In our Encounters, we often summarize the history of leadership in two minutes or less. In those 120 seconds, we break it down into four stages:
C1: Compliance – This is how leaders generally led from the dawn of humanity until the 1920s. In a C1 leadership context, the primary task is to get people to do what you want them to do -- using any means possible.
C2: Cooperation – In the first third of the 20th century, some people began to realize that compliance cultures were very expensive because people had to be watched all the time. They argued that if you devoted some resources up front getting people to want to do what you want them to do, the system would be more efficient overall. In general, their assumption proved right. Both working conditions and productivity. But the leadership task did not change: the leader’s job was still to get people to do what he or she wanted them to do.
C3: Contribution — In the 1960s, Peter Drucker and other organizational gurus noticed that some organizations, especially those employing “knowledge workers,” performed much better than other seemingly similar organizations in the same economic sectors. As they studied why this was the case, they came to realize that the most productive and innovative organizations incorporated a different kind of leadership. Instead of trying to get people to do what you want them to do, leaders tried to get followers to contribute all that they had to offer — and also tried to continually build their followers’ capacities to contribute so that their organizations could continue to improve on a constant basis.
Fostering a C3 Culture doesn’t involve doing away with compliance or cooperation. Every context, from the family to the multinational organization, has elements of compliance — from laws of the land to specific procedures to achieve safe and efficient operations. And cooperation in important, too, because it shrinks every challenge.
But C3 Cultures go beyond elements of compliance and cooperation to obtain higher levels of performance and development both individually and collectively. In C3 Cultures leaders assume that everyone has something to contribute to the group’s purpose, and that their capacities to make contributions will increase over time if properly nourished.
Acknowledging the importance of every individual, leaders in C3 Cultures make an effort to connect individual goals to organizational purposes. To do this, leadership must be widely delegated so that leaders can get to know their charges — what matters to them, what they want out of life, what motivates them. Then, as much as possible, C3 Leaders try to connect the team’s work to its members’ values and goals so that every individual’s life is linked to a larger purpose.
When that happens, motivational challenges diminish because people contribute productively as a matter of self-expression and self-fulfillment.
There is a fourth level of organizational culture. We call it C4: Communion. A C4Culture arises when the members of a group achieve complete unity of purpose. It doesn’t happen very often. But if you were ever part of a successful play or sports team, you may recall the experience.
Initially, everyone was focused on self, wondering what part they would get or what position they would play. But at the end, in the celebration of success, individual roles are all but forgotten. Lead actors embrace stage hands, star quarterbacks hug benchwarmers. Ego issues are subsumed in group achievement. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The parts, though absolutely critical, are not the focus of the participants.
Communion is rare, at least in this world. But it happens more often in C3 Cultures than in C1or C2 Cultures. And when it happens, performance is amazing. Meanwhile, performance in C3 Cultures is pretty awesome too. And today’s best leaders don’t want to settle for anything less.
Owen Phelps, Ph.D.
Director, Yeshua Catholic International Leadership Institute