Leadership and Symbolic Exchange

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of being.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As Von Goethe says, leadership is how you treat people, how you affect them. You can choose to do that for the good, or for the bad, but you can’t choose not to do it. We are all leaders.

The most outstanding leaders are masters of what anthropologists call Symbolic Exchange. This is the use of language and material objects to create and symbolize human relationships. And, as the old saying goes, successful people don’t network – they build relationships. If the term “symbolic exchange” sounds a bit academic and remote at first, let’s think of it by using the word “interaction” instead of “exchange,” and let’s use “meaningful” instead of “symbolic.” Then we can say that meaningful interaction is the way that women and men realise and manifest their lives in the world. The more vigorous and healthy our meaningful interactions with other people, the more we will prosper and enjoy self-realisation in the world. The weaker and the fewer our meaningful interactions, the weaker and the more restricted with be our prosperity and self-realisation.

Money is a typical object of symbolic exchange. You can pay a worker well for a job well done. Then the money you give is a symbol of a relationship you value and wish to build on in the future. There’s a genuine reciprocity here. Or, you can beat the worker down to the minimum and try to squeeze as much out of her or him as you can. You will also be symbolizing a relationship. But, it will not be a happy one, not a healthy one. It’s not a relationship that’s likely to last.

But, that interaction with your worker doesn’t stop with what you pay them in money. Words and body language are also of the utmost importance. If the worker did a good job, did you show them your appreciation? Did you smile and express your gratitude in words? Did you express your desire to work together again? Or did you just hand over the money as if to a vending machine?

In a system of symbolic exchange, we create a new world with the symbols we generate and exchange with other people. Needless to say, listening to and receiving the symbols those other people are generating and sharing with us is the other half of the exchange.

As I said above, we are all leaders in one way or another. Some of us might have a bit more innate talent for it than others do. Those people may quickly find themselves in leadership positions of one kind or another – from business to civil service, education, sport, the voluntary sector, or the military. However, innate talent runs up against its natural limits pretty quickly. Particularly as the organisation grows. If a person has gotten used to depending on their innate talents, those talents may actually work to prevent her or him from doing what needs to be done to provide the leadership required by the given situation. We all know organisations that should be doing really well. They’re providing something that people really want and need. And yet, they’re struggling. In most cases, the problem is a blockage of leadership.

Here are five meditations on symbolic exchange, inspired by the 5DL Model of Leadership, created by Roger H. Evans, which is in use by some of the world’s most successful corporations and organsations. (1)

The Pole of Orientation

Polaris, the Pole Star, sits right above the North Pole in the night sky. Since it sits along the rotational axis of the Earth it appears stationary, while every other celestial body appears to move with the Earth’s rotation. This fact of one fixed point in the night sky allowed our ancestors to create a whole mythology of North, South, East and West, and orientate themselves accordingly in time and space. And from this orientation, to formulate an understanding of recurring patterns in the world – recurring patterns that they could leverage for survival, prosperity and development. Through the process of orientation, humanity made of the world our own.

But, not only this world, because the North Star calls forth not only the horizontal plane of North, South, East and West, but also the vertical plane of below and above – a reaching upwards to the stars – and beyond. As the Sufis say, this beyond of the stars is in you yourself. It is the ideal you wish to achieve.

This is the strength of the leader who survives many failures and dead ends, but who refuses to be defeated or bowed. This beyond of the Pole Star that gradually becomes more and more manifest in this world as we strive for the higher ideal. Here, the symbolic exchange is between you and what you could be. Between the world of today – and what it could be tomorrow.

In the 5DL Model of Leadership, the first level is self-awareness. To be self-aware is to be orientated in the world. To be grounded with your centre of gravity sunk deep into the soil on which you really stand. To know where you are. Where you’ve been. Where you have determined to go. You have worked hard to separate what is beneficial from what is harmful. You are no longer held back by doubts. You can endure the criticism – and the sorrow when others walk away. You are confident because you know you are doing the right thing.

