Photo by Joe Kosack / Pennsylvania Game Commission

There is a folk tale about the Buddha called ‘The Banyan Deer.’ It is actually a story that occurs in a lifetime before the Buddha was born as a human. In this life he was a deer and grew to be the leader of his herd. The herd lived in a forest where the local king loved to hunt. The king rode with his courtiers through all parts of the country, hunting every type of animal and bird until the people who lived in the region could no longer stand the trampling and pillaging of the lands. They decided to build a stockade in the forest, 2 herds of deer were driven in, and the king was invited to hunt there.

Already in the story we have a leader who is not helping his people to be successful, in fact he is harming their livelihood and ability to steward their shared resources. The king at this point sees himself as quite separate from his subjects and certainly the animals of his kingdom.

When the king came to hunt in the stockade, aside from those the king killed, many deer were injured in the chaos and panic during the hunt. The Banyan Deer (Buddha) and leader of the other herd came to an agreement that every other day, a deer from each herd would offer itself to the king so that the others might live and not be injured. The King, seeing the nobility of the two deer leaders commanded that they not be killed, and noticing the single deer offering itself to be killed, decided to only shoot that one deer.

This is a change in the king prompted by the deer’s actions; he recognizes that there are certain deer which appear to be different and agrees to temper his pleasure by honoring a tacit agreement. Meanwhile, the leaders of the deer herds are concerned about every deer equally and make an agreement that adapts to the situation while using fairness to choose the deer to sacrifice.

As it happened one of the deer chosen by lot to be sacrificed was pregnant so pleaded with the Banyan Deer to allow her to give birth before giving her life. The Banyan deer agreed, but realized that he himself must take her place. When the king sees this, he engages the Banyan Deer in dialogue (such is the stuff of folktales!).  The king asks him why he offers himself and the Banyan Deer answers,

Great King, what ruler can be free if the people suffer?

The king is moved and offers to free the Banyan Deer’s herd. However the stag does not accept because the other herd would then suffer even more. Because of the nobility and resolute concern of the Banyan Deer, the king agrees to free both herds. The deer does not accept because all of the other 4-footed creatures would still be subject to hunting saying,

Ruru (Deer) Jataka, bas-relief, Bhārhut, Indian, 2nd century BCE

There can be no peace unless they too are free

The Banyan deer goes on to refuse and ask for more until the king has agreed that no living creatures - animals, birds, or fish, shall be killed in his kingdom.  After making a proclamation to that effect, the king said,

“Now I am at peace!” and leaped for joy.

In this folktale, one leader teaches another that one’s suffering effects everyone; he teaches it through his own willingness to sacrifice in order to hold his values. A king finds peace by halting his careless destruction and awards freedom to all creatures.

What ideas can we find in this fable that are applicable in our modern world? How can an ancient king and a talking deer speak to the challenges facing our leaders today? It is impossible to get action steps or implementation tips from a myth; they operate at a deeper level – the level of values. Here are some of the leadership values I find in this teaching story. Which do you find?

• Compassion for others
  
• Generosity to those who serve us
  
• Respect for all people
  
• How communication can unite
  
• The power of community
• Willingness to change

To read this tale in a more original version and find other folktales about generosity, see the Learning To Give website.

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

A professor of mine once mentioned in passing that the tasks of leadership were different in pre-industrial society, in post-industrial society, and now. That was intriguing, but I could not find anything about this topic in sociology literature, literature about leadership, or history; I someone must have researched this. Here are some questions the topic evoked:

• What type of leadership skills does tribal society call for?

Tribal Society – family groups with common language & customs. The leaders tended to be elders (those who survived) and those religiously sanctified (who carried oral history). They guided a small unit of culture; influence was the capital of power. Workforce is united in extended-family groups with similar functions.

• What type of leadership skills does agrarian society call for?

Agrarian Society – larger groups in distinct social classes (those who work on the land and those who own the land). Land was the major source of wealth and power. More elaborate political institutions like a formalized government and legal system evolved. However, land was largely individually owned and was often inherited (governmental power was held by the land owning aristocracy).  Workforce is united in local/regional groups with similar functions.

• What type of leadership skills does industrial society call for?

