Woke

We need woke leaders. Thus, we need to be woke leaders.

Of course, that’s an opinion…

…of a man who has for decades been universally respected for his leadership ideas and approach.

Robert K. Greenleaf.

Now, perhaps you’re not familiar with Greenleaf, but I’d wager you’re familiar with the paradigm he popularized: servant leadership.

And servant leadership is…woke leadership?

Naturally.

For Greenleaf, for servant leadership, woke — the past tense of the intransitive verb wake, meaning “to be/remain awake” — is akin to awareness.

And awareness is akin to effective leadership.

In his 1970 seminal essay, The Servant as Leader, Greenleaf defined awareness as opening wide the doors of perception so as to enable one to get more of what is available of sensory experience and other signals from the environment than people usually take in.

The benefits of awareness are that there is more than the usual alertness, more intense contact with the immediate situation, and more is stored away in the unconscious computer to produce intuitive insights in the future when needed.

Unfortunately, however, most of us move about with very narrow perception — sight, sound, smell, tactile [physical awareness only].

And consequently we miss most of the grandeur that is in the minutest thing, the smallest experience. We also miss leadership opportunities.

Greenleaf went as far as to argue (correctly, in my opinion) that a qualification for leadership is that one can tolerate a sustained wide span of awareness so that he better “sees it as it is.”

And here is why, per Greenleaf, awareness is required for leading well:

The opening of awareness stocks both the conscious and unconscious minds with a richness of resources for future need. But it does more than that: it is value building and value clarifying and it armors one to meet the stress of life by helping build serenity in the face of stress and uncertainty. The cultivation of awareness gives one the basis for detachment, the ability to stand aside and see oneself in perspective in the context of one’s own experience, amidst the ever present dangers, threats, and alarms. Then one sees one’s own peculiar assortment of obligations and responsibilities in a way that permits one to sort out the urgent from the important and perhaps deal with the important.

Awareness, then, is a necessary characteristic for leadership — one that provides clarity and peace, strength and wisdom.

But to be sure, awareness does not provide a leader comfort.

Rather, awareness is just the opposite. It is a disturber and an awakener. Able leaders are usually sharply awake and reasonably disturbed.

Able leaders — servant leaders — are…woke up and agitated. They see. They feel. They know.

Resultant from this, they are eager — no, they’re required — to facilitate change. They are conscious enough to recognize a thing “as it is” and simultaneously troubled enough not to leave that thing (situation, individual, team, organization) “as it is.”

Are you a woke leader?

If not, why not?

That’s not a rhetorical question. And that’s also a topic for next time.

Meanwhile, know that we need you…as aware as possible.

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Woke was originally published in Horizon Performance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.