An Existential Approach to Leadership Challenges

Monica Hanaway

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000651973
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Industrial & Organizational Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In An Existential Approach to Leadership Challenges, Monica Hanaway progresses us forward from a brief, introductory understanding of existential thought to considering how this approach can positively address the practical leadership challenges our twenty-first century leaders face today.

Hanaway presents a practical framework to tackle the greatest challenges in leadership, such as creating an inspiring and authentic vision, recruiting, retaining and developing staff and dealing with conflict. In Part I, she presents an overview of existential thought and what existentialism can bring to leadership, helping resolve issues of uncertainty, authenticity, relatedness, freedom and meaning making. In Part II, she explores how to work practically with an existential leadership approach, showing how existentialism can help communicate a vision, examining the vision statements of existing businesses as case studies and explaining the importance of this in recruiting, developing and retaining staff. Finally, she explores how the existential approach is beneficial in preventing, managing and dealing with conflict, defining what conflict is and introducing existentially informed conflict coaching and psychologically informed mediation practice. Combining philosophical and practical thinking, Hanaway has made existentialism an accessible resource for all leaders.

This book will appeal to future leaders in practice and in training, and anyone in a leadership role. It will also be of interest to academics and students of coaching and coaching psychology, as well as to those interested in applied philosophy and psychology.

Part I

What do we mean by ‘existential leadership’?

The very phrase ‘existential leadership’ immediately poses three questions which I shall seek to address as briefly as possible. Firstly, what do we understand by ‘existential’; secondly, what does the word ‘leadership’ mean; and finally, how do the two come together to form a meaningful description of a particular leadership style, or, as I would prefer to think of it, ‘way of being’ as a leader?

In my previous book on the existential leader, I considered in some detail what I mean by ‘existential leadership’, starting with a brief history of existential thought and its practical usage. I do not propose to repeat that here. However, for the rest of what follows to make sense, it is important that I give a précis of my understanding of what existential leadership entails. Although covering some old ground, the chapter does reflect new reading and thinking. I move on from laying the foundations of what we understand by ‘existential’ and what we understand by ‘leadership’ and how together they form the existential leadership model to a further consideration of how some of these ideas can be put to practical use.

Chapter 1

What does it mean to be ‘existential’?

The word ‘existential’ is becoming commonly used in the media to describe all manner of things. It can be considered a philosophical trend, tendency or attitude, as distinct from a particular dogma or system. However the media choose to understand and portray it, we should perhaps accept that even existential scholars are not in full agreement as to what constitutes existentialism. Whilst the deliberations of existentialist philosophers do not necessarily sit neatly with each other at all times, writers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Camus and Sartre would be in agreement with the singular notion that ‘being’ (with all its embodied, relational and emotional presence) has to take precedence over (rationalist) ‘knowledge’.

Rationality appears to offer certainty, yet existentialists believe that we cannot hold much certainty about anything, even what we mean by ‘existential’. Davis and Miller (1967, p. 206) noted that ‘Man is an existential being whose life is more than logic and who must discover the meaning of existence. There are no answers to the human predicament to be found in the back of a book; Philosophy is to be lived, something to be proven in action.’ The answers to what makes an existential leader can also not be found on the back or even within a book. One has to truly discover the meaning by ‘being’ an existential leader.

Existentialists and phenomenologists believe that our human ‘essence’ is simply our ‘existence’ (being in the world). Existentialism is often connected with what are thought to be negative emotions, such as anxiety (worrying), dread (a very strong fear) and mortality (awareness of our own death). As a group willing to express these aspects of being, existentialists are deeply interested in emotions. Phenomenologists focus more on the nature and meaning of emotions and bring the study of emotions to the forefront of philosophical inquiry. Their interest lies in the ability of emotions to engage with reality. Emotions are always about some thing. An emotion is a way, perhaps the principal way, in which the world manifests itself to us. The theories of Sartre and Heidegger flow from a view of emotions as explored by Brentano, Husserl and Scheler, and further developed by Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Ricoeur, with Robert Solomon, amongst others, bringing phenomenological theories to current agendas.

