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In Leading with Sense, Professor Valrie Gauthier defines leaders as genuine, generous, generativeeven poetic.
by Tom Brown
26-02-2015 11:14
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innovation and influence.... The generative leader must do more than simply act; he or she must act with sense and passion, to
drive progress, to innovate.
The third goal of Leading with Sense is to provide the reader with ways to make savoir-relier take hold inside an organization.
Gauthier has enough experience in both leading and helping others lead to know that a single savoir-relier leader inside a large,
complex firm will be either adrift or doomed. Thus, she discusses the need for a relational circuit, and moves into full
organizational development (OD) mode. (Organizational development is an old term; Gauthier seems to prefer building sense.)
As with anything OD-related, you will find charts and diagrams with arrows and circles. You also will find content thats close to
train-the-trainer details, including the outline for a four-day savoir-relier seminar.
The book closes with a fourth and quite unexpected subject: poetry. The late Warren Bennis, who contributed the books
foreword, found this extremely engaging. This book, he wrote, draws management inspiration from an unlikely source: poets....
Poetry is all about delivering a message that provokes emotions, that inspires images and influences ideas, the same way that
effective leaders must.
As an example, Gauthier reprints Fire and Ice, a nine-line poem by Robert Frost. The essence of the poem is that the world
could end in the fire of intense (and competing) desires, or it could end with relationships devolving into an icy world of hate.
Since the main purpose of this book is to teach relational intelligence, Gauthier shows how reading the poem aloud and playing
with its possible meanings (especially those involving the importance of relationships) can make you a stronger leader. The poem
is a text, an interface between the poet and you, the reader, says Gauthier, just as an organization is an interface between the
people who work for it and its stakeholders.
Gauthiers book, said Bennis, will lead to a more responsible, intuitive, and human approach to business. Yet most managers
and executives will find it hard to master the possibilities of Gauthiers approach based only on this book. Leading with Sense is
nonetheless worth your time, because it will stretch your thinking about what passes for corporate leadership today versus what
could be.
AUTHOR PROFILE:
Tom Brown is a leadership development consultant and coach, lecturer, and business writer. He was a founding columnist for NPRs Marketplace, editorat-large for IndustryWeek, and director of the Honeywell Aerospace Management Development Center. He is the author of two e-books, The Anatomy of Fire
and Fiscal Fairy Tales.
26-02-2015 11:14