TITLE:
The Science of Leading Yourself: A Missing Piece in the Health Care Transformation Puzzle
AUTHORS:
Wiley W. Souba
KEYWORDS:
Leadership; Language; Health Care Reform; Ontology; Phenomenology; Academic Medicine
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Leadership,
Vol.2 No.3,
August
23,
2013
ABSTRACT: Personal transformation is a prerequisite
for sustainable transformation of our health care system. Integrating research
from the language sciences, phenomenology, psychology and neurobiology, this
article reviews the science of leading oneself. Because this “inward” journey
can be alien and disorienting, the Language
Leadership Performance Model is helpful in illustrating the relationship
between the circumstances the leader is dealing with (the leadership
challenge), the context (point of view) the leader brings to that challenge,
and the leader’s way of being and acting (the definitive source of the leader’s
performance). Using language, effective leaders reframe their leadership
challenges such that their naturally correlated ways of being and acting
provide them with new opportunity sets for exercising exemplary leadership.
Using a house metaphor (The House of
Leadership), a foundation for being
a leader and a framework for exercising
leadership are constructed. Laying the foundation of the model involves mastering
the four pillars of being a leader. Erecting the framework entails building a
contextual schema, which, when mastered, becomes a construct that in any
leadership situation gives one the power to lead effectively as one’s natural
self-expression. Both of these activities—laying the foundation and erecting
the framework—involve a deconstruction of one’s existing leadership paradigm.
Finally, A Heuristic for Leading Oneself is
offered as a useful guide or owner’s manual as one embarks on this inward
journey. Leading oneself is a uniquely human activity—studying it and how it
works is a vital piece in solving the health care transformation puzzle.