Empowering Communities One Leader at a Time
Muddling through context shifts, community capital and leadership for the future
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." - African Proverb.
Hello Wayfinders. Today I’m muddling through collective purpose, leadership, and building a better world. Just your average Tuesday😉
If you’ve been following for a while you might have noticed a shift in my writing and podcast post-pandemic. My interest in what helps us to fulfil our potential has pivoted from ‘you, me, or us’ as individual beings, to ‘us or we’ as collectives or parts of bigger systems.
Pre-pandemic I delved into happiness, productivity, self-care, parenting, the brain, emotions, sleep, play, fun, adapting to change, motivation, procrastination, and more. It was great fun and I learned a lot. I hope you did too.
Post-pandemic, this focus on the individual feels frivolous. A little indulgent. For me, it now lacks a sense of meaning and purpose.
Instead, I am curious about how we work together to make a better world. How do we build thriving communities? Create societies that benefit us all? How do we collectively ensure that we have environments and institutions in which we will thrive? How do we, as individuals, benefit from getting involved in pursuits that are bigger than us, for the benefit of all?
The author in the early podcast days, 2019
Why the shift?
I’m still muddling through that but I reckon there are a couple of things at play.
Firstly, like all humans, my experience is influenced by my context. Changes in society and social interaction shape the way we think, learn, relate to one another, and view ourselves. In the past five years we’ve seen a series of catalysts guiding our focus as a (Western) society from individualism to a more collective approach…
The increasing urgency of the climate crisis has highlighted the interconnectedness of our world and the need for collective action to address global challenges.
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of public health measures and collective responsibility in combating health crises.
The rise of populism and political extremism has prompted calls for greater unity and collaboration across ideological and cultural divides.
Social justice movements have emphasised the need for collective action and solidarity in addressing systemic inequalities.
(Of course the psychological principles underpinning the impact of social context also explain TikTok dances, ‘influencers’, and the rise of injectables. Self-interest is alive and well.)
This changing social context towards more collective conversations is nudging me towards new ideas, new work and new interests. Maybe even a new identity?
Behaviour is function of the person in their environment. Kurt Lewin, 1936. I’ve talked about this before
The second force is my involvement over the past four years in community leadership development.
What is Community Leadership development?
I guess you could call it a niche segment of the much larger field of leadership development. It's a unique field in which the focus is not on developing individuals as leaders in the same way you might in an organisation. Instead of growing or developing the individual to function in a role, the focus is on creating the right environment for individuals to step up, discover their purpose, and create the change they want to see in their community.
How does this differ from regular leadership development?
This is where it gets interesting because the difference is not yet a mainstream topic in leadership conversations. In fact, I attended a webinar earlier this month that made the disconnect in the way we think and talk about leadership very apparent.
The webinar featured a panel of leadership experts from academics to practitioners and asked a fantastic and fundamental question: What is leadership?
I listened to each panellist share excellent ideas and insights but came away realising that our answer to the question, ‘What is leadership?’ varies significantly depending on our context.
For some, 'leadership' is an individually embedded, behavioural construct—it's something that individuals (presumably 'leaders') do. This is the predominant and historical view of leadership in popular literature, discussion, and development programs. Do a quick Google search asking ‘What is leadership?’ and you get…
Leadership is a set of behaviours used to help people align their collective direction, to execute strategic plans, and continually renew an organization. (McKinsey)
Leadership is a “process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (Northouse, 2018)
These descriptions are often followed by a discussion of what a ‘great leader’ does to achieve these aims.
This heroic view of leadership has guided how we develop leaders. Typical leadership development programs cover topics like self-awareness, emotional intelligence, teamwork and collaboration, decision-making, change management, leadership style and ethics and values. They focus on developing the skills individuals require for the doing of leadership, usually in a hierarchical, organisational setting.
Leadership and Systems
But there is a new response to the question, ‘What is leadership?’ that is better suited to a world beset by complex challenges and rapid change.
This explores 'leadership' as a process that emerges within a system, context, or situation. It still involves behaviour, but the emphasis is on relationships and interaction in pursuit of a goal or positive change rather than leader behavior. It's about what emerges, how and why, when people work together to make an impact on the world, their community or their workplace.
Positioning it this way, leadership is not just a trait or skillset possessed by individuals, nor is it something that can be fully controlled or predicted; rather, it emerges through the self-organisation and adaptation of the system as a whole. Leadership may be distributed across multiple individuals and groups, and may shift over time in response to changing conditions and needs.
This is the essence of community leadership.
Community leaders are rarely appointed to their positions. They are grassroots organisers, advocates and activists, community elders, youth leaders and those who step up in a crisis. They emerge to fill gaps, solve problems and create change. They work within complex systems that include multiple stakeholders, diverse interests, and overlapping goals.
