Leadership and Followship

for high engagement, creativity

and prosperity
we are longing for new leadership that is aligned with
interdependent relationships between employer,
employee and customer

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So please be sure to take specialist advice before taking on any of the ideas. This book is
general in nature and not meant to replace any specific advice. Deborah Lange, Lange
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reliance, whether in whole or in part, on this e-book.

04
06
09

| Challenges

| Safety and trust

| Trust and Autonomy

15
18
22

| Evolution of Power

| Leadership and Followship

| About the Author

Play is at the heart of change in disruptive times.

In disruptive times where the rules of control, predictability and order dont
work, we need to become skilled at the art of improvisation. Being skilled in
improvising, means being able to be free and play rather than being
controlled and compliant. We need a new playbook rather than a rule book
to generate new ideas for dis-ruptive times.
Engagement in the workplace is at an all-time low.
People are tired of talking heads. Theyre bored in the boardroom and
distracted by smartphones and apps.
What if there are other ways to connect deeply, inspire creativity and
encourage collaboration?
What if we have to turn our approach to the design of workplaces,
meetings, workshops, and events upside down?
Would you be willing to experiment?

The internet and technology gave people free access to information,

which means people in the community now connect with whoever and
where ever the information is they need. People have learnt to cooperate
with others in respectful interdependent relationships and the freedom to
come and go as they choose. People have formed circle conversations,
networks and interdependent relationships.
This is the antithesis of what occurs in most organisations where there is
high amounts of control of who gets what information and access to people
is held tightly within hierarchical power structures.
What if many of the systems of control that have been designed into our
ways of working are no longer necessary with knowledge work?
What if the hierarchies of the manufacturing and industrial era are

One of the most foundational aspects of designing our workspaces and

learning spaces to foster high engagement and creativity is intentional
trust building. Building trust and creating safety is the work of everyone,
especially, designated leaders.
Building trust in a hierarchy will take us so far, but hierarchies by their
very nature foster compliance not engagement.
When we build trust in and across work teams in new circular,
inter-dependent flat structures the sky is the limit when it comes to
unleashing the potential of people.
Stephen Covey talks about this so eloquently in The Speed of Trust:
"When trust is low, in a company or in a relationship, it places a hidden
tax on every transaction: every communication, every interaction, every
strategy, every decision is taxed, bringing speed down and sending costs up.
My experience is that significant distrust doubles the cost of doing business
and triples the time it takes to get things done.
By contrast, individuals and organizations that have earned and operated
with high trust experience the opposite of a taxa dividend that is like a
performance multiplier, enabling them to succeed in their communications,
interactions, and decisions and to move with incredible speed. A recent
Watson Wyatt study showed that high-trust companies outperform low-trust
companies by nearly 300 percent!
With a culture of high trust, we can play with ideas, experiment, deal
with the ambiguous and share mistakes. This is where creativity and
adaptation arise.

In my white paper, Trust, Truth and Transparency , I share how people

are more likely to share mistakes and feel safe to contribute to adapting
the organisation in a culture of high trust and creativity.
The alternative can be costly.
At Toyota mechanical failures were known to leaders long before
corrective action was taken, and many close to the issue indicated the
company took decisive action to hide the facts and distort the scope
of the problem. The problem was a rewards issue similar to that at
Enron. When the organization disproportionately rewarded managers
for cost-containment versus sustaining product quality, it created the
incentive for everyone involved to ignore facts and deny a problem
existed." KornFerry
When Google put people and teams under the microscope to find out
what does enable a group of people to work well together?
The answer they found surprised them.

People are more likely to take a risk and offer unique ideas, the more they feel safe,
accepted and have a sense of belonging.

Safety & Trust

But the journey to creating safety, trust and respect within
new interdependent relationships where power is knowledge based,
is not as smooth as some would like.
Like adolescents,who sulk in their bedrooms, withdraw communication or
leave home as they break the ties with being dependent on parents, so too
are we seeing erratic behaviours as employees strive for meaning and
fulfilment at work.
The current challenges of the rise of bullying, tension, absenteeism, and
presenteeism are responses to being over controlled in workplaces that
were designed when authority came from position not knowledge.
The disruptions we are experiencing are a response as we pull away
from being controlled and micro-managed.
The transition to creating new interdependent work relationships and
businesses which honor peoples need for freedom and autonomy is messy.

Understanding how we perceive power, can help us transition through

this messy, chaotic disruptive time.

Trust and Autonomy Diagnostic

What are the indicators of what we are doing well on this journey to high trust and high autonomy?
What are the indicators of what we need to improve or change?
Taking the 2 fundamental qualities of trust and freedom and their opposites, gives us an indication of what intervention we need.
Choose a relationship, team, work unit or organisation.
Where would you place your group or organisation on a scale between:
1.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
high fear (intimidation)

high trust (loyalty)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
high control (micro-managed)
high freedom (autonomy)

Controlling
1 - 5 for both indicators
Low Engagement, High Turnover, Absenteeism, Presenteeism,
Bullying at work.
low trust, low autonomy, high control, high fear = compliance with fear,
intimidation, lack of safety
People stay as they are threatened and too intimidated to leave, if they
speak to HR about being intimated often nothing is done, there is
collusion with the bullying as HR and Management lack expertise in
shifting culture and raising awareness of the unspoken
High costs in insurance claims, lack of productivity, absenteeism and
recruitment.

