tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24467262.post-85746453380327595982008-06-04T21:48:00.002+01:002008-06-04T22:10:11.567+01:00<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Thanks entirely to Victoria Axelrod at the excellent </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://c21org.typepad.com/21st_century_organization/">21st Century Organization</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> blog, I've just discovered </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.achievingstyles.com/asi/connective_leadership.asp">Connective Leadership and Achieving Styles</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> - a wonderfully liberating antidote to the Jungian shackles of Myers-Briggs and other psychometric profiling systems.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Splitting 'achieving styles' into direct, relational and instrumental seems to open up lots of new ways of thinking about a work team (or a family or any other group, come to that). I'm immediately interested in how it ties in with Cultural Theory (as discussed in Gerard Fairtlough's posthumous <a href="http://triarchypress.co.uk/pages/book11.htm">booklet </a>on trust and openness) and with wondering how the sociosystems that form around Facebook and other chattering clusters (a term that <a href="http://chatteringclusters.blogspot.com/">Richard Lipscombe</a> uses very productively) can accommodate the 'Direct Set' who "tend to confront their own tasks individually and directly... The three styles within the direct set emphasize deriving intrinsic satisfaction from mastering the task, outdoing others through competitive action, and using power to take charge and coordinate everyone and everything. These are the styles most closely linked to diversity and its various expressions of individualism."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">We may now generally disapprove of such behaviour and of such mindsets, but we have to remember that we've bred a lot of these people (especially in the West) and we need to go on making best use of them, lest they retreat into what <a href="http://triarchypress.co.uk/pages/book8.htm">Alain de Vulpian</a> calls 'isolates', where they can do little good and some harm.</span></span>Andrew Carey @ Triarchynoreply@blogger.com