One of the dynamics that drives a SPoR view of leadership is Buber’s i-thou.
The structure of this language is how a hyphen makes two words connected. Indeed, i-thou is one word. Similarly, Following-Leading is one word. And, this linguistic structure is active. It is not followership-leadership but rather Following-Leading, it is focused on doing.
If you want to learn more of this way of understanding then you can join us in March for four online workshops (https://safetyrisk.net/leading-managing-and-supervising-online-workshops-march-2026/).
In SPoR, leading is not about being ‘over’ or ‘under’ anything. Neither is leading about position or status. In the same way, SPoR does not understand High Reliability as something an organisation achieves. There is no such thing as a HRO. There is only ‘HROing’ – an active mode of organising that never stops, never ‘drifts’ and never perfects.
The idea of meeting in the hyphen is discussed beautifully in the book Real Meeting by Aneta and Brian Darlington (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/real-meeting-a-book-on-being-in-leadership/). In their book the show semiotically how the hyphen works.
How much do you move as a leader to ‘meet’ followers?
What joins you to the spirit and heart of following?
Who do you follow as a leader?
Who do you learn from?
Do you know how to lead with ‘humble enquiry’? (https://archive.org/details/humbleinquirygen0000sche)
Are you a ‘teller’ or more a ‘listener’?
Do you know how to ‘serve’ just as much as to ‘receive’?
These are all vital questions for leaders in organisations who want to better tackle the wicked problem of risk and learning.
This is why in SPoR, the semiotic of the hyphen is so important. For example, the word ‘if-then’ captures the real nature of how risk works. All risk assessments work on the nature of ‘if-then’.
In SPoR, this how we understand most things in dialectic: now-not-yet, subject-object, the-one-and-the-many, order-disorder, fragility-anti-fragility, faith-reason, time-eternity or freedom-necessity.
The more we think of these things in tension, the better one can lead and follow. Anchoring to one position as-if these are not intension leads to the seduction of absolute certainty, binary opposition and meaningless absolutes in slogans eg. blame fixes nothing.
However, existing in the hyphen is not easy. Existing in tensions between competing opposites is challenging. Are you up for that challenge? If you are then you will get a great deal from the workshops being proposed in March (https://spor.com.au/leading-managing-supervising-workshops/).
The hyphen is the triarchic place holder in dialectic tension between two things, holding back the seduction of the binary utopia. The quest for Utopias was
discussed in the first book in this series, Risk Makes Sense). For Ellul (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Ellul ), the hyphen denotes what is active/not inactive. It represents a conversation between two coexisting opposites.
Jung also captures the tension of dialectic in his discussion on Mandala (see Jung, C.G., (1959) Mandala Symbolism. The Mandala represents the inter weaving of opposing forces in tension as was discussed in our book on semiotics (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/spor-and-semiotics/ ).
If you want to know more about the dynamic of following-leading, you can register for the workshops here: admin@spor.com.au
Prof. Robert Long
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