Kenning Associates Newsletter

Editor's Note

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By Daryl Ogden�� and Julie Androshick

This issue of Growth Edge is all about leadership. Now, in the midst of a genuine global economic crisis, leadership is more important than ever. As we work to climb out of the deep hole we find ourselves in, this generation�s leaders will be relied on to demonstrate wisdom, character, and vision as never before. With enormous challenges before us, we hope the three articles included here will serve as a meaningful resource for leaders to draw upon.

In the first article, longtime Kenning colleague, Grady McGonagall, poses � and goes a long way toward answering � what is perhaps the fundamental leadership question: �How do you become an outstanding leader?� Along the way, Grady provides an enormously useful survey of the history of thinking about leadership that underscores the importance of leaders finding and embracing the qualities of leadership that will specifically work for them and their organizations.

Kenning partner Daryl Ogden shares a recent story about how a successful NBA coach�s approach to developing a high potential player exemplifies the evolution of coaching over the past four decades and models how leaders can effectively lead collaboratively, and by creating differentiated development solutions for their people, their teams, and their organizations.

Finally, Kenning�s Paul Atkins has allowed us to reprint one of his recent contributions to the literature of public leadership, within the specific context of his native Australia but with clear applications to political leaders and public servants anywhere. The article focuses on the importance of our elected leaders to demonstrate�responsive rather than reactive leadership, an essential distinction articulately explored here. We believe this article may be particularly relevant to the new American administration � and the public which that administration aspires to lead � as it confronts unprecedented challenges that will severely test the character and wisdom of even the most talented and experienced of our public servants.

Assessing and Refining Your Leadership Style

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By Grady McGonnagall

How do you become an outstanding leader? Anyone looking for an answer to this question from the vast body of writing on leadership will be as frustrated as the cartoon character Dilbert, who asked his pointy-headed boss: �How do you know which management techniques work best? Logically, doesn�t the existence of thousands of management books show no one knows what works best?� The boss replied: �The trick is knowing which one to read.�

Is there one best book to read? Six years ago I decided to find out for myself. I took a sabbatical from my consulting and read as much on leadership as I could. I was surprised at what I found: consistent with Dilbert�s suspicion, there is no one best way to lead. To be sure, my review showed that most writers thought they did know what works best. The problem, as Dilbert understood, is they don�t agree. But I did find agreement of a kind--clusters of opinion advocating a particular way of thinking about leadership effectiveness. Virtually all the writing on leadership fits into one of the four following categories of advice, each of which has something useful to offer. These categories roughly mirror the history of thinking about leadership.

� Embody the Right Personal Qualities. This is where leadership theory began, with the �Great Man� theory of leadership. More recent writings suggest that most leaders are made, not born. The value of this perspective is that it calls attention to the impact of a leader�s personal strengths and weaknesses and the importance of developing those personal qualities.

� Do the Right Things. When scholars could not agree on the right �traits,� they turned their attention to what leaders do rather than the kind of person they are. The value of this perspective is that it encourages identification of those practices which on average work better than others.

� Adjust Your Style to the Situation. It later became apparent that the effectiveness of an approach to leadership can depend on the situation. The usefulness of this cluster is that it provides suggestions on where it could make sense for a leader to adjust his/her approach to be more fully responsive to the particular situation if possible.

� Adjust the Situation to Your Style. Some of the more recent writing turns the previous approach on its head and suggests that the key is for leaders to first get clear on their style, and the underlying purpose it expresses, and then find situations that build on their strengths and their values.

Each of these perspectives makes a contribution Yet each for the most part ignores the contribution of the other clusters. People writing in each cluster also often disagree with the particular strategies offered by others within their own category! So each has something to offer, but no one of them contains the whole truth.

What does this suggest about how can a leader learn to be the most effective? I believe the solution is to assume that there is some wisdom in each of these four perspectives, but that the truth for each individual lies in figuring out what works for them. Leaders will be most effective if they develop a style that is unique to themselves, one that weaves their particular set of strengths and limits into a whole that they can embody with authenticity. This means not trying to copy others, or to adopt some textbook �style.�

For some years I felt alone in holding this view. But the world of both scholarship and practice is catching up. Bill George, who came to teach at the Harvard Business School after being CEO of Medtronic, has found �authenticity� to be the key to effective leadership. He writes �No one can be authentic by trying to be like someone else� (True North, 2007). And Jack Welsh�s successor at GE, Jeff Immelt, has said �There�s no one I admire or love more than Jack Welch, but I�ve watched so many people try to copy him. It doesn�t work.�

