Leadership in a Paradigm of Respect

One of the exciting movements over the last few years has been the development of Web.2 technologies which enable all individuals with internet access to start a blog, connect to hundreds of people on social network sites and generally have a way of expressing thoughts and opinions without going through more established channels. The books Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (which Matthew Taylor named his Best Book of 2008) and We Think by Charles Leadbeater, both explored the existing impact of these fascinating new flows of opinion, knowledge and awareness.  And the positive potential of the knowledge sharing alone is nothing short of mind blowing.  

However, I have been giving a lot of thought to this over the last few months in particular related to educational and social settings. The tensions which have puzzled me slightly have been:

• Although consumers and voters are more empowered to ensure that they have a 'voice' and method of redress and influence on the 'powers that be', can this potentially lead in some instances to negative but natural consequences? The line between activism and anarchy can be blurred one. Take for example 'student voice' in schools, do schools set up student voice to pacify or do they really listen to student opinion?  

• Can the ability for consumers and voters to voice discontent so immediately and accessibly lead to a type of fearful leadership - one where the concern for opinion and/or popularity is dominant in decision making?  Do we want our country's leadership, or school leadership for that matter, making important decisions based on predicted reactions to an elevated degree (they obviously have done this at times already). 

• If 'bottom-up' becomes the normal way of operating and we begin to trust 'collective intelligence' in all things, where does that leave leadership, and very importantly, expertise? 

So essentially these questions mostly concern the balance of power and knowledge, and while we now have the means to group and voice in potential numbers never before dreamed of, how do we ensure that the overall system remains balanced, and really intelligent?

I suggest that entirely new forms of leadership need to evolve which rely more on insight and understanding and less on vision, pacesetting or 'managing' people: one that goes far deeper than is currently common to respect both people and underlying forces as soon as these dynamics evolve. 

A very powerful example of this respectful leadership is demonstrated in the Positive Deviance approach currently being used in some very serious situations globally, such as malnutrition, girl trafficking and disease control.  As described, Positive Deviance (PD) is:

"a development approach that is based on the premise that solutions to community problems already exist within the community. The positive deviance approach thus differs from traditional "needs based" or problem-solving approaches in that it does not focus primarily on identification of needs and the external inputs necessary to meet those needs or solve problems. Instead it seeks to identify and optimize existing resources and solutions within the community to solve community problems."

For example if there is 70% malnutrition in an area, the PD approach is to study the 30% who are not suffering malnutrition, despite being in identical circumstances, and educating the 70% on these different (or deviant) behaviours which are helping them survive or thrive. Interestingly, the PD approach often doesn't seek to change the underlying causes for a problem, but rather aims to help people work round and within the situation by adopting good survival behaviours.  One example discovered that a family's management (storing, using, understanding) of salt within the household had a huge impact on the health of the family. 

In US hospitals trying to reduce the spread of MRSA, the PD approach led to discovering some innovations that simply would never have been thought of without actually doing the jobs and working in the hospitals. For example, one innovation involved sealing disposable overalls into latex gloves, a deviation from normal practice, which is one of a number of new measures which reduced MRSA by up to 50%. 

The inspiring thing about PD is that it is a leadership initiative which respects the knowledge of people in its employ, as well as respecting the rights of the person to have an opinion.  Essentially it seeks to draw out and harness  'informed opinion and ideas' which, although not always fully appreciated, is quite different in terms of its usefulness to 'opinion'. 

Progressive types of leadership have the potential to be so exciting: not simply managing people and finding ways of getting them to fulfil the organisational goals, but with an intrinsic curiosity and respect for other people's understanding.

Although PD is now a specific approach in these global social concerns, it is essentially an assets-based approach which researchers in psychology have looked at for a number of years and led to the new branch of psychology called Positive Psychology.  Asset-based research aims to examine the behaviours and characteristics of emotionally and mentally healthy people, in order to replicate and encourage them more widely.  

Howard Gardner named the Respectful Mind as one of the Five Minds for the Future, the other four minds being:  Disciplined, Synthesising, Creating and Ethical. Imaging those five minds employed together in leadership makes the potential for so many problems to almost melt away, and Web.2 to become a place for genuine, rather than false or uninformed dialogue .... 

