Leadership as Practice
As part of David Gurteen’s online knowledge cafe on March 20 2020 a group from all around the world were invited to discuss the notion of Leadership as Practice. Having received a distinction in 2013 for my MA dissertation about the ‘Lived Experience of Leadership Development’ I eagerly signed up for the group, as the title alone resonated with much of my research and approach to the topic.
To my great delight preparation for the knowledge cafe involved watching a short video of Ronald Heifetz summarizing his latest views on the topic. Heifetz is world leading researcher and teacher at Harvard University and specializes in a field of practice he created named ‘Adaptive Leadership’. In the video below he makes several critical distinctions, which for me detail ways in which the capacity to lead, can be so naturally accessible, that leadership can be enacted by almost any human being.
In no particular order, I found the following resonated very strongly for me; that to care for something and pursue it fully and to explore new ways forward is always a gateway to leadership. If anyone cares passionately enough about a topic or activity and also wishes to share it humbly with others, then according to Heifetz irrespective of official position or status that person can practice leadership.
Thus Heifetz states that leadership needs to be decoupled from position and authority. Having positional authority is dependent on the organisation, or institution that bestows the power or position, which as we all know too well, does not equate to adaptive leadership or rarely equates to an inspiring form of leadership. Heifetz makes a case that leadership should not be conflated with specific personal characteristics. Furthermore he states that leadership is a new field, so many important authorities do not agree on the meaning and interpretation of key foundational terms. Thus the learning experiments and experiences in the field are a moving frontier, in fact the video implies to me that anyone, engaged in the activity of continuous learning and able to enroll others in creating healthy change whatever the topic or activity, is a de facto leader.
Taking these insights into the knowledge cafe to help me reflect on my more recent experiences in my current home land. Our discussions renewed my recognition why highly educated, democratic, liberalized countries like the Netherlands comprise of numerous citizens, who are highly allergic to the suggestion of leadership and refuse to countenance it, as a liberating field within which to engage. This to some extent explains why Holocracy and other self steering, flat organisational systems have such a rapid take up in my country of residency. Thus relatively awake educated professionals, who have experienced the traditional coupling of leadership with position and authority, despair at the dire leadership exemplified by titans of governmental social and industrial institutions and understandably have huge reservations, about many contemporary expressions and manifestations of positional leadership.
The programmes and learning journeys I am currently designing for my startup leadership development business Generative You are/will be designed to enable participants to experience leadership as their natural self expression. Where their personal leadership is intrinsic to how they navigate their life. This self leadership is not predicated on positional authority, in fact it is through profound self discovery, that participants will exercise a degree of self authorship that organically liberates their leadership potential.
During our knowledge cafe breakout group discussions on Zoom, we explored how no longer conflating personal characteristics with leadership, immediately democratizes and distributes leadership as a possibility for any members of any system or group. It disrupts the heroic leadership archetype so often assumed by highly privileged individuals or those who feel they possess such hereditary characteristics, feeling they are born or have an exclusive right to lead. The top down hierarchical structures enacted in most conventional organisations, accompanied by embedded positional leadership, are founded upon mechanistic models of human behavior and organizing, thus they restrict and constrict the liberating energy associated with shared ownership and distributed leadership for example.
Thus I shared in the breakout that my development leadership processes and practices encourage participants to see leadership as a function of living systems. In each living system every cell or organ has an important function or role in keeping the system healthy. Each complement has a shared responsibility for seeing and sensing the local environment and providing the system information which influences how the whole system functions adapts whereby it’s capacity to thrive is optimized.
Heifetz’s important, subtle point stating that the field of leadership is a moving frontier is often overlooked. Therefore seeing leadership as a capacity to be practiced and developed, requires a massive rethink on the topic. It also moves the whole endeavor away from preoccupations with fixed measurements and competencies, into a more open paradigm to sensing and building on potential and possibility.
Considering the impending crises in the seven major earth ecosystems (Otto Scharmer) on the planet, every single person’s passion, care and contribution to restore and regenerate the earth is required. Thus personal self leadership is no longer important for just individual self actualization, in my opinion it is totally essential to planetary survival.
Thus the construction of Leadership as a Practice is an extremely helpful and agile way to approach the whole topic. In fact I would take this notion a step further and suggest ‘Life as Practice’ a life of discovery, reinvention and adventure upon which I intend to create much of my online courses and materials will be built. More of this on Medium in the future!
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Dave Pendle -Leadership Developer, Thought Leader & Social Entrepreneur.
Founder of Generative You developing EcoSystem Leaders.
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