Continuing on with our Principles Of Community Leadership, here are Principles 10, 11 and 12; Openness/Transparency, Congruence, and Work Ethic.
10 – Openness/Transparency
Now we come to a principle that might be a little contentious. That is, openness/transparency.
If I am a good leader I will know that staff will need to know what state the finances are in. I will also need to be aware that leaving people out of decision making that affects them is very bad for morale.
This might sound self-evident, but having a transparent atmosphere is vital in ensuring that we work to our optimum. For example, it is best that planning for the future or determining/assessing likely outcomes of different courses of action is a collective venture involving as many as possible. It is also very good for morale if we know what our work means to the overall goal of our organisation – as roles will differ.
But, not everyone needs to know everything about everything. In fact, it can be disrespectful, and it can create an unsafe environment for all if everyone knows everything about everybody else, whether we are staff or Focus Group.
Everyone knowing everything does not equate with transparency, in fact it can lead to lack of trust among a team. The Johari Window which we will describe later is usually applied to the individual, but it can also be applied to teams. In respect of what is public and what is private, people need to know that certain things will be private and confidential, and that there will be no gossip.
So when we talk about openness and transparency, we do so in the context of the need to know.
While it is impossible to totally weld down the manholes in this respect, a good will contract is a very useful tool in an organisation that is committed to sharing power. That is, if we talk about someone, or share information, we do so in a respectful manner, with compassion, good intent, and positivity in mind.
In close-knit communities people know a lot about each other, and to pretend that they don’t is kind of disrespectful and even a little nonsensical. Different people from different backgrounds will have had many different experiences of confidentiality – i.e. some people’s interpretation may be a lot looser than others’.
The good will contract, encouraged and given importance to (and modelled and adhered to) by the leader, will go a long way to ensuring that transparency can be real, safe and meaningful, and that which is talked about will be positive and affirming.
This is completely different to gossiping!
11 – Congruence
The most effective leaders are congruent.
As stated in this post, congruence can be described as human genuineness. And just to remind you, it is a fundamental principle of Person Centred Therapy.
I mention it here because as leaders we can sometimes be tempted to pretend to be someone that we’re not. That is, to play a role that is expected.
In being congruent, it is important to be accessible to others and to listen carefully to the parts that we don’t like, i.e. for the grain of truth in the criticism we react to, get defensive about, or get angry with.
We have a responsibility to have very high standards of integrity, and this includes being willing to create the atmosphere where we make it easy for others to express opinions about us, the organisation, the way we are running it, decisions we make etc.
That is not to say that the person giving a view will be always right – but at least expression is allowed – and there is a far better chance that something will be learned in such an atmosphere than in an atmosphere of fear and closed-ness.
Another aspect of congruence is giving good example.
We need to remember that we are a model for not only everyone on the staff team, but also everyone who accesses the services of our organisation and those who are in other leadership positions on Boards etc.
In short, if I am not willing to be congruent I cannot call myself a community leader.
12 – Work Ethic
Many years ago I (with a neighbour – but I was in charge) was moving a piano up a hall. We began heaving and shoving and after a promising start it got more and more difficult until the piano just stopped moving no matter how hard we pushed.
Rather than stop and try and figure out what was wrong I directed my two assistants (another hefty neighbour had joined us at this stage) to keep pushing – thinking that the extra oomph would have some effect.
When we were close to the cardiac arrest stage my son, who was 7 at the time, came to me and pointed out that we were trying to push the piano against a long mat that was folding up as we pushed – thereby increasing the resistance the more we pushed – and suggested that I remove the mat and try again. Which I did – after which the piano whizzed up the lino floored hall with relative ease!
Once again the world of physics is relevant here. The definition of work in physics is that something is moved as a result of a force being applied to it. And it takes energy to apply the force.
Whenever I think of energy and work I think of that incident, there being, of course, a strong link between the two.
If the object on which the force is applied doesn’t move, (like my piano) in physics (or mechanics, a branch of physics, to be more precise) it is not defined as work, no matter how much energy is used.
Now this is very interesting when applied in the context of social care type work, helping professions etc.
I have argued a number of times that in child protection, homelessness, crime prevention and similar areas very often an enormous amount of energy is expended by the Pillars and nothing really changes. So, going by the physics definition, no work has been done.
This is like us exhausting ourselves, expending huge amounts of energy pushing and pushing, but the object refuses to move.
So if we, as leaders, consider ourselves to have a good work ethic we need to ensure that something will change as a result of the application of all our energy. And I believe that it is very good for our morale if the change is noted and/or remarked upon.
Now – sometimes change happens but because we are not really listening and/or observing we don’t notice it – or, we expect too much too soon, i.e. we don’t give the energy we have expended a chance to take effect, that is, to turn into work, (we are not patient enough) or our evaluation methods are too clinical and focus only on quantitative results, (we are too influenced by mainstream methods).
As we all know, success breeds success, so our work ethic will be helped by noticing what is changing for the better – no matter how small the change.