An Interview With Robert E. QuinnEntering the Fundamental State

of Leadership: Reflections on thePath to Transformational

TeachingInterview by JULIE M. ANDING

The Fielding Graduate University

Presented BySunita RaiMBAPresidential Business School, Kathmandu, Nepal

Entering the Fundamental Stateof Leadership

One key to successful leadership is continuous personal change. Personal change is a

reflection of our inner growth and empowerment. — Robert E. Quinn

Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to

work with what you've got. "— Peter Drucker

Leadership

Anybody can be a leader. Anyone can choose to make deep change and become a more transformational influence. All they have to do is ask these four questions:

• What result do I want to create?• Am I internally driven?• Am I other focused?• Am I externally open?

We can change our students by changing ourselves, by becoming transformational teachers. In the end it is a question of integrity.”

—Robert Quinn (personal communication,March 21, 2003)

What is Transformational Teaching?

• The teachers who turned ordinary students into extraordinary students. Those teachers were transformational leaders.• Great teachers call ordinary students to embracetheir own greatness.

How is Transformational Teaching is possible?

The answer is that great teaching is not primarily about thinking, behavior, or techniques. It is not about style. It is about something more basic. It is about our being state. It is about the expression of who we are. That is the origin of greatness.

Four Strategies to Change

• Telling: We try to change others by using rational persuasion.

• Forcing: We design systems that force them to change.

• Participating: We try to establish win–win relationships.

• Self-change: We become transformational by monitoring and reducing our own hypocrisy. We become transformational by increasing our moral power.

How do you then deal with such resistance?

o Show people that they have already been in the fundamental state of leadership.

o It did not matter if the challenge was war, disease, or divorce. In their great trials, they entered the fundamental state of leadership.

o Once they make this connection, the resistance tends to disappear. It is a startling thought to them, but in it they find energy and hope.

You can not empower people by tellingthem they are empowered. It is a

choicethey make. What you can do is create acontext in which they are more likely to

make the choice.- Robert Quinn

How to create empowering environment?

• designing a context that has four characteristics.

• there is a stretch objective,• there are clear values, • there is high trust, and• there is a necessity to do what we do not

know how to do.

• Robert had made self-change. He had become results centered, internally driven, other focused, and externally open. In doing so, he Created a productive community.

Failure is an important teacher in thetransformational process. If you

learnfrom it and go on experimenting, you

become more unique; you gain the power

to help people transform their lives. –Robert Quinn

Why don’t we see a lot of Transformational Teaching?

• First, normal means normal. Most of the time, We witness normal behavior. The choice to enter the fundamental state of leadership is a choice to move toward excellence. Excellence, by definition, is positive deviance.• Second, people who observe excellence from

the normal state see only what their conceptual tools allow them to see.

• Third, people do not stay in the fundamental state of leadership. It is a temporary state.

How do we discoverto learn in the manner you are suggesting

here?• Let’s do an exercise• List the ten best and

worst personal things that ever happened to you.

• Reflect on them.

What is the Difference between Reflection and reflective action?

• Reflective action is learning deeply from our own experiences by reflecting regularly on what is happening in our lives.

• Reflective action is about the need to be in the world while regularly moving outside that world to reflect on what it is you are creating. Executives tend to resist the reflection; academics tend to resist the action. They key is to integrate both.

Let us evaluate ourselves:• When does our job/profession become a calling of joy? • What does it mean to be a transformational professional

(teacher, manager, leader,…)? • What does an extraordinary organizations (teams, groups,

students) look like? • What does it mean for a teacher/manager/leader to call

ordinary students/employees/individuals to embrace their own greatness?

• What does it mean to transcend style? How is it• done? How can teachers/manager/leader design their

courses/systems to be high performing organizations? • What is the fundamental state of leadership? • How does a teacher/manager/leader enter the fundamental

state of leadership? • What are the payoffs for doing so?

How Far Can You Go?