Subject: Leadership -- Toward a Sustainable Future
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Comments:
Earlier this year Jeff Sirmon was appointed Deputy Chief for
International Forestry.  This is a huge challenge with issues like
like global warming, ozone depletion, desertification, tropical
and temperate rainforest destruction on the table.  Last week, at
the Land Stewardship Conference in Atlanta, Jeff outlined his
vision for leadership to help people, both individuals and various
interest groups, build community and ownership in both problems and
solutions.  The 7 pages that follow were published in Forest
Perspectives earlier this summer and form the backbone of Jeff's
perspective. They are a welcome change from roles traditionally
assumed by managers: roles emphasizing "net benefit maximization" or
"interest group intermediation."  Hope you find them as refreshing as
I did...Dve.

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        Evolving Concepts of Leadership:  Towards a Sustainable Future

                                      by

                                Jeff M. Sirmon
                   Deputy Chief for Programs and Legislation
                              USDA Forest Service
                              Washington, D.C.  


    Over the past two decades, the profession of
forestry has been swept up by dramatic social changes. 
Not only are social attitudes about the uses and values
of forests and their management changing, but many in
the profession are recognizing that environmental
quality of the resource base cannot be sustained by the
traditional approaches to management.  Public
understanding of environmental realities may in fact
have outpaced professional recognition, resulting in
escalating controversy over resource management
decisions.
    Today's approach to leadership and decisionmaking
was framed when the forests seemed inexhaustible and
immediate human need was the deciding factor.  In the
past, conflicts over natural resources were mostly
local, as were their solutions.  Today, many problems
are still local, but the local manager is guided by
national processes such as the National Environmental
Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Forest Management Act
(NFMA) and decisions affect a broader "community of
interests."  
    The social, environmental, and political
complexities of these new realities are forcing the
forestry profession to grapple with finding new
approaches to resource management.  The profession must
consider new leadership roles to guide itself and
society as a whole.  Exploring leadership theory and
principles lays a foundation for developing a new
approach which must give more consideration to the
"community of interests" to find more appropriate
approaches to resource management.

Theoretical Models of Leadership

    Models of leadership abound, most straddling a
continuum defined by the degree of control exercised by
the individual "in charge" and the amount of involvement
or influence permitted to group members.  Riane Eisler
in The Chalice and the Blade:  Our History, Our Future
discusses leadership, power, and social structures as
"dominance oriented" versus "partnership oriented."  For
natural resource leadership, models on each end of this
spectrum might be termed "authority figure" (dominance)
and the "community of interests" (partnership).  

Authority Figure Model

    The authority figure model is a classic hierarchical
pyramid, with an expert in charge dictating decisions to
the masses, who generally does not respond to new ideas. 
The Forest Service with its reliance on science and
technology to support the "right" answers, exemplifies
this approach.  Within this authority figure model,
public agency administrators have traditionally used two
methods1 of relating to the public and others involved
in the community of interests:  (1) net benefit
maximization or (2) interest-group intermediation.
                                 
  1Attribution:  Robert Reich, Public Administration and
Public Deliberation:  An Interpretive Essay.  Yale Law
Journal, Vol 94:1617-1641, 1985.
    Net benefit maximization attempts to find a solution
that will produce the "greatest good for the greatest
number in the long run"--the Gifford Pinchot camp. 
Reliance on science and use of modeling are hallmarks of
this approach.  The downsides are familiar--a cadre of
experts who define issues in technical terms and begin
to feel they "own" them.  The public is denied an equal
voice in their solution.  Conflicting and confusing
messages are transmitted to the community of interests,
as experts compete with each other to be right first.  
    The other approach, intermediation, sees conflicts
as "turf wars" to be settled in the arena of overt
political horse-trading.  The congressional legislative
process epitomizes this approach.  Though decisionmaking
does progress, the result too often resembles what would
have occurred if Solomon had gone ahead and cut the baby
in half.  The administrator who says "everyone is mad at
me--I must be doing something right" probably believes
in this approach.  

Leadership Within the Community of Interests:

    Whereas the dominance model often involved conflict
between those affected by management, the community of
interest approach is centered around building
connections between individuals and institutions.
    Imagine the potential of a decisionmaking process
where a group of people with different backgrounds and
points of view come together for a common purpose. 
Leadership in this context is the act of facilitating
the dialogue necessary to reach resolution.  It does not
mean dictating the solutions, but rather helping to
create the environment from which the solution can
emerge.  It means taking responsibility to ensure that
all interests are represented at the discussion table,
that all points of view are considered with respect,
that each individual can learn from the others'
knowledge in a setting where each can also share their
own knowledge.  It is within this diverse community of
interest that lasting solutions will eventually be
found.

