line-dance, which we presented as a metaphor for understanding the importance of aligning systems. Decked in special t-shirts with cowboy music booming from the speakers, participants struggled to master dance’s difficult steps. When achieved success, with everyone moving together, the group burst into spontaneous clapping.

Individual Growth AND Team Empowerment.

We made stress management a theme at several events. Participants appreciated being able to share their struggles with pressing deadlines and uncomfortable situations. They were surprised at how common their problems were and learned stress-reduction techniques.

To give participants a sense of continuity, momentum, and accomplishment, we allotted time for presenting project results to the whole group. The group then provided feedback and celebrated milestones. This process made individuals more visible to the entire division and also gave everyone a sense that their input was needed and welcomed.

At every large-group event, Marianne awarded the “Golden Glue” prize to individuals who clearly contributed most across business units. We usually had a closing ritual at the end of each gathering that summed up the accomplishments of the event; for instance, each person might describe in one word their most important learning.

Group Achievements

The financial organization has radically changed in the past three years. By pooling individual competence, using integrated systems, and improving processes with a focus on creating value for the division, it has become a proactive, future-oriented partner with other business units, providing valuable input on strategic division-wide decisions. Taking on new responsibility and succeeding has released creative energy into the organization. This enthusiasm was particularly obvious when the group completed a large process analysis in record time on top of ordinary workloads.

In 2000 the financial organization received a prize from the Norwegian Association of MBAs. Although the award was specifically conferred upon Marianne, she openly shared the honor with her colleagues for their willingness to try a new approach and for following through with dedication and determination.

Currently, the whole aluminum division is being reorganized and downsized to become more effective and efficient. In addition, the parent company has made a large acquisition with substantial integration challenges. We believe that, through their participation in this change process, the individuals in the financial community have become better equipped to deal with the challenges they are now facing.

Marianne M. Aamodt was CFO of Hydro Aluminum Metal Products Division from 1998-2002. She is currently head of the Organizational Structure and Dimensioning team for the integration of the newly acquired international German-based aluminum company. This acquisition is the largest in Norwegian history and makes Hydro Europe’s largest, and the world’s third-largest, aluminum company. Mara Senese (senese@online.no) is a senior partner in Senese & Depuis Associates. An American living and working in Norway, since 1987 she has served as a coach and consultant to executives and their organizations facilitating creative learning environments as well as teaching personal mastery, communication, creativity, and intuition development.

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Robert Greenleaf (1904–1990) is known for initiating the powerful movement called “servant-leadership.” Servant-leaders embody leadership characteristics, capacities, attitudes, and values such as trust, deep listening, foresight, caring, accountability, and balance. By leading in a way that truly serves others, such leaders develop human possibilities — in themselves and in others.

Catalyzing Change in a Large Institution

Greenleaf began his career as an executive. As a young man, he was encouraged by a college professor to “create change from inside a large institution.” Following that advice, Greenleaf chose to work within the largest institution in the world at that time, AT&T. After three years of climbing telephone poles, he moved into a job in hiring and assessment.

Greenleaf was intuitively drawn to lead in a different way. During his time with AT&T, he incorporated certain leadership practices in his work.

• Deep Listening and Powerful Questions. First, Greenleaf helped people discover their own greatness by asking powerful questions., “True listening builds strength in people,” he said. By choosing to listen, you assume “a healing attitude with faith that another will rise to the challenge.”Joseph Distephano, one of Greenleaf’s mentees, recounts, “We would talk about ideas; I would ask him two or three questions; he would turn them around on me with Rogerian skill, and he’d hold me accountable for them at the next meeting.” Greenleaf focused not on giving advice, but on asking deeper questions so that others would access greater wisdom and “become convinced in their own hearts for their own reasons.”
• Co-Creativity. Greenleaf also recognized resistance to change in organizations and observed, “People don’t change a habit just because they know a better way.” To support the change process, he developed “study teams,” an early form of action research, so employees could learn from each other.When Greenleaf conceived of the idea of the world’s first corporate personnel assessment center in l948, instead of pushing the idea, he seeded a slow transformational change. He honed his idea, reading texts, exploring the issues, asking questions, and collaborating in the development of a vision of assessments based on the whole person. Ten years later, AT&T launched the world’s first corporate assessment center. Other corporations quickly followed.

