Leadership Large and Small

The Wonkette points with amusement to a New York Times headline from Friday, February 24, 2006, that a "Violent Cycle of Revenge Stuns Iraqis.”  Can anyone really be “stunned” by any violence that occurs in Iraq?  That current events seem like a build-up to civil war is almost exactly what would be predicted by at least one model of leadership and followership in groups.  SyMLOG ( Systematic Multiple Level Observations of Groups), a leadership model we use in our professional development programs, would suggest that trying to achieve unification via more stringent enforcement of authority, rules and regulations will likely lead to increasing—not less—polarization among factions.  The same is true of organizations: mergers between departments, divisions or even entire businesses or schools seldom work when the main glue holding things together is brute force or authority. 

That said, the impulse to enforce authority seems almost irresistible in such circumstances, at least to a great many people.  What SyMLOG would suggest instead is an approach that balances authority with concern for group welfare.  Robert Freed Bales, the developer of SyMLOG, defined leadership as the minimization of polarization, the maximization of unification, and the avoidance of scapegoating.  Maybe we need a bit more leadership of this type in our schools, businesses, countries and world.  Just a thought …