About Community Leadership

Photo Credit: Richard Chicoine iCopyright 2009

Leadership Horizons

"Soft focus is an important skill that can affect us metaphorically.

In other words, the way we see the future has everything to do with how well we can look up and see the expanded horizon before us." - Peter Kline

Tipping Point Goals for Leaders

At this past CLD, John DeGiacomo quoted from a document prepared by Leadership Victoria. You will be receiving the full report via email. Here are some exerpts which you may find useful as you think about your leadership and your tipping point goals:

The Case for Community Leadership

Some years back, a book of stories appeared with the catchy title

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

The title is effective — and affecting — because, though "love" is a charged word we all use, and though people will claim to know love when they see or feel it, most struggle to define it. The title is memorable because, with quirky good humour, it touches on a contradictory human truth.

As with love, so with community leadership, and not only because capable community leaders are often passionate and sometimes quirky. Like love, community leadership is much talked about — cited as a solution for daunting community challenges, invoked as the cure for the loss of community cohesion and identity, sought by community boards to rescue organizations adrift.

In Canada’s community leadership network, volunteers in twenty-two communities have devoted their time, attention, and labour, probably their money, and no doubt their hearts to building and running community leadership development organizations.

And yet, what we talk about when we talk about community leadership remains elusive. Opinions diverge even among those in community leadership organizations, though a shared anxiety infuses the differing views. At one extreme are those who suspect, echoing Gertrude Stein, that "leadership is leadership is leadership."

The dark secret of the movement, they say, is that its matter is no different from that taught in other programs. A perceived leadership deficit crossing social, political, and economic sectors has spawned a global cottage industry of sorts, with consultants, business schools, specialized institutes, and personal development experts widely offering leadership training. According to this view, what community leadership programs provide simply mirrors the training provided in good leadership programs everywhere.

Those with the opposite view suspect that though community leadership possesses a distinct character, it is a mere junior version of "real" leadership — that being leadership in business.

For many people, leadership currently is exemplified by leaders like Jack Welch, Carly Fiorina, Richard Branson, or Steve Jobs — the figuratively broad-shouldered, square-jawed, decisive heroes of the business press.

Ubiquitously profiled in popular management literature, business leadership has become for many the paragon of leadership everywhere, overshadowing even political, religious, and military leadership as an aspirational ideal. And according to this view, all that community leadership can ever hope to do, really, is aspire.

What are we talking about when we talk about community leadership?

A more pointed question to have asked is, how do different organizational and social circumstances make different demands on and elicit different practices from leaders?

As noted, it is the character of the led that drives the character of leadership in particular contexts. People act and are motivated differently in the community at large and in community organizations than they do and are in businesses. It is not necessarily the case that the people are different people. More often than not they are the same people in a different situation, both the leaders and others. It is telling in this regard that, very often, community leaders are also business leaders.

We often hear it stated that community organizations ought to become more businesslike, usually meaning that they need to be managed in a more orderly and structured fashion and led with a kind of abrupt decisiveness that some people seem to imagine is typical of business.

It’s true enough that many community organizations could be managed better. Particularly as community organizations grow and become more complex and highly structured, the genius of business leadership in maintaining large-scale, distributed task focus becomes more relevant, to take just one example.

But by the same token we could say that business ought to become more community-like. It is easy to think of situations in which the experience of effective community leaders is directly relevant to challenges faced
by business — in the leadership of change, for example, in which the risk of job loss or transformation injects huge emotion into employees’ relationships with the organization; or in the leadership of the millennial generation, who, as HR departments are learning, are demanding a healthy dose of meaning in their jobs; or in the leadership of innovation teams or groups of knowledge workers, which are often structured almost as flat coalitions of professional equals; or in brand development based on community values; or in the leadership of community relations, in which businesses aim to engage the public and its concerns.

In many ways, the lessons of community leadership are as relevant to business as those of business leadership are to communities.

It is not case then that "leadership is leadership is leadership,"

but rather that

"leaders are leaders are leaders"

and that those with the inclination, training, experience, and skills to exercise leadership will probably do so capably, wherever they find themselves — in communities, in business, in government, or in the military, rising to the demands as occasion and context dictate. We should expect therefore that the experience they garner in one sector not only adds to their depth as leaders, but is transferable to any other context in which they have the opportunity to exert their skills.

How individual leaders typically draw on the fundamental behavioural skillset to exercise leadership in various situations is what we call their "leadership style."

Community leadership starts with the creation of a passionate consensus for action. Through social entrepreneurship it builds the necessary organizational vehicles and programs. In articulating a vision of public good, it generates the broad support for issues that makes progress possible. In collaborative endeavour, it moves the agenda forward. And no doubt in engaging the public with a vision of innovative, collaborative purpose, it sets the stage for yet another small group of people to sit up, take notice, and decide to act together on a matter of shared concern that they feel is important.

That’s what we talk about when we talk about community leadership.

Reprinted with permission
Prepared for Leadership Victoria
by
Mitchell Temkin
Principal, Associatus Consulting
mtemkin@associatus.ca

Just Thinking...

Photo Credit: Richard Chicoine iCopyright 2009

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

- John F Kennedy, for a speech never delivered

on the day of his assassination

"One of the hardest tasks of leadership is understanding that you are not what you are, but what you're perceived to be by others."

- Edward L. Flom

"Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves."

- Stephen Covey, the 8th Habit

Gertrude Stein offers some sobering advice:

“There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer.

There never has been an answer.

There’s the answer!”

The media once asked Pope John XXIII how many people worked at the Vatican. “About half of them…” he said.

