Leadership lessons from a bowl of spaghetti

 

Gene Mage

 

I’m not usually a pasta fan, but when I order a nice piece of veal, I particularly enjoy a side order of spaghetti.  I avoid red sauces, preferring olive oil and garlic, or the occasional anchovy (if my wife isn’t with me).  I find that combination of flavors and textures particularly satisfying.

 

And, after spending five consecutive days locked in a rather warm room with a group of leaders, a bowl of spaghetti begins to sound pretty appealing.  While the restorative qualities of the meal soothe my body, I have more trouble putting the challenges of leadership development out of my mind.  I’m enjoying the pasta, but thinking about how to equip leaders as my fork dips rhythmically, twirling up another mouthful.

 

Were there leadership lessons in that bowl of spaghetti?  The lessons were there, emerging one at a time from the olive oil and garlic below.  Here are five “lessons from a bowl of spaghetti” for your consideration.

  1. Balance order and chaos.  When my colleagues and I conduct leadership development workshops, our flip charts have lots of circular diagrams.  These are graphical representations of systems.  We translate complex concepts into understandable words and pictures, but in doing so risk gross over-simplification. 

    The neatly ordered flow chart on the wall of an engineer’s cubicle may be useful for building an industrial robot; the messy business of developing leaders defies such simplistic approaches.  The roadmap for developing leaders looks more like a plate of spaghetti.  Individuals bring their distinctive backgrounds and perspectives into the fabric of an organization.  Leaders also contribute their uniqueness to the mix.  The end results are far less predictable.  

    I have noticed that effective leaders eschew mechanistic approaches, instead skillfully creating order, or stimulating chaos, to establish the right balance to meet the challenges of the moment.  Spaghetti defies order, yet succeeds marvelously at accomplishing its purpose.  It makes no more sense to impose an unnatural level of control over an organization than trying to untangle that bowl of spaghetti, laying each strand side by side in neat regimental rows.  But that does not mean we dump the spaghetti in our lap, either.  By contrast, we set the right boundaries, and encourage freedom within the bounds.

  2. Look for threads of thought.  The business environment today carries with it an unprecedented level of background noise.  It can be difficult to sort out the issues that matter from the issues that simply make noise.  As leaders, we need to fine tune our awareness of what is happening around us so we can discern the important themes.  The root causes of organizational dysfunction often hide themselves behind the tangled web of frenetic activity. 

 

  1. Disturb the status quo.  Until we begin to spin our fork into the bowl, the potential remains untapped.  It looks nice on the surface, but provides neither pleasure nor nutrition.  We must challenge conventional thinking with provocative questions.  We must continually look outside our walls for ideas, examples, and benchmarks.

  2. Create meaningful conversation.  Spaghetti can be highly influential on us, but only if we take it in and chew on it.  We need to become skillful at taking in the words of those around us, chewing on them, and allowing them to influence us.  Enjoying spaghetti with a group of fellow diners can be a marvelous shared experience.  Real dialog should be savored like a meal enjoyed with friends.

  3. Exercise influence to create hope.  Looking down at a bowl of spaghetti from a diner’s perspective, the tangled mass can look awfully overwhelming.  Yet whenever we choose to act in a skillful, courageous way, we make progress towards our goal.  Our initial impression of the situation gives way to one of greater subtlety and texture.  Taking it one bite at a time, we find that progress is possible.  When we do what we can do right now, hope is the natural consequence.

 

Syndicated columnist Gene C. Mage is author of the book Managing for High Performance.  To contact Gene, visit www.makingitwork.com.

 

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