The Leadership Paradigm

Dr. Stephen Covey, in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he describes a scene where he encountered a man with two children on a subway. While the children ran about and were beginning to physically annoy the other commuters their father simply sat there, his head in his hands. After some time of this, Dr. Covey engages the man and inquires as to his situation. The man, with a sigh, shakes his head and replies that the children’s mother, his wife, had just passed away not more than a few hours previous. He was reacting the only way that he knew how, and the children were reacting the only way that they knew how. This situation illustrates the classic characteristics of a paradigm shift: The paradigm of the passengers in the subway was typical: Father who did not know how to control his children. The paradigm of the father was considerably different.

Paradigm: A set of rules or worldview that each individual or group comprises that does two things: 1) it establishes or defines boundaries; and 2) it dictates behavior inside the boundaries in order to fulfill needs and desires.

Paradigm differs from attitude in that attitude is essentially defined as a complex mental state involving beliefs and feelings and values and dispositions to act in certain ways. In a sense, your attitude extends from your paradigm; that is, your mental state that manifests from the mix of your feelings, values, and dispositions extends from how you view the world. In computing people will often ask more about how an operating system works, such as Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. The best analogy that I have been able to come up with is that the operating system acts like the floor of the house: Defining the “lay of the land” throughout it; if there are two floors or more, the floor will need to have stairs in it; if the ceiling for one room is too low, the floor will need to descend. The floor of the house offers a construct in which all the people that live there operate within the constraints therein. In the same fashion, our worldview creates the construct and constraints within which we operate.

If you ask ten different people what they feel leadership is, you are likely to get at least ten different answers. From a position of a figure of authority to a special competence in a technical skill to the broader meanings of an influential individual who guides, directs, and mentors or the capacity to do such things. In this sense leadership is not something to be achieved; rather it is a paradigm for which to live your life. Leaders are not necessarily managers or people that hold supervisory or authoritative positions: Leaders are, instead, people who see the world around them and live their lives in such a way as to transform it into a better place. Leadership is a worldview, a construct in which to live our lives.

The study, science, and art of leadership are things that are as broad as the Grand Canyon and much, much deeper. The entirety of leadership, however, rests in vision.