“The leaders we need are already here.” These magic words come from Margaret Wheatley, co-founder of the Berkana Institute (www.berkana.org). The Institute is a worldwide community of people who recognize the need for change in communities, organizations and nations and who offer their leadership to help resolve the most pressing local problems.
Of leaders, she says, “We define a leader as anyone who wants to help, who is willing to step forward to make a difference in the world. We know that the world is blessed with an abundance of these leaders.”
These are good words to live by in our own organizations too. In yesterday’s model, leaders were singular and appointed. Leaders were at the top of the heap by virtue of title. Others were deemed followers. Leaders were expected to know all the answers and by force of will to get followers somewhere. By virtue of this model leaders held power and followers did what they were told.
Today’s leaders can emerge from any part of an organization. Rather than being given the title, leaders choose for themselves to make a difference and take action to do so. They see themselves not as experts but as learners. Rather than focusing on heroism and control they focus on enabling others to succeed.
This brings us back to Margaret Wheatley. About 15 years ago she began writing about the connection between living organisms and organizations. “Every living thing seeks to create a world in which it can thrive. It does this by creating systems of relationships where all members of the system benefit from their connections,” she wrote. “As the system develops, new capacities emerge from … working together. Looking at what a self-organizing system creates leads to the realization that the system can do for itself what leaders have felt was necessary to do to the systems they control.”
Wheatley urges leaders in self-organizing systems – and, by the way, all organizations are self-organizing — to abandon the fear-based practice of command and control. “We have to ask ourselves, “How much trust do I really have in the people who work here?”
And what is the reward for embracing a more participative approach? “Those leaders…tell of their astonishment,” she says. “They are overwhelmed by the capacity, energy, creativity, commitment and even love that they receive from the people in their organization.”
It sounds like Utopia. Trusting leaders can bring about an astonishing array of positive results. And anyone can be a leader. If, as Wheatley says, “the leaders we need are already here,” what are the attributes of today’s leaders? How can we prepare ourselves to become a leader? How do we step forward and nominate ourselves for the job? Stay tuned.
By Elise Roaf
