Leadership

I met with my mentor the other day, and we talked about leadership from the bottom.  I feel like I've been exploring this concept lately, especially at work where I am now starting to see some tangible changes, which I hope that I've contributed to at least in part.  If I have, then this process of transformation has come as the result of a huge number of seemingly insignificantly small nudges of influence which I have been able to impart upon the people around me.  Just like a heavy ship, many tiny actions, impulses of force, applied in the same direction will inevitably wield their influence.

I am not a manager in my work, nor do I hold a senior position.  In fact I am a bog-standard engineer.  But as a follower of Jesus, I can't leave this world alone.  I find myself in an environment, as is common in business, saturated with management but starved of leadership.  Management directs a group fulfill its purpose; leadership feeds it with identity and direction.  I exist in a community, with good qualities and destructive ones.  I can speak into this; I can call out the good, give voice to it and affirm it, offer it a direction, a plane of influence, of reality.

Leadership is a different language; a human language.

The call of a leader is to first identify with the their people, be of the community, integrate in the real meaning of the concept.  Then to speak into that corporate identity, provide meaning, location, reference and purpose.  The leader facilitates the group to fulfill its potential, he or she allows the people to go where they want to go, to achieve their goals, to live the dream.  The leader discerns, refines and articulates a direction, and is the architect of the "how" as well as the "what".  The leader liberates the people to be and do more fully.

The other thing I've realised is that it's easy to be the loudest voice when no-one else is talking.  In a vacuum of leadership, if you place a bit of this vision-food before a group, they will follow.

And so it is that I feel that I can lead.  Having spent six years being in my little workplace community, I now find myself with a vision for them; I can see what they could be.  There is room for growth.  In my particular case, I can see what they believe in, but I can also see such a low corporate self esteem that they fight it just to stay secure.

Here's the stupid thing:  The business wants the same thing they do; for them to do great work in a great way.  The problem is the relationship's a bit of a mess and communication is very poor.  What can I do?  Well I can't stand in the gap of communication- that comes in the form of a whole bunch of stressed out middle managers, that's not my place.  I can, however, whisper the simple truth, and the full potential I see, in the collective ear of the people.  Conversation by conversation, greeting by greeting and meeting by meeting, I can lay out a simple vision; that we raise the bar and fulfill that company believe in excellent engineering.  It's a simple message; "We can do it, let's!".

I try to be an example.  That sounds big headed, but I don't mean I do my job really well or I work really hard (but if my company's reading this, I do..).  I mean that I try to do it in a quality that speaks this vision.  I do endorse the good things in the company image.  I do try to improve our processes, our tools, our habits and our presentation.  I guess that secretly, I believe that our department can lead the business from the bottom.  We do things right, we do things well.

Sometimes I have nudged the boundaries, I venture beyond my specifically defined role.  It's been a journey, for my manager and myself, as I've tried to perform my function with meaning.  I always follow orders but I don't always tow the line, and I definitely challenge the underlying status quo.  I think we've found a peace, something like the way CS Lewis put it; "'Course he isn't safe. But he's good."; they know I'm effective, they know I change things, but they know I'm for them, not against them.

My company, just like my motley bunch of engineers, has some good qualities along with its inevitable flaws.  It could be the kind of company that changes the world for the better, that honors Jesus.  I aim to sow the seed of that possibility in the hearts and minds of my colleagues.  I guess that when you lead from the bottom, the only way is up.