The Kingdom of Ends

“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals

The sine qua non of symbolic exchange is recognising the other person as a fully valid human being – as an end in themselves. This basically means – Don’t view yourself and other people as things available for use and manipulation. Other people know when you’re doing that, and they’ll resent you for it. They certainly won’t respect you for it. This is particularly the case if you’re trying to maintain a leadership position with Millennials, who seem much less willing to be treated as “factors of production,” or “human resources” than their parents and grandparents were.

All of this would seem fairly obvious to most functioning human beings, except that pretty much all of our educational system is geared towards treating children as potential factors of production – and we inevitably end up internalizing this dysfunctional way of seeing the world. Leadership is then reduced to buying, cajoling and threatening. Some management books even tell us to wait for a crisis before trying to make significant changes – or even create the crisis yourself – because only during a crisis are people frightened enough and decentred enough not to be able to organize a resistance to our plans. Looking the other person in the eye and working out a new world with them may take more time and effort, but it will be work that’s more likely to be actually worth the effort.

Sometimes, it’s easier to see ourselves as a cog in some bigger wheel than to really take responsibility for our own humanity. It can be quite comforting to see ourselves as a means to an end – such as higher corporate earnings, winning elections, etc. etc. etc. It’s one way of avoiding those troubling questions we keep driving to the back of our minds. As the old song goes, “I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me.”

Systemic Intelligence – Impassioned Detachment

In the ancient Buddhist text, Majjhima Nikāya, the Buddha observes,

“If at the edge of an alpine lake of clear, transparent and pure water there were to stand a man with keen sight looking at the shells and shellfish, the gravel and the sand and the fish, watching how they swim and how they rest; this thought would come to him: ‘This alpine lake is clear, transparent, and pure; I see the shells and shellfish, the gravel, the sand and the fish, how they swim and rest.’”

No doubt, there are many ways to interpret these lines, but for our purposes we can say they provide a very fine example of a keen sighted person looking at a system – and seeing the system. Such a person’s view is not clouded by his or her fears and ambitions. The mind is immediately present – not running around after every worry or upset that happened in the past or might happen in the future. Our alpine traveller not only sees that fish exist, but sees “how they swim and rest.” And not only does he see how they swim and rest, but he sees the entire environment in which they swim and rest.

Such composure and clarity of vision may sound like a very tall order, and indeed it is. Fortunately, symbolic exchange can again come to our aid, because symbolic exchange replaces a system of fixation and emotional overwhelm with the broad vision necessary to actually see that lake – and even the forest around it. Fixated thinking prevents us from seeing the organization as an emergence, which is always changing.

Central to this way of seeing the world is the concept of detachment. Detachment doesn’t mean not caring, or repressing our emotions, it means an absence of fixation – an absence of unprocessed ideas or traumas to which we have become attached and which block all our energy and creativity.

Let’s consider the Buddha’s words again. We see that the Buddha is careful to present the man as a single entity. The lake as a separate entity. And, the man’s thought, which comes to him, as a third entity separate to the other two. The man does not reject the thought or try to push it from his mind. He does not add to the thought – for example by adding associations. He allows the thought to pass freely through his mind, which is as clear as the water of the alpine lake. The thought enters his mind as a cloud enters a blue sky, passes across it, and then fades from view. This is the ideal of detachment. I would call it an impassioned detachment, as it allows a full and passionate engagement with the emergence of the world as it really is.

A certain level of detachment is always necessary for symbolic exchange, because we are building relationships with other human beings – real human beings, not the figments of our imagination or desires. And real human beings will want and need to give their input to the relationship that is being built. If we are fixated on our own ideas and plans, then we end up fighting better ideas and trying to avoid them. The more we engage in symbolic exchange, the more we will know about our organisations, because we are not blocking the information that is constantly flowing towards us from those around us.

