The Leadership Mystique and Play-doh \u2013 Manfred Kets De Vries<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sitting in an \u201cInspire Justice\u201d advocacy conference put on by a partnership between World Vision and our church.\u00a0 The attendance isn\u2019t what we had planned and hoped for, but key leaders are here and for that I\u2019m grateful.\u00a0 But as I listen to the speakers and as we discuss ways of influence and impact on the behalf of the marginalized, my thoughts keep returning to our assigned book.<\/p>\n
The Leadership Mystique by De Vries is a compendium of ideas and suggestions around the topic of leadership.\u00a0 I am reminded of the book while our speaker is requesting that we all initial our name on an outline of a human body, near the body part that best expresses our gifts.\u00a0 This is all part of assessing personality and emotional intelligence.\u00a0 The \u201cright-brainers\u201d love this exercise \u2013 also, because we have pipe-cleaners and Play-doh on the tables for those less analytical, to offer expression and input to the problems discussed. \u00a0At the same time, the \u201cleft-brainers\u201d are already writing letters to their congressmen suggesting support of a \u201cclean water for children\u201d bill!<\/p>\n
De Vries understands that leadership growth will come with an acknowledgement of the importance of emotional intelligence and different styles of leadership.\u00a0 We need to 1) understand ourselves, 2) learn to manage our emotions and 3) learn to recognize and deal with the emotions of others.\u00a0 Our speaker, a Latina pastor from Honduras is artful in identifying the essence of each person\u2019s emotions.\u00a0 She also is excellent in listening when comments are given and shows the appropriate body language toward our group.\u00a0 I think the author would give her a high grade in leadership.<\/p>\n
De Vries also speaks to the importance of storytelling, illustrating and metaphors \u2013 using the \u201cfrog in the pot\u201d example himself.\u00a0 This morning is full of stories, stories of hungry kids, stories of mothers having to walk an hour for water etc.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard them all before but they still communicate.\u00a0 They still cause me to act.\u00a0 Storytelling is essential.<\/p>\n
Six people sit around my table.\u00a0 We are given 10 minutes each hour to discuss some of the advocacy actions that are presented.\u00a0 The author of The Leadership Mystique speaks of dysfunctional leadership, the shadow side of executives and that many times the public life of a leader is different than their private life.\u00a0 We too, are told this morning that politicians are mainly figureheads and that they sometimes vote for the highest bidder publically, although they may agree with you privately.\u00a0 Since they are primarily figureheads \u2013 similar to the leaders De Vries speaks of \u2013 it might be best to take time to talk, write and influence a congressman\u2019s aids or chiefs of staff.\u00a0 Then they in turn will influence the policy maker.<\/p>\n
The book jumps all over and touches on many areas of leadership, but one last observation is coming to me during the afternoon session.\u00a0 Our speaker is again emphasizing the importance of influencing those close to an elected official rather than the official himself, one that can see through his narcissism and self-importance.\u00a0 De Vries speaks of the fact that a good leader understands that he will have some narcissistic thoughts.\u00a0 Therefore, great leaders create a climate where open and frank conversation is allowed and they employee at least one person who can push back and openly confront him or her \u2013 without a threat of job loss!<\/p>\n
As the conference closes, the last presenter encourages us to visit a World Vision project.\u00a0 Take a trip where poverty can be experienced.\u00a0 Travel more and travel often.\u00a0 This dovetails with De Vries\u2019 idea of Global leadership development.\u00a0 He lists the five T\u2019s: tradition, travel, training, transfers, and team learning.\u00a0 I have to agree.\u00a0 I build a portion of my mission vision for our church on travel \u2013 not so much for what we can do for others, but for the exposure and challenges that come to our worldview when we get out of our familiar context.<\/p>\n
De Vries concludes by sharing that worldviews can be developed to reflect a shared purpose.\u00a0 I have to agree.\u00a0 This can be good for those of us at the conference and for leaders everywhere \u2013 a worldview of leadership that can be develop to incorporate hope, humanity, humility and humor.\u00a0 That\u2019s good leadership!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Leadership Mystique and Play-doh \u2013 Manfred Kets De Vries I\u2019m sitting in an \u201cInspire Justice\u201d advocacy conference put on by a partnership between World Vision and our church.\u00a0 The attendance isn\u2019t what we had planned and hoped for, but key leaders are here and for that I\u2019m grateful.\u00a0 But as I listen to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"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":[248,2,246],"class_list":["post-602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-devries","tag-dminlgp","tag-ketsdevries","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1938,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions\/1938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}