Emotions are intentional; they tell us something about ourselves and others, and are often felt in relation to the values and beliefs we hold. We get upset or happy about something because we value it, we believe in it, and it holds meaning for us. Existential thinking places considerable importance on our beliefs and our attempts to be true to them.

To be true, we must be aware, and existentialists place much value on the idea of the ‘aware self’, a thinking and feeling being with emotions, beliefs, hopes, fears, desires and the need to find meaning and purpose. It is not rationalist or empiricist in its philosophy, as the most important questions are not considered accessible to reason and science.

In this way, the approach differs from many approaches to leadership. As the ideas do not flow from rational disciplines, we must live our lives based on our own unique perception of the world, others in it and our understanding of our lived experiences. This draws on the work of Husserl (1859–1938), who described us as living in ‘an interpreted world’ in which we come to our own conclusions about the meaning we choose to give things. If everything is subjective, then it is easy for more scientific and rationalist theorists to dismiss existentialism. Heidegger, from whom many existential ideas flow, has been criticised for having an ontology that was not deductive or systematic in form and ‘proceeds at times by the exegesis of poetry or the more aphoristic fragments of the pre-Socratic philosophers’ (McIntyre, 1967, p. 543). This led Sanderson (2004, p. 4) to declare that ‘existential and phenomenological philosophers tend to “write from the soul” and their style is very subjective.’ These ‘criticisms’ notwithstanding, the existential approach offers a way of understanding the role of humans as agents in a fluid social setting. It is particularly suited to the uncertainty we are currently encountering, and Sanderson suggests that engagement with existential writers has never been more relevant. Existentialism and phenomenology do not give us ‘truths’ to fall back on. The approach requires us to ‘bracket’ all our assumptions and to focus on things as they appear in our experience: we are responsible for the way we experience things and the meaning we give to things as they arise and are experienced in our ‘life-world’.

Despite not being systemic, existentialism is concerned with core concepts. Fundamentally, these are set within the acceptance that we experience our ‘being’ within the context of our temporality. We will not go on forever. One existential challenge is the willingness to embrace that our time on earth is limited – we shall all die. This makes the time between birth and death very precious. We cannot constantly hold the awareness of death. Yet, we encounter many endings along the way, not just the end of our physical embodiment, but also the death of hope, future, confidence, and the ending of relationships, jobs or courses. For the existentialist, it is vital to work to create a healthy balance between an awareness of death/loss and the propensity to become overwhelmed and terrified by it. Death is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, experiences of uncertainty; in death we face the ultimate ‘not knowing’.

Tillich (1952) writes of the tremendous courage required to live life in the face of anxiety and death. In order to experience the true beauty of life, one has to become vulnerable to death and anxiety. To live with acceptance of death and uncertainty is to live authentically. We need to be aware of our motives, feelings, desires and self-relevant cognitions, and not deny, distort or ignore internal experiences and external information. We must act in tune with our true self, beliefs and values. Living authentically is not easy. For Sartre, the ‘vertiginous’ experience of the recognition of our freedom and choices can feel so unbearable that some people choose to live inauthentically or, as Sartre would describe it, live ‘in bad faith’ rather than engage with life.

Being constantly and fully authentic is an idealised aim. Erickson (1995) and Heidegger (1962) speak of the ‘level’ of authenticity in a person, as people are never entirely authentic or inauthentic but seek to achieve a level of authenticity. Remaining authentic can be a lonely experience, as we tend to fall under the sway of others. To be ‘different’ can be hard, and it can prove tempting to slip into banality and fail to think. Existentialism requires us to acknowledge our anxiety, and its causes, and to live authentically with the knowledge that there is no meaning other than the meaning we find for ourselves. This is an invitation to creativity, for those who wish to hear it. To live as though things are certain, or to ignore our values and beliefs, would be an example of living in bad faith; we must create our own meaning.

We each live our own unique lives as autonomous beings with freedom and responsibility, but there are a number of things we all share – death, freedom, responsibility, existential isolation and meaninglessness (Yalom, 1980). We can also add relatedness, uncertainty, emotionality and anxiety to that list.

