Leaders, The Shaman, and Change

Lately I have been thinking about leaders as shamans. Leaders as shamans, it seems to me, inspire people to heal themselves, their organizations, and the broader communities and societies in which they live. Importantly, they do this through the sensemaking—or spiritual leadership—role, which is infrequently acknowledged, at least in management fields. Shamanic leaders inspire in part by reframing the cultural mythology of the community in healthier, values-based directions, than may currently exist. In part, they use their power to help others open up to their own powers and walk through whatever sources of fear or resistance they might have so that they can tap into their own talents, energies, and generate new ideas, insights, and solutions to problems. And then they help others do much the same for themselves so that they can achieve their highest potential.

Leaders as shamans need not use rituals, magic, or drugs to achieve the shamanic state. In my view, they simply need to raise their own awareness of the system as it actually is through whatever means is feasible, which could be through meditation or related mindfulness practices, gaining insight through a wide variety of means including through other people or by reading, or by experiencing the system in different than typical ways. Shamans need to attain a reasonable and realistic understanding of the system—systems understanding. Then they focus on making better what is problematic, using whatever abilities they might have as healers, connectors, and sensemakers. They need to do these things with what Buddhists might call ‘right work’ kept firmly in mind, that is, with the right intent oriented towards personal and systemic integrity. They do these things with a willingness to be open to intuition and guidance that seems to come from either deep within or from other sources, and the desire to make the world a better place rather than serve selfish interests, which is the orientation of the negative shaman—the sorcerer.

Healing by itself is not enough to classify a leader as a shaman, since arguably most leaders want their enterprises to become better than they currently are, often by growing or making more money. The shamanic task, however, is somewhat different. At the core of the shamanic leader’s work are the capabilities of connecting across different types of boundaries, which some scholars[1] call mediating realities, going between different realities. The traditional shaman does this boundary spanning in trance state, seeking information that can help with healing. The process is one of integrating what is learned into a healthy whole, and then making sense of that for others through the sensemaking function. Note that the two words healthy and whole are related; both are based on the same root, the old English word ‘hal,’ meaning health and wholeness. The core task of the leader as shaman is, in some ways, to create a healthy whole—in whatever context is most appropriate for that individual.

Shamanic leaders, like traditional shamans, implicitly understand the importance of sensemaking, for part of leadership in our modern context is to help people find meaning in their work and organizations. Shamanic leaders can do this by articulating the purpose of the focal enterprise in ways that engender meaning. Most stakeholders will not resonate much to a purpose that is stated along the lines of ‘maximizing shareholder wealth,’ because that type of financial goal is fundamentally aligned with materialistic values that are, in the end, quite shallow and do not provide a lasting source of meaning for particular stakeholders, other, perhaps, than shareholders. Rather, the shamanic leader makes sense of his or her enterprise by finding and articulating a broader purpose, something that shows how the enterprise relates to the bigger picture and actually does ‘good’ or ‘right work’ in the world.

Traditional shamans work in part by helping community members understand what is wrong with the way the myths in their community are currently stated—because there is a belief that communities and their members get sick when the cultural mythology is out of alignment. Similarly, the sensemaking role of the shamanic leader is crucial in helping organizational members understand the broader purpose and function of their enterprise—as well as their own place within the enterprise and how they can contribute to achieving the purpose. It can also help stakeholders see how and where their particular enterprise fits into the broader community or society, as well as what its constructive (and negative) contributions are.

The connecting function is important to shamanic leadership because shamans think and act holistically rather than in atomized or fragmented ways. Shamanic leaders within enterprises connect across disciplines, organizational functions, and other boundaries, including externally with stakeholders, to make the activities of the whole enterprise make sense. They bring people together to work collaboratively on projects so that the product or service being develop can be integrated across the necessary functions and tasks rather than fragmented into pieces that become hard to put together into an integrated whole.

The shamanic leader is able to talk with and understand the perspectives and points of view of many different stakeholders in shaping the vision, mission, and values of the enterprise. Because shamans tend to be ‘seers,’ the shamanic leader is also good at envisioning an inspiring future for the enterprise—and bringing others along to help shape that vision. This seeing capability is an important element of leadership in general, recognized as vision, in part because it is in the vision of how the enterprise contributes to the world that purpose can be found. Purpose, as is becoming increasingly clear even in individual contexts,[2] is a core ingredient of healing—and it is the healing role that is central to the work of the shaman.

Endnotes

[1] See Peter J. Frost and Caroly P. Egri, The shamanic perspective on organizational change and development. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 1994, 7(1), 7-23.

[2] D. Buettner, The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest. National Geographic Books, 2012.