Leadership Maturity: The Role of Perspective

Perspective-taking is a crucial skill and practice for leaders in the 21st century.  

Those who experience our JLP workshops and developmental engagements practice and hone this skill, which allows leaders to not only better empathize with others when appropriate, but to also reframe situations, and how to describe them, to better serve our purpose and goals. For instance, the principle called Antagonistic Cooperation reframes conflict, challenge, and competition as sources of learning and growth rather than as a negative to be avoided. This perspectival shift advances leadership maturity.

Another perspective important to keep in mind is the “I, We, and It,” or the first-person subjective perspective of individuals, the second-person interpersonal and intersubjective experience of small to large groups, and the objective third-person structural or systemic perspective.

These primary perspectives are ways or windows through which to view reality. Here’s a graphic that displays these perspectives from a business perspective:

Image from Alan Watkins’ book Coherence: The Science of Exceptional Leadership and Performance

Watkins’ application of what he calls 4-Dimensional Leadership is derived from Ken Wilber’s Integral model.

This perspective, of course, transcends business. Systemic racism, for instance, is a third-person view, an “It” perspective, of a thorny social issue. Those who argue for this idea de-emphasize personal and interpersonal race-ism to focus on the way double standards and bias are embedded into the legal and institutional history of the United States. Yet leaving out the first- and second-person components of a solution set to this sticky problem obscures individual agency and shared purpose beyond critique and grievance, while at the same time reifying immutable identity categories.

Once people are boxed into such categories, their unique stories and backgrounds dim, their individuality can be erased, and stereotypes can fill in the vacuum left behind. A multi-dimensional leadership view appreciates each individual as unique, with interests and identifications beyond, say, race and gender. While historical background is a necessary context, the question becomes: what can we as individuals who work together toward common ends do to influence our own histories today and tomorrow, in our own homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces?

Reframing Equity 

Another perspective shift involves the idea of equity. In JLP, we use the word maturity rather than equity as our central, middle term for a new program we call Diversity Maturity & Inclusion. Why? One reason is that we think diversity and inclusion issues within companies can be viewed in a developmental sense of stages of growth. Another reason is that “equity” has become a term in the political Culture Wars. The word equity has become controversial even though it shouldn’t be. After all, equity connotes being fair, from one angle, and, in a financial sense, being of value and an asset.

Unfortunately, the concept of “equity” in Diversity Equity & Inclusion has been used by some on the far left to confront the existing disparities that exist in society. It’s unfortunate because far from being equitable—fair and impartial—equity in that DEI-sense is being weaponized in an ideological battle to address those disparities. Yes, disparities exist. But do they exist solely and exclusively because of past and current discrimination based on, say, the folklore of white supremacy? That’s a simplistic, reductive narrative in 2022. Go back 60 or more years, and a strong case for that explanation can be made. But today, three generations later? It’s way more complicated and complex than that.

Finally, we focus on maturity because in a VUCA world that’s Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous, we strive to develop in people and the teams they work in greater capacities to not only survive but to thrive. Maturity moves in the direction of wisdom, which, in part, is the capacity to best understand situations in their first-, second-, and third-person dimensions at the same time. It’s like a three-legged stool for our mature understanding of reality. Without any one of them, we can stumble and fall

When we grow as adults, we should come to understand that most of our outcomes are a composite of our own actions, other people’s actions, and the cultural and social context. We co-create our fields of reality, so the notion that anyone is absolutely powerless or that someone else is in absolute control isn’t true or real. Gaining a wider and deeper perspective becomes a roadmap for a more integrated way of seeing, thinking, believing, and acting in the world.

When you shift and grow your perspective, you can change and advance your leadership capacity.