{"id":27784,"date":"2021-10-15T01:05:38","date_gmt":"2021-10-15T08:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=27784"},"modified":"2021-10-15T01:05:38","modified_gmt":"2021-10-15T08:05:38","slug":"going-deeper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/going-deeper\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Deeper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simon P. Walker writes Leading Out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership (The Undefended Leader Trilogy Book 1)<\/em> out of his experience working with The Leadership Community<\/em>.[1]<\/a> That alone sets his work apart from many other books classified under leadership development based on psychological insight. Walker writes for the purpose of identifying, understanding, and sharing the mechanisms by which leaders can be set free from the defended chains that limit their capacity and effectiveness as leaders. He writes to empower leaders towards developing moral authority exemplified through \u201cremarkable character\u201d[2]<\/a> and the practice of compassion. Courage and integrity form the bedrock of remarkable character. After describing the challenging landscape of idealization, idealism, and unmet emotional needs most leaders must navigate, Walker elaborates the defensive survival tactics utilized by many leaders in order to survive: developing a front- (public) and back- (private) stage life, exercising control, and making use of power. He adds to this a loose psychological analysis of how individuals develop their basis of trust throughout infancy and childhood. Using research by Kim Bartholomew and Leonard M. Horowitz (1991), he contends four distinct ego types tend to emerge and that these ego types influence how one leads. The ego types are identified as shaping, defining, adapting, and defending. To move from being a defended leader to an undefended leader, one must first identify a source of approval who will \u201c\u2026not be overwhelmed by our failures and weaknesses.\u201d[3]<\/a> For Walker, this can only ultimately be found in God, though he doesn\u2019t ever come out and directly name the being he describes. Being securely held by this source of approval allows one to grow in the freedom to give, to lead in the direct and vulnerable manner of a child, to more fully develop one\u2019s moral authority, and lean into the humble journey of maturing as an undefended leader.<\/p>\n

As I made my way through Walker\u2019s book, I tried to keep myself mindful of my NPO and my posture as a leader in my upcoming Design Workshop. Walker\u2019s description of the shaping ego resonates deeply for me. I regularly see opportunity where others see threat, or a dead end, or non-starter. I love engaging those types of dynamics. It is very energizing for me. \u201cWhat might be possible if\u2026\u201d is one of my mantras. Rescuing others has been part of my journey. I\u2019m at a different place with that now\u2014inviting others to engage with discerning their path forward and accompanying them in that work and journey. Defining my own reality is also central to how I have operated and continue to operate. It\u2019s a frequent experience to be told my perspective is \u2018unique.\u2019 That is often not meant as a compliment. So, I\u2019ve had to work at inviting people to unpack \u2018unique\u2019 for me so that I can better evaluate the critique (or compliment when that is the case) and keep on growing. Walker\u2019s front-stage and back-stage descriptions for the shaping ego didn\u2019t resonate as strongly with me, so I need to sit with that a bit more.<\/p>\n

Based on Walker\u2019s insights, I am mostly pondering the following dynamic as I prepare for my Design Workshop. I find idealism is a close companion to seeing what might be possible in a given situation. Walker writes about the dissonance between the ideal and reality and the challenge this can be for leaders to navigate with those they are leading. Most people don\u2019t want to deal with the tension between ideal and reality. They would rather let go of the ideal and\/or learn to tolerate the reality. My NPO is inviting young adults in Sidon, Lebanon (and Salem, Oregon) to develop practical skills for translating the values of justice, equity, and reconciliation into lived reality in their contexts. Right now, given the complex and discouraging situation in Lebanon, most young people are deeply depressed. To ask them to be part of this NPO is inviting them into significant dissonance between the ideals they have been trying to work towards and the brutal realities they and their families now face. For most people their energy is going towards basic survival\u2014finding work to pay for very minimal food supplies, adapting their daily life around when there is electricity for an hour or two, waiting in hours-long lines for fuel, scrounging the country for now impossible to find basic medications. Optimism is not a sufficient bulwark against this overwhelming flood of despair and rescuing these communities from their country\u2019s disastrous leadership is beyond my ability to do. And yet the heartbeat of this NPO is more needed than ever. I find myself returning to one of Walker\u2019s closing comments:<\/p>\n

“Our task, as human beings, as human leaders, is far more humble and close to home. It is to grow up. It is to learn, through the experiences we are given, who we are\u2014what it means to be courageous, what it is to serve, what it is to be loved and to love, what it is to be real, what it is to be fully human. True leadership is leadership of ourselves and others into this kind of life: embracing our full humanity, discovering what it is to be fully human, to participate fully in the world.”[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps through this insight I can find a way forward. Perhaps there is a way I can facilitate the collaborative exercises to invite participants to discover how they are living examples of courage in their current context, even as we also explore possibilities for how they could further develop their capacities to serve their local communities guided by the values of justice, equity, and reconciliation.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Walker, Simon. 2007. Leading out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership<\/em>. Carlisle: Piquant, 1.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 21.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 132.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 196.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simon P. Walker writes Leading Out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership (The Undefended Leader Trilogy Book 1) out of his experience working with The Leadership Community.[1] That alone sets his work apart from many other books classified under leadership development based on psychological insight. Walker writes for the purpose of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2037,1522,2051,35,1718],"class_list":["post-27784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-compassion","tag-courage","tag-dissonance","tag-leadership","tag-walker","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27785,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27784\/revisions\/27785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}