Emotional Openness and Health

There’s quite a mythology about entrepreneurs being Lone Wolves, beholding to nobody, but there’s actually very little truth to this image. In fact, wolves are pack animals and will rarely hunt alone, unless driven from the pack by sickness or by the stronger wolves in times of scarcity, etc. A lone wolf is a rejected wolf. One likely to die soon without mating. No wolf wants to be a lone wolf or enjoys being a lone wolf. Likewise, in the human realm, no venture of any size will survive without a huge amount of social support. This social support will not generally be forthcoming unless the entrepreneur inspires emotional responses such as confidence, likability and trust. Emotional opaqueness might be useful at the poker table, but in the real world will often be taken as a sign of untrustworthiness or incompetence – or just puts people off. This will be all the more so as the organisation grows and the entrepreneur becomes a manager depending on the good will and confidence of many people.

What we have here is a system of symbolic exchange, with emotional responses as the currency of exchange. And that’s another way of saying that health is the currency of exchange. Human beings would prefer to be around people who don’t cause them stress. Stress deregulates the immune system and makes us much more vulnerable to respiratory viruses, such as influenza and Covid19, and to a range of cancers and autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis. Indeed, researchers have found that one of the main reasons for fatalities from Covid19 in younger people is that psychological stress has caused their immune systems to overreact. (2) Stress has such a devastating effect on our immune systems that it even passes on to the next generation – children of stressed people are much more likely to suffer from asthma. (3) In contrast, people flock to other people who are emotionally positive and open. There is an evolutionary calculation here – healthy, open and generous work environments increase your chances of survival and your chances of passing on your genes to healthy children.

A weighted graph with 176 nodes, each representing an emotional state. (4)

One of the best ways to work on our emotional health, and therefore on our general health, is to work on what neuroscientist, Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett, calls Emotional Granularity. (5) Neuroscientists have known for years now that our brains do not work by reacting to the outside world. This would make our brains far too slow to deal with reality. Rather they work by predicting what’s likely to happen and then amending these predictions using the actual sensory data coming in from our sense organs. In effect, what we are seeing right at this moment is not reality but a prediction of reality, based on what has gone before. In the case of vision, this prediction is only parts of a second in advance of the sensory data that amends it. But, the predictions can be much further ahead. For example, if you don’t sleep well at night for weeks or months and you wake up every morning feeling terrible, the brain expects you to feel terrible every morning – even if you actually did get a good night’s sleep on any particular night – and you actually will feel terrible no matter how well you slept. It can take weeks or months for the brain to change its predictions and allow you to feel well. In effect, if you want to feel healthy in three months’ time, you need to start leading a healthy life today.

Professor Feldman Barrett and her team have taken these findings further and find that our emotions are also the result of brain predictions. Emotions are really brain predictions regarding the energy economy of the body, i.e. heart rate, chemical levels in the blood, etc. A prediction that you are entering a dangerous situation may turn out to be false, and your heart may now be pumping at a high rate for nothing – but from an evolutionary point of view, it was better to be ready for a danger that didn’t actually materialize. The problem with all of this is that, in the modern world, we can end up feeling anxious and stressed all the time – always ready for some disaster that, fortunately, rarely materializes.

Professor Feldman Barrett has found that the more words and descriptions we have for different nuance of emotion, the better we are able to come to terms with anxiety. And this is entirely in keeping with Freudian psychoanalysis, which is called “the talking cure.” The purpose of the analysis is the give the subject the means to bring anxiety and trauma into language. Professor Feldman Barrett calls this ability to verbally describe emotional responses in finer and finer detail as “emotional granularity.” She regards this ability as a form of Emotional Intelligence which helps us with communication, understanding of other people and understanding the effect our words and actions have on others.

Since the mind predicts tomorrow based on its experience of today, the leader who wants a better tomorrow must not neglect today. When our todays are well ordered and fruitful, our brains predict fruitful tomorrows and release a positive energy which uplifts and invigorates. The Hindus refer to this energy as Viriya.

Looking Forward to Opportunities to Ask for Help

Asking for help is an excellent opportunity for symbolic exchange. It’s a wonderful opportunity to express how important someone is to you, or to create new relationships or restate and deepen older ones.