The truth of this perspective is borne out by the example of outstanding leaders. Often their behavior is paradoxical, embodying practices that shouldn�t work according to the conventional wisdom, but that somehow works for them. Take Ted Kennedy. Whatever you think of his politics, he�s widely regarded as one of the most effective members of the U.S. Senate. He also has a reputation for delegating tasks to more than one subordinate, setting up a competition to see which produces the best results. This defies the conventional wisdom about creating teamwork and harmony. But it works for him. Should you copy it? Probably not. Or take Steve Jobs. He publicly humiliates even trusted employees. Not what you�ll find recommended in the literature. Would he be more effective if he stopped doing that? Maybe, but it may also be a critical element in his overall style, one which includes the ability to �make the task of designing a power supply feel like a mission from God� (Wired, �Evil Genius,� p.139).

How can you find our own distinctive, authentic style? Here�s the 8-step approach that we offer in our seminars, which draws upon what we believe is the core wisdom of each of the four clusters:

1. Learn from your successes. Choose several times when you were at your very best as a leader. Look for common patterns in how you approached the situation, recognizing that you probably did different things at each of four phases:

-How did you get drawn in?

-How did you get it rolling?

-How did you keep it rolling?

-How did you bring it to completion?

2. Learn from Your Disappointing Experiences. Choose several times when you didn�t realize your hopes as a leader. Are there common patterns? Particular situations or challenges that you find it difficult to handle? Things you ignored? Are you vulnerable at any particular stage of the leadership cycle?

3. Leverage Your Strengths. Deepen your self-understanding by asking yourself: �What are my distinctive strengths?� It is often helpful to use a personal style instrument to explore these questions. Many leaders have found the Myers Briggs Type Indicator to be useful. In our seminars we use Temperament, a less well known but powerful tool that correlates with the MBTI and has the advantage of making only 4 rather than 16 distinctions in type. From the foundation of this understanding the patterns in your stories often make new sense.

4.Manage your Limits. It�s equally important to ask: �What are my limits, the things I don�t do well or don�t like to do?� It�s not important that you be an outstanding performer on every dimension, but you can often manage your limits in ways that support your strengths by delegating creatively or redefining expectations of your leadership. It is also critical to identify and address potential Fatal Flaws, areas where you could compromise your leadership through loss of credibility, either at your inability to meet a core expectation or because of behavior that is inconsistent with what you espouse. This leads us to the 5th step.

5. Manage Your Shadow. We all do things that are inconsistent with our values and aspirations, not because we are hypocritical, but because we have patterns that we either aren�t aware of or have difficulty controlling. These may be patterns related to your personality, which you would have in common with others of similar type, but could also have to do with things unique to you. What are the elements of your shadow? Unless you recognize and manage your shadow, take it out of the dark and expose it to the light of day, it will manage you. Many otherwise enormously talented leaders have failed to do this. Think of former President Richard Nixon, or more recently the now former Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York.

6. Assess your flexibility. Adjusting your style can be advantageous. But not everyone can be all things to all people without appearing phony. You can determine your flexibility by reviewing the expectations of people with different styles, and then setting realistic aspirations, ones that keep you in the �growth zone� but out of the �phony zone.�

7. Clarify Your Purpose. Being aligned with your purpose unleashes enormous energy, enabling you to bring your �Best Self� to your leadership. Your success stories often contain footprints of your sense of purpose. Making it explicit will help you keep it in mind as you make critical choice about where and how to lead.

8. Understand Your Sweet Spot. You will bring the greatest energy to your leadership and be most effective in situations that satisfy two conditions: they allow you to pursue your purpose and 2) they enable you to leverage your strengths while not making you unduly vulnerable to your limits. This means being proactive about choosing (and creating) the conditions that work best for you.

In following these steps, leaders would do well to look neither to the literature nor the example of inspiring leaders for the blueprint for their own leadership style. Rather, I encourage them to follow the lead of the main character in Marilyn Robinson�s novel Gilead, who in taking stock of his life reflected: �I know more than I know, and must learn it from myself.�

The example of Phil.

Phil came to us and said �something is wrong with me. I need to get fixed.� He had been fired from his last three jobs and was currently on probation. We helped Phil recall and examine his success stories. He found a consistent pattern: he had a remarkable talent for coming into a situation that wasn�t working, figuring out what was wrong, and setting it right. He was a �mess-cleaner-upper,� There was also a pattern to his failures, which resulted directly from his successes. Typically he would get rewarded for cleaning up a mess by being made the ongoing manager of whatever function that he had rescued. But this sapped Phil�s motivation. He got charged up in the face of challenges, but was bored when things were going smoothly. So what did he do when bored? Create a mess, which led to getting fired. When Phil learned what his distinctive talent was, he saw that he needed to communicate this to his bosses so that they knew how to use him. With this new self-understanding, he went on to become one of the most valued managers in his corporation.