Leadership Principles

    Volumes have been written about leadership styles,
approaches, and methods.  Although many of the issues
are relevant, regardless of the arena in which the
leadership is exercised, two principles stand out. 
First, a leader articulates a vision.  Second,
leadership causes work to be done.  In the past, vision
articulation was relatively straightforward.  Gifford
Pinchot was able to describe a vision a hundred years
ago, which was accepted and supported by the President,
Congress, and generally by the public.  Opposition came
primarily from those who would loose their essentially
free access to natural resources.  Since then, Pinchot's
vision has became blurred as the government's direction
and parameters for managing natural resources has
proliferated.  Its role has been to establish
appropriate standards for protection of resources while
supporting and facilitating some level of production of
goods or services from the land.  This has meant
balancing competing demands to assure "the greatest good
for the greatest number."  Today, the dramatic growth of
interest groups assigning differing values to resources
has created a highly polarized environment in which
leadership built around a specific vision is increasing
difficult.  
    Today's controversy suggests this role may not be
enough.  Disparate interests have been unable to agree
on the appropriate balance between commodity production
and amenity preservation.  Productivity must be coupled
with maintenance and enhancement of ecosystems'
integrity.  A vision of sustainable resource management
should guide leadership within the profession and the
broader community of interests.
    A second principle is that leadership occurs when
one causes work to be done--that is, the objective for
leadership is to cause those within the community of
interest to engage each other to find resolution to the
issues. Work (as opposed to "busy-ness") is facing,
defining, and solving problems (disputes) in non-routine
situations.  Work avoidance is not facing the problems. 
There can be a lot of energy expended but if it isn't
directed toward resolving the problem, then no work
occurs.
    It is easy to confuse an authority figure with
leadership.  The authority figure is expected to restore
order or equilibrium.  When faced with conflict the
tendency is to protect the authority figure as a means
of maintaining the status quo (i.e., avoiding work). 
Group pressures will push toward a return to
equilibrium, but the leader must have the courage to
hold steady and risk failure in order to get work done. 
Equilibrium will be restored when the issue is resolved,
but achieving equilibrium should not be the leader's
objective.
    The leader will become the lightning rod of any
system in disequilibrium.  The strategy for survival is
to focus the energy on the issues at hand.  The
effective leader will enlist partners within the group
to help stay on track, and use outside resources as a
reality check, to observe, evaluate, and provide
feedback.  The process of resolving tough issues can be
messy, and no one person, including the leader, has
enough eyes and ears to know everything that is
happening.  A leader must be willing to risk failure. 
Preoccupation with self-survival is work avoidance, not
leadership.

The Forestry's Professional Role

    The leadership challenge for the future of natural
resources management is to transform the management
environment from one based on the authority figure model
to one based on the partnership model.  Raising or
dealing with issues concerning public lands can be a
laboratory for democratic decisionmaking and leadership.
    Leadership must legitimize ethics and values in
natural resource management, and consider them on an
equal plane with scientific fact and legal requirements. 
And they must be the values of the public, not of the
administrators whose job is to provide the other two
elements--science and law.  We can borrow from the older
traditions by striving to increase (but not necessarily
maximize or optimize) net benefits and let the community
of interests decide what level of benefits it feels
comfortable with, given its value framework.  
    A leader is like a coach.  The coach knows things
about playing basketball that the players do not; hence
it is the coach's responsibility to instruct the
players, suggest strategies, and provide incentives for
success.  But the coach cannot play the game--only the
players can.  Similarly, the Forest Service knows the
"facts" about wildlife biology and silviculture.  We are
bound by conscience to disclose that information to the
community of interests.  We can also suggest strategies
for achieving alternative outcomes, and we can even
provide incentives for working on issues.  But we cannot
resolve the issues ourselves.  Only the community of
interests can do that, through their own work.
    Many will resist this attempt to throw the problem
back--after all, we have been led to expect that, almost
magically, the government or some other institution will
take care of us.  The central challenge of today's
leaders is just that--how to get the team out on the
floor to reach inside themselves for the inspiration,
the effort, and the creativity to solve problems.