Why Ontological Leadership Is Key to Succeeding in Business Learn what ontological leadership is, how it looks and feels and the benefits of employing it in business and in life.
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
Leadership is more than a title. Genuine attention and interest in others are key differentiators between those who build legacies and those who create empires with a finite shelf-life.
In 2019, Gallup research found 35% of workers in the United States were enthusiastic, highly involved and committed to their work and their workplace. While reportedly an all-time high, that still means 65% are either actively disengaged or not engaged. Bought at wholesale and farmed out at retail, employees are being pushed to do more with less. They are forced to consider alternate opportunities better aligned with their own principles and values.
Consumers and employees are far more intelligent than business owners often give them credit for. They can sniff non-genuine service and spot when they are being pushed to buy. Research consistently shows consumers are more apt to spread the word of bad service experiences than good ones.
There also comes a point where reading another book or attending yet another workshop on people skills and sales techniques isn't going to take you any further. A greater level of success and achievement that provides riches far beyond any ideal monetary reward can be arrived it through ontological leadership.
Related: How Ontology Founder Jun Li Improves His Team Every Day
What is ontological leadership?
Ontology is the study of one's being. In leadership, capacities it involves looking at your way of being and what drives/has influenced you to act the way you do in situations requiring leader-like behavior and thinking. You deliberately exercise deeper reflection of your language, emotions and physical experience — every aspect of what is to be human. It is these humanistic aspects that determine who you are, how you operate, how you show up in your relationships with others and, naturally, your results.
What exercising an ontological approach looks and feels like
The key attribute of ontological leadership approach is it's phenomenological, not epistemological. The approach involves development through (deliberate) lived experience, as opposed to looking to adhere to best-practice theory and knowledge. Its effectiveness comes from individuals recognizing and incrementally developing their own leadership style and effectiveness by reviewing how they are impacted cognitively, emotionally and physically.
Initial steps involve increasing self-observations skills. However, at this stage, focusing on improvement is put aside. You begin by increasing your consciousness of how you listen to your customers and employees and become more attuned to how you feel when you do or don't. You observe how they respond to you when you're listening to them. You pay attention to how they receive you when you speak. You observe how they speak and respond to you in turn. You increase your meta-awareness.
Leaders who build a legacy will go where most fear to tread: paying closer attention to your emotions or absence thereof. You more closely observe what emotions might drive your behavior, participation levels and choices. For many, this step can be quite uncomfortable as you start noticing how you are affected emotionally in exchanges and how your perceptions, thoughts and beliefs physically express themselves. You're deepening your attention to what's internally (e.g. thoughts, emotions, physical sensations) dictating you to decide or behave one way or another.
At the outset, this might sound exhausting. It can be, both mentally and emotionally. However, so too is any new conscious practice of unfamiliar skill or technique. What happens is that you start noticing clues to what is obstructing you from going where you want to go. Similarly, you can also recognize what's driving you in healthy and effective ways. You might want to capitalize further on these positive drivers.
Building relationships the ontological way
Ontological leadership goes deeper than a goal-based approach. It allows your natural expression of who you are — not as a manager, business owner, salesperson or employee, but as a human being.
As you become more attuned to listening to the mental, physical and emotional cue combinations naturally at play, you can't help but start seeing your customers in a humanistic way, not just as the next sale. These customers, employees and colleagues will subconsciously sense and appreciate this. They aren't just a number. They don't smell desperation for you to make a sale. They begin to feel seen as human beings. Plus, they start to see you as a human being too.
For some, this can be enlightening and overwhelming at the same time. You start to notice that the incredibly organized employee who wears busywork behaviors like a badge may be doing so to avoid appearing lazy, or because they receive validation from those they want approval from. You start to sense and notice more what subconsciously influences and drives people around you.
Benefits of using ontological leadership
The ontological leadership model has been reported effective across different leadership levels and a variety of industries globally. An ontological training model developed by researcher Werner Erhard and Harvard Business School professors Michael Jensen and Kari Granger was adopted into the United States Air Force Academy curriculum from 2008-'11 due to its effectiveness.
Developing your leadership capacity comes through your previewing and reviewing one's lived experience. You allow yourself space to develop and exercise leadership in a way that feels right for you — or what Erhard, Jensen and Granger refer to as a natural expression and evolution of the individual's way of being who they uniquely are as a leader.
Through deliberate previewing and reviewing lived experiences, your relationship skills improve. Your emotional intelligence becomes more attuned to being accepting — not necessarily liking — of how you experience challenging opportunities, conversations and negative consequences of mistakes. You also can become more sensitive to how others are impacted in those same moments.
This higher level of relational attunement is far less about forecasting and predicting others' behavior and choices or manipulating others to say yes to your requests. Rather, it is about allowing for how they might experience and be variably impacted in particular moments. It is what helps to create safe energy between you and an employee or you and a customer.
Related: 7 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Became a Leader
Over time, more exchanges between you and customers and/or employees allow for the development of a story of understanding for each other on a human level. You practice being yourself more and more — the good, the bad and the average parts in between. In the end, two flawed, authentic humans can connect on subconscious levels through a unique experience and remember each other well past a transaction is done.
