Rethinking Leadership

Rethinking Leadership

Traditional leadership research and leadership development initiatives draw on military, political, or corporate models of leadership, often ignoring what can be learned from other contexts, such as community and social change leadership, where different models may be practiced. Traditional leadership models also tend to focus on individuals, independent of context. They speculate at great length on the personal qualities, born or developed, that a single, heroic, frequently male figure brings to a setting. This confuses "the leader" with "leadership," as if they were one and the same. The new lens we have developed to study leadership addresses these shortcomings, while building on the accumulated insights of the existing body of leadership literature.

RCLA uses qualitative research strategies that explore the context for leadership, concentrate on the relational and meaning-making aspects of the work, and examine the actions leaders and social change and other groups choose to pursue. The RCLA/LCW research team has worked closely with the LCW participants to document their practice, their stories, and organizations to further understand emerging models of leadership and highlight the collective dimensions of the work. Below, we offer a brief overview of this new perspective on leadership and reflect on two implications associated with the material presented in this packet. We also offer a series of references that will help the interested reader deepen his or her understanding of this approach. For more information, please see our Resources Guide.

Leadership as a process that belongs to the community

RCLA views leadership as a relational process in a community of practice - the community defined geographically, organizationally, substantively, or virtually. Leadership belongs to the group, not to a single individual. The individual leader represents the visible tip of an iceberg, as s/he is supported by many others who engage in collective processes that help make the work happen. Individual character emerges in the course of leadership work and deserves attention, but understanding character alone is not sufficient to understand the practice of leadership.

We also believe leadership emerges out of a series of conscious or unconscious shared agreements that community participants use to establish the direction of their work, generate ownership from constituencies and stakeholders, distribute power among a group's members, and adapt to the inevitable challenges that the group encounters. In this frame, even the choice of a command-and-control or heroic style of leadership is a group action, the result of a relational process in which the followers exercise personal agency and acquiesce to a heroic leadership role, in effect delegating the symbolic task of leadership to a single person or a small cadre. The model of the individual leader is, however, only one of many possible variations of leadership practice. More apparent collective models may include formal co-directorships, leadership teams, and even structures where leadership functions are distributed among all group members.

Our relational approach understands leadership as a dynamic process in which people come together to pursue change. In doing so, they collectively develop a shared vision of what the world should look like and – bounded by a value-based world view— they engage in leadership practices that mobilize the group’s energy and resources to help bring that future into the present. Hence, the most effective way to study leadership is by focusing on the experiences people in a community of practice have when they try to make sense of their work in the context of solving real-world problems.

In this Educasting Project, each set of interviews illustrates various approaches to collaborative or community leadership as experienced by the featured social change leaders and organizations. Following are two brief descriptions that highlight the concepts embedded in the interviews:

Collaborative leadership practices seek to include diverse voices and flatten traditional hierarchies
Regardless of how formal leadership is distributed in an organization (whether through an individual leader or through flatter structures), collaborative practices are key to producing results. Effective leadership in any form draws from the participation of diverse voices and seeks to forge alliances both inside and outside of an organization. Including colleagues and constituents in decision-making and problem solving strengthens organizations and builds participants' commitment. Collaborative leadership practices promote a spirit of collective learning, understanding, and accountability. They shift the thinking from authority to leadership - from "power over" to "power with" - in ways that are more apt to promote community action.

Community leadership promotes inclusiveness through shared local knowledge Effective leadership gives explicit attention to the particular needs of a community and requires a community-based leadership style. By including stakeholders in the meaning-making process, leaders and organizations can draw upon the local knowledge of groups and communities that experience the problems first hand. The ability to involve community members in defining issues, setting goals, and developing strategies helps create common purpose. Leadership happens as visible leaders and constituents develop shared understandings of issues and make decisions to take action together.

This Educasting study guide and its component audio materials highlight many of the concepts described here and shed light on these beliefs about leadership through the stories of real work in context.