Comments

[David Wilcox]

What an inspirational start to the year - thanks Tessy! Do you know Jemima Gibbons, who is a writing a book at Leadership 2.0? http://www.interactiveknowhow.com/ I wonder if Jemima has found any examples of PD

[Dave Briggs]

Excellent and thought provoking stuff. I think we are only now starting to really understand what the web really is and what the changes are that it has helped to bring about.

What you have written about here + David's stuff about Wenger and social learning spaces + Matthew Taylor's new progressivism have all come together. Haven't quite thought my way through it, but there is a definite thread tying all this stuff together.

I wonder if the web allows us to become 'social individuals'. The postwar period saw gov't led collectivism, then we had the individualism of the 80s, then a cruddy, borked idea of community in the 90s and early 21c. But the web allows us to filter huge amounts of information on very niche, individual subjects. But it also provides the tools to then make that individuality social, by making self organising and finding other people with similar niche interests easy.

So rather than joining clubs with very general aims and interests, to make them worthwhile, we can instead take hat makes us individual and use that to join together on our own terms, and have lots of groups with specific interests rather than just one or two 'umbrella' groups.

I'm blethering here. But these are exciting times.

[Tessy]

These are very exciting times David B- thanks very much for your comment. George Siemens theory of Connectivism and the most elegant and intelligent leadership may be very helpful at this stage.

David W - I will follow your link to Jemima Gibbons with great interest :) Thanks!

[Jemima Gibbons]

Hi Tessy,

We've yet to meet but I hope to get the chance soon through David/ RSA.

I loved this post - you're right to have a sense of urgency re leadership. It feels like we're either on the verge of something great or something calamitous. (Although maybe that's just the human condition?)

Re Student Voice, if a school sets this up to pacify, they’ll soon be found out. The ones that really listen to student opinion will be the ones that are successful. But schools – as we all do – need to learn to ‘listen’.

On ‘fearful leadership’: we probably have this already, in that no political party wants to make unpopular decisions, however necessary. (Ken Livingstone was only able to introduce the congestion charge to London because he was, temporarily, an ‘independent’ politician). We need to learn not only to accept criticism, but to welcome it, and negative comments can always be turned around if we’re seen to act on them.

In this digital age, we still need leaders. But they must be the sort of leaders that enable and motivate others. As for expertise, true knowledge and ability will always be important, and will always shine through. Good editors and curators will be especially necessary. Social status will be less important.

I read your points re positive deviance and the respectful mind with interest – both these ideas are relatively new to me. Re examples, I know Women in Film & Television have been using the PD approach in order to explore why so few women reach the top in directing, cinematography etc. I shall look up Howard Gardner’s book. (And also George Siemens).

All great food for thought.

[Mike Amos-Simpson]

"where the concern for opinion and/or popularity is dominant in decision making" isn't that modern politics?! (its why I have little time for party politics in any case)

I think the changing role of leadership is very interesting. I always found it interesting on courses we did with young people - observing leaders among young people, yet when the concept of leadership was introduced to them most often it would be met with a denial "I don't want to be a leader". And so we'd go on to discussions about different leadership styles/approaches etc. etc. and how very often really good leadership goes unrecognised, and yet is critical for success.

I think the same applies to the web and online collaborations. I think people that think the web will somehow magically transform disorganised individuals to come together and produce world changing initiatives are kidding themselves (and possibly a few others!) In reality organising people and projects needs some form of leadership, and as has been pointed out already its maybe more a case of how these new approaches will impact on what leadership actually is and how we view it.

Linking the young peoples denial/resistance and the desire in some online communities to not have leadership does suggest theres still a negative stigma about the idea of leadership - and this is something I think really needs to be challenged. At the moment I think we're stuck in between old style 'stand up and follow me' leadership - or for a better example - the difference between traditional conferences where the few preach to the majority, and unconferences where the audience dictate the themes. Those unconferences still require some organisation and some facilitation - theres still leadership in there, but it may be that its more fluid both in style and personnel.

Whats really good about this of course is you don't have to follow that leadership - which arguably requires a much better style of leadership to be effective.

Of course there is another leader who's used the social web very effectively, and yet can still stand in front of 1 million people and say 'follow me' (although of course it was presented as "we'll do this together")...... possibly (and fingers crossed) combining the best of both approaches.