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The Four Facets of a Leader
by Dr. Charles James
The impact of the Information Revolution and the globalization of business and culture confronts the 21st century leader with unprecedented challenges and opportunities. How do we mentally keep up with the pace of change? How do we sift through data and find wisdom? How do we lead virtual communities with people from all continents and every conceivable perspective? When we do achieve a breakthrough, we now have an instant world market for our ideas and products. Charles James’ article summons leaders to a new way of integrated thinking, a "polyvalent" mind that will position the diligent thinker for maximum impact in the era ahead. After setting the historical context, James presents four ways of thinking that integrate the diverse real-world challenges faced by executives. James calls for uniting intuitive, pragmatic, speculative and relational modes of thinking into a cohesive whole.
The Challenge
Today’s business leader must contend with information overload, immediate market impact, virtual corporations with employees from all continents AND try to have some kind of inner harmony, family joy and community involvement. Is it possible to integrate these disparate elements, or must the leader’s life be a fragmented series of unconnected events? The new millennium requires a new mind.
Ever since Rene Descartes (fl.1650) failed to prove that the interaction of body and soul occurred in the pineal gland, philosophers have been trying to integrate human experience and thought. The history of Western thought, from the seventeenth century onward, is one long debate about the unity of the person. Descartes forced thinkers to confront the problem of dichotomized humankind. What is our very essence - mind or body? How do the mind and body interact? Can there be integration of these two seemingly opposing sides of human nature?
These questions assume the split in human nature even before the discussion gets started! If Descartes had begun with the assumption that the human being is one integrated whole, consisting of body, intellect, emotions and will, we would not be asking introspective and individualistic questions. Rather, we would be asking a social question. Rather than ask, "Who am I," we would ask, "Who are we?"
Descartes began with the individual thinker (cogito ergo sum) and built an entire metaphysics from that starting point. If he had begun with a social starting point, namely the experience of another, then his basic motif would be radically different. Rather than "I think, therefore I am," he would have said, "I experience others, therefore we are." That is to say, he would have begun at the social level of relationship rather than at the individual level of pure reason. Today we are still puzzled about the question of integrating our thoughts and experiences. The proliferation of spiritualities and the explosion of new self-help ideologies indicate a desire for integrating our bodies (experiences) and minds (thoughts).
Advances in the sciences since Descartes persuaded some philosophers that all reality is ultimately matter. Others, rejecting this materialist view, argued that ultimate reality is more like mind or spirit. Western thought is divided between those who tend toward empirical/rational forms of reasoning and those who are more intuitive and speculative. Today this quest for integration must confront artificial intelligence and the cognitive sciences. Is integration possible?
Leaders Must be Integrated Thinkers
Are Descartes’ questions relevant for 21st century leaders? Some may say that one’s personal answer to his own "inner integration" has little impact on those around him or his leadership. Not so! Only an integrated person can effectively communicate with others. This is the heart of the matter: the way we reason determines our effectiveness in every sphere of life. Only those with a polyvalent mind can communicate with a broad spectrum of people, and lead any community effectively.
Great leaders discover this very early. In order to have an impact upon different kinds of people and situations they must develop a model of reasoning that integrates several different modes of thinking. This new rationality is unwilling to separate the body from the mind. Polyvalent reasoning goes beyond Descartes’ tragic dichotomy and celebrates the unity of our being.
We are entering a century in which traditional notions of the mind/body dichotomy have been radically changed. Several contemporary philosophers reject traditional ideas of rationality. Many argue that the Enlightenment ideal of pure reason has led to an emphasis on technique over substance, production over beauty and logic over passion. This questioning or rejection of "pure reason" has worried some, but it has shown that human beings do not live on rational thinking alone. The human mind seeks something more than pure logic.
An Integrated Model of Reasoning
A person can use one model of reason and completely fail to communicate with someone who is using another model of reason. The mixing of perspectives, religions, and cultures due to global communication exacerbates this problem. What we need is a rationality that is versatile enough to communicate with varied cultures, and grounded enough to resist the tendency to relativism, and therefore irrelevance. We live in a polychotomous culture in which disparate models of rationality all assume validity. Diverse communities, with these different models of rationality, cannot communicate or have genuine understanding of each other because their rational criteria differ. The effective leader is aware of this variety of rationalities. He or she must develop an integrated model of reason that increases the impact of his or her leadership. Twenty-first Century polyvalent thinking has four facets. When united, these provide a cohesive and comprehensive pathway to impact.
