Haniel Lecture 09 2010 E.pdf - Haniel Stiftung

12 | Ronald Heifetz
To help refl ect on the dissonances of daily life and to resolve them, I
use the metaphor of the balcony. We all tend to get swept up in the
action of daily life. When we are dancing to music and the music
is beating strongly, we tend only to see the people with whom we
are dancing, and at best we are carried away on the dance fl oor by
the music. But it is also useful to step back and get on the balcony
to observe the larger patterns of action that are taking place on the
dance fl oor. In the daily practice of leadership, it becomes essential
to staying alive that people can step back in the midst of action and
refl ect on a key set of diagnostic questions to assess the dynamics,
key themes, and sources of confl ict in the larger system of organizational
expectations, norms, politics and trends.
One needs to be able to move from action to refl ection, back to
action, back to refl ection, over and over again every day. One needs
to get swept up in the action, dancing on the dance fl oor, because
that is where work and life take place, but then one also needs
to be able to step back and get up to the balcony of refl ection.
At least in one’s own imagination, even in the middle of a meeting,
one needs to push one’s chair back an inch or two and ask
oneself, “What really is happening in this meeting? I thought this
was going to be easy and all of a sudden it has become diffi cult,
confl ictive, and confusing. What did I miss, what is the underlying
loyalty or loss, how am I stepping on somebody’s foot in ways that
I had not anticipated, and therefore, what kind of corrective action
do I need to take the next day?” And then after fi nding at least
approximate answers to those questions, you can get back onto
the dance fl oor of action and identify or name the particular cost
that you are asking people to sustain.
One needs to be able to step back and ask oneself, “What is all of
this about for me? Am I the right person to be deployed at this
moment? Perhaps somebody else should be deployed, perhaps I
need to let go of certain prerogatives that naturally come with my
authority and delegate them to other people who may be better
situated to work the issue, perhaps because of their informal network
of relationships, or because they bring a particular personality
and skill set. Perhaps I should give the responsibility to other
people so that I am not leading alone.”
But at the personal level, too, it is important to be able to step back
and get on the balcony, and to ask oneself, what I am doing here,
what is this all about? To re-anchor oneself in the orienting values
and the key sets of commitments that can guide a life through all
the improvisations of diff erent kinds of family events, and professional
events, and political events.
In our day and age where so much is moving so fast, in a world
of increasing global interdependency where nobody is in complete
control anymore of anything, it is common for people to feel
swept up or even swept away. In this era of complexity, as in other
eras of anxiety in the past, there is a strong tendency of people
to look to a singular authority to lead the way. But it is dangerous
to lead alone. The idea of a leader as the lone warrior, the single
person, is foolhardy; it is heroic but suicidal. Leadership today, for
others and for yourself, requires partners.
And so that is the second practical idea. You cannot lead alone.
To stay alive, to take care of yourself, you need people who will
straighten you out, people who will pull you by the collar up to the
balcony and ask you some key questions: “Wait a second, what are
you doing here? Wait a second, you have gotten seduced again.
Wait a second, you are not that important. Wait a second, here is a
blind spot – you are not listening to this person just because they
are getting so angry again, but there is something they are saying
you need to identify.”
“In the daily practice of leadership, it becomes essential to staying alive that
people can step back in the midst of action to assess the dynamics, key themes,
and sources of confl ict in the larger system.”