Is (Leadership) "Style" a Type?

I am really impressed with the Integral Leadership post by Brett Thomas: Kickstarting a Movement: A Call for Integral Leaders.

Brett and others in the Stagen "experiment in Texas" concluded that our typical obsession with stages/levels here at IL was not particularly useful when it comes to predicting who is a good leader. Leadership "style" was found to be a much better predictor of who is a good leader and who is not. More specifically, a leadership style x worldview of the leadership domain (of the people you are leading) interaction is the best predictor of successful vs. unsuccessful leadership. 

Brett's/Stagen's "Rosetta Stone" for leadership not only makes perfect sense, but apparently has been empirically validated. Brett has been at this for a while.

I've always liked the ambiguity of the word "matches." Its double meaning has an application when it comes to approaches to facilitating or mapping out effective leadership.

The old-school leadership form of "match" is the kind that you strike and it starts a fire and makes things happen. It is a symbol of masculine-like potency, virility, impact, etc.— closer to the authoritarian style described in the Rosetta Stone of Leadership. 

The new-school leadership form of "match" the act of matching various components together. Good "matches" create effective chemistry. The old school fire starter is less important than the overall dynamics of the fire. This form of "match" or "matches" appears more like the collaborative leadership style described in the Rosetta Stone of Leadership. 

It is the "matching" of leadership style to the world view of those being led that is thought to be the main key to success. No matter how much passion, power, or expertise a leader brings to the project, if his or her style is out of synch with the world view of the people he or she is leading, then the fire won't spread (at least not in a positive way that would resemble effective leadership). 

In a personal philosophical essay draft I scribbled out many years ago, called "Idea Physics," I postulated 3 main factors that determine whether an idea becomes a real thing:  Intensity, Duration (perserverance), and "Extensity"(or "fit"). It is the latter that "matches" (pun intended) the new-school approach to creating or facilitating effective leadership. And it is this catalytic-like approach that seems to "match" the essence, or soul, of "Integral." 

In terms of technical correctness however, I'm not sure that style (as the main key) qualifies as being "Integral." Style is not one of the elements of the current Integral Map ... that is, unless "style" is actually a version of type. It may well be. If that is, in fact, the case, then Stagen's use of term  " 'Integral' Leadership" is no misnomer—not even in a technical sense. 

And if style = type, then my recent statements here at IL, to the effect that I am more inclined to assign more wieght to type than to stage, have been proven to have some merit. Considering that my type wieghting/valuation was not generally agreed with, the findings at Stagen have (at least partially) vindicated me.  

But being right for the sake of winning arguments is of little use. Being right for the sake of the putting legs on Integral is what matters.

My thoughts that led to a greater weighting of type came to me while envisioning, and writing about, an optimal community. It seemed to me that "matching" natural human gifts to the right occupations was both a way of maximizing human energy and of reducing the degree of human resistance and sabotage.

If every gift (and I saw a "gift" as being intimately related to "type") is correctly franchised, and if the gift types are equally valued (in an "All are needed, and all are cherished" line of collective thought) then both motivation and cooperation/harmony could be achieved.

In my book, Allsville Emerging (http://sbpra.com/DarrellMoneyhon), I even dreamed up a new political system called a giftocracy, in order to help keep certain gift-types, gift-sets, or gift-orientations (GOs) from dominating other gift-types. 

My basic notion is similar to Ken's notion (articulated in Integral Spirituality) that the quads aren't merely passive perspectives, but can function also as enactment zones. We are not just passively observing the world.

I'll go further (into a metaphysical line of thought) that we are wired to create the world. In fact I see "response" as a greater "driver" of world-shaping than "stimulus" or perspective. Not only do I give more wieght to type than I do to stages/levels, I give more wieght to types than to quadrants/perspectives.

From the beginning of our births we were poised to perform and create. In many ways it is more correct to say our incarnation or individuation is a spiritual response rather than a spiritual circumstance. That is to say: even our existence is a response. The inertia of our particular way of standing out (existing) is predisposed to shape the world in certain ways.

Failure for communities and collectives to harness that patterned inertia, or "gift," is not only a lost opportunity, it is asking for trouble. The untapped and unchanneled inertia will create resistance. 

And now Brett and Stagen come along and find some evidence that tends to support this notion. If not type or gift, it is at least one's style that determines leadership success, or lack thereof; that is, if the style is placed in the right place at the right time. 

Darrell