First, the leader will have a kind of rationality, which can "hear" a sense of personal purpose or vocation. I will call this intuitive rationality. Second, he or she must be able to connect attainable ends to practical means in order to get the job done. This is pragmatic rationality. Third, it must be a model that has breadth of vision. This is speculative reasoning. The fourth mode defines our encounters with others. I call this the interpersonal reason. A leader must have this polyvalent rationality, inclusive of all four facets, to be effective in the new century.
The Listening Mind
First, let us look as what I call the intuitive or "listening" aspect of reason. The human mind has the capacity to "hear" the call of a lifelong purpose. The Latin word vocare means, "to hear." Our vocation is not something we choose, rather, it chooses us. The rational mind has the ability to hear this call to total commitment. Our vocation is not a temporary job, it is a life to which we dedicate all our gifts and energies. Without this sense of "calling" (vocation) we will not endure in our career (occupation), and will not make the sacrifices necessary to fulfill our personal purpose.
The meaning of vocation comes down to us from philosophers and sages who sensed a transcendent purpose to carry out specific tasks. Socrates, Homeric heroes and Biblical prophets all required total commitment that would radically change their community and themselves. It is interesting that the Latin noun "carrus", from which we get our English word "career," means "a four-wheeled baggage wagon." Only a profound sense of calling keeps our careers from weighing us down with excess baggage.
In the West during the Medieval period (500-1500) the notion of a vocation was restricted to those called to a religious life. But during the sixteenth-century, Reformation and Renaissance leaders universalized this sense of transcendent calling. When the Pilgrims and Puritans landed in the New World every member of the community was suffused with a personal sense of calling. This kind of vocational significance animated communities throughout Europe and in the British Isles. Even the most mundane tasks were now charged with significance.
The transcendent meaning of personal vocation has almost vanished in the modern secularized West. With this change we find the related notion of the mind’s capacity to hear this call fading as well. Before the Enlightenment (1650-1790) people thought of themselves inhabiting a theocentric universe. The Enlightenment, the related Deistic movement and the dichotomy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) persuaded many that the transcendent was unknowable by human reason, or to be ignored altogether. Reason was, therefore, demoted to the realm of purely practical or this-worldly matters. According to Kant, reason did not have the capacity to "hear" a call. The result was an anthropocentric universe and a disdain for affective or intuitive thinking.
In an attempt to defend the mind’s intuitive scope, Romantic thinkers in the nineteenth century gave a special "knowing" power to faith. Poet Samuel Taylor Cooleridge and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, argued that faith has the capacity to encounter divine reality. The German thinker, Friedrich Schleiermacher said that we experience transcendence best through what he called "feeling".
These nineteenth century thinkers were on to something. They realized that the Enlightenment model of reason was too restrictive a notion for their deepest sentiments. They recognized that to define human reason as logical operations alone would leave the human mind truncated and spiritually handicapped. In other words, in the name of religion, they argued that reason had grown too narrow. It had lost its mystical or intuitive aspect.
We return to our main theme: anyone who does not develop a polyvalent rationality will have little effectiveness in leadership. Every leader must sense a personal call that evokes a lifetime commitment. He or she must hear this "vocation" which roots him or her in a clear goal. Without this sense of calling, the leader lacks confidence and direction, except for short-term tasks.
We cannot dispense with the intuitive sense of calling. Our agnostic age must not steal this from us. The "crisis in leadership" of which some speak is a crisis of vocation. People today do not believe that their life’s work is a transcendent plan to which they are called. They choose their work according to its financial benefits or social status, but not according to an inner compulsion that drives them to do nothing else. A leader who does not have this call cannot lead effectively. He will change his life’s goal according to the fads of the day or the lure of temporary rewards. He will offer no clear direction to those who follow him because he has none himself. Self-centered labor soon becomes unfulfilling, even with generous bonuses and stock options.
The Practical Mind
The next facet of an integrated mind is pragmatic rationality. By this term I mean the ability to connect attainable goals with practical means. The leader must have the ability to envision the goal and be able to implement procedures to reach it. This requires that he or she can see the potential connection between means and ends. Not all people can see this relationship. The sign of a great leader is the depth and rapidity with which they perceive this connection.
