FOREWORD

Goal

This work is intended to be a concise handbook for emerging and experienced leaders to provide a reality based systematic approach towards rapidly developing or enhancing competency and coherence in leadership.  Key references are cited and the intent is to provide a few new ideas framed in the backdrop of concisely summarized great works the reader should further explore on their journey of development.

I was raised on a farm and received a traditional Chemical Engineering education.  I was intimately involved in the execution of many critical manufacturing projects as a president, principal, project manager, engineer of record, field/commissioning engineer, field technician, labourer etc.  While this has firmly grounded me in physical reality, I also have an appreciation and an affinity for the abstract, but do not live in the realm of the abstract or imagination and see great danger in doing so.

We are faced with a new type of class conflict: Physicals against Virtuals:

“The thinking classes are fatally removed from the physical side of life… Their only relation to productive labor is that of consumers. They have no experience of making anything substantial or enduring. They live in a world of abstractions and images, a simulated world that consists of computerized models of reality – “hyperreality,” as it’s been called – as distinguished from the palatable, immediate, physical reality inhabited by ordinary men and women. Their belief in “social construction of reality” – the central dogma of postmodernist thought – reflects the experience of living in an artificial environment from which everything that resists human control (unavoidably, everything familiar and reassuring as well) has been rigorously excluded. Control has become their obsession. In their drive to insulate themselves against risk and contingency – against the unpredictable hazards that afflict human life – the thinking classes have seceded not just from the common world around them but from reality itself.” (Lasch, 1995)

We are also faced with a related rise, even an epidemic of narcissism and like narcissists the Virtuals are blind to the feedback of reality-based downstream consequences of their actions. 

The natural world and human civilization are composed of sets of interdependent complex systems.  Due to the increasingly powerful technologies at our disposal, and hubristic decision-making being made by narcissistic Virtuals in increasingly thick-walled ivory towers, catastrophic destabilization of these complex systems is on the horizon.  Reality-based decision making by humble servant leaders possessing Wisdom will help to ensure that we at least do not introduce further destabilization, and hopefully repair damage that has been done.

My desire in writing this work is to provide a leadership framework that will help emerging leaders that have grown up in a largely virtual world get grounded in reality and make better decisions.  At the core of the leadership model being advocated is Servant Leadership.  The focus will be on how servant leaders at all levels in an organization can work to maximize the positive impact they can have:

1.     On the lives of the people they are leading

2.     On the desired organizational results

3.     In their own lives staying healthy and sustaining high performance

What we need now is Wisdom driven competent leadership.

Stories and Gratitudes

There are a few stories and events in my personal life and family history that provide some context for this work.

A significant event for me was the Canadian Iron Ring Ceremony that engineers graduating from a Canadian undergraduate program in engineering can opt into attending.  I attended this first as a new graduate and then 15 years later was invited to “ring” a newly graduating engineer who was actually a mature student working for us as a co-op student and later full time.  This second time was almost like a renewal of wedding vows to the profession.  The whole ceremony is described here: Iron Ring Ceremony - EGM Heritage (enggeomb.ca).  The take away is that the people who take the oath seriously have a true commitment to service and a higher standard of behaviour.  This oath is firmly grounded in the all too real consequences of engineers failing in our work.  Thank you Trevor for the invitation and for being a great colleague.

Another significant event is having been part of the team to start up an engineering services business, then taking over as its leader and continued and accelerated its growth and eventually selling a majority of the business and transferring leadership to an internally developed leadership team.  Thank you to everyone at Cheme.

These experiences were highly informative to this writing as they grounded me in the realities downstream of decisions I made.  Thank you to our founding president Paul for your mentorship and guidance.

A big thanks to my dear friend who introduced me to his idea that is central to some of what will be discussed, that three personal characteristics are required to enable someone to become an effective leader:  Perseverance, Humility, Emotional Intelligence.  These are big seemingly abstract ideas that directly connect to reality.  Thank you, Spencer, for this and so much more.

A big thank you also goes out to Jenna, my career coach whose shared wisdom continues to be invaluable.