My journey toward a Ph.D. began at the start of the month when I read a research article with that title. I plan to share my thoughts and insights from my studies here from time to time and connect them to the issues I deal with in my work every day. After all, that’s why I pursued my doctoral studies—to take a new leap forward in quality by working with managers in a practical setting.
I’m interested in why the same problems keep recurring in leadership—what are these patterns that we would be wise to acknowledge and face honestly? What shapes our decisions and relationships before we even realize it? What drives a leader?
But what makes an approach interesting? Murray S. Davis wrote in that 1971 article that we consider theories to be interesting if they call into question something we have hitherto taken for granted.
If an idea confirms our existing understanding, we say, “That’s obvious!” If it shakes the foundations of our worldview too strongly, we might say, “That’s absurd!”
Somewhere in between, though, there’s something like this: “Wait… I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
Leaving aside the development of theories, this made me wonder how much goes unnoticed in management precisely because we already have a familiar explanation for the situation. Things like “people aren’t taking responsibility,” “we have a communication problem,” “employees don’t want to go along with the changes,” and so on.
If we accept what is happening without preconceptions, we will begin to seek solutions within the limits of the assumptions we have created for ourselves. For example, how to increase accountability, how to share information more effectively, how to reduce resistance, and so on.
When it comes to responsibility, for example, we might ask: How does our management style influence the amount of responsibility people take on? Perhaps we expect independence, but we want to approve every decision ourselves or are constantly involved in the decision-making process. Perhaps we encourage people to experiment, but when a mistake is made, we immediately take control, and over time, people learn that it’s safer to wait for the manager’s response.
This can lead to a pattern where the manager takes on more and more responsibility, and people leave more and more decisions up to him. Through their behavior, both sides reinforce the other’s existing perception, and we end up with unresolved decisions and an overburdened manager who resists the HR manager’s invitation to attend leadership training because he doesn’t have the time. After all, people won’t take responsibility on their own while I’m away for two days!
The pattern underlying the problem may go unnoticed. For me, the idea in Davis’s article ties in with what I want to explore more deeply: how our taken-for-granted assumptions as leaders direct our attention and leave parts of a situation unseen.
Of course, just because an idea is interesting doesn’t mean it’s true. But it can raise a question we hadn’t thought to ask before: when faced with a recurring problem, what might the current explanation and assumptions be overlooking without my realizing it?
Maybe we need to take a fresh look at things, without any preconceptions. Just like this, waiting for visitors Studio MindZ in Tartu (pictured), where people with such an open-minded approach gathered in my studio last week.
