Thus, it would seem that the tapestry of Generativity Two is made up of many distinct, though tightly interwoven ways of being helpful to other people. We assist by energizing, defending, provoking and at times defending on behalf of Generativity Two. We are helping to provide safety, learning and creativity when engaged in one or more of the five M’s. As a professional coach, we can be truly helpful to a leader and their organization when assisting them in the effective engagement of Generativity Two services.
Conclusions
What does all of this mean? What have we learned about the complex processes of Generativity Two from our own coaching and consulting experiences and from the 100 interviews we conducted with Emerging and Senior Sage leaders?
Patience
We conclude, first, that Generativity Two doesn’t occur overnight. It is a gradual, transforming process that is a central ingredient, as Erik Erikson noted, in the developmental process of any maturing adult. We must be patient, in particular, about the emergence of Generativity Two as a leadership style or perspective. We don’t learn about Generativity Two from a textbook on leadership. Rather, we learn about it by observing and personally experiencing the generative role played by other leaders. And we learn how to be generative through our own accumulated positive and negative experiences in our work within organizations and communities:
“My leadership style has greatly changed over the years. When you’re working for a living and have people working for you, it’s a whole different approach to getting things done. If you were getting paid to do a job, I expected you to do it. That’s the way we were brought up, and that’s the way we learned to manage things. There’s more control involved, and more downside. What I’ve taken away—what’s been good for me—is that I don’t need to be a controlling person anymore. I don’t need to say, “Why didn’t you get that done?” I’m a lot more appreciative of people. We’re all volunteers, and I’m very appreciative of what these people do. And I’ve found it much easier to be personable with people that I don’t even know, like a walk-on volunteer. I feel very comfortable with that person because I know they want to get involved in doing something for Habitat. I don’t need to be controlling or measuring. I like to just lay it out there and say, “How are we going to get from here to here by this time?” It works.”
Furthermore, it is more than being patient about our own emerging generative style of leadership. It is also about patience in observing and supporting the growth and maturation of other people with whom we interact as mentor, mediator, monitor, motivator, and mobilizer. It means thoughtfully awaiting the achievements we hope to gain in collaboration with other people and in our five generative M roles:
Quiet
We have concluded from the wisdom offered by our Sage leaders that effective Generative Two engagement is aligned with a particularly challenging stance: being quiet:
“I have tended to do things quietly. I live quietly and when I act, I act quietly. I like being in the background, working behind the scenes, rather than being up front. I am not a joiner and don’t belong to a lot of organizations. So I do things without other people knowing. People don’t have to know the good things one does. The Good Lord knows, and that’s all that is important.”
To be quiet is not to be mute, nor to stand by idly as bad decisions are being made. Our Sage leaders repeatedly talk about stepping in and providing both direction and energy when a problem emerges in their organization. To be quiet is to step away from taking credit for everything. It is about letting other people speak. It concerns the acknowledgement that you might not be the custodian of all truth. It is not always about being in the formal leadership role. Perhaps in the end, we should turn to the wisdom offered by one of the Sage leaders we quoted earlier. Generativity Two is about Gentle Fierceness.
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