The Infinite Leader by Chris Lewis & Pippa Malmgren
“It doesn’t need to be the leader who has the ideas or even who sees them. The leader just needs to create a culture where ideas come to life.”
3 Main Messages:
Leaders need to be the most flexible member of the team
“We don’t need leaders with brains or hearts, we need them with both.”
The education system needs to change in order to value leadership skills, problem solving and flexibility instead of focusing on exam results.
Leadership is changing and it’s about time! For far too long the image of a leader has been that of a top down dictatorship style, where people do as they are told and toe the line. Increasingly however, people are moving to the understanding that leadership is about leading by example and creating a culture where all can flourish and achieve success towards an agreed goal.
The Infinite Leader opens with the line: “We live in an age of catastrophic leadership,” and continues to give multiple examples of where we are currently going wrong. I was shocked to read that 94% of Americans surveyed reported wanting to be debt free. How can 94% of the population be in debt? Sadly I was also shocked to read that the figures for teachers having experienced violence from pupils were as low as 25%. Having been a victim of student violence numerous times in my 25 year teaching career, I think in reality this is probably much higher.
Lewis and Malmgrem cite historic male bias and poorly planned education systems as a reason for this. All too often leaders are promoted because they hit all the metrics which we currently use to measure success. We are increasingly learning however that “Not everything that counts can be counted.” They have written The Infinite Leader to recreate our idea of what a leader looks like - and that is one in perfect balance.
They explore the imagery around circles and infinity across cultures, with the Yin and Yang of Chinese philosophy representing opposite but interconnected forces; the deliberate architecture of the Oval Office in the White House, Arthur’s Round Table, the UK GCHQ building and Apple’s office in Silicon Valley. The suggestion is that balance, or the ‘zero-models’, is the new version of leadership that we need.
The search for balance has led to some interesting conversations over the past few years. Many talk of seeking ‘work-life balance’, while others acknowledge that there will always been fat and lean periods through the day/week/year and that we should make the most of both. Lewis and Malmgrem insist that balance is important in leadership and that rest is as important as action. “If you want extreme insight, then you also need the opposite. You have to allow the mind to stop and repair itself.” They write about the importance of leadership spirit, and of ensuring peak rational, physical and emotional fitness in order to be the best possible leader.
Also explored are the values of creating a sense of team belonging, the need to love your team and the power of asking “what do you think?” Increasingly we see that the role of a leader is to unite and build up others in their team. As this happens, the old notion of an ever present, overbearing leader is replaced by the suggestion that the best leaders are increasingly invisible: they speak last, and are there to serve.
As a former teacher, I found the final chapter of the book incredibly thought-provoking. Our children grow up learning how to remember and recite information and those who succeed in tests are those who are rewarded. Lewis and Malmgren suggest that we need to move away from the notion that all leaders need to have University degrees and look for other ways to measure potential. They refer to the four H’s of servant leadership: to be humble, happy, honest and hungry; none of which are measured by our schools.
Certainly change is happening. We are wanting more of our leaders and the book concludes optimistically, suggesting that there is a new generation of leaders emerging who are “modern, pragmatic, technical and…romantics,” - people who put people first. They suggest that the start of change is awareness and this book certainly raises that.
