Welcome to The Partnership Leader! As the title suggests, this blog discusses leadership — in particular, a Partnership approach to leadership. The term, Partnership (with a capital P), was coined by cultural historian Riane Eisler and describes an emerging type of leadership that is both very applicable to the dynamic world in which all of our organizations presently operate, and intrinsically rewarding for its practitioners.
Background
This blog has been many years in the making. As a woman and leader in the high technology industry, I have had the opportunity to work with some of the industry’s most progressive and visonary leaders. Yet, even in these relatively enlightened environments, I sometimes felt that organizational norms hindered rather than helped us to achieve our goals. Although collaboration was essential to organizational success, structures, reward systems and organizational dynamics tended to encourage competition; being heard in meetings often involved grabbing and holding the “ball” of meeting airtime, limiting the scope of ideas considered; and organizational learning and flexibility seemed to be constrained by a network of vested interests. Communications flowed regularly from the top, yet employees complained that “communications are poor.”
Over time, I came to learn that the sense of dissonance that I sometimes felt with respect to “business as usual” was not unique to me or my industry, but was shared by many women and men in the corporate world. My conversations with leaders in sectors as diverse as high technology, health care, non-profits, education, and consulting have confirmed that these problems can be found in virtually every industry. I also found a hunger, at almost every level of the organization, for meaningful work, and a workplace which encourages mutual respect, trust, collaboration, and in which team members can make their fullest contribution.
In my doctoral studies, I discovered how a network of assumptions shapes our worldviews and by extension the social structures we create. I was fortunate to meet and have the opportunity to collaborate with Professor Alfonso Montuori, a pioneer in applying Riane Eisler’s Partnership framework to leadership and organizations and director of the graduate program in Transformational Leadership at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
According to Montuori, the bureaucratic structure and the modern management style, still used by many organizations, is an historical creation, developed and adapted by men for a particular purpose and environment. As a historical creation, it reflects the assumptions its creators held about about the nature of the world, and us as human beings. The successes of modern organizations have been well-documented; yet, it has become widely recognized that many of the fundamental assumptions that underpin this approach, are no longer true and, certainly, the environment has changed radically!
Therefore, if we and are organizations (and our larger world as a whole) are to thrive, we must adapt a creative approach to leadership and organization; to test old assumptions and determine if they are still true; to think afresh for ourselves, rather than follow the well-worn path of “business as usual.” Fortunately, as we navigate this new territory, we have some guideposts in the emerging thought of many pioneering theorists and practitioners, such as Riane Eisler, Alfonso Montuori, Isabella Conti, Ronald Purser, Margaret Wheatley, Peter Senge and others.
Purpose
The purpose of this blog is to:
> share ideas about how a Parternership framework provides both a useful way of understanding how and why organizations must evolve to survive and thrive, and a strategy for achieving successful and enduring change;
> develop a larger conversation to explore, develop and share our experiences putting these strategies into action. Together, we can explore the leading edges of leadership thought and practice.
Although this blog is written for both practitioners and academics, my bias is towards making these ideas accessible to practioners. Therefore, although I will point towards some excellent sources, you won’t tend to find the same rigor in citation and language as you will find in an academic journal on the same subject!
The term, journey, is often used to describe a shared experience that involves learning and growth. It’s my hope that our conversation together on this (and other, related blogs) will constitute a rewarding journey for all who participate, and that our work together will help a larger number of people experience the effectiveness and satisfaction of Partnership in their organizational lives.
In Partnership,
Lisa
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