Pleasing
1- 5 control: 5 - 10 trust
High Participation but meeting myopia, ineffective decision making,
all talk no action? high trust, low autonomy, high control, low fear
good relationships, but politeness and an avoidance of making a choice
to allow initiatives to be implemented, generating belief in participation,
to loss of hope, to being cynical about requests for participation
People stay as they believe in the work and the people are OK but they
have one foot in and one foot out, ready for the next loss of belief.
High costs in loss of productivity.

Independents
5 - 10 freedom: 1 - 5 or below trust
Flying Solo, freedom without feedback, can mean flying in the wrong
direction, resulting in chaos, stress and stress.
Managers give employees freedom and autonomy to do their jobs.
The Employee loves the freedom but is inhibited in asking the Manager
for help in case they are seen to lack credibility and/or capability and
have their freedom reduced. The Manager does not know how to
maintain an ongoing reciprocal feedback style of communication to
ensure the work being done is relevant and aligned with the organisations
mission and objectives. Employee and Manager relationships are distant.
Lack of communication and information sharing leads to tension, chaos
and high stress for both Manager and Employee. People stay as they love
the work. People are given redundancy packages when the work is not
what is expected. Management have a view people can be replaced easily.
High recruitment costs.

Co-creators
5- 10 trust: 5 - 10 freedom
High engagement, mistakes are shared, people feel safe to contribute.
Risk taking is a norm, being creative emerges, people love the work and
the workplace?
Managers and Employees see each other as colleagues. There is a
partnership approach and high shared responsibility to continually
improve existing systems and to create totally new ideas for new services
and products for clients. The client is also perceived as a partner in the
business and information is constantly sourced from the client to improve
and products. This becomes a symbiotic relationship of support for one
another, working in step, including work/life balance.

People Power Potential

Different challenges arise dependent on the level of trust and autonomy within a team or organisation. These require different
interventions to steward the organisations leaders to foster a culture for prosperous, fulfilling creative work.
Depending on where you rated your team, there will be different indicators of what you are doing well and need to keep on doing
and different indicators for what is detracting from your team effectiveness.
It is not a linear journey from A to B
It is an adaptive, spiralling experiment to take notice of what indicators are promoting trust and creativity and what indicators
are detracting team safety to innovate.
An understanding of how power has evolved can help us understand what is happening in this transition.

Evolution of Power
1 In the manufacturing and industrial era work was organised in hierarchies.
The Employer had positional power over Employees.
Control and Compliance was the norm.
2 As people have become more educated and technology created free
access to information we have seen shifts in who where power is located.
People are needed for their knowledge work.
Employees have power of expertise.
The switch in power from Employer to Employee is a transition to a state
of being able to share power in inter-dependent relationships within
circular, networked and flat structures.
Knowledge workers want high trust, and freedom within the limits of
the organisation to be able to to find meaningful work, with respect and
development opportunities.

3 Inter-dependent relationships
As we learn how to work in interdependent relationships power shifts.
There is no longer power in position or title alone.
Power comes from knowledge and our ability to engage and cooperate
with others in the co-creation of new circular, networked structures that
are constantly evolving and adaptable.
Our work occurs in networks that thrive in cultures of trust and
transparency fostering adaptability and creativity.
Leaders and Followers exchange power.

The power shift in the evolution of new partnerships between

employers, employees and customers
Requires new qualities to develop for leading our organisations today.

When looking at a sculpture such as the statue of David, it is often said,

Is the sculptor sculpting the clay, or the clay sculpting the sculptor?
We can learn much from this in our evolution of leadership and organisation development today.
Rather than believing we can use the power of control to shape the "clay", we are learning how to engage with the essence of ourselves
and our organisations as social systems that are shaped through influence. There are some things that we can control and others that we
can influence by our modelling of values through our behaviour and the systems that we create that are aligned with the values that we espouse.
This requires an understanding of both the conscious and unconscious systems at play as well as how to relate to ourselves,
each other and our groups in the social systems that we create to do our work.
We require an understanding of such things as:
how humans as living systems grow and develop,
how power promotes creative intelligence or constrains it,
how to develop relationships where we have the trust to develop and grow together.

