Let us move on with our arduous journey in sketching out “a whole picture” of a leader. It is hoped here that on its part this text shows that leadership is truly a complex, important and multilayered phenomenon.
Just as a reminder, let us mention the key elements or layers in our model. In our Onion model the leader herself/himself is seen the be the core of the model and the layers around him/her are: 1)gestures, 2) words, 3) action, 4)setting and 5) image.The part one of this blog outlined the Onion model and discussed about gestures layer, whereas the part two went deeper into the Onion analogy and discussed about layers two and three, ie. about words and action.
Hence we will now proceed to talk about layers: setting and image.
Fourth layer, setting, is perhaps the element in leadership which has been discussed rather little but which would certainly deserve close examination. Setting is the working environment where people around leader find themselves and certainly also a leader share the more or less similar setting as everybody else in any organization. Setting include things like work related rules, all practical work related arrangements, performance measurements and control and reward systems. These before mentioned elements of the setting are such things which could be described for all to see, for instance these things could explained in quality manual or in any other such document. However, setting is also action and human behaviour. For instance control systems outline general rules but often this desricption is rather thin portrayal of what happens when people meet and talk how control system should be applied in any everyday event, in particular if that event may include individuals who see things differently.
Thus setting is a very challenging element in many ways. Firstly, in different organizations settings are different and even in same organization settings change over time and sometimes very rapidly and unexpectedly. Probably we can assume that for instance a new leader always create a somewhat different setting.Secondly, also individuals see and interpret settings differently. Where someone sees a lot of room for creativity and individual autonomy the other thinks that s/he has to follow rules and guidelines.
Thirdly, all the actors within organization face an insurmountable task when they try to understand how setting is created. People wish to understand who has done what in the process of creating the setting. People are keen to understand which elements are created through actions and decisions of the previous leaders and what has been the role of existing leaders.
What is important here in this blog is the proposition that there are people in any organization who are interested to assess what has been a role of a incumbent leader in creating the setting where they work. It is proposed here that people are becoming more astute in delineating how the setting is created. Hence they in the future they are even more able to give credit to a leader which in their mind has created a setting in which they wish to work.
And finally let us proceed to the fifth layer - image. Our mission here was to examine what a leader truly is and how multilayered phenomena we are examining when we are talking about leader. In our examination we have gradually moved further away from a leader as a physical being (and we have also addressed the relevance of physical existence) and we have seen how a leader exist in different layers - gestures, words, action, setting - and now as a image. Image here is something what people carry in their mind. Whenever we meet any leader in any organization we form an image of that leader in our mind. Quite often people give to the leader a very prominent position and thus the image tends to be immensely important.
Thus to some extend we may propose that a leader is always everywhere, at least people carry the image of a leader with them. This is unavoidable. Hence the real question is what kind of an image people have in their mind, is it something positive which on its part brings meaning to the work and give courage to continue and develop new things or is it something different.
To sum up. The connection between leader and people around him/her is truly a multilayered and complex phenomena. These three blogs have been a very preliminary effort to outline what might be the whole picture of a leader. Certainly the impossibility of that task has been in our mind all the time - a whole picture is too much for any effort. Nevertheless we propose that perhaps the Onion model could valuable in showing something about the complexity relating to the phenomena leader and also our model takes a step or two in locating and naming elements which create a leader.
Sunny days and all the success for all leaders and for all people who have a privilege to work with leaders.
