The following is a response to a colleague on a e-mail based group list serve that has run since at least 1996. E-mail was new tech! What is unique is that deep relationships have formed within this group, often leading to in-person connecting.

Dear X, I’m not saying that Lewin is all there is. I am just challenging this:  “I think that there is NOT a good understanding of leadership as we think there is.” I also think Edwin Friedman’s self-differentiated leadership, as described in his “Failure of nerve,” is a “good understanding.” I think you would like it also, if you haven’t already read it. He’s as cynical as you are (and don’t give me this line about your attitude coming from being an elder…I bet you were just as much trouble when you were young lol). So I would say that there is more to know than can ever be known, much bs, and much other valid guidance about leadership (like the Tao).

And everywhere I look, this applies: one can lead too much, just right, too little and one can allow too much freedom, just right, or too little. One can lead just right on some things, not enough on others, etc. Most lead too little and paradoxically don’t allow enough freedom to act.

In some circumstance the leader better do most of the thinking (such as when an EMT arrives on the scene), in others that is a fatal mistake (such as when the green Captain won’t listen to the seasoned Sergeant before ordering a foolish attack on a heavily defended position).

Lewin’s model is situational and provides a great template for followers (“Boss, I need more information about this, and less oversight on that”). It’s up to the leader to decide whether to act on the feedback, of course.

Both templates, Lewin and the three little bears, are simple and easy for me to apply (that does come with expereince/age). And both can be integrated with other models and circumstances, such as cultural differences. 

Just for fun, here is how Friedman defines most contemporary leaders: …a peace-monger…a highly anxious risk avoider, someone who is concerned more with good feelings than with progress, someone whose life revolves around the axis of “consensus,” a “middler,” someone who is so incapable of taking well-defined stands that his “disability” seems to be genetic, someone who functions as if she had been filleted of her backbone, someone who treats conflict or anxiety like mustard gas-one whif, on goes the emotional gas mask, and he flits. Such leaders are often “nice,” of not charming.

Society and the OD profession encourages the same, creating a vacuum of leadership that makes the occasional decisive asshole politically attractive, sometimes for better and often for worse. 

Your breath of fresh air candid approach to consulting may be an example of the “for better” version lol.