Author
of Authentic Leadership: Courage in Action, Robert Terry was the founder
of The Terry Group, now Action Wheel Leadership, a leadership advisor,
educator, and organizational consultant. Terry held a Ph.D. and M.A. in social
ethics and public policy from University of Chicago, a Bachelor of Divinity
degree from Colgate Rochester Divinity School, and a Bachelor of Science degree
from Cornell University. He authored For Whites Only, a pioneering
volume on what it means to be both white and anti-racist. It sold over 250,000
copies and was required reading in the U.S. military. His last book, On
Being A Secular Theologian, remains unpublished.[1]
Terry
was honored with the Gordon L. Starr Award for outstanding work with University
of Minnesota students, the 1995 Ethical Leader of the Year Award from the
University YMCA in Minneapolis, and the 1998 Ted Kern award by the Senior
Executive Association, which represents the senior executives in the U.S.
federal government. He was also selected as one of the country’s 100 best
educators and is included in a recent volume: Learning Journeys: Top Management
Experts Share Hard-Earned Lessons on Becoming Great Mentors and Leaders,
Marshall Goldsmith, editor. He died on September 20, 2002 at age 64.[2]
The
main purpose of this book is to deepen and broaden the readers’ understanding
of the content of leadership; to guide them in figuring out the current
characteristics of external reality, the world around them; and to give the
readers ways to make wise, adept choices.[3] The
book has thirteen chapters organized into three parts: The first part,
Leadership Choices, shows the readers around the leadership landscape. The
second part, Leadership Zones, presents the first six leadership zones. Each
zone is followed by an analysis of the core ideas of the zone and a discussion
of the application of the ideas in practice. The third part, The Promise of
Authenticity, explores zone seven and leadership actions and ideas that apply
across all the zones. The author draws ideas from leadership and management
thinkers and theorists, beside his own lived experiences.[4]
This review gives emphasis mainly on the seven zones for leadership, rather
than covering the whole book.
Terry
develops his seven zones for leadership based on his model of action wheel,[5] which divides any human action into
seven features, or components. The seven leadership zones come into existence
within the universe bounded by agreement (tight
to loose) and certainty (high to
low), stretching from the past and stability to the future and chaos and change.[6] This book can be called the extension
of the seven action wheels in his Authentic Leadership.
Zone
1 put emphasis on the past, which is important because it provides the
fundamental character for all that follows. The criterion for authenticity is
“correspondence,” and leadership is about preserving the best of the past and
owning the present. In this zone, it is important to tie the values to the business,
separating the core values from the shared values. The idea is that the past
shapes people (present), and they in turn shape the future. Further, zone 1
leadership sees the world as an object, which demands attention and inquiry. The
core competencies of stewardship include the knowledge of relevant history,
clarity about core values, skills for remembering and celebrating, a
willingness to face hard truths, and the ability to preserve the sacred past.[7]
Zone
2 gives emphasis on resources, which sees
the world as a fixable world, and leadership in this zone focuses on matching
the right people to the right jobs. Competency is required.[8]
Hence, knowledge and skills have become critical resources. According to this
zone, organizations have to be filled with people with skill mastery to get the
work done. The criterion for authenticity is “consistency,” and leadership is
about sharing and building expert, technical knowledge. Zone 2 sees life as a
machine; for this zone, the world is knowable through science, and there is a
fix-it mentality in its leadership.[9]
Zone
3 is interested in systems thinking,
and it concentrates on “structure” with two primary leadership functions:
designing sustainable systems and affirming shared identity. The former focuses
on crafting system for future growth, whereas the latter focuses on inventing a
more dynamic, living systems approach. The issue of identity becomes priority
in zone 3 leadership.[10] In
this zone, life is no longer like a machine; it is a body, a living organism.
Machine is for efficiency, whereas body is for effectiveness. Hence, leadership
is about position and executive control to make effectiveness. In this process,
coherence and connectedness become the measure of authenticity.[11]
Unlike
the previous zones, zone 4 pays more attention to power within individuals, shifting leadership concept from
positional to potentially everywhere. As such, people empower themselves and
codetermine the future of the community. Leadership, in this zone, is about
sharing power and decision making. Life is viewed as a conflict between ups and
downs, and truth is to be found in the workers (members). In this zone, leadership
moves around, and power is to spread from top to bottom. As Terry put it,
“leadership is more than power over. It
needs to shift from power over to power with.
It is vision. (emphasis original).[12]
Zone
5 attends to the future, and it sees
the world as unpredictable that requires anticipation. It has two parts: the
first part concentrates on the desired destination (setting direction) and the
second part explores the trip (anticipating change). In this zone, a leader
needs to be out in society and know where the competition is going as well as
where the customer is going in order to be able to anticipate. Life, in this
zone, is understood as a journey; the world is unknown, and a leader needs to
look for emerging patterns.[13]
As
the world becomes more unpredictable and unfixable, leadership in zone 6 lives
in the midst of chaos. It can attend only to the now and act in the immediacy
of the present. Creating meaning in the processes or events on a
chaotic situation is important in leadership. Put different, leadership is
about discerning meaning, and people have to make up solutions because there
are no models, no procedures to refer to.[14] This requires a leader to be improvisational,
rather than provisional. Moreover, a leader is encouraged to think outside the
box and engage where there is no certainty about the consequences.
