A New Paradigm of Individual, Group, and Organizational Performance

Challenging Your Implicit Leadership Theory

“…For most of us, leadership operates under the same principles. Accordingly, the prevailing model says that a leader's performance is an effect (an outcome), where the cause of that effect is: a) the internal characteristics and attributes of the leader and/or b) the external circumstances with which that leader is confronted (Erhard, W, Jensen, M, & Barbados Group, 2010). In other words, my effectiveness as a leader is caused by some combination of my abilities (skills) and/or some set of (favorable or unfavorable) external factors or conditions.…”

“…This approach can be useful but it is often insufficient. Moreover, while the current cause-and-effect model of leadership performance provides reasons for the course of action the leader chooses, those reasons do not distinguish the source of one's actions, and as a consequence, currently provide no consistent access to producing real breakthroughs (Erhard, W, Jensen, M, & Barbados Group, 2010).…”

“…The emerging model of leadership effectiveness approaches performance as an entanglement phenomenon (Souba, 2011). In this model, performance is a product of action (or inaction), where the leader's actions are entangled with (correlated with) the way in which whatever the leader is dealing with "occurs" for that leader and the way in which that leader occurs for himself or herself in dealing with that challenge (Erhard, W, Jensen, M, & Barbados Group, 2010;Souba, 2011). [We borrow the term entanglement from quantum mechanics.…”

“…This approach to exercising leadershipusing knowledge to unravel problemsis crucial for solving technical problems (e.g., your laptop crashes). However, this DOI:10.12806/V17/I4/T1 October 2018 THEORY "third-person" approach, where learning to lead is based on using or acquiring someone else's knowledge about leadership, does not provide consistent "first-person" access to being a leader (Erhard, W, Jensen, M, & Barbados Group, 2010).…”

“…With "relanguaging", the patient safety challenge occurs in a very different light. Once the "occurring" shifts, our actions shift because the way in which our leadership challenge shows up (occurs) for us gives us our range of available actions for tackling it (Erhard, W, Jensen, M, & Barbados Group, 2010). When patient safety breaches occur as someone else's problem, physicians' latitudes for action become quite limited and they often absolve themselves from taking full responsibility.…”