Systems Thinking and Leadership
Summary
TLDRThe speaker explores the concept of leadership beyond the traditional definitions found in popular literature. Starting with an observation of dogs at a lake, they question whether leadership is truly as complex as books suggest or if it's merely dominance. This leads to a historical journey, examining the evolution of leadership ideas from the communal focus of ancient civilizations to the virtue-based leadership of 'Lao Tzu', the 'feminine approach', and the shift towards individualism with Plato and Machiavelli. The speaker critiques the 'Great Man Theory' and modern literature's emphasis on 'dietic influence', suggesting these promote a return to selfish individualism. They advocate for a systems thinking approach to leadership, emphasizing collective action and collaboration over dominance. The talk concludes with a call to consider leadership as a system-wide contribution rather than an individual trait, potentially leading to more effective and collaborative outcomes.
Takeaways
- 🤔 The concept of leadership may be more nuanced than what is presented in popular literature.
- 🐾 Observations from nature, such as dogs at play, can provide insights into leadership dynamics.
- 📚 Early thoughts on leadership, like those from Laozi, emphasized virtue and community improvement.
- 🧍♂️ Plato introduced the idea of a philosopher king, suggesting leadership is about guiding those who cannot see the whole picture.
- 👑 Machiavelli's 'The Prince' shifted the focus to the leader's goals, reflecting a more self-centered view of leadership.
- 👴 Thomas Carlyle's 'Great Man Theory' posited that history is shaped by the actions of a few influential individuals.
- 🤨 Critics argue the 'Great Man Theory' overlooks the impact of systemic factors on historical events.
- 💭 Modern leadership literature often focuses on 'dietic influence', where leaders manipulate followers to achieve their goals.
- 🌐 Systems thinking encourages a broader perspective, considering the entire system and its interrelated parts, rather than just the leader.
- 🤝 A collective approach to leadership, where everyone in the system contributes, may lead to more effective and collaborative outcomes.
- 🌟 The speaker suggests that true leadership might be about enhancing collaboration and moving away from dominance.
Q & A
What is the speaker's initial observation about leadership that sparked their research?
-The speaker's initial observation was about a dog that seemed to naturally assume a leadership role among other dogs at a park, which made them question the complexity of leadership as described in literature.
How does the speaker describe the shift in the concept of leadership from the past to the present?
-The speaker describes a shift from a focus on collective action and community in ancient times to a more individualistic and dominance-focused approach in modern leadership theories, with an emphasis on the leader's goals rather than the followers' well-being.
Who is Daniel Smil, and what does he discuss in the context of the speaker's talk?
-Daniel Smil is a historian who talks about 'deep history,' a period with no records but significant for the beginning of meaningful community and civilization. The speaker uses Smil's insights to emphasize that communities created our humanness, not the other way around.
What is the 'Dao De Jing' and how does it relate to the speaker's discussion on leadership?
-The 'Dao De Jing' is an ancient Chinese text written by Lao Tzu that emphasizes virtue and a feminine, networked, and gentle approach to leadership. It is significant in the speaker's discussion as it represents an early view of leadership focused on improving the lives of followers.
How does the speaker connect the ideas of Plato and the 'great man theory' of leadership?
-The speaker connects Plato's ideas to the 'great man theory' by highlighting Plato's metaphor of the cave, where he suggests that a philosopher king, who has experienced reality, should lead the rest. This represents a shift towards the idea that history is shaped by great individuals, rather than collective efforts.
What is the Machiavellian view of leadership as described by the speaker?
-The Machiavellian view of leadership, as described by the speaker, is one where followers exist to accomplish the leader's goals, rather than the leader working to improve the situation of the followers. This perspective is seen as a return to selfish individualism.
Who is Thomas Carlyle, and what is his contribution to the concept of leadership discussed by the speaker?
-Thomas Carlyle is a historian who coined the term 'great man theory of leadership.' He proposed that every significant event in history can be attributed to the actions of one or a few great men, which the speaker critiques for not considering systemic factors.
What is the speaker's perspective on the current literature's focus on systems thinking in leadership?
