Hidden dynamic

Framing the Interplay of Leadership and Misleadership: in the light of the coaction cardioid and the Mandelbrot set (Part #4)

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As argued previously (Sustainability through the Dynamics of Strategic Dilemmas -- in the light of the coherence and visual form of the Mandelbrot set, 2005), dissipative systems, and the M-set, offer a language through which to explore and identify viable patterns of sustainable relationship between essentially incompatible modes of behaviour or anti-thetical modes of thinking. It is these which are typically fundamental to the strategic dilemmas calling for leadership in psycho-social systems -- whether intrapsychic, interpersonal or intergroup. It is the continuing search for the resolution of these dilemmas that characterizes the dynamic of such systems. Typically however the resolution is of four types:

• stable (perhaps exemplified by the "constancy of the heart"),
• unstable (exemplified by nonviable projects of every kind),
• a form of periodic stability (exemplified by cyclic patterns of interaction),
• chaotic variety (as with the many weird and wonderful, "improbable" relations between real people).

The apparently static nature of Figure 9 obscures the dynamic represented by the M-set. It also obscures the dynamic between forms of leadership and misleadership. The point was made earlier than in the process of risk taking under conditions of uncertainty in response to a challenge (that may itself be dynamically complex), leadership may necessitate:

• taking a risk, later to be proven mistaken and therefore framed as exemplifying misleadership
• misleading others, whether opponents (with whom subterfuge is an appropriate option for strategic leadership) or even some supporters (who do not comprehend the challenge) in order to mobilize adequate resources to respond appropriately -- both forms of misrepresentation which may be condemned as inappropriate

In effect the leader is obliged to "dance" back and forth across the above diagram according to the uncertainty and the nature of decisions about how to represent the situation for strategic effectiveness and to sustain support. Followers might indeed see this as a "dance" elegantly done -- and well-represented symbolically by a sword dance across quadrants formed by crossed swords or by a dance with a mirrored shadow (exemplified by the use of term in parliaments). The disaffected would see it as hypocrisy. Whether or not opponents also frame it as hypocrisy, they would be obliged to assess it in terms of skilled strategic maneuvering through subterfuge. Such oscillation (vacillation?) on the part of the leader, assailed by periods of doubt, may be understood as corresponding to a form of existential bipolar disorder.

Furthermore there is the subsequent challenge to be able to claim to have acted in good faith -- and to avoid the charge of having acted with dubious or self-interested intent, thereby justifying any charge of misleadership in the most problematic sense. It may indeed be extremely difficult to demonstrate that the choice of actions did not exemplify misleadership -- rather than leadership struggling dynamically with risk under conditions that required a shifting degree of deliberate misrepresentation. Clearly these are the conditions in which Bush and Blair would claim to have found themselves -- claiming the best of intentions (with divine benediction), where others may legitimately perceive those claims to be deliberately misleading.

It is appropriate to note that Figure 9 is presented such as to highlight the fact that emergent order is not a direct consequence of the action of leadership. The leadership offered by authority structures may actually get in the way of such emergence -- which may occur despite what leadership has to offer. Leadership may "get in the way" of its own agenda -- of its understanding of emergent possibilities. As the vertical prolongation of the central axis, new patterns of order emerge from the combination (or as the resultant) of the diagonal axes representing:

• the instrumental actions of leadership on the one hand and
• the imaginative reframing of perception represented by the other.

Of course the disastrous collapse of social order (at the lower end of the vertical axis) is also born of both (cf Jared Diamond, Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, 2005).

As represented within the M-set, these emergent forms of order may be understood as the succession of forms above the central cardioid. Such a framing of emergence and appropriate governance may be especially comprehensible within classical Chinese cultural frameworks -- notably by the I Ching as a traditional tool of governors for understanding the conditions and possibilities and appropriateness of change. The diagonal axes would then represent the "creative" and the "receptive" from which new forms are generated. The extensive use of metaphor to enable imaginative comprehension of leadership options is a characteristic of that work (cf Transformation Metaphors derived experimentally from the Chinese Book of Changes (I Ching) for sustainable dialogue, vision, conferencing, policy, network, community and lifestyle, 1997)

As noted in the earlier paper with regard to dissipative systems and their illusory continuity, a very useful articulation of the challenge is in terms of dissipative systems about which the remarks of Kent Palmer (Steps to the Threshold of the Social: the mathematical analogies to dissipative, autopoietic, and reflexive systems, 1997) seem the clearest and most relevant for the above purpose. For him (pp 587-588):

Dissipative systems hold two strands of illusory continuity together. They concern the situation where there are two orders that are in imbalance so that one order is displacing the other. Notice that if there is only one order there cannot be a dissipative system. Also if the two orders are in balance or stasis there cannot be a dissipative system. A dissipative system is when there are two different orders or ordering mechanisms that are out of balance with each other so that one ordering mechanism is disordering the other and creating a boundary between the two ordering mechanisms where one is dominant and the other is being dominated.

Such language would seem to be a helpful way of handling the many fundamental strategic dilemmas that affect both the coherence of global debate and the experience of interpersonal relationships. The challenge is indeed one of two different "ordering" mechanisms, whether these are culturally defined (Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations", Snow's "Two Cultures", political cultures ( "right vs left", "mainstream vs alternative"), gender defined ("Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus"), or in terms of epistemological mindsets (Systems of Categories Distinguishing Cultural Biases, 1993).

As Palmer argues, this situation can be approached using the "imaginary" qualities of complex numbers, stressing the nature of the "illusion" involved:

This case has the basic form of vector arithmetic or the complex number system that holds the order of the real numbers together with the ordering of the imaginary numbers. The complex number system includes both real and imaginary numbers. The differentiation between the two is indeed imaginary because either number could be designated as real and the asymmetry between imaginary and real numbers is an illusion which comes directly from their conjunction not from the numbers themselves. In the case of the complex number system the reals are dominant and the complex numbers are subservient.

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