Following on from the last blog, in which I questioned our fixation on leadership, I co-hosted a community conversation about the topic of leadership with Jae Sloan. In this blog I share some of the things that stood out for me in the conversation, along with the many questions this conversation brought up.
The leadership crisis
The construct of leadership has become synonymous with a particular type of leadership dominant in the global North that is summed up in this wordcloud.
By contrast, these are the qualities we see the world needing in leadership today.
So, here we are in the midst of a leadership crisis…
The leadership development industry is a multibillion-pound industry worldwide. The huge range of different organisations and individuals offering leadership development makes it hard to even know what works and where we might be making progress.
A significant part of the challenge is that most large organisations are systemically rigged to suppress human development beyond conventional beliefs about achievement and financial success.
Most leaders are not aware of, let alone capable of shifting from creating structures of obedience, to liberating collective contribution.
As Margaret Wheatley says in her book, Restoring Sanity …
‘A terrible desertification has occurred in many organisations, barren landscapes now devoid of life and human potential. Leadership has created these by striving for obedience rather than contribution, choosing greed and power rather than inclusion and engagement.
Everywhere now we can see the consequences of denying ignoring and suppressing the human spirit’.
Emerging questions …
As we circled around, sharing what we are all noticing about leadership today, these are some of the questions that emerged….
- What do we even mean by leadership? Can someone be a leader without followship? Can we be a leader when we are still learning?
- How do we change the conversations about leadership, shift into leading the new paradigm of leadership, when the old paradigm is so dominant?
- How can we shift from leadership as the role of the few, to ‘acts of leadership’ which can be individual or collective?
- How can we shift from thinking about leadership as the old constructs of Leadership, to something different?
- How do we shift from ‘power over’ to ‘power with’ and ‘power within’?
Ourselves as leaders …
This exploration then lead to us thinking about the many different ways leadership can show up when we stop limiting ourselves with the old definitions. Perhaps we each have a leader within us, our own unique way of leading. Do we even think of ourselves as leaders? If not, what gets in the way?
For those of us who do not demonstrate conventional leadership qualities, self-doubt seems to be a big factor that gets in the way of us claiming our leadership capability. In an environment of uncertainty, conventional thinkers tend to resist different views by defending and making them wrong.
Standing alone, speaking our truth to power, holding unconventional views can feel exhausting. One of the things we can do to support ourselves to find our agency and lead our own way is to stay connected with people who see us and hear us.
Closing …
We took time to hear from everyone as we closed the session and many people gave thanks for the opportunity to have a conversation like this, with such diverse views about leadership.
The quality of listening, appreciation of different and new thinking, building on ideas and overall care in the conversation was a joy to be part of.
My aspiration for my own leadership is to make time and space for human spirit to show up and, in this conversation, I felt it did. Thankyou to everyone who showed up and made it possible.