The pragmatic aspect of reason is that ability to devise a plan that works. It is the daily habit of following the most effective pathway towards accomplishment. The pragmatic leader pays close attention to the practical success of the task at hand. All true leaders get "dirty with the details". No leader with any real impact has ever remained merely a visionary. The integrated leader responds to the call by immediately devising plans of action. He or she then works to see whether or not these plans lead to the goal to which he or she is called. If not, the plans may be refined.
Thinking "Outside the Box"
The third aspect of an integrated model of reason is speculative rationality. This speculative facet is quite neglected today. Speculation is the ability to reason beyond present mental restrictions. Over three decades ago Thomas Kuhn stunned the complacent world of science when he asserted that the progress of scientific discovery was not always the story of painstaking empirical effort. Kuhn asserted that most major changes in scientific understanding were the result of speculative leaps of genius. Reason must embrace speculation and not be content to survive in the world of rocks, clouds and other "matters of fact."
Reason will not rest unless it can express its creative gifts. Reason sometimes reveals its creative wisdom in the questions asked such as, "What is beyond?". Human reason always asks the next question that it is not supposed to ask; it always reaches further in speculation. Speculative reasoning is scary for those unwilling to risk being wrong!
Reason is not only analytic; it is constructive as well. It tears down, but it also builds up. It has the power to speculate, dream and assemble new ideas. The effective leader is a speculator, a constructive visionary. A good leader sees the possibilities and unites them with a clear plan. This is the peculiar creativity of leadership. Speculative insight joins final products with particular means of production. The leader sees this connection immediately when others only see possibilities. She is more than a visionary; she is an architect and builder who turns plans into products.
Encountering Others
The fourth and final facet is interpersonal rationality. Holistic rationality requires this interpersonal aspect because we are social beings. We do not come to understand another person merely through logical analysis. We understand another person by means of impression, innuendo and insight. Communication between two people utilizes symbol, metaphor, intonation and facial expression. Logical reasoning is only one component of interpersonal understanding.
Interpersonal understanding is a kind of knowing realized by entering into a relationship with someone. In this mode of knowing, one person comes to share another person’s world of experience. This kind of knowing is vital in order to intelligently lead a community of followers. We lead within communities. The leader must share the community values, goals and experiences of those he or she leads.
A Call to Re-Integration
If our reasoning capacity is limited to only one facet of the four outlined above, our leadership will have little impact. An integrated rationality is required for the twenty-first century. We live in a society in which these four types of reasoning have been turned into rivals. Pragmatic planning wars with speculative bursts of insight. This creates a dichotomy where succeeding in our career seems at odds with our creative life of play, hobby and art. Intuition that hears the call to a life commitment seems hostile to the interpersonal thinking necessary for harmonious community. This is why our individual calling often faces the opposition from well-meaning members in our community. Integration is essential because the calling of a leader is a call to lead a community.
Some leaders fail to integrate their lives because they fail to integrate their reason. It is essential then that leaders develop a model of reason with all four aspects. However, this cannot be done without a return to faith and its inseparable connection with reason. As our culture has become increasingly secular, reason and faith are perceived as enemies. Reason itself has been demoted and faith has lost its moorings. The two cannot exist without each other. As reason shed itself of faith, it lost its speculative, intuitive and interpersonal aspects. It became merely the pragmatic tool for getting the immediate job done. Because of this, modern men and women feel this disintegration. Their reasoning capacity extends no further than their careers and leaves their calling, creativity and communal life to the whim of momentary emotions, completely divorced from everyday work. A sense of transcendent calling seems opposed to a successful career because, after all, one’s career is based on "down-to-earth" pragmatic reason. This is a tragic fragmentation of human experience.
Contemporary leaders often feel compartmentalized and disoriented. Careers are safely protected from a sense of calling and personal creativity is not connected to career. One works hard in order to savor a few moments of playing hard or collapsing in a heap late each evening.
The way back to an integrated life is through the reintegration of these four facets of reasoning. This reintegration creates a new "reason-faith" that is pragmatic and intuitive. Reintegration creates a healthy balance of inner experience and social encounter. This new reason-faith provides the capacity to hear the call of vocation. It also provides the speculative aspect of creativity. Reason-faith helps us to accomplish the immediate in the light of our lifetime calling. And reason-faith helps us appreciate our unique personality and those of others in our communities.
If the leader will embrace polyvalent thinking his or her impact will be profound. Today’s leaders must find personal purpose and community fulfillment while barraged by the cacophony of a global culture and an ever-transforming economy. These new challenges call for a new "thought-ware" -- a new mind for a new millennium.
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