By Lévis Madore
Leadership Development Coach

For the first decade of my work life, I served as a public servant in the Canadian Public Service. For the last twenty years, I have been working as a leadership development coach and organizational development consultant with many leaders in the private and public sectors. In both contexts, I have been at my best when the leaders around me engaged my heart and my mind in bringing meaningful possibilities into existence that were unprecedented in their organizations. They did this by making requests and promises in the name of the possibilities they were committed to and by connecting my own commitments and deepest concerns to the future they stood for. What follows is the result of my reflections on the nature of requests and promises leaders make.

Theories, concepts and models about leadership abound. So, as we begin our reflection, our goal is not to produce yet another definition of leadership; it is to give a perspective from which we will examine requests and promises as leadership actions. Consider, for a moment, the possibility of leadership as the art of weaving commitment-based conversations to bring meaningful unprecedented possibilities into existence. From that perspective, how would requests - the speech act we use when we seek the assistance of others - and promises - the speech act we use to indicate our commitment to fulfill what someone else has requested - look and feel like to those with whom we are involved in this conversational weaving? Would they be any different from requests and promises made from our concern to keep our heads above the water as we feel ourselves pulled along the river of life? Would they be any different from requests and promises made from our ever-shifting mood states as we experience ourselves on the receiving end of life's uncertainties, whether our mood is excitement or resignation, exhilaration or cynicism?

Well, there are a few things that would not change. For one thing, as a person living in an organization with other human beings, we would still be faced with the inability to predict the entire spectrum of events and circumstances coming at us from the future. Moreover, life would still serve up its plateful of satisfactory and unsatisfactory outcomes, delightful and unwelcomed surprises. The difference would rest with how our requests and promises would transcend the limits of personal survival, with how they could serve as opportunities to build something that contributes to others' future while supporting what we are building. How could that be possible? From the perspective of leadership as a weaving of commitment-based conversations, requests and promises come from two distinct yet interconnected conversational threads: one, from our commitment to possibilities; and two, from an authentic listening to the deeper world of concerns, commitments and possibilities of those with whom we are doing the weaving. Let's examine both of these aspects.

First, requests and promises stemming from a commitment to meaningful unprecedented possibilities have the power to interrupt the direction and energy of the cultural drift in which the organization finds itself. Commitment-based requests and promises act like a hydroelectric dam. They stop the flow of the cultural current and use the energy of the amassed waters to generate action capable of opening new inroads to innovation. When void of any commitment to new and meaningful possibilities, organizations live in the drift of "things-are-done-this way-because-that's-the-way-things-are-around-here" which then feeds "things-are-the-way-they-are-because-what's-done-is-done-the-way-it's-done".

Second, making requests and promises from a place of deep and authentic connection to other people's world of concerns, to their own commitments and to the possibilities they see allows leaders to weave what lives in the world of others into the shaping of the unprecedented possibility they stand for. It is the depth of that connection that allows leaders to bring the true voice of others into the birthing process of the possibility that is being created. It's as if people's concerns and commitments are prolonged into the possibility that is being birthed to create an emotional harmonic resonance. The word resonance comes from the Latin word resonare, which means to resound, to prolong or reinforce a sound by reverberation. If it is the depth of the connection that creates emotional resonance, it is authenticity that allows the connection to develop into a trusting and sustainable bond that allows others to stay focused on the possibility that is being created amid profound uncertainty and doubt. This resonance legitimizes leaders to push and pull the organization as a community of human beings living in a system to step up to its historical call, to its unique contribution, to its societal duty often hidden by the drift of things.

The reason a leader's authentic connecting with others matters so much in the process of bringing unprecedented organizational possibilities into existence lies in the very design of human beings. Human beings rely on their connections with others for their own emotional stability. Lately, I lived through the painful parting of my oldest brother after he died from cancer of the liver. The comforting presence and words of so many during these hard times brought a soothing effect on my aching heart. It helped me keep my emotional balance. More dramatically, the interplay or emotional connection between a leader and the members of an organization produces a kind of emotional soup that shapes the mood of the entire organization. In turn, moods affect not only the size of the possibility an organization is willing to commit to but also its readiness to grant the leader their gift of followership. Why? Simply because members of an organization take their emotional cues from the their leaders due to the reality that everyone watches leaders.

Whether we hold the position of a director general or that of a clerk, when our requests and promises are made from the commitment to the possibilities we stand for while being authentically connected to the personal concerns, possibilities and commitments of others, they become openings for playing together as partners in the action they call for. They simply live in a different life cycle from those made from the need to look good and avoid domination as we swim our best to our retirement day.

