Today’s Great Leader is a servant. In the past, we served the leader. The great leader of today serves those he leads. You serve by creating a structure for success. When we speak of structure we are not talking about the organizational chart. Structure in this sense is the invisible framework of the organization that influences behavior.

In her book, Leadership and the New Science, Margaret Wheatley talks about fields of influence. A magnet is surrounded by its own magnetic field. Its field influences other magnets and pieces of iron that enter the field. The Earth has a gravitational field. Any object that intersects the gravitational field of the Earth is influenced by that field. Objects either fall to the surface or go into orbit. Organizations have fields also.

Wheatley offers an example of a customer service field. Her team researched what makes excellent customer service in retail stores. What they found was that they could “feel” the presence of excellent customer service in the stores where it was present. Somehow, they knew, the moment they walked in the door that they would be served well. The presence of excellent customer service could not be identified by the layout of merchandise or the smiling faces of clerks. The one common denominator was the feeling in the store.

She referred to this phenomenon as a customer service field. It seemed to fill the spaces of the stores, structure the behavior of employees and generate service behaviors whenever an employee was in the store. She goes on to say:

Of course, the field didn’t just drift into the store; the cosmos didn’t create a customer service field. In each of these stores there was a manager who, together with employees, took time to fill the store space with clear messages about how he or she wanted customers to be served. Clarity about service filled every nook and cranny. With such a powerful structuring field, certain types of individual behaviors and events were guaranteed.
– Leadership and the New Science, Wheatley, page 53

What it comes down to is that you can always sense the presence of leadership. You can walk into a classroom or a seminar and “feel” whether or not learning is taking place. You can walk into any workplace and “feel” if there is an excitement there, an enthusiasm for the work being done. You can feel negativity in organizations, too. The field, then, is the unseen pattern of structure that influences behavior.

As a leader, your role is to structure a positive and productive field – to create the emotional ambiance for your team, your department, your organization, your family, or your community. This ambiance, or tone, energizes managers, employees and customers; administrators, teachers and students; professionals and clients; high ranking officers and their reports; family members; and public servers and citizens. It serves as a structuring field that has people feeling compelled to think and behave in ways that are nurturing and helpful.

For example, in my hometown of East Lansing, Michigan (USA), there is a restaurant called Lou and Harry’s Grill. Lou and Harry’s employs college students at three locations. Although Lou and Harry’s has a transient workforce, the service is always professional, quick, and responsive. I have consistently experienced excellent service there. I asked the owner, Harry, how he maintained such high quality service. He told me that customers were very important to him. He wants every customer to have such a pleasant experience that they come back and bring their friends. He is passionate about customers. Harry is often out on the floor greeting customers, cleaning tables, and serving food. Harry talks to his managers daily about the importance of serving the customers. Quality food and service, clean floors and restrooms, and friendliness are consistent at Lou and Harry’s.

Harry has created a powerful structuring field. He told me that occasionally he hires someone who doesn’t want to offer great service. They leave within a week, because they don’t fit in. Harry never has to fire them. While many leaders depend on force of will to control their workplaces, Lou and Harry’s is guided by a powerful idea – that everyone who walks in the door is an important person. This includes customers and employees. Harry and his employees live that idea so consistently that great service is guaranteed.

Systems expert, Peter Senge, wrote that structure is made up of “choices made over time.” Our choices become “the way things are done.” The way things are done comes from the way we think. The way we think is our mental arrangement. Our mental arrangement includes our view of the world, the assumptions we hold, and our beliefs. It is the filter through which we interpret the world. Each person brings their own mental arrangement to the group. At the same time there is a group mental arrangement. You and I may have vastly different mental arrangements, yet as members of the same organization, there are assumptions, beliefs, and views that we share.

In most organizations, when problems arise, we blame whomever is standing closest to the symptoms. We fail to recognize the systemic factors that influence people’s behavior. Behaviors and events are merely the forms that arise from behavioral patterns, relationships, structure, and the mental arrangements (thought systems) that people in a group share. Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a world expert on quality, wrote that 93% of what happens in an organization is due to common causes. That is, the events and behaviors are built in to the system. “The system”, as we call it, is really a group of thought forms, or mental arrangement that determines reality. All true change in any organization takes place at the level of thought.

The role of a leader is to influence thinking. If a leader is clear about the mission, the vision, the goals, and the values of an organization, she will communicate her intent to the people around her. These ideas will be communicated through her way of being with others. For example, if people are considered important, that importance will be communicated in the way she treats everyone. Her thinking and her ability to align behavior with that thinking will create clarity. A common mental; arrangement will be created. Yet, if she says that people are important, but treats some people poorly, her contradiction will be communicated as a conflicted intention.

Many organizations communicate conflicted intentions. These mixed intentions cause confusion and chaos. As a result, people in these organizations don’t have clarity. Their goal is to get through the day, please the boss, further a personal agenda, or to earn a paycheck. Stephen Covey’s research from his book, The Eighth Habit, stated that 63% of workers in a poll taken in the USA didn’t know what their company’s goals were. He said that only 19% understood how their role impacted the goals of the company. He used the metaphor of soccer team saying that if the American workplace was a soccer team, only four players on the team would know which goal is theirs, and only two players would know which position they play. Picture Saturday morning soccer for five year olds, and you can see how many organizations operate.