-The speaker believes that while systems thinking is important, some authors mistakenly focus on the leader as the central agent of the system. The speaker argues that a true systems approach requires looking at the entire system and the interactions of all agents within it.
How does the speaker propose that leadership should be understood in the context of systems thinking?
-The speaker proposes that leadership should be understood as a system where everyone contributes rather than being the domain of a single individual. This approach emphasizes collaboration over dominance and aligns with the collective nature of humanity.
What is the speaker's conclusion about the nature of leadership?
-The speaker concludes that leadership might be better understood as a collective effort rather than an individual trait. They suggest that focusing on collaboration and the contributions of everyone in the system could lead to better outcomes and a more accurate representation of human nature.
Why does the speaker believe it's important to reevaluate our understanding of leadership?
-The speaker believes it's important to reevaluate our understanding of leadership because it could lead to enhanced experiences, greater results, and a more collaborative approach that aligns with the collective nature of human communities.
What does the speaker suggest as a potential flaw in the way leadership is often portrayed in literature?
-The speaker suggests that a potential flaw in the way leadership is often portrayed is the focus on dominance and individualism, which may not accurately reflect the collaborative and collective nature of effective leadership within human systems.
Outlines
🤔 Exploring Leadership Beyond Traditional Views
The speaker begins by sharing a personal insight about leadership, questioning if it's more than what is described in popular literature. They recount an observation of dogs at a lake, where one dog naturally assumed a leadership role, which sparked a research journey. The speaker discusses the evolution of leadership concepts from the formation of early communities around 10,000 years ago, emphasizing the significance of collective action and collaboration in defining humanity. They reference Daniel Smil's 'deep history' and the idea that communities created humanness. The speaker also explores ancient perspectives on leadership, such as the virtue-focused approach of Laozi in the 'Tao Te Ching' and the contrasting views of Plato and Machiavelli, with the latter introducing a shift towards leaders using followers to achieve personal goals, akin to dominance rather than mutual benefit.
📚 The Shift in Leadership Philosophy Over Time
This paragraph delves into the transformation of leadership philosophy from the past to the present. The speaker mentions the shift initiated by Machiavelli, where leadership became about accomplishing the leader's goals rather than improving the followers' situation. They discuss how this perspective contrasts with earlier views, such as those of Laozi, which emphasized virtue and a community-focused approach. The speaker also touches on Thomas Carlyle's 'Great Man' theory, which attributes historical events to the actions of a few key individuals, and acknowledges the criticism that this theory neglects other systemic factors. The paragraph concludes with an observation of modern leadership literature, which often focuses on systems thinking and the interplay of all agents within a system, rather than just the leader. The speaker suggests that a systems approach to leadership could lead to a more collaborative and less domineering style, which might yield better results.
🏁 Concluding Thoughts on a Collaborative Approach to Leadership
The speaker concludes their discourse on leadership by reiterating the importance of considering leadership as a collaborative effort within a system, rather than as a one-person show. They express their belief that by viewing leadership as a collective endeavor, we can enhance our abilities and achieve better outcomes through collaboration rather than through dominance. The speaker humbly states that they do not claim to have the one right answer and encourages further thought on the topic, emphasizing the value of considering a systems-based approach to leadership.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Leadership
💡Dominance
💡Collective Action
💡Virtue
💡Feminine Approach
💡Philosopher King
💡Great Man Theory
💡
💡Systems Thinking
💡Diegetic Influence
💡Selfish Individualism
💡Humanity
Highlights
The speaker suggests that leadership might be more than what is portrayed in conventional literature.
The idea for reevaluating leadership was sparked by observing a dog's natural leadership among other dogs at a lake.
The speaker questions if what is often seen as leadership is actually dominance.
Leadership is explored through a historical lens, starting from the formation of communities 10,000 years ago.
Daniel Smil's concept of 'deep history' is introduced to discuss the origins of meaningful community and civilization.
The importance of community in defining humanity is emphasized, rather than humans creating communities.
The Da De Jing by Lao Tzu is mentioned as one of the earliest writings on leadership, focusing on virtue and community.