Exhibit 1: Life cycle of requests and promises from a perspective of connected commitment

Without commitment to unprecedented possibilities, requests and promises sound hollow. They have no generative ability to bring people to see larger pictures, to pave the way through hope and daring; to release their enormous capacity of self-expression. Without authentic connection to the other people's world, requests and promises lose their weaving quality, and people either comply with or maneuver around them. Uncommitted and disconnected requests and promises fuel the organizational practice of trying to predict the future while controlling processes and people to achieve it - with an attachment to the outcome. From that perspective, given our obvious inability to predict the entire spectrum of events and circumstances coming at us from the future, requests and promises quickly get adjusted to no more than what is feasible in the existing cultural drift of the organizations we work in. Sticking to the feasible is the best way to produce perfectly controllable action through people and processes.

This self-adjusting cycle, presented in Exhibit 2, works something like this: A plan or some version of a plan gets made from the perspective of predicting the future while controlling processes and people to achieve it. That controlling energy generates either compliance or survival game playing around requests and promises. Then, in the unfolding of our organizational life, things happen. Those things bring with them their normal array of satisfactory and unsatisfactory outcomes, delightful and unwelcome surprises. As managers review what life has served up, they adjust the size of their expectations - usually on the basis of beliefs and practices learnt in the past from "making it" in their respective organizational cultures. From this revised set of expectations designed to "make it" in our organizations, a revised plan gets created, again from a perspective of prediction and control which triggers the compliance or survival game playing. From that revised plan, new requests and promises get made to produce action. Soon, especially in cases where events have served up a larger portion of unwelcome surprises and unsatisfactory outcomes, we slide into a mood of gradual cynicism and resignation. And that becomes the place from which new requests and promises get made.

Exhibit 2: Disconnected requests and promises with no commitment to an unprecedented possibility

Uncommitted disconnected requests and promises land as some form of manipulation to seduce or scare people into action. From a perspective of leadership, connectivity is the attribute that requests have when they evoke the unique gift other people are and that they are just waiting to contribute to the world. What people get when leaders make requests is not whether they conform to the criteria of a well-made request, what they get is who leaders are that's behind their requests. When, at the moment they come out, our requests evoke the unique offering of others while coming from our commitment to a possibility that has integrity with the context we are in, then we see people as ready to be ignited; we see them as ready to participate, willing to be moved and inspired. And from that place, when they say "No" to our requests, we either hear a commitment to participate differently or get curious as to how they don't yet feel the connection of our requests to their offering.

Promises, as leadership actions, are what we do when we commit to fulfill what someone else has requested. Promises imply we fully understand what another person is requesting. They also imply that we are sufficiently competent to fulfill what is being promised. When promises are not fulfilled or when they are declined, it does not mean that we are not committed. In fact, from the perspective of leadership, commitment is always present. Promises may become unfulfilled because the level of competence of the person promising is insufficient to meet the standards of satisfaction contained in the promise. From the perspective of disconnection, we usually expedite a solution by promising less or by finding someone who has the competence level to meet the standards of satisfaction of the promise made. From a leadership perspective, because of the nature of connection, promises can actually be an occasion to step up to something bigger than who we are and hold the very process of fulfilling the promise as a developmental opportunity to bring out the best in ourselves. When J. F. Kennedy announced that America would put a man on the moon and bring him back safely to earth - as a promise to be fulfilled in a period of ten years, there was no level of competence to do so that was already demonstrated in a previous example. That promise created the space for developing a new capacity.

One could even say that if we meet all of our promises, we are operating inside the frontiers of a shrunken dried-out world that kills unprecedented possibilities. When we make promises from the cultural drift of the organizations we live in, we are more attached to repetition than to innovation. When leaders make promises, they are about generating commitment-based possibilities. And that very process creates a new world of issues and concerns for those we have promised to. Leaders' promises open up a world of possibilities. When leadership is present, we promise hugely, we requests outrageously and we offer immensely.

Can you begin to see the possibility of yourself as a leader? What is an area of concern you are grappling with right now while feeling towed by the organization`s drift? What could you commit to that would shift it from a problem to solve to a creation that would inspire you and others to make requests and promises that resonate with people`s open-ended issues and questions to create an exciting world of possibilities rather than a repetitious drift of boredom? What three outrageous promises could you make now?

References:

• Notes from "Future Thinking", A Leadership Development Program offered by The Center For Authentic Leadership, Atlanta, Georgia
• Leadership Is An Art, Max De Pree, Dell Publishing, 1989
• You Are What You Say, Matthew Budd, Three Rivers Press, 2000
• Leadership And The Art Of Conversation, Kim, H, Krisco, Prima Publishing, 1997