References Bill George with Peter Sims (2007), True North: Discover your Authentic Leadership, (New York: John Wiley & Sons) Leander Kahney, �Evil Genius,� Wired (April, 2008, pp. 136-143)

An abbreviated version of this article was published in July by "American Executive." And another shortened version is to be published in March in "Leadership Excellence."

Grady McGonagill is Principal of McGonagill Associates, where for 25 years he has led a practice devoted to leadership development. He offers public workshops and coaching based on the approach in this article (www.yourleadershipstyle.com) and works with other coaches and consultants to achieve mastery in their craft (www.reflectivepractioner.com. He has a doctorate from Harvard University and an MA from Stanford. Grady is a contributor to the "Fifth Discipline Fieldbook," edited by Peter Senge et al. (New York: Doubleday, 1994) and the author of a chapter in "Executive Coaching", edited by C. Fitzgerald and J. Berger (San Francisco: Davies Black Publishing, 2002).

Some Reflections on Coaching and 21st Century Leadership

By�Daryl Ogden

If, as either an incidental or serious student of the burgeoning field of 21st century leadership development, you ever wondered whether we had truly entered a new age of leadership, consider the following story.

An NBA basketball coach I know well � someone who over the past 40+ years has coached at virtually every level, and with considerable success � was watching on TV the men�s final of the French Open tennis tournament. Amid the red clay splendor of Roland Garros� Center Court, the coach spotted one of his current players, surrounded by a group of bon vivant friends clearly having one of the times of their life. The player was a flamboyant, talented 22 year old first round draft choice who had just completed an NBA rookie campaign in which his scoring and rebounding averages � and playing time � had climbed steadily every month over the course of the season, due, it was widely reported, to the rigorous one on one work he put in with the coach, who was now watching his player on TV.

The coach was intrigued. No longer interested in seeing Nadal square off against Federer, he consulted his personal practice calendar and confirmed a suspicion: less than 36 hours later, the player was scheduled to begin his offseason workout regimen with the coach at the team�s practice facility, which was an ocean and half a continent away from the player�s present location, in Paris.

The coach picked up his cell phone, scrolled through his contacts list, selected the appropriate recipient, and added to the collection of several thousand text messages he had sent to the player over the previous 11 months. A break in the action brought the TV camera back in focus on the player, who was shown consulting the text message that had traveled its intercontinental route from the United States to France. A sanitized version of the message on the player�s phone would have read, in part, �Why are you sitting with a bunch of guys, when there are so many beautiful women in Paris?� The player laughed and texted back. A back and forth exchange of messages ensued, culminating, eventually, in the key question the coach had wanted to pose from the beginning: �You at practice Tues am?� The reply, a simple �Oui.� And that was that.

Approximately 36 hours later, coach and player convened the first of what would be approximately 60 intense personal workout sessions over the next three months. The coach�s first question, posed to the bleary eyed player after joining him on the basketball court. �What do you think you need to work on today?� The player shared his perspective. The coach listened carefully, reflecting back what he had heard and, drawing on decades of experience, built on and modified the player�s proposed workout, testing his own hypotheses and suggestions and creating space for the player to modify those hypotheses and suggestions in turn. After not more than two or three minutes of back and forth, in which they efficiently shared their points of view and modified the initial workout plans, they agreed to the final outline of that day�s workout.

So what�s the leadership lesson of this story? It doesn�t have to do with technology, though the use of technology and real time communication is important here and certainly characteristic of our age. And it doesn�t have to do with the collapsing of distance, though collapsing distance is what globalization � and there are fewer more globalized industries than the National Basketball Association � is largely about. No, the moral here � if moral�s the right word � concerns how a leader, in this case a coach, optimally positions himself to express his leadership as a form of collaboration and partnership, while at the same time retaining his authority as coach, expert, and leader.