  Greenleaf later discussed this approach to change with his son, Newcomb. “Suppose you had a really good idea? How would you go about trying to get it accepted? Here’s how I learned to do it. First, decide who the key people are in getting it adopted. Then, tell them the idea but only a bit at a time.” He explained that eventually others would “come to an idea on their own.”, “But,” his son asked, “how will they know it was your idea?”, “They’ll never know,” Bob Greenleaf answered — as if that were the core beauty of the stratagem.

  “All great things are created for their own sake,” Greenleaf wrote, quoting Robert Frost. Paradoxically, by giving over his ego, he became a legend at AT&T. His humility was based on knowing who he was, his deepest identity.

• Inner Listening. Finally, Greenleaf taught managers to gather “enough information, thought, and intuition to do something useful.” To access this inner knowledge, Greenleaf found ways to “listen inside.” Listening inside was revitalizing and also a pragmatic practice to gain a “wider span of awareness.” This was true whether he was looking out at the stars, sitting quietly on a train, or taking time alone in his favorite room at Bell Labs — the absolutely silent anechoic chamber. Greenleaf often stayed there, renewed by the silence, until he was kicked out.In his journal, Greenleaf described a time when his creative drive was blocked. He wrote about a “shadow side” in himself that did not take enough time for his family and was overly concerned with prestige. Once aware, Greenleaf put his insights to work, finding ways to achieve more balance and taking a chance on greater life and creativity. At 49, he let go of the prestige of his position at AT&T to retire early, a powerful turning point that accelerated his unique work and contribution.

Servant-Leadership Is Conceived

After retirement, Greenleaf did leadership consulting. This was in the heat of the tumultuous l960s era. He left one consulting job at a college feeling like a complete failure, stating, “It was virtually impossible for me to carry out the task that I had gone there to do.”

Greenleaf didn’t bury or deny the pain of failure. He held the creative tension, clarifying his vision of a university that could serve the high purpose of nurturing the needs and spirit of students. He had read all of the novels by the student’s most popular author at the time, Herman Hesse. He thought about one character in Hesse’s Journey to the East, Leo, “a man of extraordinary presence, a servant who raised the spirit of the group with song while doing chores.” In the book, Leo suddenly disappears. The group members later discover that this servant was actually a wise and influential leader. In reflecting on the book, the phrase “servant-leader” popped into Greenleaf’s consciousness.

Greenleaf found a way to put this idea into action. He wrote a short essay called “The Servant as Leader” and sent copies to 200 friends. The piece became an underground classic in the business world.

Greenleaf later learned that companies such as TDIndustries were continually reordering copies. One day, he called TDIndustries CEO Jack Lowe and asked, “What are you doing with all those copies of my essay?” It turned out that Lowe was giving them to everyone in the organization, from office workers to executives. Furthermore, they were all meeting in small groups to read the essay and apply its insights. More than 30 years later, new employee-partners at TDIndustries still receive copies of “The Servant as Leader” and discuss it in groups. This practice may be one reason that the company is consistently in the top 10 of Fortune magazine’s 100 best companies to work for in America.

The essay was distributed more widely than Greenleaf could ever have imagined and catapulted his leadership influence to another level.

Greenleaf’s Legacy

During his elder years, Greenleaf never became rigid or wavered from his focus on life-long learning. He gathered wisdom in resonant conversations with others — some well-known and others not — including ministers, writers, thinkers, doctors, activists, and business luminaries, such as Ira Progoff, Aldous Huxley, Karl Menninger, and Bill Wilson. He and his wife, Esther, intentionally sought out certain people; others, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, appeared synchronistically.

From the wisdom and maturity of his elder years, Greenleaf began to write books, publishing his first at age 74. A quote conveys the experience of his final “meaning-making” years:, “The rewards of living a full life may be measured in joyous moments rather than days or years. These are the treasures that return to mind in the quiet hours. The moments nobly lived, the challenges met, the truth spoken. Meeting life — taking responsibility and leaving it joyfully once taken.”