“I am not retreating. I am advancing in a different direction.”
- Gen. Douglas MacArthur

“I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. So I said, ‘Got any shoes you’re not using?’”
- Steven Wright

“Conscious noticing of what we’re experiencing, once we get back the hang of it, can be a common denominator, a language of connectedness between social, environmental, and economic concerns… Using the things we know or sense about places but seldom put into words, we can bring all our minds to bear on the problems of how our communities, regions, and landscapes should change.” - Tony Hiss, from www.pps.org

It is easy to sit up and take notice,

What is difficult is getting up and taking action. ~~Honoré de Balzac

"People are elected not to power, but to serve." - Ian McCormack

Anonymous said...
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts we make the world.

Speak or act with a pure mind,and happiness will follow you as your shadow, unshakeable.

How can a troubled mind understand the way?

Your worst enemy cannot harm you as muchas your own thoughts unguarded.

But once mastered,no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother.

Buddha (from the Dhammapada, translated by Thomas Byron)

Shaping Innovation

Photo Credit: Richard Chicoine iCopyright 2009

It just makes sense. The ancient Egyptians knew that building the model of a pyramid in sand would lead to a final architectural design. Leaders, too, need to have the skills - and the tools - to preview their actions and think about potential outcomes. The first design is only the beginning of the blueprint.

Skills. Tools. Innovation requires both. Leaders can shape their "sandcastles in the air" into a design - the real underlying architecture of the organization.

Four bright ideas to fuel tomorrow's innovation

Rule #1: Uncertainty is possibility. Uncertainty is opportunity. And you don't want to get surprised by missing an important opportunity.

Rule #2: Some of the greatest dangers for an innovator who is able to identify future trends is to mistake a clear view for a short distance, to be too early, and to think that things are going to arrive more quickly than they actually are.

Rule #3: Don't let your hope about what will happen interfere with your judgment of what you think could happen.

Rule #4: The essence of executive wisdom is the ability to make the right decision based on incomplete information. The sooner you can be comfortable that you have the right decision with less information, the faster you can move over your competition.

Source: Paul Saffo
Paul Saffo is a technology forecaster and futurist based at Stanford University and is a Visiting Scholar in the Stanford Media X research network. He was the founding chairman of the Samsung Science Board and serves on a variety of boards including the Long Now Foundation, the Singapore National Research Foundation Science Advisory Board, and the Pax Group. http://www.bigthink.com/

May Learning Day:

Our learning day line-up will showcase a few of the innovators who have been instrumental in leading large scale research and projects. Remember, it's one thing to talk about innovation. It's another to lead innovation.
Skills. Tools.

See you on Thursday at the University - 5th floor, ATAC building at 8:45 am sharp. We are having a late 1 pm lunch.

Dress: Business or business casual. Look good...We're being videotaped for a Leadership Thunder Bay Marketing video, thanks to the Communications Committee.

And, as always, if you need help with your 10 minute dress rehearsal presentation, please just ask.

BTW, if you're serious about being a sand castle sculptor, go to http://www.popularmechanics.com/ and search "Sand Castles". Playing = leading innovation!

- Maggie

AmBIGuity?

Photo Crefit: Richard Chicoine iCopyright 2009

Fear of Ambiguity

It's easy enough not to notice the opportunity to innovate - to ignore the possibilities. Our daily routines determine our most common direction and pace. We can easily ignore the obvious. That's a dangerous leadership trait.

As leaders, how can you become more aware of circumstances which will spur on unlikely intersections of ideas and help others to get over the fear of "change", for example?

This week's photo - the Snow Rose - illustrates the potential of "intersections" of thoughts. The question at the root of the experiment: "What would happen if... "

Leaders need to see the possible in the impossible and help others leap through the fear of the unknown.

In his book, ICONOCLAST, Gregory Berns says:

"Fear of the unknown, or ambiguity, is a funny thing. It is not a specific event event such as an electric shock or the pain experienced from the criticism of an unempathetic supervisor. Ambiguity stems from lack of knowledge. It looms over the psyche like a dark cloud on the horizon. Some people are better at dealing with ambiguity than others, but when fear of the unknown bubbles to the surface, it is universally experienced in the same way."

What to do? Re-direct your fear of ambiguity. ASK! Read. Discuss. Experiment - play. Find the "intersections" and lather yourself up with ambiguity.

There's a biological reason behind this theory. As a leader, you have to find the knowledge and then stimulate your own - and everyone's - "amygdala". That's the brain's critical processing centre, an almond shaped structure critical for processing emotions. Amygdala's have a long memory, and they can be trained!

The Practical Application for You:

Which brings us to this month's CAP presentation, "Dress Rehearsal". Here are the "ambiguous" guidelines which we sent last week.

• About your CAP Presentation:
  
  This is a "dress rehearsal" for graduation.
  Only firm guideline: 10 minutes max.
  Purpose is to highlight your CAP project and results, your leadership learning’s.
  How and what you include is up to you.
  Hint: tell a story!
  And remember that the audience "knows nothing" about your project.

The "ambiguity" of instructions allows each of you to experiment in ways which will stretch your skills. I'm thrilled that 2 groups were pro-active in asking for instructions. Asking for input, direction, how to respond in new ways is a sign of solid leadership. Don't be afraid to ask!

Gregory Berns says, "One of the critical fears that inhibit people from sharing their ideas is the fear of being rejected." The solution? "Remove as much of the social pressure as possible, by creating an environment in which individuals feel comfortable pitching half baked ideas."

Your May presentation is an important "dress rehearsal". We'll give each other feedback on what works, what doesn't and how you can blow the audience away with your CAP presentation at June's graduation. It's going to be fun! And... you have a month to prepare your final versions.

Once again, if you need help, just ask.

Here's to happy amygdalas,

Maggie