Is our whole model of leadership wrong?

What if leadership isn’t about the leader but about what happens between the leader and the group?

[Source Image: Getty Images]

My husband and I stumbled into Imago therapy early in our marriage. We were both open to therapy because we knew enough to know what we didn’t know. He came from a divorce, and I came from witnessing parents who were married for 48 years but continually had the same arguments over and over again. We didn’t want to repeat those mistakes. 

Imago therapy rewired how I think about communication. It was developed by Harville Hendrix, and its premise is that every relationship we enter is an unconscious attempt to resolve something unfinished from our earliest caregivers. So, the person sitting across from you isn’t just a colleague, a direct report, or a board member. They are, in some dim way, a mirror. The relationship itself is the unit of growth, not the individual alone.

That insight circled back to me when I spoke recently to........

© Fast Company