Greenleaf’s circle of influence continues to expand today, as Stephen Covey, Ken Blanchard, Margaret Wheatley, Parker Palmer, Ann McGee-Cooper, and many other authors cite servant as leader as an inspiration. Warren Bennis called Greenleaf’s work the “most moral, original, useful writing on the topic of leadership.” According to Peter Senge, “No one in the past 30 years has had a more profound impact on thinking about leadership.” In addition, success stories are emerging from companies that have adopted the principles of servant-leadership, such as Southwest Airlines, TDIndustries, Starbucks, USCellular, and Synovus Financial.

The scope of Greenleaf’s influence goes far beyond the workplace. His seminal writings can be found in graduate and undergraduate courses at dozens of universities. Leaders from a spectrum of religious denominations find that servant-leadership mutually reinforces faith literature. Board trustees are using servant-leadership principles to hold institutions “in trust” for all stakeholders. The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership has become a hub for servant-leadership efforts around the world.

Lessons from Greenleaf’s Life

The “Servant Leadership Primer” in the appendix of Robert Greenleaf: A Life of Servant Leadership offers insights and reflections on developing as a servant-leader. Servant-leadership can’t be reduced to a formula or technique. It is about developing capacities, habits, attitudes, and values. All of these contribute to a leader’s growth — like tributaries feeding into a moving stream. And the source of this development starts with one’s identity and spirit.

As you read this biography, you will likely become open to exploring powerful questions about life and leadership. Important questions compel us to reflect deeply and measure success in new ways. Greenleaf measured himself by the “best test” of servant-leadership: Do we, and those we serve, grow as persons? Become healthier, freer, more autonomous, more likely to serve? And what is the effect on the least privileged, are they served or at least not harmed?

Whether you adopt Greenleaf’s best test, develop your own, or find other issues to explore, this book will evoke questions that matter. The story will breathe new life into the way you think about developing the capacity to serve — in yourself, your organization, and your community.

Deborah Vogele Welch (DeborahVW@aol.com), Ph. D., is founding partner of Reflective Leadership Associates, a company that provides consulting, coaching, and e-learning services. She is an adjunct faculty member in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at Capella University and cofounder of Arizona’s local SoL group, Cactus SoL.

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This process usually begins with the CEO. Pressured by shareholders’ demands or analysts’ expectations, top executives sacrifice their personal lives by working 70-hour work weeks. At the same time, they demand that everyone in the organization do the same, pressuring them to produce more with fewer resources. However, results do not necessarily follow. Instead, tension increases, and commitment, energy, and creativity all decline.

Executives justify sacrificing their souls because they believe that everything is secondary to the bottom line. However, this assumption is based on the erroneous belief that people need to work harder in order to produce better outcomes. This is not true. Working harder tends to produce more—but of the same. If companies want to increase their competitiveness, they need to constantly create new products and services, new strategies, new processes, and often a new organizational culture. As the cliché goes, they need to work smarter, not harder.

Feeding the Soul

But current working conditions don’t support working smarter. According to quality pioneer Edward Deming, our prevailing system of management is based on fear. Fear of failure, fear of being embarrassed, fear of not getting a promotion, or fear of getting fired. Fear is the dominant emotion—the main source of energy and the impetus to action.

But when human beings are in a state of fear, do they behave in innovative or habitual ways? Habitual, of course! When we’re afraid, we almost always revert to our most ingrained patterns of behavior. In fact, brain physiologists explain that the primitive part of the brain takes over—the limbic system, where our “fight or flight” programming resides.

Why does management by fear still persist? Most organizations are still designed based on what Douglas McGregor termed “Theory X”—the idea that employees are unreliable and uncommitted, and work merely to earn a paycheck. From this perspective, people need to be bullied or frightened into acting on behalf of the organization. “Theory Y,” however, offers another possibility—that employees are responsible adults who want to make a contribution. Based on this alternative mindset, it is possible to consider aspiration as a source of action—one that is far more effective than desperation ever could be.

Businesses can learn a lot from sports and the arts in this regard. Ask an athlete what usually happens when she mentally repeats “Can’t miss” or “Can’t fail” before or during a performance versus repeating “I’ll make it” or “I’ll get it.” Thinking about what you want to create works much better than thinking about what you want to avoid. Picasso pointed out that if you trace the history of any great piece of art, the crucial moment in its development inevitably came when the artist had the vision of what needed to be created. Why would business be different? Being able to articulate what deeply matters to us is a powerful source of energy. As the old saying goes, “Dreams feed the soul.”

