It can become extremely challenging when people holding differing belief systems, worldviews, and levels of complexity of thinking encounter each other in business. The main challenge being that people are often only able to understand thinking based on the world view of their own value and belief systems. This can make communication between a leader and her or his team difficult. Especially when dealing with non negotiables. Each Value System will look for a different mode of leadership.
Beige and Purple communities are close knit and fearful of others who are different. Leaders are nearly always part of a direct lineage of succession and are often the ‘elders’ of a group. Leadership is driven by appealing to tribal loyalities.
Red leadership is about the absolute ‘power’ and rule of the individual. Leading from the front the Red leader demands respect and always comes first, even if it’s at the expense of those being led. Leadership is dictatorial and ego-driven.
Blue leadership is driven to serve a higher authority and observe and obey absolute laws and rules. While offering a degree of order, authority, predictability and stability this form of leadership can sometime be inflexible and pedantic in todays shifting market place. Leadership is compliance driven.
Orange Leadership is entrepreneurial and innovative but can sometimes be Machiavellian. This energy is driven to succeed at all costs. Showing emotion is considered a waste of time and money. Similar to Red, this mode of leadership is primarily self-seeking. Leadership is achievement driven.
Green leadership seeks interpersonal relationships. Honesty, empathy, authenticity and trust is highly valued. However this mode of leadership on it’s own can lead to challenging levels of “political correctness”. Leadership is primarily people driven.
A leader energised by the Yellow value set is able to see the whole spiral of human differences within an organization from a values perspective, and knows how to communicate with people at their respective levels. Cultural barriers such as race, religion, gender, age and lifestyles that divide and create conflict are managed, transcended and included in a syngergistic approach that serves the whole system. A leader expressing Yellow asks who is best suited to do what and why? Leadership is flex and flow driven.
The British Psychological Society's blog features a post about some new research suggesting that "Employees who perceive their leaders as ethical put in more effort and are more prepared to speak up and report issues at work. Judgements of ethical leadership depend upon the level of cognitive moral development: not only in the leaders, but the employees as well.Their research recruited 28 executives and 129 of their direct reports, who all completed a standard test of moral development. The direct report also gave their opinion of the executive's ethical leadership. The data was then combined into all possible pairs, where each pair comprised an executive and one of their reports. How did those executives seen as ethical do on the moral reasoning test? They scored highly; specifically they scored higher than their direct reports. That is, when leaders thought with somewhat bigger moral horizons than their followers, they were seen as most ethical. Jordan's team had predicted just this, based on an observation from social learning theory that the best way to model behaviours to others is to stand out from the crowd: sophisticated, novel moral reasoning can grab attention in a way that dutiful consistency will not. How do the followers appreciate these perspectives if they don't make sense to them? Well, the leader has to find a way to make them sensible. Luckily, post-Kohlberg researchers agree that individuals at higher levels can choose to speak 'the same ethical language' as others when necessary, offering a bridge between the two ways of thinking."
This research seems to support our own thinking that anyone in a leadership position should aim to push their development towards activating Yellow and becoming a Spiral leader.
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