My experience of leadership in different roles and contexts has made me question the idea that leadership can only be developed in those who hold leader positions. I believe leadership is a “way of being” that should be encouraged and practiced in every interaction.
Leadership for me is taking care of what we agree that we care about. For example, behaving with integrity, having a shared vision of a good life, engaging in respectful conversations to reach an agreement, showing moral judgement and establishing trustworthy relationships. These behaviours can be found in good homes, happy classrooms, productive workplaces and safe communities – when collaborating for mutual benefit is valued.
My first lesson in leadership came at the age of nineteen, when I found myself in an environment where I felt out of my depth. As a cadet VSO I was sent to Malaita in the Solomon Islands to teach at a primary school. Adapting to the local envrionment was a challenge in itself. But only two weeks later a cyclone demolished the school. Suddenly, I was thrust into a new reality, as the local community looked to me to help them rebuild. Facing uncomfortable facts and exploring new opportunities tested my resilience and creativity. All conversations had to be about action.
Learning to adapt
The village community had faced this devastation before. They knew how to construct houses from palm leaf, tree planks using plant string. I had to respect their ancient wisdom and building expertise. But I saw the chance of build a more permanent school structure from cement, reinforcing rods and corrugated iron.
My inclination was to lead from the front. This was an error. They reacted positively, but insisted on building it themselves. They were happy for me to secure government funding for tools, transport, materials and to help them schedule the work and ensure safe practices. I was struck by their enthusism to learn new skills, apply their natural talent in new ways, with ingenuity and commitment.
They adapted their building skills and organised themselves to learn new building practices. They nominated a spokesperson (Headman from the village). I observed them using many of the leadership skills listed above. My contribution amounted to facilitating the work and helping the team solve its problems. I adopted an overseeing eye on progress and resources, helping out when asked to. They were an enterprising bunch. One day I found them fishing using reinforcing rods as spears.
Nothing world shattering going on here you might think. But I learned a lot about time management, sequencing tasks and creating spaces to resolve disputes, such as speaking openly and respecting cultural concerns. Not easy when using pidgin english.
Examples of self-organisation
TEACHING
As a School Teacher, I found that pupils became more enthusiastic learners when they discovered knowledge for themselves through practical skills, and apply them to topics that interested them. By learning in pairs and sharing their experiences in a social context they became more confident learners and team players.
INNOVATION
I brought together relevant service agencies into one place, to share concerns and explore posibilities for service improvement. One team focused on delivering a better coordinated Special Needs Transport Service. By getting face-to-face the team established an action driven conversations and strong relationships aroung a shared concern. They found opportunities to improve communication when responding to service breakdowns in real-time. This cross-boundary working with schools and other local authority services, built a shared understanding of each other’s constraints and built trusting relationships.
FUTURE SEARCH
A Future Search Conference led to a unique project that brought together a Day Centre for the elderly, an adjacent Community House for child-care and parenting classes, a Chemist, a Community Café and Meeting Hall, sharing facilities on the same site. I escorted Queen Elizabeth around this landmark project in 1977.
SERVICE MANAGEMENT
As a Leisure Centre Manager, I supported my teams in developing a Caring Code that agreed the rules and behaviours they wanted in their relationships with each other and their service partners. They delivered on their promises to each other, transformed staff morale and customer service.
LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT
As an OD Consultant, I developed a leadership mentoring programme that engaged service managers in team coaching to improve their feedback and influencing skills. They listened and learned from their service users, colleagues and stakeholders to embed the lessons learned and establish collaborative action across functional boundaries.
A vision for the future
Since retirement, I have work part-time with individuals and teams doing knowledge work to develop their leadership skills to deal with the challenges of a VUCA environment. They are finding themselves under increasing pressure to “do more with less”, feeling unsupported and overwhelmed.
Some are seeing ChatGPT as a lifeline, a way of giving employees an intelligent work assistant. The danger here is that employees become less engaged is critiquing their output and feel under valued. Training in AI tools leaves less time for social learning and personal development to make full use of their skills.
It’s therefore vitally important that artificial intelligence is set up to augment human and collective intelligence, not the other way round. Complex problems require the merging of cognitive and affective skills. AI tools have the potential to enhance human creativity but can bring insecurity and ethical concerns.
Embracing complexity
When team learning is constrained, the creativity and diversity of thought arising from collective intelligence and conversation will be lost. Work becomes more unpredictable, relationships more fragmented and decisions more ambiguous.
I believe a more intelligent response will require a merging of the three major intelligences and make them available as leadership skills to support every interaction. I call it complex intelligence because it is a combination of multiple-perspective and step-by-step thinking styles – vital in addressing messy problems in human systems where results are difficult to predict and control is temporary.
All employees will need to become more resilient and aware of the politics in their choices. This demands a review of leadership competencies if tomorrow’s organisations are to thrive in a VUCA world. An example of the competencies for leadership in a VUCA environment are outlined in the diagram below.
A more detailed explanation can be found in my article on Complex Intelligence for a VUCA world and leadership practices on my Life Leadership website.
