Leadership as a Verb
We have too many high sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them. -Abigail Adams
In our article on leadership definitions, we identified four core traits of leadership.
- Vision & Communication
- Action
- Collaboration & Service
- Resilience
Today, you don’t have to look far to find examples of those who carry the title of leader, yet do not exhibit all four of these traits in their day to day leadership. We may see a leader who models the Action trait but ignores the rest, and on another day we notice a leader exhibiting Resilience and Vision, but fails to bring the Collaboration and Service piece to their work. Why is that?
What leadership IS NOT.
It is very easy to point to our elected officials when exploring the concept of leadership, the executive level of large companies, or those we see achieving prominence in the media (actors, authors and social media influencers). They rise to the position of leadership either by appointment, election, through self-prescribed means or by claiming authority on a topic.
There is a clear divide between these individuals holding power as opposed to exhibiting leadership. Power to make decisions, power to withhold services, power to call the shots or introduce new rules. Power to dictate what we purchase or how we live.
Leadership is power with people. Not power over people. Mark Sanborn
Several years ago, David Stark addressed this in his piece on Leaderism. He is speaking primarily about elected officials, but it’s relevant nonetheless. He says:
The idea is that there has to be one person who makes the decisions, for the sake of there being decisions. It doesn’t matter so much if they’re qualified or informed enough to make them. Everyone with power — businessman, bureaucrat, representative, bloodthirsty dictator, fraud — is a “leader”. It’s no longer relevant how someone got the power they have, it’s only relevant that they have it. Getting the right thing done shouldn’t be a function of going begging to people who have power, it should be about finding the right people with the right attitudes, and putting them into positions where they can get things done. More and more, everyone in power gets bundled into this class of “leaders”. Let’s start by calling those people what they are: men and women who have power, not “leaders”.
Leadership is not power.
Leadership is not withholding opportunity from others.
Leadership is not a title.
Leadership is not a given or a birthright.
For too long, we have operated from a place of allowing those that grab the microphone first to dictate our next steps. We allow those individuals to make policy changes, speak for us inside our communities and wait for their next move instead of taking the steps on our own. For too long we have permitted those who have prestige or status to step inside positions of leadership based solely on their family name, their carefully structured strategic career paths or their ability to deliver an amazing speech.
Inside of online communities, we give the title of leader to the one who came first. The founder of the Facebook Group, the owner of a Slack channel, the Host of a Mighty Network. We correlate “admin” with leader, when in most cases the concept of manager or moderator is more akin to the work that many online community builders do.
Leadership is not simply authority. Knowing more than someone else does not constitute leadership. The right to give orders or introduce policies is simply authority, not leadership. Often we confuse authority with leadership.
Nilofer Merchant, in her book, The Power of Onlyness, discussed leadership and the concept of an open palm.
The former style of leadership was to hold an idea tightly behind a closed fist. New leadership is that idea on an open palm — which allows others to pick it up as if it were their own. The leader asks the questions, the followers joiners help the whole to arrive at the answer.
What IS leadership?
The words leader and leadership are both nouns. We believe we need to make an epic shift from leader being a title and leadership a noun, to the act of leadership being more of an action verb. Leadership is an art, a choice and a daily practice. Leadership is not what happens when you take a seat at the table with your name card or when you step up to the podium. Leadership is what happens when you seek to make an impact in the lives of others. The important thing to remember however, is that leadership is a trait that you must practice and continue to hone. One day of impact making decisions does not a leader make.
Leadership isn’t just about being helpful or engaging, but is also developed in noticing and being aware of what others need. This can be community based, or individually focused. It is also an awareness that your core values and conviction are vital to your actions.
In order to have others follow your lead you must have the three Cs — character, competence and connection. John Maxwell
The power of a leader is to create a magnet for those to wake up something inside of themselves that was lost or covered up and allow it to flourish. That’s the power of an individual. Which is why the impact can ripple across a culture. David Sherry
A common misconception about leadership is that you are either born with leadership qualities or you’re not. We believe that everyone is a leader. This may be evident in your own home, within your community, at work or even inside of your school. The art of leadership means that you can practice it when just a few are impacted, or when many are affected.
“All that truly counts is whether you grew into all you could have been and whether you showed leadership by using your potential to positively contribute to the lives of other human beings. And it all begins within. So your absolute best can shine.” Robin Sharma
Leaders look at the opportunities that lay before them, and see the gaps in the world around them and they take action. Sometimes the action is as an individual and sometimes its by rallying the troops to invite others to also exercise their skills and impart their knowledge. Leaders act with courage, regardless of title and often without permission.
We began our exploration to uncover the new normal for communities in a world that had evolved far from the classic dictionary definition. But what we found was that it is impossible to separate the concept of community and the leadership of those communities. As our communities have evolved, so it seems has our understanding of leadership. It is no longer a noun, it is a verb, a process of action leading to more action. The leaders we now find ourselves inspired by are not those to whom power was handed or those who seized power for themselves. Instead, they are the quiet leaders, the smaller leaders whose actions are creating impact on a daily basis in society despite the people in power, rather than as subjects of them. The art of leadership is changing and we find ourselves very intrigued by this indeed.
How do you feel about leadership and our current role models? Is leadership a noun or a verb?
Meet Emmy and Naomi
Emmy McCarthy and Naomi Hattaway often like to joke that they are one brain split over two continents. After “meeting” on a podcast about community building they quickly realised that not enough people who actually steward thriving communities were talking about how they build and grow communities. They also realised how much they had to say about that.
Emmy and Naomi believe that every individual is capable of making an impact on society but they often lack the support and information on how to do so.
Through #RedefiningCommunities Emmy and Naomi hope to open up the conversation on the communities we are building, gather together the people creating impact through action and provide a space for learning and growing together.
