EVOLVE

Evolve, How Exceptional Leaders Leverage The Inner Voice of Human Evolution, by Graeme Findlay, Routledge 2018 

Do you believe the human tribe has evolved from hunter/gatherers with pack leaders and followers, roaming through forests to settle by night in camps, waiting for dawn to head out?  Do you think we've learned a few skills since the Bronze Age?  Well, author and social anthropologist Graeme Findlay sees the long road of human evolution leading us to new leadership challenges and methods based on multiple "voices" of leadership, each of which represents a different stage of leadership evolution. 

"We have been amazingly successful as a species since learning to cooperate in larger and larger groups," says Findlay.  "Evolution has rewarded the traits that have us cooperate better, and where there is cooperation, there is leadership."    In fact, says Findlay, our capacity to respond to leadership has been wired into our brains!

But as our packs have expanded, so has our ideal leadership profile.  The author uses a "meta-model," or structure of knowledge, to illustrate.  Findlay's meta-model identifies four distinct outer voices of leadership that are needed for groups of increasing size because he says that as group size increases, so does the requirement for a higher outer voice.  Here are the four leadership voices:

1.  Heartfelt voice - The ability to create an environment where people feel safe, to discuss difficult issues and stand for each other's success, where there are deep relationships and shared purpose.

2.  Command voice - The ability to deliver reliably, to ask for things once and get the required outcome, to speak and get action, and to turn ambiguity into action.

3.  Prosocial voice - The ability to create a positive social environment and sense of community behind business objectives, and an environment where formal and informal communication channels transmit positive messages, where successes are celebrated and shared, where teams interact positively with other teams.

4.  Futurizing voice - The ability to create the case for change that causes a community to take coordinated action in service of big goals.

We can see a hierarchy in the development of each of these voice capabilities, building on the lower foundation to establish a futurizing voice, for example.  Think Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

The fifth voice, says Findlay, is a bit more dangerous, the "inner voice" that can subconsciously work to undercut effectiveness. 

Each chapter ends with Takeaways and Leadership Development actions that summarize the chapter and offer practice points to continue to develop as a leader.  Also included is Findlay's controversial look at how Martin Luther King led and grew the Civil Rights movement.  In fact, the author sees each basic leadership growth element in King's revolution, growing the community of activists with story-telling and a strong Futurizing voice supported by the foundation stones of the heart and mechanics of each dangerous demonstration - from lunch-counters and boycotts, to Rosa Parks and others desegregating public resources. 

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, pemoody@aol.com, patriciaemoody@gmail.com, tricia@patriciaemoody.com,