Cultivating the Art of Leadership

One of my colleagues, Tess Beasley, and I were talking about apprenticeship the other day over lunch. Tess remarked how much she's learned from working together so closely-- about marketing and branding, customer management, and business itself.

It's interesting how learning happens -- over time, through repetition, through experiences that challenge us, and through debriefs on how things work (or don't).

Often, we think of apprenticeships as something almost pre-modern, when young people studied alongside masters for years at a time to cultivate their own sense of mastery -- whether as painters, cathedral builders, carpenters or other artisans.

An apprentice is fundamentally a beginner, focused on learning a trade or occupation and accepting of instruction from the person teaching "the way" -- think: Jedi and Samurai as warrior examples.

In business, it's common to hear leaders talk about the dearth of "good talent" and the "lack of experience" when they try to fill open positions. And, it's not uncommon to hear twenty- and thirty-somethings say, "I'm not sure what I really want to do."

It seems that too few leaders are cultivating "the way" for the next generation, while too few young people are cultivating their own mastery.

Impatience comes in on both sides. I think it's our cultural penchant for discovery -- whether it's the newest superstar to recruit or the coolest new job to score, we often want to find rather than cultivate.

Alas, mastery in a "way" takes time. It takes deep soaking in a milieu of effort to understand hidden sources of cause and effect. It takes cultivation of real competencies as well as discernment.

In Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions by Gary Klein, there is a section that talks about the power to see the invisible, including:

• Novices are confused by much that happens to them because...they keep encountering events they did not anticipate.
• Experts can detect differences that novices cannot see, cannot even force themselves to see.

One of the strengths of an apprenticeship is the opportunity to learn how to see (and how to practice) in the ways that come not from theory or intellectual knowledge but from a deeper sense of cause and effect and how things work.

Funny. The topic of apprenticing seems to be in the air. In a client call today, I learned about an intriguing apprenticeship program -- for preparing candidates for CEO positions in hospital administration. Given the complexty of healthcare today, it's an encouraging story.

Given the dissolution of informal mentoring networks (through families and closely-knit communities), I wish for more of the same in other industries, and also for less senior levels too.