In the previous chapters of this series we have defined spiritual intelligence as: the ability to choose between the voice of spirit over the voice of the ego. Spirit always seeks the highest good for all concerned. The ego is driven by fear. Choices based on the highest good for all, made over time, will influence the way people in an organization think and act. Choices that reflect the stated values of an organization, that reflect the mission and the vision, will tend to create a structure that influences everyone in that organization to live by those values, the mission, and the vision.

Many organizations are represented by the results Stephen Covey found. Actions are often not in alignment with the stated mission and values. Leaders say one thing yet do something else. A leader may talk about the importance of treating people well, but he will often fail to treat people well. This contradiction causes resentment and anger. People become disconnected from the organization, seeing the leaders as the organization, and themselves as victims of the organization. People will talk about their organization and refer to “them”, the leaders, as the organization. A split takes place with “them”, the management on one side, and “us”, the oppressed workers on the other side.

Some leaders are very focused on the mission and the vision, yet they use force to get it done. By using force the mission is owned by the leader alone, and members of the organization become simply a means to get it done. In these workplaces people are “the cost of doing business”, an expense that is reduced whenever possible to maximize profits. Again there is a split between “them” and “us”. Often there is a split between the person doing the work and the work itself. The work is not something that has meaning, nor is it service to others. The work is something management makes us do in order to receive our paychecks. Fear becomes the driving force and egos struggle with the environment and with each other in order to survive.

Spiritually intelligent leaders are not ambitious for selfish reasons, but seek to enhance the whole organization. In Jim Collins study of great companies, Good to Great, he discovered that all of the CEO’s of the truly great companies, those that prospered the most, were not egotistical people. The first chapter of this series referred to a common practice among these leaders that Collins called “the window and the mirror”. When things went wrong, these leaders consistently looked in the mirror at themselves, taking full responsibility, refusing to blame others. When things went well, they consistently looked out the window to generously give credit to others. Even when there were no obvious people to give credit to, these leaders would say: “It was just good luck.” The intent of each of these leaders was to nurture and grow the organization.

As leaders we have the opportunity to deliberately create healthy organizations, communities, and families. It begins within us. Over time, our ability to choose the voice of spirit which loves, nurtures, and enhances all life, will create a structure that gently, yet firmly, influences the thinking of all members. It is the ripple effect. The ripple effect of you is there, whether or not you use your spiritual intelligence. Whatever is happening around you is part of your ripple effect. The key is to own, rather than complain about, the relationships and interactions we have with others. Ownership is not blame and should not result in guilt. Ownership is power. Ownership is understanding how powerful we are.

Most of us use our power to make ourselves powerless. By taking full responsibility for the reality we are creating we come into our power and become effective leaders. Instead of reacting to people we begin listening to people. We stop thinking about ourselves and seek first to understand the other person. This is responsiveness. In responsiveness we consider the needs, concerns, and goals of another person. Not only that, we see past whatever troubles or concerns they express and consider the beautiful spiritual being that each person is in truth. What we “see” in each person becomes our vision for them. What we “see” we encourage. We see what people are in truth, and we see the greatness that a group can become.

Leaders are visionaries. Your vision is whatever you are seeing. If you see the worst in people, and react to everything that could go wrong, then the “worst” and “what can go wrong” become your vision. Your thinking will lead to behaviors, and you will be helping to create the vision of what you do not want. If you see the spiritual nature in people, and speak to that nature in your interactions, you will help to create that spiritual vision. Do it consistently and you will create an environment, a structure, that promotes health, growth, healing, and success.

 

The path to success in groups is not always paved and smooth. This is not due to the attitudes or antics of the people in your group. It is due to your own unhealed parts – the parts of you that react to what you think you see in others. To find success, stop reacting and begin responding. As it is stated in A Course in Miracles, “Anything that is not love is a call for love.” Spiritual Intelligence helps us to answer the call. Every encounter with misbehavior or unhealthy speech is an opportunity to pray or to meditate, to ask within for direction. Stay focused on what you want – the vision, the values, and the mission. You want results that align with these. Means and ends are always the same. The ego will have you taking short cuts, plotting and planning, and operating from fear. Allow the wisdom of spirit to come through you. You will know what to do and your action (or inaction) will be the perfect response. There will be nothing to justify or defend, for you will be acting in the best interests of all concerned.

Your responses over time will become more consistent. Others will be influenced to respond as well. Your combined responses over time will become structure. Structure will reinforce the thinking from which it emerges. Your way of being will serve to create a field, and fill the spaces of the organization with thought forms that lead to great service, nurturing behavior, creativity, and meaningful participation by all of the members. If you have the intention; if you have the willingness to listen to and follow the voice of spirit within; you will contribute great value to your organization, team, family, or community. You have the power.