Kurt Lewin’s well known maxim states: There is nothing so practical as a good theory. Most leaders I know, when it comes to leading people are somewhat thin when it comes to the theory side of things. Most lead others based on their own experience of having been led – where often the, ‘how not to do it’ is the louder voice of lessons learnt!
The reality is that ‘theory’ underpins all our actions, intentionally or not. John Maynard Keynes in his 1936 work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, wrote: The ideas of economist and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves to some defunct economist”. Point is, whether we acknowledge it or not, we lead out of some or other ‘theory’.
So the question for leaders is: what is that theory which shapes your behaviour and actions? This is the ‘unseen’ work for all leaders: the dynamic work of paying attention to their theory. Being able to articulate your theory is the building block to being an intentional leader; someone who knows the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. It is important, for without doing this work, personal change and the ability to shift paradigm becomes impossible.
I once attended a Salzburg Seminar where the session title was, ‘Linking the Theory and Practice of Leadership’. The sixty or so international participants were equally divided between the ‘theorist’ (leadership academics) and the ‘practitioners’ (those directly involved in organizational leadership). The two groups mixed liked oil and water. When the ‘theorists’ spoke the ‘practitioners’ rolled their eyes as if to say, “when you enter the ‘real world’ you will see how impractical what you saying actually is!”. Of course, when the ‘practitioners’ spoke, the ‘theorists’ in turned rolled their eyes as if to say, “well if you listened to what I have been saying you would know why you are having that problem!”.
And so it went, back and forth, for an entire week.
We need both. Leaders need to work harder at understanding, exploring and articulating the ‘theory’ behind their leadership. Those who think, study and write on the subject need to work harder at understanding some of the reality of the context into which they speak. Building a bridge between theory and practice is important work that leaders everywhere can neither afford to ignore nor neglect.
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