Accessing the Soul

Visualizing what we want to create doesn’t mean escaping reality; it means being present in a new way. The martial arts offer an excellent example of handling challenges from a posture of creativity rather than fear. The essence of disciplines such as karate and aikido is to develop a capacity to be more and more quiet, centered, and relaxed in dangerous situations. Martial artists know that, by doing so, they can produce outstanding results.

During the last several years, the Society for Organizational Learning has sponsored a research project involving interviews with more than 150 leading scientists, artists, and government, business, and religious leaders. One of the conclusions reached by the researchers has been that the internal place from which a leader operates matters; in other words, the quality of consciousness determines the quality of performance.

If these ideas seem too abstract, take a moment to reflect on the best decisions you have made in your life, professionally or personally. Now remember where you were when you made those decisions. Were you in the office, feeling stressed or desperately grasping for an answer to your problems? Or were you taking a shower, driving quietly, or observing your kids? I wager it was the latter.

When Leonardo da Vinci was painting “The Last Supper,” the church commissioner was impatient for the painting to be completed and complained to the Duke that Leonardo occasionally took long breaks from his work. The commissioner argued, “If a gardener doesn’t take his hands off his scissors during the whole day, why does [da Vinci] need to leave his paintbrush?” But Leonardo understood that he needed incubation periods, away from the work, in order to produce his best. With humor, he replied to the Duke, “Great geniuses sometimes work better when they work less.”

Different fields of knowledge have alternative explanations for this phenomenon. Psychologists would say that our unconscious mind processes information, in quantity and speed, thousands and thousands of times more effectively than our conscious mind. When we turn off our conscious mind, we let the unconscious mind work better and the answer suddenly comes to us. Spiritual leaders would say that, in silencing our mind, we access our soul, which is our full potential and knows all.

Connecting Souls

Although individual performances are important, companies increasingly rely on decisions and actions taken by teams. Here, again, businesses can take lessons from the world of sports. High-performing sports teams sometimes find themselves “in the zone,” where they experience peak performance. Bill Russell, the star center of the 11-time world champion Boston Celtics, spoke of those special times:, “Every so often a Celtic game would heat up so that it became more than a physical or even a mental game, and would be magical. That feeling is very difficult to describe, and I certainly never talked about it when I was playing. When it happened, I could feel my play rise to a new level. It came rarely, and would last anywhere from five minutes to a whole quarter or more. … It would surround not only me and the other Celtics, but also the players on the other team, even the referees.”

In researching all kinds of high-performing teams—heart surgeons, firefighters, astronauts, trial lawyers, business teams, and others—Carl Larson of the University of Denver found the same phenomenon reported in different terms: the atmosphere of the room becomes “super-charged”; there seems to be a “group mind” or “collective wisdom”; team members experience the sensation of being “a conscious part of even a more conscious whole” and feel a “luminous transparency” between all the participants. David Bohm, the famous quantum physicist, once explained this experience to consultant Joseph Jaworski as “a single intelligence that works with people who are moving in a relationship with one another.”

If you want scientific proof that this “single mind” could exist, consider the experiment by Mexican neurophysiologist Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum. Two people meditated together for a period of 20 minutes, aiming to feel each other’s presence. They then entered separate Faraday chambers (metallic enclosures that block all electromagnetic signals) while attempting to maintain their direct communication. One of the subjects was shown a flash of light that produced electrophysiological responses; the responses were measured by a machine. In about one in four cases, although no electromagnetic signals could have been transmitted between the two subjects, the brain of the person who hadn’t been exposed to the light showed electrical activity quite similar to that displayed in the first subject.

In my work as consultant, I have seen several groups experience this special kind of connection. Most of the time, the precipitating factor was that people talked openly and listened deeply—or, as I prefer to say, talked and listened from the heart. And as many ancient cultures believed, the heart leads directly to the soul.

Stop Giving Up, Start Using It

In modern society, we take for granted the existence of gravitational and magnetic fields. Executives and managers must also learn to recognize that every company produces its particular social field, created by people’s thoughts and emotions, relationships, and the organization’s physical space. This field is an invisible but powerful force that influences the quality of shortand long-term performance.

