In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack, a speaker came to the Kennesaw State University campus and related the following incident:
A man emerged on that fateful day from the rubble and ruin of the second tower, still clutching his briefcase, blanketed with dust and debris, clothes torn, his face covered with cuts. A policeman approached him and ordered, “Come with me, Sir. You are in a state of shock.” The man pulled himself up to his full height, stared for a moment at the policeman and replied, “I’m not in shock. I am fully cognizant for the first time in my life — fully cognizant of what really matters.” That sent a shiver through the audience; it set us all to thinking, to reflecting. How profound it must be to have that shock of recognition — to be fully aware of what truly matters, of what is really important in our lives.
At about the same time that the speaker came to campus, one of the authors was reading Carl Sandburg’s Remembrance Rock. In that novel, the protagonist goes once a year to this particular rock and asks himself three questions:
Who am I?
Where do I come from?
Where am I going?
Pondering these and like questions beckons us to turn within, to remove ourselves momentarily from the noise and clutter of everyday life — to go into our own silence to explore and discover, fully realizing the Greek imperative: gnōthi seauton, “know thyself.” The invitational leader comes to know him- or herself and then reaches out to others to help create for our world what the poet Alan Brownjohn refers to as the “Commonwealth of Decency,” a world wherein we honor diversity, pursue social justice, promote civil discourse, and treat each other with dignity and respect to serve the common good. Caring about each other and for each other may well be the noblest expression of our humanity.
Of course, the journey is yours. As the poet Walt Whitman reminds us, “Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.” And as you travel that road, there will be many challenges to meet and choices to make — critical choices. The philosopher Jean Paul Sartre contends that we derive meaning and values through our decisions in everyday living. Further, we are free to make whatever choices we will — the only limitation to our freedom of choice is that we are not free not to choose. We must choose. And our choices are consequential, since they result in acts and behaviors that ultimately become who and what we are; in short, choice becomes character. Free agents, we are responsible for creating the very purpose, meaning, and values in our lives through our choices.
To conclude, we have emphasized that Invitational Leadership has a significant personal component. To be truly inviting towards others, after all, we must be inviting toward ourselves. Now we would like to go back to our Remembrance Rock and ask an all-important fourth question: What meaning am I making of my life and work, and how can I help others to make meaning of their lives and work? For the invitational leader, answering that question is part of a lifelong process of joy, discovery, and human service.
Foundations of Invitational Leadership
“Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do. We spend most of our lives mastering how to do things, but in the end it is the quality and character of the individual that defines the performance of great leaders.”
—Frances Hesselbein, Leader to Leader
Questioning what gives our lives meaning and purpose is a process that should be taken quite seriously. Indeed, answering this question helps invitational leaders craft narratives of their personal and professional lives — stories that evolve as their ideas change, and as they themselves change, revealing ever-new possibilities for their careers and colleagues. Further, and perhaps most importantly, asking and answering such a question should be a natural extension of a continuous internal dialogue. This dialogue is a key component of what it requires to become an invitational leader. It is also central to the development of a positive and realistic self-concept.
Taking this type of searching inventory enables a leader become more consciously aware of him- or herself, and by so doing, take responsibility for how he or she defines that self. After all, if we perceive ourselves to be lacking in some fundamental leadership quality, then surely we will fail to move others to join our cause. But if we can learn to speak invitationally to ourselves — if how we speak to ourselves helps us define a largely optimistic self-concept — then the sense of possibility in our personal and professional lives will expand exponentially.
Our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world are so real to us that we seldom pause to question them. Yet, human behavior is always a product of how we see ourselves and the situations in which we are involved. Although this fact seems obvious, the failure of people everywhere to comprehend it is responsible for much of human misunderstanding, maladjustment, conflict, and loneliness. In Invitational Leadership, being aware of, and questioning, our own perceptions is the first step in a re-visioning and re-calibrating of our relationships and responsibilities.
In Walker Percy’s novel, The Moviegoer, narrator Binx Bolling discusses what he calls “repetitions” — “the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle.” In other words, by recreating the past for himself, Binx is able to give it heightened meaning. This is but one of the ways Binx engages experience deliberately and thoughtfully. For instance, he might insist upon seeing a favorite movie in the exact manner in which he saw it the first time — even to the point of sitting in the same seat. By becoming hyper-aware of his actions, he avoids the general devaluation of repetitive experience. Or, as he puts it, he refuses to be defeated by the “malaise” of unquestioned existence.
Binx’s existential approach to things can help us understand how leaders learn to think invitationally by first becoming aware of the possibility of doing so. Inspired by the knowledge of this possibility, we are able to step outside of ourselves and observe our behavior more clearly, re-evaluate our perceptions, and question how our actions and words become part and parcel of a larger vision of the world. Thus, we defeat the “malaise” of an unexamined life, turning toward a more joyful, thoughtful, and meaningful existence. This process begins with a deeper understanding of those three cornerstones of Invitational Leadership: the perceptual tradition, self-concept theory, and the “whispering self.”
The Perceptual Tradition
The perceptual tradition is a way of understanding human behavior that takes into consideration all the ways in which we as humans are viewed, as well as how we view ourselves. The term perceptual refers not only to the senses but also to meanings — the personal significance of an event for the person experiencing it. These meanings extend far beyond sensory receptors to include such experiences as feelings, desires, aspirations, and hopes, as well as opinions about ourselves, others, and the world.
The starting point of the perceptual tradition is the assumption that we are conscious agents in the process of our own development. We experience, interpret, construct, decide, act, and are ultimately responsible for our actions. Behavior is understood as a product of the way we see ourselves and the situations in which we find ourselves. Each individual is seen as an architect in the construction of his or her own development.
There are many scholars from numerous disciplines who have contributed to the perceptual tradition, and we would be remiss not to at least give them a mention here. In the late nineteenth century, William James, who pioneered this tradition, as well as the use of “stream of consciousness” as an introspective tool, described consciousness as the “function of knowing.” Building his work, George Herbert Mead’s perspective on the social nature of perception employed the concepts of “I” (self as subject) and “me” (self as object). Together they were classed,