On Collective Leadership

Collective leadership is about collaborative action with a group or network where all members are encouraged to lead. Based on the energized sense of possibilities that emerges whenever groups gather around a deeply shared purpose or vision, collective leadership represents a compelling, "co-intelligent" mindset that crosses all boundaries -- families, communities, organizations, society as a whole.

Collective leadership is not about taking action in ways that create dependency or a false sense of alignment among "followers." It's about interdependent action with others with whom we have joined. It's not about central authorities or charismatic hero images or one-way communication, nor is it about gaining "buy-in" and "overcoming resistance."  Rather, it is about processes of inviting, hosting, engaging, awakening awareness and action in search of the common good. The "body" is often less a formal organization than a living network involving people from many different backgrounds and interests who strive to build a creative, open dialogue for change.

A related notion is that of "collective intelligence," meaning the knowledge that exists among people, that is in their relationship with one another, not just in individual brains. We've probably all had the experience of shared understanding in a group, almost as if it is its own form of consciousness.  This state is reached through dialogue and collective reflection.  Just as we as individuals need time to reflect on our lives and work and reconnect ourselves to personal potentials, so we as groups also need time to reflect together.  By gathering to share observations, discover commonalities, and explore differences -- by finding our meaning in dialogue -- we do more than simply reduce our illusion of separateness. We become that beautiful human thing called a community, richer and more alive than ever.

Leading Change in a VUCA World In a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous), leaders must be able to adapt to -- and stimulate -- continuous organizational change. Older procedures, labeled "change management," which aim primarily to control change, most often do not result in shared, long-term ownership and engagement.  Change leadership, by comparison, is associated not only with transforming the work, but also transforming the culture.... Read More...

  

Leadership Conversation

Dan Leahy Affirms the Power of Connection and Collective Leadership

 

 

Currently the director of the LIOS program at Saybrook University, Dan Leahy likes to describe himself as an "evocateur," someone who likes to evoke something in a person or a system. As such, he is particularly well placed to be a key nurturer of LIOS, a residential Master of Arts degree program through Saybrook's Seattle, WA campus. The program, which offers a specialization in Leadership and Organizational Development and provides exceptional learning for anyone interested in systemic and humanistic change, currently enrolls about 80 students from all walks of life. 

 

Dan has had a varied career to reach this point. After almost 20 years as a family therapist he devoted most of his time to leadership development, including several years as President of the Leadership Institute of Seattle (LIOS) and a few more as Curriculum Co-Chair on the Board of Leadership Eastside.  

If you have questions for Dan about his work or the LIOS program, he can be reached via email.

 

 

Dan, as someone who has worked for some time as a teacher and "evocateur" in the field of leadership, how do you think about that field these days?

 

Part of me is still hungry for the heroic leader of the past -- the some one who will save us.  But I've come to the point of feeling that this hope, this idea of one savior, is not going to help us very much in the future.  Instead I've come to think about leadership in terms of function and the dynamics of situations or contexts. I ask, "What will move us forward?" And that means leadership can come from anyone at any time; the person who speaks up or asks the right question, for example.  As a consequence, I'm much more drawn to collaborative and collective leading.  Somehow it's about all of us, not just one or two.  For example, I like to ask the person who's been quiet for awhile about their views and I'm often surprised by what that individual has been thinking about and has come up with that resonates with many.  As an image, it seems to me it's about all the instruments in the orchestra, including the ones that have become quiet. Can they be invited into the symphony with their particular notes and melodies and harmonies, and how does that result in a whole audience being moved?

 

Historically, what comes to mind is the distinction between Western and more indigenous cultures.  In many indigenous cultures, there is a circle of elders as opposed to just one chief.  It's about the village, the tribe, the collective group, and how that circle of elders operates and is respected.  By comparison, in the West it is more often about a lone hero's individual actions, and we've been so culture-centric that we may not even understand the alternative or give credit where it is due. I recall attending a dialogue on the Navajo reservation and found myself in a deep conversation with one of the elders.  He challenged me about the typical perception that the ideas behind our democracy emerged solely from French intellectual thought, and went on to educate me on principles of governance that had started with the Iroquois Nation at least 200 years prior to the American Revolution!

 

So you are really talking about a very different paradigm of what leadership is and is not.  What do you see as the bridge between these two worlds, Dan?  How do we get from an individualist to a more collective view of leading?

 

This question takes me back to the work of physicist David Bohm on dialogue and his thoughts about shifting paradigms.  He suggests it's not about crossing a bridge, for bridges simply connect two land masses, something we are inherently familiar with and certain about. It's more about living into the new paradigm, which is as different as water is to land. He indicated that a more accurate metaphor was a dock, from which one can leave the land, the old paradigm, and immerse themselves in the new paradigm, where they develop the skills necessary to flourish there. It means stepping off of "solid ground" of certainty and into what I think of as courageous curiosity where one is willing to live into life giving questions with others long enough for new perspectives to emerge. In my experience, when people are able to "hang out" together and be okay in such uncertain spaces amazing things happen and entirely new answers come forward.

 

Can you share some stories about finding such a different way where leadership was collectively evoked?