We do not live our lives alone, but in relation to others and the things around us. In this existential aspect of relatedness we experience ourselves, and everything around us, the world, other people, us included, in the context of a relationship. Within these relationships we encounter uncertainty. Life is uncertain in its meaning and our futures are uncertain. This uncertainty causes an existential anxiety that is all pervading and endless.

Much of human existence can become a battle to deny our anxiety about the uncertainty and meaninglessness of life. One way of trying to defeat these enemies is to seek power in the mistaken belief that it can offer certainty and an escape from powerlessness and temporality. Throughout his writings, Camus sees the hopeless human desire to make sense of our condition and to establish certainty where it does not exist as being essentially absurd and impossible. He challenges us to respond appropriately to this situation and to live in full consciousness of our state of uncertainty and absurdity. If we can accept these absurdities, we can liberate ourselves from habit and convention, bringing about a ‘passion’ to live intensely, not to escape the sense of absurdity, but to face it with absolute lucidity. Kierkegaard challenges us in the absence of certainty and the need for passion to find a truth that is true for each of us individually and by which we can live or die. Anxiety is not considered a bad thing. Kierkegaard (1844, p. 155, 1980) wrote, ‘Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate’.

If nothing is set in stone, then we have freedom in how we live our lives. As relational beings, this freedom carries responsibility. However, this existential freedom is not an espousal of a doctrine of total freedom. We are not free to decide to be born into this world or time. Existentialists term this ‘throwness’. We are thrown into an existence we did not choose. However, once here, we are free to choose what we make of our lives. This is far from an easy task, which we often try hard to avoid in a number of ways. Currently we are all encouraged to use our freedom to think positively, something which Cerulo (2006) calls ‘optimistic bias’: an element of self-delusion, leaving us ill prepared to face uncertainty at those moments when it is most present for us. O’Gorman (2016, p. xiii) suggests that we can also choose to do the opposite, ‘…worrying is also an attempt to control the unknown. Worrying is, among other things, a “futures management technique”… an attempt to assert some authority over what is ahead’.

If we are to find meaning, it is through our beliefs. If we believe in something, it gives us meaning and lessens our anxiety, making some sense of the world for us. However, beliefs can become ‘sedimented’ or stuck. We can fail to question whether we still believe something and continue to live as though we do. This may be comforting, but it does not serve us well. It can take hard work to loosen these sedimented beliefs when they appear to offer us ways of defining the self-construct, creating a feeling of stability and security and acting as a guard against uncertainty.

During the twentieth century, existential and phenomenological ideas were brought into the practise of psychotherapy in Europe through the works of van Deurzen and Spinelli, amongst others. In their very accessible books they provide an understanding of the development of existential phenomenology and how the elements described in this book are used to explore the worldviews of clients.

Our understanding of the existential is not static. Recently Caruso and Flanagan (2018) have looked at how the growth in neuroscience fits alongside existentialism. They suggest that new neurobiological research confirms the existentialist view that we have no fixed soul or self and no inherent purpose. They believe that we exist as tiny specks on a small planet, within a wider universe, a concept referred to as ‘naturalism’. This concept stresses the ‘smallness’ of each individual and can leave many people feeling deeply uneasy, experiencing ontological anxiety or angst, leading them to embark on a search for meaning. Caruso and Flanagan (2018, preface) term this recognition of individual insignificance a crisis of ‘neuroexistentialism’, suggesting that, ‘Today there is a third-wave existentialism, neuroexistentialism which expresses the anxiety that, even as science yields the truth about human nature, it also disenchants.’ For those of us not intent on seeking certainty, we do not look to science to reveal undeniable truths. How often have scientific findings been turned on their head as new information and understanding come to light? Yet for many people science continues to hold out the hope of finding the ‘right’ and ‘final’ answers, which would bring certainty on some matters. We certainly need the benefits which scientific discovery brings; it can improve our daily material existence, but it cannot answer our existential questions. It is possible to live without a sense of certainty and to experience its lack positively, as a blank canvas on which to create.

In their thinking, Caruso and Flanagan define existentialism as the diminish...