What might the natural world teach us about Leadership?
James Dixon
As a self-confessed country-boy I retain an allegiance to Mother Nature and to the many lessons to be learned by observing nature in the round. My first experience of leadership, or maybe the lack of it, was in trying to move a flock of sheep, together with their lambs, from one pasture to another. As was typical at that time and place I wasn’t given any detailed instructions as to how to accomplish the task but left to learn by experience. Sometime later I figured out that sheep will always follow their self-selected leader but will not follow anyone who merely wishes to impose their will on the flock. Once the penny had dropped I was able to help the flock to access the new pasture in their own time and at their own pace. A valuable lesson was learned and subsequently practised throughout my career – not only with sheep.
Anyone watching migrating creatures will be able to observe a similar phenomenon while they organise themselves into appropriate formations, before setting out to achieve a collective outcome – usually a return to traditional breeding grounds via a route providing suitable feeding and resting stopovers. Such activity suggests that the role of leadership is well established and passed down through generations. As animals can similarly be observed when responding to danger, or to perceived threat, then it appears that the element of leadership is a vital component within nature.
What I have drawn from both my life on a farm, and from my professional career to date, is that effective leadership appears to be essentially a set of characteristics. These are rarely to be found within any one individual person, bird or animal but can be found dispersed throughout every group, team, family or organisation. Sometimes the situation, problem or opportunity requires someone to step forward and be strong and to display courage, sometimes what is required is patience, sometimes vision, sometimes wisdom but never displays of power. Over time I believe that we all will have the opportunity to display one or more leadership characteristic so it might be a good idea to have thought about how we might act if or when we are required to ‘step-up-to-the-plate’.
During the discussion about leadership in the Putting Relationships First cell on 20th October, I quoted that “managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing”, which I attribute to the book “Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge” by BENIS & NANUS, 1985 - which was based on interviews with 90 leaders from both the private and public sectors.
While in general terms the statutory sector divides the two roles of leadership and management between elected representatives and salaried staff, and the commercial sector between executive and non-executives, in the various branches of the community sector these different roles are often ill-defined, misunderstood or ignored. The statutory sector is perhaps best known for its reliance upon a traditional ‘command-and-control’ approach, while the commercial sector draws on a wide variety of theories including ‘transformational leadership’ in order to arrive at a position which it believes will give it a ‘market’ advantage. The community sector in general appears to favour a ‘shared leadership’ approach. An added complication for many community-based organisations is that they often owe their origins to a ‘heroic founder/leader’ whose behaviours, mindsets and actions still reverberate down the generations often causing ‘cultural lock-in’ or ‘stasis’.
While the statutory sector is answerable to the public at large via the voting system, and the commercial sector to its consumers/customers via the marketplace, arguably the community sector is just too complex, often impenetrable and riven by factions for substantial collaboration and/or co-operation to take place. Perhaps it is more likely that the community sector, in all its forms, will be required to re-examine the role of its leaders, if we are to gain the collaboration we say we are looking for. Perhaps we could begin by becoming less addicted to Grant Funding and more aware of how ‘Social Value’ can be generated within communities, and subsequently exchanged as the basis for collaboration with other sectors.
One option for our leaders to consider is the approach of ‘authentic leadership’ the origins of which can be traced back to D.W. Winnicott who, as far back as 1971, was talking and writing about the subject of leadership. Winnicott thought that self-awareness, awareness of others and an awareness of organisations provided the basis for ‘conscious leadership’ by which people would be able to examine their motives and to make conscious judgements and decisions that were ‘authentic’. While being authentic implies a willingness and capacity to say things openly and boldly, authentic leadership goes further and requires a connection with the need to guide others in ways that are attuned to the needs of the organisation. If leaders are to be authentic then two conflicting imperatives have to be considered. On the one hand the leader must be ‘true to oneself’ and to act out of personal awareness and conviction while on the other hand be ‘true to the organisation’ and to act in ways that meet the needs of the organisation, through working through others. To sustain such a relationship takes a conscious effort to manage the tensions between the varying personal and organisational needs. Authentic leadership does not imply making a compromise in which neither personal nor organisational goals are fully satisfied but it implies shaping new possibilities for individual leaders and their organisations. This concept of having the capacity to sustain paradox as a basis for creativity and authenticity also derives from the work of Winnicott.
As community-based organisations operate within a complex environment they are constantly exposed to paradoxical and often conflicting leadership approaches. This leads some practitioners and some academics to believe that the sector could benefit by embracing a dynamic approach to the question of leadership which might be distilled from among the various theories and practices that abound. Whether such an approach is based on the version of ‘authentic leadership’ advocated by Lee in 2003, the ‘best-fit-approach’ advocated by Handy in 1993, or the ‘integrated model’ advocated by Locke in 2003 is less important than the fact that responsibility for leadership is not left to any one person or ‘clique’ within the sector or individual organisation.
James Dixon is a ‘sensemaker’, mentor and coach who is able to help individuals, agencies and organisations thrive amidst periods of disruption. He started his career in the commercial sector as a marketing director, has since founded two social enterprises and has also worked as a Community Development Manager with Alcohol Concern and Scope. He was awarded a Master of Studies Degree in Community Enterprise from Cambridge University for his work on developing a strategic ‘social’ marketing approach for the community sector; and is currently studying how increased collaboration within the community, commercial and statutory sectors might regenerate and create ‘Places of Wellbeing’ based upon ‘whole systems’, ‘co-production’ and ‘social value’ approaches.
