These are a few recursive actions you could take to ensure congruence between the tool and
the process used to formulate, introduce, and sustain it. The key technique is to ask the recur-
sive question, “If XYZ is such a good leadership tool, if we turned it back on itself, what would
it tell us about how to understand it, introduce it, and sustain it?”
HOW TO USE THIS LEADERSHIP TOOL
Recursive sayings:
Headline in the Economist,December 1999:
“Rethinking Thinking”
Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message.”
Roseanne of TV fame“...Nobody gives you power. You just take it.”
Groucho Marx made a career of recursive humor: “Sincerity is the key to success. If you can fake that,
you’ve got it made.”Some upsides of recursive leadership behavior:
✔ People will be more likely to accept you warts and all, because they know you are will-
ing to accept them warts and all.
✔ One of the most powerful ways to elicit model behavior in others is to model the
behavior you expect in others. People more often than not will mirror back your
behavior.Like all leadership models, there are downsides to recursive behavior:
✘ Recursive behavior doesn’t always work. Some, for example, will take openness as a
sign of weakness and try to exploit it. This leads us to a leadership principle: Nothing
works all of the time when it comes to human behavior. Think about it: If behavior x
always elicited behavior yon the part of others, you could then manipulate others’
behavior (and be manipulated!).
✘ Recursive behavior sets a very high, perhaps ideal, standard of leadership conduct.SECTION 1 FOUNDATIONALCONCEPTS 27
✔Be creative and innovative about how you elicit and deal with creativity and innovation.
✔Be creative about rejecting unsuitable ideas.
✔Use a team to introduce teams.
✔Have the leadership operate as a team.
✔Introduce teamwork in ways that are congruent with how you want your team to act.
✔Ensure the quality program is designed as a qualityquality program.
✔Use quality tools to measure the success of and improve the quality program.
✔Be accountable for the accountability process.
✔Visibly model your accountability statements.Creativity and
innovation
TeamworkQualityAccountability