Deep, Interior Leadership<\/p>\n
Thanks to the help of Manfred Kets de Vries, I have been set free in my true leadership identity. With de Vries semi-clinical, psychoanalytical angle on leadership and the powerful tools and diagnostics provided in “Leadership Mystique: Leading Behavior in the Human Enterprise,” I can now self-identify as a cyclothymic, passive-aggressive, masochistic, sadistic, antisocial, schizoid, avoidant, borderline, schizotypical, depressive, dependent, histrionic, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid, narcissistic<\/em> leader who splits, projects, undoes, denies, displaces, regresses, represses, isolates, reacts, converts, suppresses, rationalizes, alturizes, and humorfies<\/em> all conflict to strive for the top with a whatever-it-takes mentality to appear to be the bullet-proof leader our world needs me to be.[1]<\/a> If knowing<\/em> is half the battle in leadership identity, I am now half way there!<\/p>\n All joking aside, I found Vries angle on leadership to be truly fresh and needed. There are mass volumes of leadership resources in our culture that could be considered for leadership junkies <\/em>who strive to apply all the veneer of great leadership. Based on a truly how-to-mentality<\/em>\u00a0that skims over the deep interior work that is needed in the head of the leader. And while the heart, strength, and soul of a leader gets plenty of play in the majority of leadership content available in our more pop-leadership culture, de Vries emphasis on understanding the good, bad, and ugly of the inter-weaving of our whole lives (past, present, future\/heart, soul, strength, mind) is powerful and potentially highly transformational.<\/p>\n The closest touch I have had to this angle or level of leadership analysis has been through the Church Planters Assessment Center. In the assessment center I went through when I was in process of planting my first church, I had to fill out the Minnesota Multi-phasic Inventory (MMPI). The MMPI was a 600+ question inventory that asked some very bizarre questions along what I would have to now call some psychoanalytical scale. Some of the questions were like, \u201cDo you ever scan a room for objects you could impale yourself with?\u201d Or, \u201cDo you ever scan a room for objects you could impale others with?\u201d followed by questions like, \u201cDo you like cats?\u201d These were not exact questions, but the real ones were similarly bizarre and dark (especially the ones about cats).<\/p>\n I remember all of us being assessed and that assessment center where rather weirded-out <\/em>by the inventory until it was explained that the MMPI is used to check the psychological health of an individual and make sure she\/he fits in the healthy social range<\/em> before entering the work of church planting because of the extreme stress and pressure that church planters face. Overtime, that explanation has made great sense as I have seen what church planting can do to planters, their spouses and families, and those who become a part of the early days of planting.<\/p>\n In chapter six entitled, The Rot at the Top<\/em>, I think de Vries captures the greatest threat to leadership and especially greatest threat of delusional leadership. Vries writes, \u201cThe fantasies<\/em> or scripts that make up a person\u2019s interior world \u2013 the stereotyped well-rehearsed, constantly repeated ways of behaving and acting that determine an individual\u2019s particular cognitive and affective map \u2013 are essential to understanding that person.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n Too many times in our pop-leadership culture, <\/em>the true diligence needed to recruit, equip, and empower or even just follow whole, healthy <\/em>leaders is not prioritized or even on the radar. At best, we talk of character and integrity but usually in a oversimplified, cookbook <\/em>fashion that works on the veneer versus hitting the deep, interior tissue.<\/p>\n It seems leadership in our culture is so vulnerable to chase what de Vries calls the four P\u2019s of power, perks, podium, and pay, that we are blind to the fractures, breaks, and necessary repairs needed to our interior as the exterior chase dominates.[3]<\/a> Not only does this lead to the rot <\/em>of the leader but to the ruining of an entire organization through the decay of its culture.<\/p>\n Reading \u201cLeadership Mystique\u201d truly peaked my interest and raised awareness of the deep void of leadership focus and resources about the interwoven deep interior\u00a0of a leader. As I have reflected over the week on this it seems the majority of the pop-leadership<\/em> culture is built on leadership prowess without any balance or development of leadership psyche. I wonder what would have to change to tip the scales to really bring some weight to the psychoanalytical\u00a0dimension of leadership? How could a leaders deep interior really be acknowledged and developed? What would be the broader and applicable tools and methods that could actually help leaders, organizations, and our culture bring the reality that leadership is a human behavior enterprise<\/em> with human beings with a broken human condition attempting live towards an incredible human capacity? With such resources as Leadership Mystique, <\/em>there is at least a glimmer of hope for the deep, interior leadership needed in our culture.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, The Leadership Mystique: Leading Behavior in the Human Enterprise<\/em>, 2nd ed. (Harlow, England.: FT Press, 2009), 12-16.<\/p>\n