The nature of leadership has recently become very clear to me. The only leadership which can work in this world over the long term is leadership that looks out for the health of people and by extension, of the planet.

Many people mistake leadership and control. They're easy to spot, what they're putting out there as leadership looks a lot more like desperation. We're a society caught up in power, greed and control. We focus on winning no matter what the cost to others. It’s not all of us, but enough of us act in a manner that gives free-market capitalism a dirty name. I equate this to a computer that has a virus, a bad program that damages the rest of the computer’s abilities. What’s needed is a disinfectant program that can run like a good program that removes all the bad ones.

What’s created is a willingness to stop trying to control the group and instead to become a part of the group and offer your full participation and turn over control to the group. This is the only way that a healthy communication can occur at the base of the group dynamic, if the leaders are willing to participate on the same level as everyone else. Give and take, becoming a part of what is going on, from the inside is the only place that any influence can be made. There is still intelligence. There is still an effort to create a dynamic, healthy group, applying all of the knowledge and experience available. But it’s applied as a team member, as opposed to a team controller.

People in a natural state need to learn and grow.

A business that runs its systems based on its people having to submit to a control system is running counter to the long term health of its people. Submission is a perversion of the human ideal and immediately stunts the growth of the individual and the dynamic of the group. Participation, on the other hand, is a healthy human trait and can look a lot like submission at first, but upon closer observation, you will notice that the individuals display qualities of leadership and risk taking.

So the key to effective leadership is to make your people leaders of your business.

And you know what, they were already anyway.

Organizations are in chaos because the formal leadership has not chosen to understand and compromise with the informal leadership. The informal leadership can’t initiate this understanding and compromise because it isn't well enough organized to do it, so it’s up to ownership and management to start a discussion about what the business is all about. The group only begins to respond as a whole when the leadership becomes consistent (whole). This group response is a precondition to being a business.

The nature of business is always a group-on-group relationship. If you're not in a group, you're not in the game.

Individuals are workers, not businesses. A business possesses a special type of dynamic that allows it to meet universal demands and create individual satisfaction over a wide spectrum of the market. An individual is limited to types of demands that match their personality. A business knows and remembers everything about its customers and strives to create and complete any and every agreement. An individual only keeps agreements that are in their self-interest, because there's just too much to do, and certainly too much to remember. A business puts on a sunny face twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, forever. An individual suffers through fits of depression just reading that last line. A business works to maintain healthy relationships with all of its primary partners, including employees, customers, stockholders and suppliers. An individual is now on total overwhelm.

All businesses are born in ignorance, most die of stupidity.

An individual has an opportunity to become a seeing-eye dog for the business. A chance to use the unique skills human beings possess to help the business plan its education; to set up and run experiments that will help the business understand itself and its relationship with the market. Face it, individuals and businesses need each other.

Neither should try to control the other, but they should try to work together to build upon their strengths and natural abilities. This may come as a shock to you, but we are not our businesses and our businesses are not us. We are in relationship with the group that is the business, just as the business is in relationship with the market. These all need to be healthy, functional relationships.

It’s time for us to leave our selfishness and desperation at the door, and work for a better tomorrow by understanding our past and fully participating today.