The Arc of Awareness: Broadening the Gaze and Widening the Heart of Leadership

By Joe Mutizwa

The Arc of Awareness explores and captures the essence of a leaders journey of expanding awareness.

This book is intended as a guide for students of business leadership in tertiary institutions as well as for practicing leaders in business who want to expand their appreciation of the key issues that confront leaders as they grow and develop.

The books main thesis developed through a series of questions on awareness is that by asking themselves these questions, leaders expand their horizons and gain a deeper understanding that enables them to make a contribution towards the creation of humane communities within their organizations and to engage wider societal issues so as to contribute towards the building of humane societies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Aug 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482802658

Joe Mutizwa

The author is a leading consultant on leadership development in Southern Africa. He has authored six books on various aspects of leadership. He writes from insights developed over thirty years in senior executive positions in the private sector. A Graduate of the London School of Economics, University of Zimbabwe, HEC-Paris and Oxford University’s Said Business School. He is a certified executive coach and a certified mediator. He Lives in Zimbabwe

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Joe Mutizwa.

ISBN:                      Hardcover                   978-1-4828-0266-5

                           Softcover                    978-1-4828-0264-1

                           eBook                         978-1-4828-0265-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/africa

Contents

Introduction

Part I Critical Questions for Self - Leadership

Chapter 1 Are You Aware of How You Make Sense of Reality?

Chapter 2 Are You Aware of the Key Determinants of Who You Are?

Chapter 3 Are You Aware of the Key Questions of Self - Awareness?

Part II Critical Questions for Leading Others

Chapter 4 Are You Aware of the Kinds of Intelligence that Effective Leaders Require?

Chapter 5 Are You Aware of the Limitations and Constraints on Leaders?

Chapter 6 Are You Aware of the Key Drivers of Human Motivation?

Chapter 7 Are You Aware of the Crucial Importance of Adaptive Capacity for Leaders?

Part III Critical Questions for Organizational Leadership

Introduction Awareness at Organizational Level

Chapter 8 Are You Aware of the Key Organizational Complexities?

Chapter 9 Are You Aware of the Key Requirements of Organizational Vigilance?

Chapter 10 Are You Aware of the New Ways of Leading Required for the Twenty - First Century?

Chapter 11 Are You Aware of the Key Organizational Measures of Success?

Part IV Critical Questions for Societal Leadership

Introduction

Chapter 12 Are You Aware of the Major Drivers of Global Change?

Chapter 13 Are You Aware of the Pervasive Influence of Cultural Legacy?

Chapter 14 Are You Aware of the Important Measures of Societal Success?

Conclusion

Notes

About the Author

I dedicate this book to my students at Mandel Training Centre in Zimbabwe who, over many years, have given me useful feedback as I taught a class on awareness on the Executive Development Program.

I also dedicate this book to my wife, Mukai, and my three children, Tatenda, Tendai, and Ratidzo, and my daughter-in-law, Muchero, who have all enthusiastically supported and encouraged my ambition to embark on my literary journey. I owe a debt of gratitude to Martha Musonda, my personal assistant for her service of close to three decades and for her patience and diligence at every stage of putting this book together.

Introduction

To be aware, in the leadership sense, is to be cognizant of fundamental realities that affect or influence what happens in the lives of individuals, organizations, and societies. In this book, my focus will be on various questions that leaders need to consciously cultivate as they embark on their leadership journeys throughout their lives.

My objective in writing this book is to assist leaders—in particular, leadership students at tertiary level to work out how to see the world from a broader perspective. I hope that, by reading this book, current and future leaders can begin to reflect on issues that are not often discussed in management literature, such as who they are, how they came to be what they are, what drives them, what their purpose is, how they interact with others, what repertoire of skills they need to lead in a complex and volatile world, and how they can develop measures of success for their organizations and the societies in which they live. It is also my intention to provoke leaders to take steps to make a contribution towards the creation of humane organizations and societies. The fourteen questions that I will ask in this book may provoke this consciousness.

The Importance of Awareness for Leaders

The leadership journey is a journey that is characterized by the expansion of awareness as leaders gain experience and deepen their understanding of what is going on around them. This growth is not possible unless leaders expand their awareness of the critical issues that determine success at each critical juncture of the journey. It is my view that where expansion of awareness is inadequate, leaders often fail to lead effectively in a manner that brings the best out of the people they lead or in a manner that enhances organizational or societal health.

It is not suggested here that this journey of expanding awareness is like a one-way progression up the ladder of awareness. The reality is that, depending on circumstances, awareness develops at different rates for different people as they encounter real situations in their lives. There is no attempt in this book to prescribe how the expansion of awareness takes place. Like any journey, there are twists, turns, and detours.

The Fourteen Questions of Awareness

It is useful to unpack the concept of awareness and look at it through the lens of questions. I have identified fourteen questions to help us explore various aspects of awareness, which I discuss in this book.

These fourteen questions of awareness encompass issues which have to do with the self, others, organizations, and the wider society.

