Our Story
Doug Menikheim
Leadership scholars tend to dismiss our approach to leadership development. Traditional pedagogy pours knowledge into the heads of leadership students. However, the belief of this group of “tempered radicals” is that leadership development is achieved experientially, in a trial and error application.
It became quite evident that each of these twenty leaders led in ways that were peculiar to
them.
It is not enough to have “read all the books on leadership,” which one of my academic colleagues defensively told me. My response to her: “Would you fly an airplane or perform surgery after only ‘reading all the books’?” This exchange reflects well the Center for Creative Leadership’s observation that learning to lead is 60% trial and error, 20% observation and 20% from of the books. Our efforts over the past 15 years have been directed at discovering how best to operationalize this reality.
In 1990, a St. Thomas friend and colleague, George Golden, and I questioned how better to develop potential leaders. We were well aware of the amount of time and money being spent on this endeavor. As we listened to the tales of inept leadership shared by our adult-learner MBA students, it became abundantly clear that little meaningful impact was being made in this important area.
For some reason, most of the effort going into producing better leaders was not having the desired effect.
From our career perspectives of successful leading and/or counseling others to lead, and being strongly intuitive, we went about this in a qualitative manner. Whereas many researchers use college sophomores as subjects for their experiments, we learned from our older, more experienced, early-to mid-career students. Rather than begin with a hypothesis to test, we wanted to approach leadership development differently, then sit back and observe what happened.
Subscribing to the definition of leadership was that you “knew it when you saw it,” we were personally aware of people in the Twin Cities area who practiced this performing art well. It was clear that we needed to involve these individuals in the process of developing future leaders. So, we invited these proven leaders to join us to share what they knew about leadership.
Over a three-year period, 20 prominent leaders willingly devoted an evening to help our students in their leadership studies. (To demonstrate the quality of this group, one of our guests, General John Vessey, USA (ret.), called the day before he was scheduled to meet with our class, and apologetically postponed his appearance because the President of the United States had asked him to depart within 48 hours and lead the American POW/MIA mission to Vietnam.) Other leaders included the 25-year president of St Thomas, who had taken the small college to university status during his tenure in office, an executive VP of 3M, who was one of only two non-chemical engineer company officers, and the regional head of the Girl Scouts of America, who left her mark during an incident involving razor blades in the Girl Scout cookies, the major source of annual funding for the organization.
Three very important outcomes (ah-ha’s) of these visits became evident and formed the basis for the Centre for Applied Leadership.
The initial ah-ha was that each of these accomplished leaders spoke differently about leadership and how they went about it. Some were very strategic in their approach. Others led from a position of fact and logic. Still others were very inclusive and empowering. It became quite evident that each of these twenty leaders led in ways that were peculiar to them. Their approaches included bits and pieces of various leadership theories, but no two were the same. And, their presentations were not at all compelling. Informative, yes. Thoughtful, yes. Authoritative, yes. Exciting or compelling, not at all. Why?
Over time, we discerned that during the early part of their visits, these leaders were operating out of their intellect. They were talking about leadership using models, graphs and scholarly words. They talked about leadership in a manner that didn’t connect meaningfully with students. They incorporated the best of leadership thinking and imparted sound knowledge, but they did little to increase the understanding of what it takes to lead. The students responded accordingly with polite interest and discrete squirming.
The second insight occurred observing the conversation following these leaders’ presentations. During this open-ended period, students sought ways of understanding two basic things from these leaders; (1) “what’s it like to lead from the position you have?” and (2) “what does it take to get there?” Almost from the moment this exchange began, the class became riveted; polite attention turned into laser-like interest. Squirming gave way to intense efforts to have one’s question addressed. And the leaders responded in kind. They relaxed. They moved physically closer to the class. They became less formal and more personal. They told stories of parents, teachers, mentors, colleagues and spouses. They spoke of successes, of course, but more often failures, and how they recovered. They laughed (actually guffawed in some cases) at themselves, and in some instances, were moved to tears as they recounted significant parts of their leadership journeys. They became engaged and connected to the students in ways that replicated how they connected to their followers in the real world.
It was a powerful learning experience, and it happened over and over again. At first, we did not recognize it for what it was. Finally, we realized that what happened in our classroom was what made these leaders successful in their professional lives: they operated from their whole persona. What we saw, what engaged the students, what connected them to their followers was the holistic nature of their being. Not only intellect, but also their spirit and emotion, which when integrated, produces one’s authenticity. We encountered the whole person, and that was the key that led to the concept of the Leadership Fingerprint™.
Our third insight came from escorting our visitors after class to the underground parking. It was clear from the contemplative moods of each that they had been affected by the classroom experience. Amazingly, each one of them asked the same question: “Well, how did I do?” At first, we made little of this question, as leading well requires a strong ego, and we assumed the question was stroking their need for recognition or feedback. Finally, after hearing the question every time, we began to realize that they were telling us that even they didn’t know what made them successful as leaders.
They were asking us as professors of leadership if they had hit the mark? Imagine these pillars of leadership expertise being unsure of what made them successful practitioners. How were they to pass on their leadership legacy? How come none of them fit any leadership model other than their own? And so was launched the Centre for Applied Leadership, and our espoused Leadership Fingerprint, to provide some answers to these provocative questions.