(This post is anchored to the new release book by Aneta and Brian Darlington Real Meeting, Leadership is Time and a Simple Cup of Coffee).
The book is on sale here: https://www.humandymensions.com/product/real-meeting-a-book-on-being-in-leadership/ Please note, when you purchase the book that credit options are given to you at the checkout stage.
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So often, the literature in Leadership is flooded with famous people, generals, athletes and ex-CEOs. Most of what circulates in this space is not about Leadership but about ‘heroship’.
Real leadership is only as good as its followership (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/following-leading-risk/).
A classic in the heroship space is the tale told by Simon Sinek about how he justified pushing in line to get a free bagel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tif2D-rQ0fM ). That’s right, so many are conned by Sinek’s rhetoric but his ethic is appalling. Without a real ethic of service-humility, there is no Leadership. And Sinek is one of the worst in the heroship genre of non-leadership presentations. This story by Sinek demonstrates that he can’t see people, he only sees objects in the way to achieving his selfishness (a vice, not a virtue). And he states it as such! This is i-it! NOT i-thou.
The book Real Meeting is anchored to the work of Buber (i-thou) who stated that all life is meeting. Without an understanding of the dynamic of i-thou, you will never understand either real Leadership or Real Meeting. You can download Buber for free here: https://www.maximusveritas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/iandthou.pdf
When you think you can push in at the front of a line of 200 people who have been waiting for a bagel, your ethic is driven by self NOT Meeting the other.
When you think risk and safety is all about telling NOT listening, your ethic is driven by self not by Meeting the other.
The opposite of Leadership is living in the i-it like Sinek. The key to Leadership is living in the Meeting of i-thou so that the Leader-Follower dynamic is the foundation for leading.
In Aneta and Brian’s book they go into extensive discussion about what happens when we hold meetings but never ‘meet’ anyone. These are of meetings of distrust, formality, process, performance, ego, arrogance and minutes of meeting. BUT, no ‘Meeting’ has occurred. There has been no connection!
There is no book on the market in Leadership like this. The way Aneta and Brian explain Buber’s i-thou, is accessible and builds on the concept. They go into great semiotic detail about what the hyphen means in i-thou (Chapter 3). This discussion makes i-thou come alive and extracts what i-thou means in practice. This is how SPoR is practiced in Mondi Group.
There is no book on the market that explains i-thou semiotically except for this book.
When we can visualise semiotically the hyphen as an extension of time then we can ‘see’ just how much we move towards the other to connect and ‘meet’. Hence the subtitle of the book ‘Leadership is Time and a Simple Cup of Coffee’. In Sinek heroship, the reason why one pushes in front of the line is to save time because heroes don’t wait’, all they see is obstacles to their ego and self (i-it). Yet people pay absurd amounts of money to see a conman spruik heroship. This is the delusion of performance. This is what one gets from any focus on ‘performance’.
In Real Meeting we leave performance and whatever one measures as performance behind. If you focus is performance, you won’t ‘Meet’ anyone. Performance is one of the greatest inhibitors for Meeting. Performance is one of the greatest inhibitors for Learning (https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-the-nature-of-performance-and-hop/).
If you are interested in understanding Buber and i-thou further, we have a 5 session Module on offer: https://cllr.com.au/product/buber-i-thou-and-risk-module-27/
BTW, Performance makes time a measure of outcome. When we experience Real Meeting, time becomes irrelevant. This is why in SPoR we have no interest in the delusions of HOP.
When your interest is in how people and organisations perform, you are already trapped in Technique (Ellul). In SPoR we are not interested in how people or organisations ‘perform’ in safety.
What we are interested in SPoR is, Meeting you in understanding how you tackle risk.
If you want to learn about SPoR and how it shifts away from performance to improve safety so that what you do is practical, positive and enriching, you can write here: admin@spor.com.au and, we will let you know when a course is on near you. Or if you want, you can access the free online Introduction to SPoR Module.
Dr Rob Long
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