The Four Fields of Leadership, How People and Organizations Can Thrive in a Hyperconnected World, by Tom Goodell, Rowman & Littlefield 2020

When we try to describe what leadership is today - true leadership -  that moves organizations and people toward specific goals, whether that is running a small bodega 24 x 7, or a fat government agency populated by humans and tech, or a hardware producer under the gun for customer orders, or even a home-based tech creator sharing wiring with dozens of other tech creators - its a difficult image to form.  Defining leadership images used to be easy.  History has given us some pretty strong examples - Churchill at Yalta, JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis, George W. Bush during 9/11, Francis Perkins during the Great Depression, and maybe Elon Musk reaching for the moon and more.  Each of these leaders was supported by great power and money.  Their information, however, came from very different sources, and that I think is one of the big differences between our old concept of leadership and the new one - still forming - that Tom Goodell challenges us to understand.

Our business world contains enormous complexity.  While it may be easy to access analytics in nano-time, making sense of all the available data is an impossible job for one human brain.  And bringing together all the worldwide actionable items to "manage" the complexity doesn't work for the solo artist.  "It takes a village..."

So we are facing some new leadership challenges and Goodell is going to coach us through them using his hyperconnected approach drawn from physics, math, brain research and spiritual traditions. "What?" you say, "spiritual traditions"?  That's right, spiritual, because the author believes that leadership recognizes more than one driver.

There are four fields that Goodell wants us to explore and develop:

1.  The Field of Self - be masterful first at managing yourself;

2.  The Interpersonal Field - be skillful at building relationships up, down, and across the organization

3.  The Field of Teams - be adaptable in forming, leading and re-forming teams in the midst of constantly changing requirements

4.  The Enterprise Field - be continually mindful of the impact of decisions on the organization's culture and the organization's presence in the world - build awareness.

The kicker here is that Goodell is shifting from a "one leader, one vision" approach to something that may arise from other groups, more of a collective growth.  In fact, he defines leadership as any means by which two or more individuals develop the ability to cooperate and take collective action.  And in fact he says that leaders in this new zone are not in charge - as much as they would like to think they are.  Instead, they are participants in the four fields.  "If you don't participate in ways that serve the greater good, you put yourself and your enterprise at risk," he says. "This is the heart of Field Leadership.  You are here to serve those you lead, the enterprise of which you are a part, the communities within which that enterprise functions, the human race, and ultimately the planet as a whole.  The extraordinary and daunting challenge given to Field Leaders is to guide us through the current period of transformation."

The idea of growing leadership in a collective enterprise may be hard to grasp, but in some ways we are already there. ""No organization of any size will ever have a population of employees who all reach high levels of mastery in all four fields.  But that is not necessary; a critical mass of individuals with mastery will correct for those who have not achieved it.  And often those who don't practice the disciplines will choose to leave because the culture will be uncomfortable for them."  One leader I can think of whole fits this new model is Gordon Lankton, founder of Nypro, a leader decades ahead of his time.   

The author credits previous thinkers like Gregory Bateson, Margaret Wheatley, Peter Senge, Daniel Goleman and Antonio Damasio for inspiration, as well as a slew of other supportive individuals who helped him move from assorted journal notes and conversations gathered over seven years to this fascinating book. 

Mill Girl rating:  A+.  I'm still thinking about this and what it means for our new economy.

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,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com