Why We Exist: Open-Source Leadership Development

What is leadership? What could leadership be?

When the word ‘leadership’ is mentioned what are the images evoked for you? If you are like most people, leadership is something equated with people in power –mystical, inspirational individuals who make the extraordinary happen. But let’s reflect on that image …

Think of all of those texts on leadership you see in airport bookstores, mainstream movies or through the media. What do you see? Leaders are often portrayed as almost impossibly charismatic, or ethical, or inspirational. This is often the case when a sports team has just won a big tournament, or when a business has posted enormous profits. Or, leaders are portrayed as deeply flawed, even dishonest. Unfortunately such images are often linked with political leaders, and, increasingly, leaders within the public sphere and the executives of large business enterprises embroiled in some scandal or other.

What is the effect of attributing leadership to the domain of these individuals? It suggests that leadership is something ‘out there’ and not really much related to our work. In the words of Prof Keith Grint, leadership becomes something ‘separated’ and ‘distanced’ from us. Celebrate a leader when the organisation she/he leads achieves some accolade. Sacrifice (often the very same) leader when things start to go a little wrong.

Keith Grint has highlighted our over-dependence on individual leaders

But how often can any change of significance in fact be attributed to a single individual, even an individual who enjoys a great deal of power? Indeed, how helpful is it that this word ‘leadership’ has become synonymous with single individuals? This is surely an elitist and unhelpful way for us to think of leadership. These images of individual heroism seem more appropriate for the domain of Hollywood movies than they do the hard graft of everyday work and change. Let’s keep our fantasies of leadership in the cinema and outside of the public domain.

What we want to introduce here is the idea that leadership can be the job of anyone – at least anyone with an interest in change. But more than that, leadership can be something shared within a group of people passionate about making an impact on the world. If we are unhappy with the world, we can lead the change.

Leadership for us is about asking difficult questions of the world around us, of questioning the taken-for-granted and challenging the status quo. Leadership is about asking how we could be approaching problems differently – and then working together in creative ways towards meeting these challenges. Leadership is then inherently linked to purpose: working tirelessly towards a cause that we feel is being approached in terms that are currently too narrow. And collaboration: that tough process of asking more of each other and ourselves in the belief that together we can achieve more.

Leadership is not management, then. Management is about controlling our environment, making problems manageable and predictable. There is a place for good management, for certain. In fact we would be lost without it – our lives chaotic. But let’s acknowledge that management has a place, and keep it in that place.

Leadership is about tackling those problems which refuse to go away, which keep popping up in various guises to irritate us, provoke us, often sadden us. Leadership problems are messy, complex and often ideologically divisive. Can we truly tackle the big problems facing our communities today with only management? Think wealth inequality. Think poverty in all its grinding, horrific guises. Think discrimination. Global warming. Crime. The environment. Education. Public health. Sustainable, innovative, ethical and profitable business. All of these issues call out for a way of thinking about leadership capable of challenging dominant paradigms, of questioning how things currently are.

What is leadership development? What leadership development could be

So where does this leave leadership development? Leadership development currently seems to be the domain of those in positions of power – the chief executive, senior executives, sometimes middle managers. They are sent on leadership programmes, where they are often told that leadership is about learning more about themselves – their personalities, characteristics, behaviours. It’s as if they are the sum total of leadership! What about the people around them, under them, outside of their organisations?

Of course people in senior positions need development and are important actors in leadership. But surely if we aspire to challenge dominant leadership problems, then leadership needs to be something far more people can feel and be involved in. More than that, leadership development ought to be one way in which groups of people outside of the conventional structures of power can learn together, find a voice together and innovate together.

Leadership development ought to be something which enables people to learn about leadership but also to experiment and collaborate in leadership. In other words, to actually learn, practice and change as they go.

Unfortunately leadership development in its current form does not seem to meet these challenges

How we came to this point and where to go from here: Open-source leadership development

The call for collaborative leadership is often heard, especially in academic and policy circles. Yet how often do we see innovative collaborative leadership projects in action? In the area of leadership development, we believe that the status quo has become stuck. Stuck in familiar technologies. Stuck in terms of the audience it is delivered to. Stuck in classrooms. Stuck in the realm of executive leadership.

And, let’s face it … stuck in financial dependence. Formal leadership development programmes deliver much-needed revenue for institutions and consultancies. Many even deliver considerable value for participants, let’s not forget. Formal leadership development programmes have their place. But let’s keep them in their place.

The world has moved on. People are less prepared to accept a view of anything as meaningful as leadership as the property of just a few. You only have to pay a little attention to the way the world of elected politics is moving. Not to mention the way we relate to issues of major public importance. The Internet has changed the way people relate to the world. They are less prepared to accept what they are spoon fed, more inclined to stand up and have a go at change themselves.

Evidence for change is all around us, if we care to look. Howard Dean, Obama, the Arab Spring, Occupy, the Tea Party, the UK student protests … The list grows daily. On a smaller scale, just take a look at the exponential growth of social networking as a means of connecting people in online and offline conversations – conversations which lead to new action and new alliances.

The role of Our Leadership is firstly to provide a forum where people can access contemporary leadership and leadership development thinking – and debate, discuss, challenge this thinking. Secondly, we want to make quality leadership development accessible to anyone who has an interest in developing leadership. We are not talking here about formal leadership training programmes, but of providing an infrastructure where we can talk and progress real-world leadership. From scratch, from the bottom up, side up. As long as we’re learning and developing, we’re happy.

This blog will be a home for theory and practice relating to collaborative leadership. If we think there is a valuable theoretical contribution out there that would enhance and stretch our thinking on leadership, we will post it up. We believe that theory provides a rigorous basis for our thinking and action – it also stretches and challenges the way we view the world. We make no apologies for our love of theory! Equally, if there is an interesting development story out there, especially one which relates to grassroots leadership, we would like to hear it. We will of course post stories from our own experiences in development and everyday life.

Drop your stories, photos, video clips and contributions to ourpublicleadership@gmail.com We’ll take a look at the submission and either put it straight up on the blog or suggest some changes and then put it up.

Outside of the blog, we want to embark on the much more radical idea of open-source leadership development practice. If we gauge that there is an interest for this thinking, we will start to post up links to events, an opportunity for people to meet in the face-to-face world, or virtually, to discuss ideas and collaborative possibilities. The idea is that we can provide a basic infrastructure – ideas from leadership and leadership development – but that we all learn and run the development together. This could be a great opportunity for community groups, student groups, public sector employees, or people from business, to get together and start something special in leadership. No cost, all open source. All we require from each other is passion for leadership and an open mind.

For now, let’s start the discussion …