A short quotations based introduction to Isaac Getz's Liberating leadership (California Management Review, 2009)

1. Isaac Getz’s Liberating
Leadership
• Liberating Leadership / California
Management Review / Summer 2009 /
Isaac Getz
• A quotations based introduction

2. • Command and control
• Power focused people
• Reward and punish
• Deprive people of universal
needs
LIBERATED COMPANY ?
• (1) Competence. Seek to control the outcome and experience mastery.
• Relatedness. Is the universal want to interact, be connected to, and experience caring for others.
• Autonomy. Is the universal urge to be causal agents of one’s own life and act in harmony with one’s integrated self; this does not mean to be independent of others.
• Liberated company
• Self development – self motivation
• Universal needs
• Mastery and happiness
• Three universal needs for people self
motivation: relatedness, competence
and autonomy(1)
• NO… (organizational charts, long
term planning process, etc.)
• (Need) Liberating leadership
• Leaders proceeded in a seemingly
empirical manner: they simply added
features that increased employee
freedom and responsibility and rejected
features that did not.
• They create an ENVIRONMENT
• Based on values often opposed to
those of society at large

3. • INTRINSIC EQUALITY
• (Remove) work practices (that don’t) satisfy
needs for equality
• People consulted about decisions that affect
them
• Listening
• Rigorous recruitment and promotion process
for (…) « leaders » thus avoiding authority -
and power focused people from being hired
and promoted.
• WORLD CLASS VISION
• (Need) Make good day to day decisions
• Sharing it with employees so that they own it
emotionally is much harder
• Recruitment
• Reinforcing actions ((stand) behind what they
(say))
• Share vision relevant information
• NEED TO GROW
• Everyone has a talent for
something
• Agricultural approach
• Constant effort to build
environments that provide for
growth of people capabilities
• NEED TO SELF DIRECT
• “send me the solution”
ENVIRONMENT (CREATED BY LIBERATING LEADER)

4. • Job : CULTURE KEEPERS
• Maintaining the culture
• Getting rid of wrong doers
• TRAITS
• Freedom and responsibility values
• (as seen in frustrations / history)
• Creativity
• Ability to redefine problems
• Wisdom (embracing PARADOXES /
contradictions)
• Embracing a thing and its opposite
• Holistic and dialectic
• Considering all the ways a problem
may be related to its surrounding
circumstances and environment
• Entertain both sides of an apparent
contradiction if it helps them move
forward (Rem. They dictatorially want
freedom)
LIBERATING LEADERS

5. •Happiness:
• The main obstacle to happiness lies in the apparent contradiction between the personal
interest of individuals and those of the collective others
• (Solution ) clear acknowledgement of every employee’s personal needs. Simultaneously this
person (…) has to act to satisfy other’s universal needs.
• Provide help when a colleague needs it
• Pursuing its self interest brings consideration to other companies (and competitors)
• Respect, dignity, consideration, trust, fairness, courtesy and grace
COROLLARIES