Lao Tzu's work contrasts with later views, advocating a feminine, networked, and gentler approach to leadership.
Plato's 'The Republic' introduces a shift towards a more individualistic view of leadership with the philosopher king concept.
Machiavelli's 'The Prince' is discussed as a significant shift in leadership philosophy, focusing on the leader's goals rather than the followers' well-being.
Thomas Carlyle's 'great man theory of leadership' is critiqued for not considering systemic factors.
The modern literature on leadership is criticized for promoting a return to selfish individualism.
The concept of systems thinking is introduced, suggesting that leadership should be understood as a collective system rather than an individual trait.
The speaker argues that true leadership should involve collaboration over dominance for better results.
The talk concludes with a call to rethink leadership as a system-wide contribution rather than an individual's dominance.
The speaker humbly positions their perspective as a contribution to the discourse on leadership, rather than the definitive answer.
The talk humorously ends with the speaker expressing uncertainty about who or where TED is.
Transcripts
so I have this idea and I've had this
idea for a while and I the idea is that
leadership might be something other than
or even something more than they say it
is in those books you buy in the airport
um and I I've been thinking this for a
while and the the thought is has driven
a fair bit of research um on my part and
I can go back a number of years to when
I first started thinking this and I it
was actually a moment that I remember
quite well I I was walking around a lake
I I lived close to a lake at the time
and uh at one end of this Lake there was
this big field where people would take
their dogs and the dogs would uh go off
the leash and play and I noticed that um
in this one particular group of dogs
that was chasing ball uh that one of the
dogs seemed to be the leader which I
thought was odd the other dogs were
deferring to it they would let this one
dog catch the ball even if the other
dogs were running faster and I thought
isn't it interesting how the one dog
seemed to assume the mantle of
leadership so easily
even when leadership seemed to be so
complicated and so complex I've been
studying leadership even then I'd been
studying it for a couple of years uh and
I thought it seems that seems too easy
because the literature was telling me
that leadership was much more difficult
than that so I thought maybe what I was
looking at with the dogs wasn't
leadership at all I thought maybe what I
was looking at with the dogs was just
dominance so so I thought well if that's
just dominance and yet yet it looked so
much like leadership I thought maybe
much of what we see as leadership in our
world is just
dominance and like I said that drove me
down a path of research that took many
years um and so I want to talk a little
bit about that research I want to go
back in history in fact I want to take a
journey through history looking at our
attitudes towards
leadership so if we start 10,000 years
ago maybe even more uh 10,000 plus years
ago what we see is in different places
in the world the beginning of meaningful
Community the beginning of what we think
of is civilization uh a a historian
named Daniel smil talks about this
period of History calls it deep history
uh because there are no records uh but
he's making some assumptions and what he
said was sometime back around then uh
our
ancestors came in out of the Jungle or
they came in off the Savannah or they
came down out of the trees and they came
together to create civilization or they
came together in meaningful
community and it wasn't until then that
they became truly human so it was this
coming together in community that gave
rise to our
Humanity it's not the other way around
and that's significant I think it wasn't
that humans created human
communities it was that communities
created our
humanness so it was this focus on
collaboration uh a focus on Collective
action that defined our humanness and it
was when we let go of our selfish
individualism that we became truly
human we'll come back to that later on
in history maybe about 2500 years ago um
as far as I know that's when the first
book basically on leadership was written
and uh the book was called the da de
ching uh it was written by uh a fellow
named Lau in China and lau wrote about
the importance of virtue following a
path of virtue so the leader and he
spoke quite a bit about leadership in
this book The Leader um is trying to
improve the lives and improve the
situation of those who follow so once
again we're seeing this focus on
community also significantly
significantly Lau talked about feminine
approach Roes to leadership as opposed
to the dominant masculine approach Lau
was talking about a feminine approach to
leadership a more networked gentler
approach to leadership a couple of
hundred years later in history uh in a
different part of the world Plato wrote
the
Republic now Plato's perspective was a
little bit different he still talked
about virtue although he used the word
justice um but his Focus became a little
bit uh more
clearly on the leader so you probably