In this case, such a coaching �best practice� was achieved by the coach entering the player�s frame of reference � a decidedly non-basketball frame of reference � via text message, engaging in a spirited and playful dialogue, and then and only then isolating his agenda, which concerned the player�s accountability to himself, his teammates, and the coach. The coach zeroed in on the player�s commitment, even while that player, sipping an Orangina and relaxing in the Paris sun, watched the era�s two greatest tennis champions reach for athletic immortality. Gently, but purposefully, the coach for a few minutes joined the player as a spectator at Roland Garros. Only when the relationship had been reestablished, via text, did he call the question by asking, in effect: �Are you going to be at practice on Tuesday, or are you going to screw around with your friends in Paris and let everyone down in the process?�

It wasn�t always so. In 1968, when the coach in question graduated from school as an accomplished small college point guard and declared his intention to enter the coaching profession, basketball coaches did not seek to establish collaborative relationships with their players. Certainly that was not true of the point guard turned coach in this story. For the next few decades, the coach told his players what to do, showed his players what to do, and drew up for his players what to do. Success had to do to the degree to which his players performed on court as he would have done if he had been playing.

No one exemplified this ideal of coaching leadership more than John Wooden, another ex-point guard and the legendary UCLA men�s basketball coach who, in 1968, was in the middle of a run of seven consecutive � and 10 out of 12 � NCAA titles, a record of excellence that will almost certainly never be matched in any major sport. In that era, Wooden was the model that virtually all coaches � and perhaps every young coach � aspired to emulate. The Wooden system was characterized by a powerful framework � the Pyramid of Success, which captured in diagrammatic form the components of a successful basketball player and, by extension, a winning basketball team. A pyramid was an apt metaphor for Wooden�s coaching philosophy, because he expressed a classic top-down model of organization leadership, with the head coach � the analogue of the CEO � at the top of the proverbial pyramid, with no room for anyone else at the apex. Wooden was a brilliant strategist, an unrivalled teacher, and an uncompromising micro-manager � his expertise extended all the way down to the way his players rolled their socks and tied their laces, which he showed them the proper � indeed, the only � way to do.

Wooden�s model of coaching leadership was right for its time, when organizations of all types were structured vertically, more or less in the shape of a pyramid, and players were coached, in a single, more or less uniform style, depending, dominantly, on their position and in keeping with a style of play that drew upon the strengths of a particular set of players who made up the team.

But leadership in the 21st century, for a variety of reasons � some cultural, some generational, some technological � calls for a more collaborative expression of mutual learning, of curiosity, of openness to, for instance, the ideas put forward by a junior colleague (or rookie basketball player). Over the course of his 40 year career, the NBA coach who is the subject of this piece has evolved his philosophy from a top down, non-collaborative style reminiscent of Wooden, to a far more collaborative � though still authoritative � approach that aligns well with the current climate, a climate at its best characterized by the collaborative and creative organizational cultures of Google and Apple rather than the ossified model of, for example, the American auto industry. Arguably the most accomplished leaders today, whether they be high tech CEOs or basketball coaches, deploy their expertise wisely, neither to dominate their direct reports or players nor to surrender authority to their subordinates, but rather to build individual and organizational capabilities with their colleagues and players by making sense together of what they see �on court,� whether that court be a state of the art conference room in Silicon Valley or a windowless basketball practice facility many thousands of miles removed from Roland Garros.

Leadership as response not reaction: Wisdom and Mindfulness in Public Sector Leadership

By Paul Atkins

This chapter concerns the development of cognitive and emotional capabilities of leaders in the public sector; in particular, the capacity to respond rather than react automatically to challenging events, described herein as mindfulness. The chapter aims to make the case a) that key differences in the complexity of cognitive and emotional processing are not stylistic but developmental.

Although difficult, it is possible for leaders to learn to think and feel in more complex ways, and b) that the cultivation of mindfulness in particular may well be associated with this development. In essence, the chapter argues that the failure to think complexly is a problem for public sector and political leadership and that the cultivation of mindfulness may form part of the solution.

The chapter begins by outlining key theoretical beliefs embodied in the psychological perspective that informs this work, then outlines what mental complexity might look like in the context of a senior public servant. Two key developmental pathologies are then described (over and under-differentiation) and linked to senior leadership in Australia by considering Judith Brett�s (2007) analysis John Howard�s term as prime minister. Finally, the possible implications of mindfulness training in the development of mental complexity are considered and related to leadership. The chapter concludes with a brief consideration of some key factors working against the development of mental complexity in public sector and political leaders.

