The Leadership Diamond — Do You Have the Courage to Lead?

Only 3% of Danish managers have the courage to put action behind the words to set management free in the organization. This is the assessment of Doug Kirkpatrick, who visited Resonans in November and arranged for a number of Danish top executives, leadership aspirants and consultants to meet in Copenhagen.
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Doug Kirkpatrick is Today co-founder of the Self-Management Institute, and he was part of the Morning Star company from the start — the California tomato producer with over 2000 employees during the peak season and not a single formal leader. All employees are managers. Morning Star has been called the world's most innovative company by management guru Gary Hamel because of the radical way the company is organised and run. Doug Kirkpatrick has published the book on this basis Beyond Empowermentand in 2018 the sequel will be released The Future of Work. In other words, Doug is a strong capacity and inspirational advocate for new ways to lead and organize the agile business of the future.

9 out of 10 managers lack the will and courage to challenge traditional leadership model

According to Doug Kirkpatrick, only 3% of Danish managers are ready to really challenge the traditional, heavy and bureaucratic management approach — and the organisational practices that go with it. Only 3% are ready to let the leadership loose among the many. Instead, many leaders stick with the old model where leadership is reserved for the few.
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And this despite the fact that almost all the leaders we at Resonance are in contact with on a daily basis openly acknowledge that they see a great need to rethink and redefine organisation and management if companies and organisations today are to succeed in realising the human potential that is so crucial to unleashing innovation, competitiveness and sustainable results.
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But when this is the signal, why are more than 9 out of 10 managers not ready to take a step further from the traditional and soon to be 200-year-old management paradigm, which is practiced virtually everywhere today, if we disregard the few entrepreneurial start-ups and smaller entrepreneurial companies that, after all, try their hand at new management styles? What is holding back large and well-established companies and organizations? What is holding YOU back as a leader compared to loosening the reins of leadership and giving agility and human potential a little more leeway in your organization?
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Perhaps the fact that it is easier to stick with the familiar. Perhaps it is the fear of being left paralyzed because the changes around you are so numerous that they can topple you and your entire organization at any second. If this is the reason, it is actually not so strange, because quite often it is the personal barriers of the individual leader that stand in the way of challenging the existing. The good news is that there is an answer for that, and the answer is called the Management Diamond.

The management diamond may be the compass you need

Management philosopher Peter Koestenbaum has developed a compass with a series of simple points of orientation that you can lean on as change whizzes around your ears. He calls the compass The Leadership Diamond, or the Leadership Diamond in English, and it is an effective tool for you as a leader, enabling you to better maintain both the will and the courage to lead in big change processes, and to strengthen the agility and power of action in your organization by allowing others to lead themselves a little more.
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In the article Do you have the will and courage to lead? Are you among the bravest 3 per cent? In Børsen Ledelse, CEO and partner of Resonans, Thomas Gedde Højland, presents the model as a suggestion of a compass for you as a leader to navigate in a process of change — and which may even inspire you to challenge the existing leadership and power structure in your organization and set the leadership free.
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The orientation points of the Leadership Diamond are courage, Ethics, actuality and Vision — and in the meeting of the four points, the potential for producing extraordinary results awaits...