remember from your philosophy 101 class
uh the Cave the metaphor of the cave and
so he was suggesting that most of us are
like we're in a cave and chain to the
wall and only able to look at the back
wall of the
cave um and what happens is we can only
see Shadows of reality because the
reality is coming in behind us we can't
look out of the cave we can only see the
shadows of of the wall I'm sorry the
Shadows on the wall of reality and what
we need to do is we need to raise a
great man a philosopher king uh up out
of the cave to experience reality and
come back down to lead us so now we're
seeing the beginning of the great man
theory of
leadership so we're seeing a slight
shift away from what Lau was talking
about hundreds of years later uh in the
early 16th century uh gentleman named uh
nicholo Machiavelli uh as you'll recall
uh wrote a book called The Prince and in
the prince he shifts the nature of
leadership entirely it's not him that
did this he was simply writing about a
process that had been going on for for
many years but he shifted the focus of
leadership entirely when he said that
the followers are there to accomplish
the leader goals as opposed to the
leader being there to improve the
situation of followers it was the other
way around and we're seeing more of a
return to selfish individualism because
the leader is getting their goals met
through the actions of the followers
that's a little bit more like what I saw
by the lake that day when the one dog
was dominating the other
dogs I think we still have that
Machiavellian view of leadership even
though we're we're approaching
leadership with a Kinder gentler hand I
think we're still looking at having the
leader goals accomplished through the
actions of the
followers few hundred years later we're
almost there few hundred years later we
see a guy named Thomas Carlile a doer
old Scotsman uh and Thomas car
uh actually coined the term the great
man theory of leadership and Thomas
carile said that every event throughout
history can be attributed to just uh one
or a few great men that were involved in
that
event now the criticism of of the great
man Theory the criticism is that it
doesn't take into account other systemic
factors that were occurring at the same
time so uh we can't simply attribute
every action throughout history or every
event throughout history to a great man
uh practicing what we call dietic
influence so the great man is
influencing someone else to do what the
great man thinks is important we're now
we're really seeing this focus on uh uh
on on dominance just as the dogs did um
we're seeing people do it now only
people are now calling it
leadership now if we come forward into
into the into our current reality uh
what we see is that uh many of the
authors
are writing about dietic influence and
calling it leadership they're saying
that what the leader needs to do to
accomplish a certain goal is behave in
this way so that the followers uh will
accomplish the leader
goals and that seems to me that it's
possible that it might be a return to
the selfish
individualism uh that we had 10,000
years
ago also if you look at the literature
today uh one of the things that the
literature focuses on is uh systems
thinking and systems thinking tells us
very clearly that you can't understand a
system a human system you can't
understand it by looking at just one or
two or three of the Agents of the system
rather you have to look at all of the
Agents of the system and how they're
interacting uh and uh
interrelating so some of these even some
of these systems thinkers make the
mistake then of going back and saying so
what the leader needs to do what the
leader needs to understand is
and I think to myself wait a minute you
just said that we can't understand the
system by focusing on just one aspect of
the system or just one agent of the
system you said we have to look at the
whole system and if we do that and we
really allow ourselves to to take
systems thinking seriously what we see
is that in order to understand
leadership we need to look at everyone
in the system not just one person and it
takes a bit of a focus off the leader
and puts it rather on the collective
which which takes us back to what Daniel
smil was talking about when he said uh
humanity is about how we are
together and it takes us away from what
the dogs were doing by the lake uh and
takes our Focus off of dietic influence
and puts it onto the
system and I believe that that's what
systems or that's what leadership is I'm
not saying I have the one right answer
I'm not saying that uh that everybody
else is writing about leadership is
incorrect uh I'm not saying that I have
the one true Way Forward what I am
saying is that I think that it's
worthwhile thinking about this that if
we look at leadership as something that
towards which everyone in the system
contributes but not anything that anyone
does I think we might increase uh our
abilities I think we might uh enhance
our experience and I think we might
achieve greater results simply through
collaborating rather than
dominating that's my TED Talk I don't
know where Ted is I don't even know who
Ted is I'm
done
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