To achieve their aims, community leaders seek to understand the broader context in which they are working, build relationships across sectors and organisations, and identify opportunities for collaboration and coordination. They navigate and influence power dynamics within the community, and work to align resources and efforts toward shared goals - all without positional power.
This can be understood a form of systems leadership - leadership that emphasises the interconnectedness of complex systems, and promotes collaborative and innovative solutions to achieve sustainable, systemic change.
The skills of systems leadership include:
Seeing the big picture and recognising interconnectedness
Fostering collaboration and coordination across sectors, organisations, and communities
Encouraging and engaging in innovation and experimentation
Developing resilience and adaptability in the face of change and uncertainty
Promoting equity and inclusion by addressing power dynamics and systemic inequalities.
There is less emphasis on ‘me,’ ‘my skills’ and ‘the tasks I need to do’ than found in traditional leadership development. Systems leadership is self-referential, reflective and transcendent (let’s call it meta*) and requires knowledge that as individuals we are parts of the system, not directing the show.
This approach is critical to recognising and making inroads into the interconnectedness and dynamic nature of a community’s challenges and opportunities. It’s also vital to businesses whose boundaries with community and society are blurring (think ESG) and operate in the face of rapid change, ambiguity, volatility and uncertainty (think disruptive tech, hybrid work modes, staff wellbeing, diversity).
Whether it’s community, business or society as a whole, in a world of interrelated, complex challenges - this is the future of leadership.
How do we develop it?
There is tight pool of research on community leadership development that traverses sociology, community development, economic development, leadership and organisational studies, leadership education and community psychology. Nerd that I am, I’ve read much of this research. I’ve drawn from this, along with my experience developing and delivering the Future Shapers Community Leadership Program in Ballarat and my involvement in Regional Community Leadership Programs in Victoria. Add in a background as a workplace and positive psychologist and my experience as a sessional University lecturer in Developing Leaders and these are my thoughts**…
How to build systems leadership in communities and beyond
From my exploration there are two interconnected elements required to prime and facilitate community and systems leadership:
#1 Context and environment.
Traditionally, community leaders emerge in situations of crisis or urgent challenge, where a need is unmet, there is perceived injustice or inequality, or via social movements. Those who can rise to the challenge, either individually or collectively, to support those who can’t, do so to create positive change.
Existing networks, shared values, and a sense of agency and responsibility to with whom we live and work facilitate this.
The question then becomes, how do we create a context or environment in which community/system members step up in the times in-between, when a community is enjoying calm and harmony? How do we ensure that communities - or any systems - are served by a robust, perennial network of those willing to support, promote and drive impact?
There are a few things we can do:
Foster Collaboration and Partnerships: Create spaces and platforms for diverse stakeholders to come together, share knowledge and resources, and collaborate on shared goals and initiatives. In communities, these might be community centres, coworking spaces, online platforms, community gardens, events and festivals, service clubs, and volunteer organisations. In an organisation, you might develop innovation labs, cross-functional teams, employee reference groups, conferences, or job rotation programs.
Support Innovation and Experimentation: Encourage individuals and organisations to take risks, experiment with new approaches, and learn from both successes and failures. When people or groups feel safe to experiment and take risks, they are more likely to step up to new challenges, participate, offer ideas and lead change. We can promote a culture of experimentation by highlighting and celebrating stories of those who have taken risks, experimented with new approaches, learned from failure and iterated to achieve success. Promoting, supporting and rewarding curiosity also helps.
Enable Equity and Inclusion: Diversity of thought and experience is critical to the emergence of leaders who represent the needs, interests and experience of an entire system, be it a community or organisation. Addressing systemic inequalities and power dynamics through policy, open communication, and the use of data to guide practice and decision-making can all ensure that diverse voices and perspectives are included and valued. This increases the likelihood that diverse leadership, reflective of the wider group, emerges.
Sharing Stories and Lessons Learned: Highlight the work of those who have stepped up to make a difference in the community or organisation and share their stories, successes, and lessons learned, inspiring others to follow in their footsteps. Resources such as Reconnected: A community builder’s handbook provide grassroots examples of community-led initiatives that connect and build social capital, enhancing system resilience.
We can also draw on the learnings from fields such as Positive Organisational Scholarship (POS) to build better systems for emergent leadership. POS identifies the factors that contribute to the flourishing of individuals, teams, and organisations, and the practical strategies that promote well-being, engagement, and performance within these systems.
I’m not aware of research that directly links POS findings to the emergence of systems leaders (but Professor Michael Steger’s proposed pillars for a Regenerative Positive Psychology are heading in an interesting direction). We do however, know that the following factors are important in creating a culture or context that helps us to act independently and take initiative (agency and autonomy), and that is vital to stepping up and taking the lead within a group, community, team or organisation.