Daniel Goleman refers to a ‘triad of awareness’, where he brings attention to ‘focusing on yourself, focusing on others, and focusing on the wider world’. He concludes that ‘every leader needs to cultivate this triad of awareness, in abundance and in the proper balance, because a failure to focus inward leaves you rudderless, a failure to focus on others renders you clueless, and a failure to focus outward may leave you blindsided’.¹

It is my view that as one plays the different leadership roles this is accompanied by a requirement for increased awareness as well as a need for an expanded repertoire of leadership competencies.

Deepak Chopra, in his book The Soul of Leadership, asserts that ‘the journey that a leader takes is one of expanding awareness’. He goes further to say, ‘Awareness is the birthplace of possibility. Everything you want to do, everything you want to be starts here. To be a successful visionary you must be as aware as possible. At every moment many paths lead forward. Awareness tells you which the right one to take is. As a leader your own awareness affects everyone around you. Those who you lead and serve depend on your grasp of the situation.’²

I believe that leaders whose awareness is of limited scope experience increasing challenges as they move into more complex leadership assignments. In a world characterized by increasing volatility and complexity, leaders need to constantly expand and update the scope of their awareness. The renewal time frames have become much more compressed as the speed of knowledge creation and the pace of obsolescence of old knowledge continue to increase exponentially. The effective leader must keep pace with the speed of change or get left behind. To attempt to apply rigid mental frames carried over from decades gone by is to court irrelevance.

Even at a personal level, leaders need to embrace a dynamic concept of awareness. People need to be aware of and prepare for the changes that will happen to them as they move across different seasons of their lives. As Dan Millman and Sierra Prasada pointed out in their book The Creative Compass, ‘As time passes you keep changing, once dominant concerns become less important and then irrelevant.’³

My Philosophical Perspective

In this book, I bring a perspective that believes that leaders leading in the twenty-first century and beyond ought to recognize that the modern workplace requires of leaders a more open, inclusive, caring, and humanistic approach to leadership than what was required in more-authoritarian eras gone by. Dramatic changes in how power is distributed between leaders and followers and in the relative importance of factors of wealth creation as well as radical changes in beliefs and assumptions on what constitutes good leadership have informed my perspective.

Indeed, Pope Francis, in his letter of appointment to the nineteen newly elected cardinals of the Catholic Church, had this to say on 22 February 2014: ‘Becoming a Cardinal is not a promotion. It is not an honour. It is simply service which requires a broadening of the gaze and widening of the heart [my emphasis].’ This resonates well with the philosophy that informs this book. I have taken on board the key message of ‘broadening the gaze and widening the heart’ as central concepts in my quest to stitch together a humanistic view of awareness—any awareness that enhances the common good and promotes the humane elements of leadership within organizations and societies.

The fourteen questions of awareness that I discuss in this book encompass these crucially important concepts of broadening the gaze of leaders and widening their hearts through the experience of expanding awareness. This suggests a mindset that is more oriented to others, as well as a more caring and compassionate attitude. It also suggests that leaders need to examine their ‘leadership toolkit’ and realize that a more sensitive leadership approach guided by contextual intelligence is required. Such an approach recognizes that a significant power shift has occurred between leaders and the led. This shift, I argue, calls for greater deployment of context-shaping skills by leaders who want to have greater impact on what happens in their organizations and societies.

The Concept of Expanding Awareness

Combining the various levels of leadership mentioned above and applying the fourteen questions of awareness to this, one sees a leadership and awareness hierarchy emerging.

This is shown in figure 0.1 below. As we move up the ladder of leadership, we learn new competencies and expand our gaze over more people, situations, and societal dynamics and discourses. This process of awareness expansion has, I submit, a significant impact on us and those with whom we interact. As we understand ourselves better and appreciate others and the world around us more, we begin to have a clearer and sober view of how the world works and how much interdependence there is. This process of awareness expansion should hopefully engender more humbling experience driven by one’s realization of how one is so dependent on others. Indeed, the journey of awareness resembles a battle through a dark tunnel towards the light. As one becomes more and more aware, ignorance recedes, and awareness takes its place. It is a process of enlightenment.

A critical challenge we encounter in trying to expand our awareness is the reluctance to acknowledge our ignorance. Gian Carlo Menotti, the Italian American composer (1911–2007), summed this dilemma aptly when he said, ‘A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.’

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Figure 0.1. Leadership and awareness hierarchy.

Awareness is a process, not a thing or destination. The process of acquiring awareness is a never-ending one, and what is covered in this book is but a small part of what is knowable from a leadership perspective at each of the four levels of leadership discussed in this book.

Different People Will Travel Different Journeys in the Quest for Awareness

Most people will get by with some appreciation at the level of the self and others and never progress beyond that. For leaders of teams, organizations, and the wider society, it is essential that they understand the key issues that influence the terrain and theatre within which they lead—whether it is about managing themselves, leading others, or indeed, leading in the wider society.

There is no argument advanced here that the fourteen questions of awareness discussed in this book constitute a comprehensive and exhaustive list of all that is important for leaders to be aware of. Of course, this is not so. This book is only a small contribution towards this important subject.

A major implication for this journey of expanding awareness that leaders travel is the reality of increasing interdependence among people, organizations, and countries as the level