The dynamics of mental development

In this section I present a set of theoretical assumptions underpinning the work to follow. Given space limitations, these assumptions are presented without great elaboration although each has supporting literature.

a) Human beings must self-regulate physically, cognitive and emotionally in response to environmental challenge (Carver & Scheier, 1998). For example, in the same way that a leader must physically self-regulate to maintain core temperature in the face of fluctuations in air temperature, she must mentally self-regulate in order to maintain a sense of coherence and well-being in the face of conflicts to her beliefs and attitudes. In practice, mental self-regulation involves striving to make sense of experience through fitting it to existing schemas or through the development of new schemas for conceptualising self and the external world.

b) The active construction of meaning from one�s interaction with the socio-physical surround develops across the lifespan such that more mature leaders are able to think, feel and respond (ie. self-regulate) in more complex ways to environmental challenges (Fischer & Yan, 2002; Torbert et al, 2004). While psychological development is most rapid in childhood, it can continue throughout adulthood given appropriate challenges and supports (Kegan, 1982, 1994).

c) The development of mental complexity can be seen as a dialectic process of ever more subtle and complex differentiations and integrations. For example, in the affective domain, wiser individuals are better able to differentiate between subtle emotions and their meanings, and are better able to integrate those emotions with situational demands to act effectively (Labouvie-Vief & Marquez-Gonzalez, 2004).[1]

d) Leaders, like all humans, strive for agency and communion. Agency refers to the need to act effectively to achieve desired ends and communion refers to the need to belong as a valued member of a community (McAdams, 1997).

From this set of assumptions, the development of leader wisdom can be seen as the growth of capacity to respond in more complex ways such that the leader can maintain a stable sense of coherence and well-being in the face of increasingly complex challenges. This emphasis on maintaining well-being may seem excessively self-centred to those more accustomed to thinking about interpersonal, organisational, institutional and societal aspects of leadership. And indeed, it is a very partial perspective. However, the bridge from the micro- experience of leadership to more macro aspects arises particularly from assumption d). Coherence and well-being are the outcomes of effectively meeting the interpersonal, organisational and societal challenges of leadership. For the purposes of this article, it is useful to take the perspective of the leader looking out and acting at least partially from enlightened self-interest.

We intuitively know that leaders vary in mental complexity. When I ask people what makes a wise leader, they usually cite abilities like a deep understanding of the dynamics of the broader system (particularly the broader social system), a capacity to step back from experience to take a longer term or bigger perspective, an interest in people manifest in a capacity to listen, and a sense of their identity, values and limitations that preserves their integrity and humility through challenges that others might react to defensively. In short, wisdom in common parlance seems to mean a combination of good judgment, effective social action and a resilient sense of self.

Psychological processes underpinning mental complexity

What might mental complexity look like in terms of underlying psychological processes in the context of leadership? Let�s use an example to illustrate. Mary is a leader of a major government department in the midst of a significant organisational cultural change effort to increase accountability and devolve decision making. Although generally supported, Mary is frequently engaged in heated disagreements with both her senior management team and minister. Mary is confident in the direction she is taking, having successfully deputised during a similar organisational change in a different department. Her perception is that current criticisms of her arise from concerns among stakeholders about short-term costs of the change when her actions are designed to bring about long-term benefits.

Change happens (or not) through a series of conversations between Mary and key stakeholders including her senior management team, her minister, members of other departments, clients and so on. Many of these conversations are difficult, in the sense that they will directly challenge the way that Mary is seeing the world, potentially threatening her sense of her own capability to bring about the change and even her worth. Consider for a moment, what emotional complexity might look like in the face of this situation. Mary must be able to:

� identify subtle differences between emotions and the informational signals these differences convey.

� predict the progression of emotions such that she can anticipate the effects of different actions.

� accept and regulate sometimes strong and painful emotions within herself to achieve desired ends.

� take the perspective of others, to anticipate and discern their emotional responses to her actions.

� modify her actions appropriately to facilitate others keeping their emotional responses at optimal levels for effective action.

� reconcile and integrate conflicting emotions arising from different aspects of the situation[2].

� step back from her emotions enough to recognise that other emotional reactions might have also been possible given different interpretations of the situation, and

� even from this somewhat detached position, Mary must be able to honour and use the emotions to help move her in a valued direction, realising her commitments without being attached to her particular anticipation of the ways in which she might get there.

These are just some of the emotional capabilities required. There are also substantial cognitive demands of this situation. For example, as a leader, Mary must be able to disentangle her leadership role from her identity (Linsky & Heifetz, 2002; Kets de Vries, 2005). Not only does Mary require a finely tuned capacity to identify, predict and regulate different emotions within herself and others, she must also understand the motivations, values and world-views of others; anticipate the dynamics of conversations, patterns of influence and power that typically arise in conflict, and respond accordingly; understand her own strengths, needs and vulnerabilities; sustain herself in body, mind and spirit under stress and maintain a sense of who she is, what she stands for and what she hopes to achieve not just for herself but for the bigger context in which she operates.

