We are fixated with leadership.
Billions of dollars, pounds and euros are invested in leadership each year – finding, recruiting and developing the right leaders for today and tomorrow.
Yet despite this, so much disappointment is being laid at the feet of leaders right now.
Of course, the path of least resistance is to blame leaders for the ills of the world we are in today, but my feeling is that this does not embrace the complexity of the situation.
Whilst I don’t even begin to think I have all the answers, what I can do is share some of the things I am seeing and join a few dots. Maybe you are seeing some different things and, I expect you will join the dots differently, so I see this blog more as the start of a conversation, rather than the font of all knowledge about leadership, just a chance to share what I am seeing and raise some questions that are occurring to me.
Most of the leaders and people with power in the Western world, have got there through demonstrating conventional leadership attributes. They have risen up the ranks of their respective systems
by being clever, articulate and knowledgeable about their field,
by being able to command a room with their presentation skills,
by identifying problems and deciding how to fix them,
by powering through enormous workloads to produce results in this way and
by being able to influence upwards to celebrate these achievements.
These people have been trained, consciously and unconsciously, by the systems that have rewarded and promoted them, to be highly individualistic, and achievement orientated in a capitalist system that is rigged to see power and financial results as the definition of success.
This is what’s got us to where we are now.
And it’s clear that this is not working.
And many people can see that conventional leadership is not working.
And, so, there has been an increasing trend towards trying new things in leadership such as
- Promoting people who are different from the conventional white, cis, male heterosexual leader of the past – women, people of colour, people with a different sexual orientations, people with neuro diverse ways of thinking.
- Different leadership speak – listening, inclusive, compassionate, heartfelt, conversational, collaborative, authentic, humble, human, kind … these are the kinds of words being used to describe the leadership attributes we need, as if we say it then it will become.
- Different talent and leadership development – so many different theories, models, programmes and interventions all promising the answer to the question, ‘how do we develop the leaders we need today and for the future?’
And, all this makes me wonder …
What if the very people we need as leaders don’t want to be leaders?
- People who would balk at being called a leader.
- People who would not put themselves forward for a leadership role.
- People who would not dream of doing a leadership development programme.
And, what if…..
What if our desire for better leaders is part of the problem?
What if we don’t need leaders any more?
What if, by making leadership a person, leaders become figureheads to take the blame for systemic problems?
What if our focus on leadership is just a deflection from embracing our ability to connect and act collectively without hierarchical power?
What if leadership is a process not a person?
Just think about the amount of money and energy that is invested in leadership at the moment – is that the best use of our collective energy in organisations and society?
If we remove the problem of leadership and blaming leadership, then what does that liberate in us? What might we do more fundamentally differently than just tinkering around with doing leadership differently?
As you can see, I have more questions than answers here and I hope that we might start to explore some of these in our next community conversation on 20th February at 12:15-2:15pm, UK time.
Join the conversation>> email sara@meetingmagic.co.uk to request an invitation.