Giving up your soul doesn’t create a promising field and it doesn’t produce the best possible results, even over the short run. The alternative strategy: Start really using your soul—feeding, accessing, and connecting. By doing so, you will produce much better outcomes in all senses—financial and material, but also physical and spiritual. As Joseph Jaworski says, “Anyone who walks into a locker room of a championship team can feel the energy, the excitement, the mutual trust and the extraordinary sense of the possible.” Why can’t you feel the same when entering your office? It can be this way, as long as you bring your soul along for the ride.

Tácito Nobre is a senior consultant with Axialent (www.axialent.com).

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I glanced around secretively, leaned over the table that separated us, and whispered to Diane, “You know, this transformational change is spiritual.” I feared making this statement out loud because I was convinced that had I described the change process as a spiritual journey, the mechanistic organization would have rejected me quickly. On the other hand, when I linked the change effort to materialism (reduced costs and increased revenues), I was provided heroic status—at least for a time.

“Spirit at work” is one of the recent themes of people seeking to help organizations adopt a holistic and organic worldview. And, like other well-intended and theoretically sound initiatives, it is in danger of being rejected as a fad. But spirit at work is not a quick fix to problems; it embraces the complexity of life and the human condition—and focuses on the difficult inner work followed by courageous actions needed to effect profound transformation.

The change effort I was involved in began in 1990 with the need to save the enterprise millions of dollars and respond to a union-organizing effort. In addition, demographic and market changes that demanded new ways of doing things were on the horizon. We all felt a sense of urgency and excitement.

A period of exploration and study about ideas new to organizational life began. We read books, attended conferences, and visited other organizations. Those who had caused the crisis retreated to the safety of their offices. We began to feel the end of the old ways, the confusion of chaos (which we welcomed), and the uncertainty of new approaches.

People responded to the challenge. The worries and frustrations of day-to-day life receded from awareness. A powerful sense of purpose became real. The rule books went out the door. Finding what worked was what was important. Barriers were eliminated. Those with the needed skills or information led, regardless of rank, and all who wanted participated in the creative process. People learned and adapted as they proceeded.

Employees were involved in the redesign of their work. Consultants provided facilitation and methods. Managers made sure the employees felt valued, involved, and informed during this change effort. Trust and credibility grew, and the union-organizing effort went away. The energy level was incredible. We were alive in the moment instead of toiling for an obscure future.

Operational results were phenomenal. Now when employees went to conferences they were presenters as well as observers. People began to visit to learn from the business unit. Consultants began to write about this work.

For a moment we were more of our natural selves: braver, smarter, and more creative than during more orderly times. We worked harder, cared for one another more, and accepted our differences. We were filled with hope for the possibilities we saw for us as people and for the life we lived at work.

As the change effort continued, its meaning became clear to me. I realized the ways in which leadership can bring forth mediocre organizations and dispirited people. I came to understand the powerful energy generated by a shared vision. I saw the courage summoned when people create together what they want most for their lives. I felt the inspiration born when people live by their deepest values.

This describes spirit at work. Spirit is not the move to teams, the quality efforts, the job redesign, and all the other tools we use to change organizations. Spirit is the profound energy, the creativity, and the commitment that emerges when free people live their highest and most authentic potential. For me today, spirit at work represents the expression of our deepest authenticity as, inspired by our sense of purpose and guided by our values, we step into the unknown and move courageously together toward a bold vision, feeling the aliveness of life experienced completely and humanity realized more fully.

Historically, spirit at work was effectively destroyed by industrialization when work was redesigned to make money for others. Our spirit at work at the newspaper was eventually destroyed by people who, afraid to look within, projected their fear, pain, and limitations outward and destroyed our creation.

Why is spirit important? Because, simply, our spirituality makes us human, connects us to all of life, and elevates us to our potential as caring people. The uncertainty of the times, the suffering all around us, our need to help others, and the grandeur of life focus our attention on spirit at this difficult time in our history.

Tom Heuerman is a leadership and organizational change consultant, writer, and wildlife photographer. His essays on life, leadership, and organizations are available at www.amorenaturalway.com.

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