As said above, we are limited beings in this world so we need the support of other human beings and the environment in general. The only way we can progress in any venture is by asking the help of others. But, we all feel reluctant to ask for help. We fear refusal or rejection. We fear old childhood hurts overwhelming us again. We even fear that we’ll be accepting on inferior status to the person we are asking help from.

And yet, most of us know the intense pleasure and sense of self validation we get when we are suddenly encountered with another person who needs help – and we successfully help them without even thinking about it. It’s like we are suddenly jolted from the mundane world and surprised by the feeling of being truly alive.

This is the foundation of symbolic exchange – the sudden encounter with the other person in need. We don’t have time to think of who or what we’re supposed to be – or all the good reasons we might have for not helping – or time to rationalize why we should help. For an instant, we are thrown. And, it’s in this very moment that we feel most alive and most connected to all beings.

In my view, there is no better exposition of this phenomenon than the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus tells us of a man who has been beaten and robbed. He has also been stripped of his clothes. He has, in effect, been unpersoned. We suspect that he may be an Israelite, since the action takes place on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. But, he could be a despised tax collector, or a foreigner – maybe even a hated Roman. All we can say for sure is that he’s a naked and beaten human being. Jesus tells us of two men who see the injured man, but who cross the road and carry on. These men are known by their clothes. They are a Priest and a Levite. They are literally covered in the signs of their duties. And Jesus doesn’t criticize them. Perhaps they did have important duties pressing on them. Perhaps contact with an unclean person would make them unfit to perform the duties that awaited them. In short, the clothing of the everyday blanketed not only their bodies but their eyes too. They were not capable of experiencing that sudden encounter with naked humanity in need.

Then a foreigner arrives – a Samaritan. On this road, he is a despised person. In effect, he is also unpersoned. We all know his reaction. But, why did he react so differently to the other two? Is Jesus saying that it was easier for the Samaritan to see the other person? At least we know it was possible. The story moves on to the inn. Professor Ruben Zimmerman, of the University of Mainz, gives us a wonderful analysis of this scene. (6) He points out that in 1st Century Palestine, and in all of the Eastern Mediterranean, it was considered deeply shameful to take money from a guest. Inns were regarded as dens of ill repute – effectively brothels – and innkeepers were nearly as despised as tax collectors. They were also mostly foreigners. So when Jesus brings an innkeeper into the story, this is deeply significant. Here is yet another unperson. And yet, it’s to him that the care of the injured man is entrusted. The only reported speech in the parable is to the Innkeeper – “Look after him, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.” The Samaritan is asking the Innkeeper for help – and he is fully confident that he will receive it. Here we have an initiation. Three outsiders have been drawn into a community of neighbours by an act of leadership on the part of the Samaritan – leadership that is founded on helping. The fact that the Samaritan is handing over two silver coins for the victim’s care does not take from the fact that the Innkeeper is entrusted with giving the injured man the care he needs – and if the bill runs over, he will continue to give the care needed until the Samaritan returns. That is a risk he is expected to bear. In effect, the coins have become symbols of something extraordinary.

I believe that Jesus has given us a beautiful example of symbolic exchange between the Samaritan and the Innkeeper, which was made possible by the Samaritan’s openness to seeing the other person in need on the road. Does this mean that we should all strip off the blanket of our duties and cares and become outsiders? Well, that’s not a luxury many of us could afford, but at least we can be aware of the presence of this blanket that’s blocking our view. A little detachment from the blanket would likely help us a lot. Then, we can be more open to those magical moments when the blanket falls and our humanity suddenly surprises us in all of its glory.

When we allow others to help us, we are really giving them a very valuable gift.

References

1. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=5dl+leadership&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7345443/
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4349604/
4. https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/08/20/wireheading_done_right/
5. https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Emotions-Are-Made-Science/dp/1469292084
6. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271115111_The_etho-poietic_of_the_parable_of_the_good_Samaritan_Lk_1025-37_The_ethics_of_seeing_in_a_culture_of_looking_the_other_way