So a wise leader is someone with sufficient cognitive and emotional complexity to consciously respond, as opposed to automatically react, to increasingly complex challenges. This amounts to a capacity to step back somewhat from experience, to see our experience in context. Rather than being swept up in experiences, to have experiences. In the terms introduced earlier, we must become more complex by differentiating our own reactions from the observable aspects of experience, allowing us to make choices as opposed to operating on automatic pilot. In simpler terms, to live wisely we must learn to watch our experience while living it.

Before we turn to a consideration of how we might help develop this mental complexity in public-sector leaders, it might be instructive to consider a couple of identifiable ways in which leaders might fail to develop or at least exhibit complexity in response to their experience. These can be seen as dead-ends branching off from the developmental pathway. I argued earlier that psychological development entails more complex forms of self-regulatory capacity such that we are able to maintain equanimity in the face of increasingly complex challenges. Another way to say this is that, faced with new and challenging experiences we must either integrate these with what we already know or we must differentiate new ways of knowing.

Developmental pathologies in leadership

The core processes of differentiation and integration suggest a couple of developmental �pathologies� that seem highly relevant to leadership. First, it is possible to over-differentiate, such that a huge variety of perspectives and possibilities are perceived without the capacity to integrate these with past experience and context in a way that leads to effective action. This type of over-differentiation sees the nuances and relativities in everything but is effectively paralysed by this complexity. We perhaps see this in public sector leaders hamstrung between multiple conflicting points of view, seemingly unable to act in a world rich in context and nuance and, ultimately, electing the most timid courses of action. From a psychological perspective, this type of leader is complex but unable to self-regulate effectively to achieve positive affect and is prone to depression and stress. Such leaders are presumably rare in political leadership because they struggle to provide the clarity of message required to be elected.

At the other end of the scale, leaders may fail to differentiate enough, prematurely foreclosing on complexity. We see this in examples of leaders who exhibit excessive certainty and confidence in their ability to control and predict the unfolding of events. Here the leader essentially ignores or denies complexity in order to protect threats to self and resorts to trusted and over-learned patterns of habitual response and categorisation. This sort of leader is able to maintain a high degree of positive affect (at least until change becomes undeniable) because uncertainty and complexity is either not considered or discounted as unimportant.

Judith Brett�s (2007) fascinating analysis of the last year of John Howard�s term as prime minister paints a picture of under-differentiated acts of leadership[3]. Brett (2007) drew upon Little�s (1988) characterisation of �Strong Leadership� to emphasise the way Howard reduced complexity by dichotomising issues:

�Howard thrived on division. After all, it is only with division that you can have a contest, show your strength and win. Whatever the issue, Howard turned it into a contest of opposites, in which there were only two possible positions, black and white, right and wrong, with him or against him. Under Howard's leadership, conversations about our national past, our present and our future were re-configured as "The History Wars" and "The Culture Wars", all nuance and complexity reduced to a simplistic confrontation of claim, denial and counter-claim. Bipartisanship was rarely in his repertoire.� (Brett, 2007, pp. 11-12)

�The simplistic approach of dichotomising may increase electability and speed up reaction times to urgent simple issues, but it has serious drawbacks in response to complex issues involving multiple stakeholders, long time frames and uncertainty. Again Brett (2007) illustrates these difficulties with respect to the way the Howard government responded to issues of climate change:

�The issue of global warming calls, above all, for co-operation, an open inquiring mind and new ideas. It does not lend itself to Strong Leadership's politics of conviction and control. As Graham Little put it, the Strong Leader prefers convictions to new ideas: "A Strong Leader's philosophy must be simple and reliable ... Made to strike hard and stick. The intention is not to contribute to debate: the intention is to overcome and then marginalise contrary views out of existence."

The Strong Leader also wants to solve problems, but the more urgent demands of keeping control of the agenda, scoring points for one's own side and maintaining dominance keep getting in the way. Good policy making thus becomes hostage to the leader's reputation. The Howard government's record on climate change is a casebook study of the policy weaknesses of Strong Leadership: its propensity to construct policy problems in terms of friends and enemies, its lack of interest in new ideas, it�s imperative to control, and its vulnerability to seduction by special interests.' (Brett, 2007, pp. 56-7)

Brett (2007) discusses similar patterns in response to the release of a report into child abuse among indigenous communities:

�The Northern Territory intervention carried all the hallmarks of a Strong Leader's preferred way of operating. An emergency or a crisis requiring immediate and drastic intervention is declared. There is no time for doubt in the face of complexity, nor for talking, listening, consulting. What's needed is swift and decisive action, now! And the leader is convinced that they and only they can see what needs to be done. In response to critics, Howard declared, "I don't care. I don't care what they say. They are wrong. I know what I am doing is right."� (Brett, 2007, p. 52)

Such under-differentiated leadership limits options because to change one�s position in response to new information, or learn from others through consultation is cast in terms of weakness. To quote Peter Costello mocking Kevin Rudd, �A leader doesn't go to committees, a leader knows what he wants and announces it!� (cited in Brett, 2007, p. 56)

In summary, effective leadership must navigate between these two extremes: sufficient differentiation to be open to new information while recognising and understanding complexity, but sufficient integration with identity, experience and context to bound issues, maintain positive emotion and act effectively.

