The Art and Practice of Transcendent Leadership

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The Four Pillars of Balance

The Leadership Skills for a Global Economy

The Art and Practice of Transcendent Leadership starts with leadership of self. The plethora of models focused on leadership of others and leadership of strategy are sufficient to help anyone to form a delegation strategy or a plan for effective meetings. But what is missing from the extensive literature on leadership in general is a framework for leadership of who a leader is being as a person and how well they are managing to balance the key ingredients of leadership presence while they oversee the climate of the organization.

Climate or Culture?

Lou Gerstner, the infamous leader who saved IBM from becoming a dinosaur in the late 20th century said it right. Helping organizations to change is like “teaching an elephant to dance”. The important ingredient he noticed is that companies are built on teams, not on big infrastructure. As he split the company up into manageable teams and zeroed in on how to lead teams well, he helped the organization to morph itself into the 21st century.
At Tilt, we believe that it is through individual leaders and how they lead teams that success in today’s fast changing environment will be achieved. Culture is the big elephant and has deep roots that keep the norms in the larger organization in place. So this is the force that often prevents large scale behavior change that is needed to keep companies competitive. Team level climate, on the other hand, is something that is defined largely by the team leader behaviors and the psychological impact that leader has on the norms in that team can be the change agent that virally makes positive or negative change possible. It is through these people that a company will survive or thrive.

Measuring Team Level Climate

This fall, we will publish the seminal research on our hypothesis that a balanced formula of character-traits and meta-factors will correlate positively with the nine dimensions of innovative productivity in team level climate. Specifically, we will publish early indications of a longitudinal study about leader behaviors associated with self-leadership. We believe that a strong locus of control on self mastery and balance are key to creating an atmosphere where the team can show up and not have to waste energy on politics, gaming, internal competition and dysfunction and will instead be able to focus energy on the creative aspects of the work itself. When the leader holds themselves accountable to creating the best climate for this highly actualized level of support, the team is not reacting with defense mechanisms, but is rather focusing energy on creative work.
>br>Innovation is Key

Ask any senior executive and they will tell you that the key to surviving in a globally competitive and rapidly changing environment is harvesting innovation. Companies who are still trying to compete with traditional methods of leadership can’t possibly respond to the change quick enough to thrive. And the most innovative talent isn’t going to stay there either. Creative leaders and contributors are moving to places where the work is not only challenging but is fun and rewarding. Or they are starting business of their own.

The Four Pillars

Transcendent Leadership is the new model of the future and the new generations understand it. We feel they will embody it, even if their baby boomer parents don’t get there in the next two decades. The best organizations are embracing new ways of leading and are helping their boomer leaders to shift perspectives NOW.

The four pillars of this new form of leading, include leadership of others and leadership of strategy, but more importantly have added leadership of self, which leads to leadership of community. Today’s highly educated knowledge worker knows about the bigger issues we are facing in the world and want to be a part of the solution, not a contribution to “head in the sand” leadership that doesn’t have a positive impact in the greater community in which they live. Good people are not just born that way. They work on improving themselves as a lifelong journey of commitment.

From Transformational to Transcendent

The leadership failures we are witnessing in this era are born from our trust in the Transformational model of leadership. The leader who is gifted with natural charisma and may or may not develop the requisite character along the way is the potential danger with this model. Transformational leaders can be a great thing if they have developed character and a very bad thing if they have not (i.e. Maddoff). Our model is focused on the mediator in this relationship of leadership and outcomes, specifically the responsibility of character development. Leadership of self must start with self-awareness and must be balanced in the four meta-factors of Humanity, Wisdom, Courage and Resilience. Transcendent Leadership is demonstrated in a leader's ability to rise above self interest and social conformity to do the right thing for all in the enterprise and community it impacts.

Pam Boney Tilt, Inc Copyright 2009 http://tilt360leaders.com

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