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Ferguson, George, HMR/US wrote:
>
> I personally do everything I can in the management and OB courses I teach
> (graduate and undergrad) and in my classes at HMR to work on the
> Pathos, or emotion. I show it and encourage it. The questions I have are,
Can
> it really be taught? and, Are organizations today really
> wanting emotion? I know in the past emotions at work were considered taboo,
not
> professional.
>

Two cents on leadership/management from a psychoanalytic perspective:

Mangement and leadership, of course, overlap, but insofar as they
differ they involve two distinguishable aspects of the psyche.
Management is a function of the superego, what Jacques Lacan calls the
symbolic. It is manifested as the set of behavioral requirements that we
accept as our obligations within the process of social exchange. Since
the superego concerns behavior, we can develop skills as ways of meeting
our obligations. Skills, I gather, are elements of our behavioral
repertoire that we may employ at will; they are under our conscious,
cognitive control. Leadership, by contrast, is part of the dynamic of
the ego ideal. Jacques Lacan calls it the imaginary. It involves our
spontaneous feelings, our emotional responses, our fantasies, creative
images, etc. It is not under our conscious control and therefore cannot
be part of our repertoire of "skills." We can, of course, develop our
skills as creative workers; we can work on the craft of writing for
example, but no amount of skill development will give us something to
say. Skills are something we may be said to have. Creative inspirations,
by contrast, are things that have us. If you want to check that out,
just try to control what dreams you are going to have tonight.

Anyway, this is where the paradox shows up. Organizations require
leadership, as everyone agrees, but leadership rests on fantasy and
creativity, which are not under conscious control. Management tries to
bring these dynamics under conscious control, which undermines them
immediately.

If you want to understand leadership, you have to understand the
psychology of creativity. One of its great students was John Keats, who
had this to say:


"...and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of
Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare
possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is,
when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries,
doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

Howard

Howard S. Schwartz Schwartz@Oakland.edu
http://www.sba.oakland.edu/faculty/schwartz/schwartz.htm
"Nothing is hidden from the lover of shadows. Mystery remains."
-- Anais Nin

Dutch Driver wrote:

> The ancient Greeks summed this all up with three words: Ethos
>(credibility), Pathos (emotion), and Logos (logic). In my estimation, we
>have done a darned good job in developing people with ethos and logos, but
>darn little pathos to work in organizations. In general, the education
>system is losing its capacity to deal with pathos which allows for the
>human connection needed to succeed.

And to this, I say "Amen, brother!" With one thought: Can Ethos, or
credibility, be taught, or does it have to be earned?

I personally do everything I can in the management and OB courses I teach
(graduate and undergrad) and in my classes at HMR to work on the
Pathos, or emotion. I show it and encourage it. The questions I have are, Can
it really be taught? and, Are organizations today really
wanting emotion? I know in the past emotions at work were considered taboo, not
professional.

Dutch also said:

>What is vision but an idea or concept.

You're absolutely right...it's idea. Then you said:

>Through communication, vision is
>expressed, feedback on the vision is received and HEARD, the vision is
>either reinforced or refined through an interative process until it
>becomes imbedded into the beliefs of organization.

Again, you're right. To be worth anything, that idea takes ACTION, or
communication. It's the personal and interpersonal side. You're
not managing ideas, you're communicating with people.

Rick Corcoran said:

>Leadership, as
>you say, requires the use of a lot of communication skills.
>Perhaps, and I would love to hear from more of the list on this,
>Universities are doing a fine job on teaching leadership and
>management..but where we are not so good at is in teaching
>'excellent' communication skills. Whattya think?

Based on my experience, I think academia is doing a good job of teaching
management, accounting, etc....NOT leadership, and not the
"excellent" communication skills. In my many years of schooling I have had
frightfully few teachers who were considered leaders. Look at
the teaching methods we currently use: mostly lecture, with a minimum of group
interaction and outside the box thinking, and no focus on
communcation skills (maybe 1 or 2 courses on communication in the typical
curriculum: written communication, and presentations). Are any
schools including a course on listening skills, particularly empathic listening?
How about something on informal interactions, team
communication, walking your talk, watercooler conversations, or understanding
others' meaning?

Look at how we do student evaluations: We assign a "grade" based upon
retention, testing on facts and readings. How are the students
able to use what was learned (in other words, LEAD and communicate with others)?
Did we provide any feedback on the student's
communications skills? Did we provide any feedback on how they "led" a group?
Does the grade REALLY represent what the person learned and
the progress made? Will someone who gets an "A" really be more successful and a
better leader than someone who gets a "C"?

Maybe those of us teaching in colleges and universities need to change our
paradigm of how people learn and what should be learned,
particularly when it comes to leadership. Why else would Rick Corcoran ask:

>Why are we taking our 'freshouts' (term for recent college grads)
>and sending them to additional learning on leadership and
>communication?

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George Ferguson Hoechst Marion Roussel, Inc.
Senior Consultant PO Box 9627 (J1-M1640)
Leadership Education & Development Kansas City, MO 64134-0627
Voice: 816-966-3028
Fax:: 816-966-2750 georgeferguson@hmri.com
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