Having briefly painted a picture of what mental complexity might look like in leadership, and having identified two leadership pathologies that might arise, we are now in a position to return to the question of how this complexity might be developed in public-sector leaders.

The development of cognitive-affective complexity: the core capability of mindfulness.

Earlier it was argued that an effective leader has the capacity to step back from experience, to see their experience in context, allowing them to make choices as opposed to operating on automatic pilot. Linsky and Heifetz (2002) refer to this capacity as �getting up on the balcony�, noting that it is also essential to be able to get down on the dance floor when appropriate. Indeed, mental complexity in leadership appears to involve being simultaneously on the dance floor and on the balcony, integrating action and reflection dynamically. In psychological terms, this ability has been referred to as �mindfulness�. Mindfulness has been variously defined but two informative and complementary definitions are �Paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally� (Kabat-Zinn, 2005) and �The continuous creation of new categories; openness to new information; and an implicit awareness of more than one perspective� (Langer, 1997, p. 4).

Mindfulness applied to leadership implies a quality of openness to experience where the leader does not closely identify with their thoughts, feelings and sensations but instead fosters and maintains a moment-to-moment meta-awareness of the very process of their thinking and feeling. In other words, we are mindful when we are able to deliberately pay attention to what is actually happening without being swept up in patterns of judgment, evaluation, categorisation and reaction arising from past experience. Focusing on what �is� rather than our inferences allows us to discover new facets of our experience and act more creatively instead of being constrained by old habits of thinking. For example, most of the time, most of us are entirely unaware of the layers of judgment and evaluation we add to situations, thereby decreasing the possibility of perceiving from a different viewpoint or acting in a new way. The complex demands of public-sector leadership increasingly call for the capacity to creatively and consciously move between bare observation and judgment. Mindfulness training is one pathway for cultivating a non-reactive self that is able to intelligently register multiple perspectives in ourselves and others.

Mindfulness training allows participants to develop a broader perspective on themselves and their experience, often leading to both differentiation (of otherwise automatic thoughts and feelings) and integration (into patterns of thoughts and feelings, and their relationship to self). Of course, cultivating mindfulness is not the only aspect of enhancing mental complexity. Education, formal analytic techniques and techniques that foster creativity, or dialogue with diverse stakeholders can also be helpful. However, I believe mindfulness may be a sine qua non for the development of the highest levels of mental complexity. For example, even though consultation with others can foster mental complexity, it can only do so if the leader is willing and able to attend to multiple perspectives simultaneously instead of acting out of automatic judgment and evaluation.

So cultivating mindfulness is cultivating cognitive and affective complexity by adopting a perspective that is somewhat outside the whole system of the self interacting with the world. Cultivating mindfulness allows us to self-regulate more effectively and, from a mindful vantage point, leaders are better able to respond rather than react and to learn from rather than avoid challenge.

How might mindfulness be developed? Cultivating mindfulness involves disrupting unconscious habits of automatic behaviour �over-learned� across a lifetime. This disruption involves practice and so the standard intensive format for leadership development programs does not lend itself to mindfulness development. However, there is evidence that mindfulness can be enhanced in a relatively short time. The �Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction� (MBSR) program yields demonstrable changes in brain structure and function (Davidson, et al, 2003), as well as psychological changes associated with increased psychological flexibility and resilience in eight weeks, a time frame that is considerably shorter than the period within which leadership development coaching usually occurs.

To date, such programs have been seen as interventions to improve psychological or physical health. However, my experience of teaching MBSR courses is that they can also improve performance at work through helping participants dis-identify with their thoughts and feelings, providing them with more options for response rather than reaction at work. Mindfulness is a mental ability that can be developed in any context and is not restricted to formal or meditative practices (e.g. Hayes, Strosahl & Wilson, 1999). Mindfulness based therapies are becoming increasingly popular for the treatment of depression, anxiety and a wide range of other psychological difficulties. These therapies tend to rely upon briefer exercises more akin to the sort of experience one might have in a intensive leadership development course. Together with colleagues from Sydney University, I am presently researching whether such brief interventions make any substantial difference to mindfulness and leadership capability.