These are the conditions we can cultivate to foster thriving systems:
Promote Positive Emotion: Thriving systems foster positive emotions such as joy, gratitude, and compassion, which can strengthen relationships, build resilience, and enhance overall well-being.
Explore Meaning and Purpose: In thriving systems, individuals feel engaged and find meaning in their work and relationships, leading to increased motivation and satisfaction.
Prioritise Positive Relationships: Thriving systems prioritise the development of positive relationships, promoting trust, respect, and collaboration among individuals and groups.
Facilitate Strengths-Based Development: Thriving systems focus on identifying and developing individuals' strengths, rather than solely addressing weaknesses, leading to higher performance and fulfillment.
Foster a Growth Mindset: In thriving systems, individuals and groups embrace a growth mindset, seeing challenges as opportunities for learning and development.
Get all of this👆right and we have a shot at creating communities and other systems that are resilient and adaptable, and able to navigate challenges and change with flexibility, creativity, and resourcefulness. This is what the world needs right now.
#2 Let’s accelerate!
The second of the two interconnected elements required to prime and facilitate community or systems leadership, is what I like to think of as acceleration.
We can work together as a society to create contexts and environments that allow community or system leaders to emerge - and we should - but as an organic process this can be slow and difficult. What if we also create catalysts for this emergence? What if we build smaller ecosystems that help to amplify and accelerate this process?
This is the role of a Community Leadership Development Program.
Instead of teaching traditional leadership topics that position participants as heroic leaders, these programs promote community (or system) understanding and commitment, support social cohesion, and provide experiences for individual skill development, personal growth and efficacy in real-world community contexts. They are a microcosm of a thriving community, society or organisation.
These programs bring together a group of community members who are eager to learn, understand and have a positive impact on their world. The programs generally take place over a period of months and accelerate and amplify participant growth and experience collectively.
Programs activities include:
Those that promote personal growth and efficacy and educate for resilience, mindset, self-understanding, systems knowledge and the role of community leaders and leadership.
Those that facilitate community knowledge and understanding including community organisations, assets, challenges, initiatives, and opportunities.
Those that promote social cohesion and social capital (both bonding and bridging capital) through personal and stakeholder network development.
Experiential elements, often in the form of community projects, that offer opportunities for skill and network development and practice. Skills include community and stakeholder engagement, project design, development and iteration, cooperation, collaboration, resource management and collective decision-making.
These experiences, accumulating over time, build human capital at the individual level through learning, personal growth, mastery and efficacy. Participants develop the skills, confidence and knowledge to become change agents.
Aggregate this human capital and activate it through networks, project experience and deep community understanding and involvement and you build community capital - the resources that underpin successful, sustainable communities.
In my mind it looks a little like this..
(Except that being a system there should be hundreds of arrows that depict the interaction of every element with every other element and there are a whole range of elements that I haven’t depicted because my Canva skills aren’t that great.)
These program activities are ideally situated in a data-driven contextual framework that identifies community need and allows measurement of change and impact. We need to know what we’re doing is needed and that we’re making a real, measurable difference.
Those responsible for leading the program or accelerator should also have the skills and knowledge to promote positive emotion and relationships, ensure psychological safety and foster a strengths focus to cultivate a thriving, curious and courageous program culture. This unlocks participant autonomy and agency, spurring them on to ideate, connect, collaborate and act.
Pivot to Purpose
Underpinning all of this, and the source of my joy working in this field, is the role that community leadership plays in helping us to live and act with purpose and for the greater good. Humans are innately social creatures with a strong capacity for empathy. We’re wired for prosocial behaviour, even when our social context runs counter to this.
Providing people with the opportunity to learn, grow and make a difference together, is gratifying***. Watching them take that experience and have a positive impact on the systems that they operate within - their community, workplace, organisation, families and society at large - is extraordinary.
Everyone benefits from ripple effect of community leadership. It may be niche but it’s my niche. I get to work with others to create a better world. You’ve got to be happy with that.
Onwards and upwards,
*Hello fellow Community fans.
**Subject to change. I’m always learning and fields and contexts always shift and grow e.g. This fab article: Zombie Leadership: Dead ideas that still walk among us
***This video compilation of reflections from the last Future Shapers cohort I worked with gives me all the feels.
The fun stuff
I’m watching: The Olympics, of course. Weirdly interested in skateboarding and BMX. Also, shorts from The Big Bang Theory that my social media feed keeps serving me on repeat because the algorithm knows I can’t resist🤷♀️
I’m reading: Way too many things, all at once. This includes Community Effects of Leadership Development Education: Citizen Empowerment for Civic Engagement (Rural Studies) and posts from members of the My Efficient Electric Home Facebook Group.
I’m wondering: If I have made a big mistake by committing to get my dog, a dog.
Coming soon…
Hazel the Kelpie pup. Too cute to resist.