Leadership as a Lever for a Healthier World

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Short Description

Effective leadership involves the direction, alignment, and commitment at different levels of the system within which the organization presides to improve the organization and keep the system sustainable. This workshop will connect the concept of organizational health to the theory and practice of leadership in interdependent organizations. After an overview to core leadership essentials leveraged to achieve both organizational and societal health, a range of leadership tools used for dialogue and meaning making will be introduced with examples from the facilitators’ work in the Middle East, Africa, and China. Please come prepared to engage in small group discussions and bring your own global experience to the table.

Detailed Abstract

This workshop connects the concept of organizational health to the theory and practice of leadership in interdependent organizations. Effective leadership involves the direction, alignment, and commitment at different levels of the system within which the organization presides to improve the organization and keep the system sustainable. We offer a multi-level model of organizational health that establishes four levels of social dynamics: societal, organizational, group, and individual. Real-world examples of the Center for Creative Leadership enacting change in the Middle East, Africa, and China provide strong examples where leadership works as a lever to increase the health of individuals, groups, organizations, and society at large. we explore what good health means for organizations in the context of our changing world.

We offer new approaches to collective leadership development as a way of understanding organizational health and how it can be improved. Examples from our work in democratizing leadership in East Africa illustrate that good health is tied to leadership that is shared, collaborative and adaptive.

Organizational health and leadership development are connected by the core idea of successful adaptation.

Adaptation: a change or the process of change by which an individual, group, organization, or society becomes better suited to its environment (Carley & Lee, 1998; Palus & Drath, 1995).

Leadership development, done strategically, is a primary mode of organizational adaptation in the world today. Strategy-based leadership development is a primary mode of achieving and sustaining organizational health.

Health: the ability to adapt in the face of challenges and opportunities (Keller & Price, 2011; Huber at al., 2011).

Resilience and development are replacing absence of illness as the guiding health paradigm. Health is about successful, positive, and sustainable adaptation.

Adaptation occurs at a variety of levels simultaneously. All of these interlocking levels must be considered for a complete picture of health, even if the main focus is on organizations. We summarize these levels of social aggregation as individual, group / team, organization, and society (SOGI). Using the metaphor of a biological ecosystem, then the health of individuals as well as organizations and communities is related to the health of the entire ecosystem. We use the SOGI Model as a way of keeping all levels of social aggregation in view, as targets for development.

The workshop will illustrate the Leadership Essentials leveraged in our prior work and leverage leadership tools that cut across boundaries of culture, language, and context.

Sub Unit

• Conference Theme – Leading Across Borders and Generations

Presenters

• Steadman D. Harrison III, Center for Creative Leadership

• Charles Palus, Center for Creative Leadership