 

Sure, and there are many.  What first comes to mind, is a training program I participated in with about fifteen other people, called Generating Transformative Change (GTC) . After 18 months together we went through a final exercise togther based on the Theory U practices of Otto Scharmer. We were in a meditative space together, having cleared out a lot of preconceptions about what we could be and do, and when we came out of it, one of the participants had an epiphany that she needed to create a documentary on money - about how it could be possible to think about money in life-giving ways - and she actually went on to make that movie. Another person, who had been involved in "voluntourism" in Mexico, expanded her work to include global dialogues with people from around the world.

 

I also think of a GTC experience on the Navajo reservation that I already mentioned.  There, our collective process began with a sunrise ceremony and an elder talking about the importance of facing the different directions of the compass, starting from the East, the direction of the ancestors. The important lesson was in knowing that we are all standing on the shoulders of others, and that lesson lives right here, right now. I recall how in that session, a man who had had an accident and become quadriplegic because of it, mentioned that this was the first sunrise he'd really seen since his accident.  Something quite magical happens when people come together for collective reflection, as if, in effect they are members of a tribe. That's a door to the different paradigm we've been talking about.

 

Another example is work I participated in locally developing an adaptive leadership program called, "Leadership Eastside."  Three years after it's launch the board went through a process to determine if the program was "delivering on its promise" to prepare community leaders capable of addressing the adaptive challenges facing the region. As a member of the inaugural class I was asked to take part in that process. We determined that the program came up short on the promise. I was asked to head up a task force to see what was needed in order to achieve the promise. We spent nine months talking to a wide range of stakeholders and then another nine months working with a group of very creative and dedicated consultants and educators. The result was a program that delivers on the original promise and is found nowhere else. One of my favorite memories of that work was how as word got out about what we were doing folks began coming to us to see if they could join in and contribute to the work. In the end, this community leadership program was created by the community. And it is far superior to anything any one of us could have come up with on our own.

 

Sometimes this kind of collective work is so surprising. I remember another time working on a project team dealing with hunger.  We looked into what foodbank agencies were doing at the time and it turned out they were doing pretty much everything the team had already thought of as needing to occur. A suggestion came up that perhaps we as a team could actually do some work at food bank lines to experience what the agencies were saying. So we as a team did that and one thing we noticed right away was that many people receiving food were immigrants and we were handing them things like canned corn and other packaged products.  We decided to do some intercultural focus groups with translators and we found that many recipients did not know what to do with what we were giving them and actually preferred to get fresh produce.  So we went back to the agencies and shared our results.  The agencies were aware that a great deal of day-old produce was both available from local stores and also being wasted because the agencies did not have the refrigeration equipment needed to keep it at food banks.  We helped them take that need to the United Way and they got money for the equipment. We didn't end hunger, but we were instrumental in helping match the intent of the people already working to alleviate hunger with the human beings they served.  This could only have happened as a collective process that embraced interacting with cultural systems, especially those of the people who were being helped.

 

There are so many possibilities once collective action gets going.  Another local organizing entity called Nourishing Networks, has been working with six school districts on the Eastside of Seattle all independently trying to address the problem of kids who are hungry at school.  Their efforts are so inspiring, because it's not about creating new government programs or agencies; it's about finding the self organizing things that people are already doing in their local areas and then sharing that information with the whole network. They are finding that it not only is helping to spread innovative ideas to a broader area but also is helping agencies better focus their programs on the challenges not met at the local level.

 

It sounds like collective leadership really begins with an issue, a challenge or a problem and joining together to learn, to see what is truly possible through common efforts. Is that the essence?

 

To me, leadership is a response to something that calls us forward toward what is new and that will make a real and positive difference.  In that, we can always begin simply by sharing our stories.  If you want to change organizations, for instance, it's about talking about what's human, about the human need that we can identify with, that grabs us in the heart.  There are always people who are already there, doing amazing things in stealth mode, finding a way not to let the system control them.  A first step is often simply finding out who else is doing it.  And then asking, can you make that network visible?  Can you get a chance to join and play with those efforts, with those people, and to celebrate them?  Beyond that, can we create not just a few hidden networks, but networks of networks from a variety of sectors.  I recently heard of a proposal at Columbia University, for example, to discard traditional expertise-based degree programs in favor of bringing people together around an issue.  Then, the "students" have 5 years to show they've made a difference. That's the "program." It's not about a particular discipline, it's about bringing psychology, engineering, and any other needed knowledge base into collective, joint action, a chance to make a bigger difference because old silos have been broken down in favor of improving the world.

 

Dan, what do you think it takes for individuals to step forward and to embrace collective action?

 

It's just the basic question: can you pay attention to what touches your own heart and has meaning for you?  I think of the recent Budweiser Superbowl ad with the dog and the horse.  Did you see it?  These two knew what they wanted.  The fence couldn't keep them apart even though the people didn't get it.  They found a way to stay connected and they followed it.  The dog didn't complain; he went with the force of the connection and the horse didn't ignore it!  We got a great commercial and a kind of beacon for what is possible. 

 

For me, the question today is how do we truly access and deploy that same kind of heart energy, the "We, the people" stance that formed a Nation?  Maybe the place to start is with those who aren't letting the fences get in the way of connecting, the ones who are paying attention to what has heart and meaning.

  

 

MY LEADERSHIP BINDER

More Resources to Foster Reflective Learning

 

* Speaking of Change.  On Jesse Lyn Stoner's Seapoint Center blog, "emergence" writer Peggy Holman explains a very interesting set of roles -- and finds a place for everyone -- as broad new paradigms come into being, in "Change Your Story, Change Your Organization."  

Click the image, find a poem.