What IS good leadership?
May 21st 2012 in Globally Responsible Practice • Leadership 5
Chris Taylor working with Katrin Muff at the Rio 50+20 Brussels retreat
For the past year I have been representing Oasis on an international working group that is drafting a report for the upcoming UN Earth Summit.
The latest draft landed in my inbox recently for comment (all 160 pages of it). One sentence in particular stood out for me: ‘Leadership cannot be taught but it can be learned.’
To be honest I have no idea what this means or what the author is trying to get across. But it certainly got me thinking. What IS leadership? What personal qualities does it require? When is it good and when is it poor?
And that’s when I realised that I have completely changed my view on leadership.
I’ve always been fascinated by the topic and in my own modest way I felt that I had exhibited good leadership skills. I liked people and they seemed to like me. I worked hard at being democratic and inclusive and I have always had a strong strategic outlook.
Of course there were bits I wasn’t so good at – 360 degree appraisals told me I wasn’t trusting enough to let go and this sometimes made people feel undermined or undervalued. But I did enough to reach the position of Director and to make a decent job of it for five years.
So what’s changed? Well, two things.
Firstly, working with a range of organisations that are trying to adopt new and innovative approaches to their direction has made me realise that real change happens through a process where everyone (or at least a sizable number of people) start to realise their true potential.
This is not about leadership. It is about collective, collaborative personal development.
Secondly, working towards the Earth Summit has brought me to the realisation that it’s ‘Leadership’ that has gotten the world into the mess it’s in.
If we are to create a different world, one that’s more just and more sustainable, we will need a new approach. This approach will need to be much closer to what I’ve seen within some of these innovative organisations: collective, collaborative development.
So that’s what the leadership question has now become for me: less about personal leadership qualities and more about working as peers to generate new forms of collective momentum.
If that’s the type of world we wish to create, how do we mirror this in the way we work and how we live our lives? And what will this require of each of us going forward?
Chris Taylor will be co-facilitating Awakening Social Purpose: creating a 21st century responsible organisation, a three-day course running at Oasis from July 2-4. Find out more.
5 Comments
Love your succinctness and clarity. Also the frame of todays leadership = collective momentum + personal development.
I enjoyed this, Chris, and hearing part of the journey for you. That old definition of leadership – a leader is someone who has followers – has run its course, I believe; and there’s space for a more nuanced approach as you have it here: leadership as an enabler, releaser, pattern-breaker and pattern-shaper, articulating a future to which others are invited to shape not just follow blindly. So leaderfulness at any level becomes possible, achievable – if one has the encouragement and genuine space to work out what one wishes to create.
Inspiring! Margaret Wheatley talks about a ‘leader in every chair’ and leaders as anyone who is prepared to step forward. What will it look like when everyone is contributing in this way?
Empowerment begins with confidence a difficult proposition when basic institutional structures such as family, school and early work or team experiences a based around inequality of power, childrenlearn what they live and leaders are products of their environments as are all people. Where then would the tide break be placed for effective change to begin? A mantra passed down from parent to child would be a starting point- then teacher to pupil, peer to peer……
Jasper, I see what you mean. So much of our real-life experience reinforces the notion of hierarchy, power and compliance. It can sometimes be hard to find ways to break out of this pattern – either as a leader or someone who is asked to follow. But, as you say, peer-to-peer is the way of the future.