Otis' note: I have to say Leadership Capacity 4 Be Inclusive has gotten away from me. Don't worry, we will get to the last three capacities. But the next three posts will be on the important subject of Inclusiveness. Stay with me: and if you find what I am writing about here useful, I do hope you will pass it along...
Let’s continue with Leadership Capacity 4 Be Inclusive.
In my prior post regarding this capacity I was writing about separativeness as a way of helping you begin to understand what inclusiveness is.
What is separative leadership? It is the opposite of inclusive leadership. And what does it mean to be inclusive?
There is a very strong tie between inclusiveness and the humility that Jim Collins describes in Good to Great as Level Five leadership: humble leaders have the empathetic, intuitive capacity to sense all of life and the interconnectedness of the whole. In the personality style assessments we do for leaders as part of our work with them, this shows up as the Aesthetic value. Top flight CEO's possess that as the fourth value, whereas others have it as the bottom value.
To become inclusive requires mastery of the ego. The ego is not bad, but when it is running the show (as it is in most leaders), it is separative and therefore fear-based. This is why becoming emotionally intelligent—possessing self knowledge—is the most important thing you can do to break through your current limitations (the lid) and go to the next level of leadership.
Let’s look at a current example: the difference between the campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama. McCain went down the path of playing the fear card, which is separative. He attempted to cover it by selecting Sarah Palin, a female, to make himself appear inclusive. But the net is his campaign was run on fear and based on fear.
There were enough people in the United States who, at some level, know that working from fear is taking us down as a country. This country was founded on courage, not fear. It was founded on inclusiveness (send us your cold, hungry and down-trodden), not separativeness. Colin Powell summed it up in his endorsement of Obama when he said that his endorsement was because of “the inclusiveness” of Obama’s campaign.
But in real life terms, how do we see inclusiveness at work? It means you draw out the best in every single person around you, no matter whether you like them or not. It means you can separate a person’s behavior from their potential and respond to both at the same time. In short, it means you have the capacity to be ruthlessly honest and unconditionally supportive concurrently.
What is ruthless honesty + unconditional support? You say all that needs to be said (ruthlessly honest) in a manner that enables the other to use your feedback to evolve (unconditionally supportive). I am not talking about being “nice” here. Honest feedback, even when delivered supportively, often feels very harsh to the other person’s ego. But everyone else can see that it is truly supportive, that you are confronting the brutal facts while at the same time pulling for that person to grow and evolve.
Ruthless honesty without unconditional support is brutality. Unconditional support without ruthless honesty is a soggy, gooey mess tantamount to entropy and inertia. This balance is one of the most difficult to strike, but when you do, the very essence of life is at your command. Three posts from now, you will see that in the words of the greatest leader of all time. In the next post, however, we will look at an intensely practical example I have seen in virtually every leader I have worked with or known, including my self.