Leadership and Followship

Leadership and followship in our next stage of evolution will be in rhythm
with the environment. There will be a synchronicity just as in a
self-improvised jazz band. There are no mistakes. Things happen and the
musicians play with what is, and create rhythm. Playing autonomously
and synchronistically at the same time. A paradox.
Leadership and Followship requires new steps.
surrendering to being humble
accepting not knowing and being curious
appreciation, diversity, aesthetics and ethics
working cooperatively for the good of all
listening and holding multiple beliefs
learning about energy and flow
learning how to see simplicity in complexity
making intuitive choices when logic is no longer the answer
sensing and anticipating the unexpected
leading like a scientist who is continually being curious about what
emerges and is discovering new knowledge
being able to play, to laugh to release stress and maintain work life balance.

Leader - Influencer
The more expertise employees have, the more leadership is about influencing.
Influencers create permission to do or say something with a group of people to
bring them along on a journey of improvement.
Some organisations or teams within organisations have taken one step further,
This next step on our evolutionary journey of leadership is developing a wave of
leaders who also know when and who to follow.
Leader - Follower
The story of the inventors who shared their idea for an instant camera in Kodak
has been well researched. At that time the leaders in the organisation did not
follow the lead of the inventors and see that they were on the pathway of a
next revolution in technology. The story is history of how Kodak lost their
market presence when they bypassed the opportunity to take this new
technology to the market place.
Who influences who?
In the world of knowledge experts, who is leading who, in organisations is
sometimes blurred. With egos detached as people are primarily interested in
the fulfilment of the creation of new ideas and taking them to the market place.
Barack Obama talks to garbage collectors, the Dalai Lama is known for talking
to beggars as much as to people holding positions of power, Richard Branson
has an approachable, open relationship with employees.
These leaders gain just as much information from people across the broad
spectrum of their organisation and society as they do their fellow peers or
senior representatives.

Guide and Steward

Professor Margaret Wheatley is renowned for her work in understanding
people in relation to our understanding of the science of living,
self-organising systems. She has invited us to look at our work, not only
from the perspective of science, but also from the perspective of the
sacred and of stewardship of our communities and the earth.
This is more about understanding ancient wisdom than science, more
about the sacred than the objective, more about wisdom than information,
more about inter-dependence than independence.
The development of Senior Leaders in the organisation who can engender
trust with the community as the organisation does the right thing ethically
with work practices that are highly ethical for both employees and the
community within which the organisation lives and works.
Every employee in an organisation has the capacity to be self aware and
lead their lives and their from a self-leadership perspective. Leadership is
not only for those people in designated positions. When designated
leaders are co-creating a culture where all employees are loyal to the
organisation, have trust and pride in their work they are also ambassadors
for the organisation.

Question
The Trust - Autonomy Diagnostic gives us a guide to assess where it is best to intervene.
Based on this as an indicator there are different questions to begin our exploration of where to best intervene.
Manager - Controller
Are our systems of control measuring the right things?
Do we have systems so people know the benchmarks for success?
Do we have systems to help identify the detractors that are inhibiting our development?
Leader - Influencer
Do we need to learn how to influence to engage people?
Do we need to learn how to gain permission to give and receive non-defensive feedback?
Do we need to learn how to create safety and trust for people to feel safe to speak up?
Leader - Follower
Do we need to learn to see the unseen patterns that influence our success?
Do we need to learn to show appreciation for a person who contributes great ideas?
Do we need to learn how to follow the ideas of another and dissolve positional power?
Do we need to give people permission to take risks, implement and create the new?
Guide - Steward
Do we need to learn how to guide and steward ethical and community behaviours that demonstrate our organisation cares?
Do we need to learn the art of storytelling, ritual and celebration to foster the sacred in our organisation?
Do we need to learn to be transparent and humble at sharing our mistakes and having the courage to be vulnerable?

Deb Lange, The Fine Art of Facilitation Mentors, Designs, Hosts,

Facilitates and Speaks about the art and science of fostering safe spaces
for people to re-design our workplaces and event spaces
for conversation, creativity and collaboration.
She partners with people to turn the engagement dilemma into a great
opportunity to build relationships and trust leading to high engagement
and the development of creative solutions.
Deb has worked with both international and national organisations in
both the private and public sector on organisational change initiatives,
leadership and culture. Her career, like many leaders today, has been a
colourful blend of personal and professional development. Whether
engaging in sacred sabbaticals to make sense of emerging trends or
balancing family responsibilities like caring for her mother to age and
die at home, she has embraced the blurring of boundaries between life
and work. Boundaries that will continue to dis-rupt the status quo in how,
where and why we work.
Deborahs work has won Awards for Mentoring, and facilitating change
in a State Community/Government/Business project called Linc Up.
She has been invited to open, design and facilitate participative sessions
at conferences internationally, nationally and in house. She has been
successfully published in 4 books including being a contributor to a book
on the principles of Natural Capitalism and a management book about
A Sense of Being for leaders today.
An educator by training who deepened her studies in HRD and OD by
gaining a Masters of Applied Science in Social Ecology. Her work breathes
new life into understanding and influencing the human systems of
corporate organisations. Deborah has been described as heartfelt, wise,
energetic and practical, a true thought leader.
Her work will dis-rupt your life and workplace for the better!
Contact her to work with you on the next step of the journey.