Industrial Society - produce finished goods, in a continual state of rapid change due to technological innovations. People start living in cities and urban areas. Status and power can be achieved in corporations, political parties, and government bureaucracies. Workforce is divided into workers and managers with disparate functions.

• What type of leadership skills does post-industrial society call for?

Post-Industrial – service based economy, professional and technical workers, use of technology for formerly manual processes, higher education. Roles become less defined in the name of efficiency, arts and ideas become part of economic market, rather than relegated to fringe hobbies. Status is achieved through service innovation that leads to a broad, and/or wealthy customer base. Workforce is divided into discrete teams at all levels, some with similar functions and some not.

• What type of leadership skills does digital society call for?

Digital Society – accessing information 24/7; blending of international news, socializing, work, entertainment, and social action. Status is achieved through celebrity and technical innovation that is used by huge masses of people at all economic levels.  Workforce is fluidly and vaguely divided (individual contributors and loosely connected groupings) to address tasks, which determine the function.

What era are your leadership skills suited to? If not the digital society; what skills, intelligence, and presence do you need to cultivate to be an effective leader in our era?

Here is a list to start with:

• Be open to input from all directions
• Care about others’ intelligences
• Embrace change that you did not envision
• Be a synthesizing agent
• Learn to be grounded while moving forward with purpose
• Lend direction through influence
• Share power
• Be internally connected (mind, body, emotions, spirit), flexible, and open to change in yourself

Ideas are not in short supply,
only our willingness to receive them as leaders.
- Paul Extrum-Fernandez

Interconnected by Beth of Glos Programming

Over the last year we have lived through a profound and perhaps epochal shift
in the distribution of power.
- Mark Pesce

Closed and strictly hierarchical systems of management are vulnerable to challenge by the forced transparency of digital hyperconnection and the might of web-connected polities. Mark Pesce is a technology writer, researcher, and teacher who gives vivid examples of breakdowns already occurring in the public arena when hierarchies clash with digital crowds. How do you enact effective leadership in a new, open, and hyperconnected system? Become more flexible and welcome change; move from opacity to transparency and then to permeability – so that crowdsourcing works to your advantage; share your power and be generous in your inclusiveness. In this new epoch, leadership is more about convening and synergizing than it is about commanding.

Mark Pesce on Mark Molaro's interview web page, "The Alcove"

In our digital era, as Mark Pesce details in his writings and teachings, our hyperconnected-ness (access to inconceivable amounts of information) has led to hyperintelligence (vast numbers of individuals in a network coordinating their efforts), which  transforms into action by adhocracies (groups of connected people concerned about an issue), which spreads and replicates itself through hypermimesis (mimesis is learning through imitation). Pesce writes compellingly about how hyperconnected and hyperintelligent networks of individuals using hypermimesis are already smashing into institutions and traditional hierarchies to thwart and disempower them.

The question is:

• As a leader, how can you direct individuals (who are curators of individual knowledge-bases) to become unified polities, and get everyone pulling in the same direction?

Here is what Pesce says:

Top-down hierarchies which order power precisely can not share power with hyperintelligence. The hierarchy must open itself to a more chaotic and fundamentally less structured relationship with the hyperintelligence it has helped to foster. This is the crux of the problem, asking the leopard to change its spots. Only in transformation can hierarchy find its way into a successful relationship with hyperintelligence. But can any hierarchy change without losing its essence? Can the state – or any institution – become more flexible, fluid and dynamic while maintaining its essential qualities?

I propose that the way to lead in this new epoch is by being open to input from all directions, caring about others’ intelligences, embracing change, and being a synthesizing agent. This leadership is about lending direction through influence and sharing power; I would call that generous leadership.

How does this actually work; how is it structured? What are the traits and qualities of effective leadership in this unimorphic system? How can you learn to do this? A good start is to be internally connected (mind, body, emotions, spirit), flexible, and open to change in your self. If you can do that and keep yourself grounded while moving forward with purpose, you may have the ability to do the same with your leadership in outward structures.

…power must surrender power, or be overwhelmed by it.
Sharing power is not an ideal of some utopian future;
it’s the ground truth of our hyperconnected world.
-Mark Pesce

Here is a video of Pesce speaking about this at the Personal Democracy Forum in June, 2009:

Sharing Power (Global Edition) from Mark Pesce on Vimeo.