In conclusion: awareness (perhaps) begets change

In this chapter I have presented a psychological perspective on wisdom in leadership by characterising it as mental complexity. In closing, I wish to broaden the focus from individual capability development to the systemic pressures operating against the development of mental complexity in leaders.

First, in the context of public-sector leadership, mindfulness training might suffer by its association with somewhat esoteric or religious traditions. But mindfulness training can be entirely secular and is supported by an increasing body of scientific research showing improvements in psychological flexibility and performance.

Second, the media, the oppositional political system and indeed public attitudes often work against the development of, or at least the expression of, mental complexity. For example, we need only to think back to the proposed Knowledge Nation policy and the way in which Barry Jones� �spaghetti and meatballs diagram� was received by the media and his opponents to see how expressions of uncertainty and complexity can come to be mindlessly evaluated, for example, by association with leader weakness. It is my hope that, by relating mental complexity and leadership, and by highlighting the way in which leaders must integrate reflection and action � both �getting up on the balcony� and �being on the dance floor�, that a more nuanced view of expressions of uncertainty and doubt might prevail.

On this eve of the election, it seems none of us are capable of designing systems of political interaction that capture the benefits of independent thinking and the generative power of a competition of ideas, without degenerating into a simple competition of personalities that fosters premature foreclosure into simplistic and judgmental positions. If we are to have the sorts of dialogues and leaders we need, we must be able to tolerate enough uncertainty to allow more sophisticated integrations to emerge than what we already know. By definition, creativity involves a time when we don�t know what to do and as leaders we must develop ways in which we can express this complexity and uncertainty in the very midst of acting.

References: Brett, J. (2007). Exit Right: The unravelling of John Howard. Quarterly Essay(28). Carver, C. S. and M. F. Scheier (1998). On the self-regulation of behavior. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. Davidson, R. J., Kabat-Zinn, J., Schumacher, J., Rosenkranz, M., Muller, D., Santorelli, S. F., et al. (2003). Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation. Psychosom Med, 65(4), 564-570. Fischer, K. W., Yan, Z., & Stewart, J. B. (2002). Adult cognitive development: Dynamics in the development web. In J. Valsiner & K. Connolly (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychology (pp. 491-516). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Linsky, M. and R. A. Heifetz (2002). Leadership on the Line, Harvard Business School. Kabat-Zinn, J. (2005). Coming to our senses, Hyperion. Kegan, R. (1994). In over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kets de Vries, M. F. R. (2005). "The Dangers of Feeling Like a Fake." Harvard Business Review 83(9): 108-116. Labouvie-Vief, G., & Marquez Gonzalez, M. (2004). Dynamic integration: Affect optimization and differentiation in development. In D. Y. Dai & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Motivation, emotion, and cognition: Integrative perspectives on intellectual functioning and development (pp. 237-272). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Labouvie-Vief, G. (2005). Self-with-other representations and the organization of the self. Journal of Research in Personality, 39(1), 185-205. Langer, E. J. (2005). On becoming an artist: reinventing yourself through mindful creativity. Ballantine Books. McAdams, D. (1997). The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self, Guilford Press. Torbert, W., S. R. Cook-Greuter, et al. (2004). Action Inquiry: The secret of timely and transforming leadership. San Franciso, Berrett-Koehler Publishers.�

[1] Through this paper I refer to more or less complex mental processes. The word �mental� here refers to both cognitive and emotional (affective) processes. Contemporary neuroscience and psychology shows cognitions and emotions are inseparable: Our emotional experience is deeply informed by our conscious and unconscious cognitive interpretations of experience and, conversely, all mental events are infused with affective value. [2] Even intrapersonally, conflicting emotions might arise at different times or at different levels of self-insight. For example, acting out of anger can be both disturbing and satisfying at the same time and each has different impacts upon action. [3] With respect to John Howard, because I can only assess his mental complexity through the lens of the media, I must constrain any claims to qualities of acts of leadership rather than the qualities of Howard himself.. It is of course possible that mentally complex leaders may choose simplistic rhetoric and action in order to persuade a disinterested or under-informed public or just to ensure they are given a �sound-bite�. But for the climate change issue at least there is increasing objective evidence, irrespective or rhetorical demands, that Howard�s rhetoric and policy was insufficiently differentiated and integrated at both the national and global levels.

This article was originally published in Public Leadership: Perspectives and Practices (Canberra; Eds. P.T. Hart & J. Uhr).

Paul Atkins is Associate Professor in Leadership and Organisational Behaviour at the Crawford School of Economics and Government, The Australian National University