Leadership = Congruence

The following is a summary of “Congruence” by Tricia R. Shalka, a chapter in Leadership for a Better World.  The full citation is below.

The sixth value, and the second individual value, in the Social Change Model  (SCM) of leadership development is Congruence.  Congruence is defined behaving in a way in which your values and your actions match.  It has also been called authenticity and integrity and at the core of all these words is honesty. 

A life lived in Congruence has a certain look to it, and it isn’t always easy to do.  Acting in congruence means you give time and energy to the things you say are important.  If you say your family is most important but you choose to work 80 hour weeks and, via technology, are never truly with your family 100%, is that congruent with saying your family is most important?  Probably not.

Not having congruence leaves you with two choices:  You either need to change your actions to bring them in line with your espoused values, or you need to be more honest with yourself and others about what your values really are.  Honesty is, therefore, the core of congruence.  Without honesty with yourself, you can’t be truly honest with others, nor can you fault them for being less than honest with you.

This congruence between values and actions applies not just to what you do, but how you do it.  One of the most well-known examples of this is Gandhi.  It was important to him that India obtain independence from Great Britain but the way that independence was gained – non-violently – was as important to him.  He knew that his values must be applied not only to the ends they attained but the means they used to do it.

While most of us are not faced with dire situations like Gandhi, it’s easy to see that living in congruence takes another C, and that’s courage.  If you’ve ever said to someone, “I don’t really think that joke is funny” or “Is this really fair?” or otherwise stood up when others were sitting down on an issue, you know that it isn’t easy to live your values.  It can make you unpopular and it can be awkward but it is necessary to take congruent positions in order to facilitate change.  Leadership, as we’ve discussed in this blog, is about change and change cannot happen without occasionally changing something that others may want left alone. 

One of the major challenges to congruence is how you balance your values with those of others.  You may believe you are taking a principled stand on something that someone else opposes equally as strongly, and you both may be congruent with your values.    That’s when the espoused values of the group should be invoked in dealing with conflicts – including Controversy with Civility --  so that a solution can be devised that corresponds with the group’s values. 

Congruence is strongly connected to the other “Cs” in the SCM.  Congruence requires courage and Consciousness of Self to enact regularly, but it inspires the respect of others and is fundamental to leadership of all kinds.

Reference

Shalka, T. R.  (2009).  Congruence.  In Komives, S. R., Wagner, W. & Associates (Eds.), Leadership for a better world: Understanding the social change model of leadership development (pp. 335 – 364)). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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