Zone
7 can be sum up with three leadership orientations: (1) making wise choices,
which fit both external and internal to the context; (2) probing deeper in
order to better inform practice; and (3) living the promise, meaning leadership
lives hope and courage by addressing the issues of spirituality, evil, and
theology.[15] As Terry
put it, the world of zone 7 challenges leadership to make comprehensive
choices, ask comprehensive questions, and face the most devastating aspects of
human life. Making choices requires wisdom, which emerges out of interactions
with others and experience of complex events. Further, everything in zone 7
appears to be problematic, like puzzles, and leadership takes the form of
probing deeper. Terry says, “It offers the confidence to explore the puzzles,
open to what will be discovered and learned.”[16]
This zone is not just about intellectual mapping; it is about living one’s
deepest commitment everyday. Leadership, in this zone, talks about religion and
spirituality.[17]
Without
a doubt, this book is valuable for a number of reasons. To begin with, it
bridges three related domains in leadership field: the person, spirituality,
and organizational development. By the end of the book, readers are guided into
terrains of personal and organizational spirituality with words such as
“authentic wisdom,” “leadership as a wildly transcending process,” “finding
voice,” “scanning inward,” “organization’s grounded hope,” and “spirituality
equals theology.”[18]
Terry’s thesis is reflected in this exploration of the spiritual development of
the organization’s leadership as the means to fulfill the promise of the
organization’s existence.
The
book also focuses on personal development, and it allows readers to assess
their readiness to enact zone competencies. It offers an orientation, key
questions, bibliographic sources, a veteran educator’s interpretation of
research, and opportunities to reflect on personal and operational management.
The use of many charts in this book also helps readers to comprehend the
author’s expression of a particular subject, if not those charts are the only
and best ways to describe his leadership concepts. Unlike many development models, Terry does
not suggest that progress consists of advancing from one leadership zone into
another, but that it is achieved only when each concern is given its due. Every
feature must be addressed in every action to the extent that it is relevant.
It
is obvious that Terry demonstrates his dedication to both administrations and
education when he declares, “I have longed for a diagnostic model of
organizational development so I could more wisely offer sound advice - advice
about selecting leadership actions in relationship to the great variety of
real-world situations . . . there are few blueprints to place them in context
so that people can make wise and adept decisions” (xvi). By doing
this, he invites organizational leaders into a spiritual journey of leadership
characterized by wisdom and authenticity.
This
does not mean that this book is perfect and beyond drawbacks. Terry’s model seems
to assume that through blending diagnostics and tactical insight, a leader can
stem the affects of chaos. However, because of the neutralizing effect of such
factors as culture, organization design, stage in life cycle, and the effect of
political powerbases, a leader using this model can be vulnerable in an attempt
to stabilize collective life. Moreover, a diverse of metaphors in this book can
create unnecessary complexity and confusion for readers. For instance, the
scenery metaphor, though it is helpful to account for many organizational
development theories and research, seems to cover the simplicity the author
promises. The result is that it is not easy for readers to be able to understand
what the metaphors are all about.
[1]
Robert Terry, Seven Zones for Leadership: Acting
Authentically in Stability and Chaos (Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Pub.,
2001), xxiii. See also http://www.action-wheel.com/bob-terry.html (accessed April 6, 2010)
[3]
Robert Terry, Seven Zones for Leadership,
1.
[4]
Ibid,., xix.
[5] The
seven action wheels are: existence (the history, past, and
memories in which the action is rooted or from which it arises—zone 1), resources (valued items, both tangible
and intangible, used in the action—zone 2), structure
(how processes and procedures are designed and implemented to get the action
accomplished—zone 3), power (the
energy or spirit that infuses the action—zone 4), mission (the direction of the action—zone 5), meaning (the significance and rationale of the action—zone 6), and fulfillment (the completed action—zone
7). See Robert Terry, Seven Zones for
Leadership, 48. See also in his Authentic
Leadership: Courage in Action (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers,
1993).
[6]
Ibid., 48.
[7]
Ibid., 83, 86.
[8]
Ibid., 48, 49.
[9]
Ibid., 90, 91, 103.
[10]
Ibid., 48, 49, 107.
[11]
Ibid., 109.
[12]
Ibid., 184-186, 217.
[13]
Ibid., 244.
[14]
Ibid., 270.
[15]
Ibid., 50-52.
[16]
Ibid., 337.
[17]
Ibid., 381ff.
[18]
Ibid., 310, 364, 208, 255, 382, 390.
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