5.3.9 Leadership - Conclusion

This post, the first in the Conclusion, in the Chapter on Leadership, explores how the Pillars might view, or be influenced by leadership in the community sector.

One of the most tiring (and sometimes challenging) aspects of leadership in an organisation that is committed to families in our Focus Group is that we are constantly dealing with fast-changing situations in an environment which can be a matter of life and death.

An apt description might be emotional A+E!

In addition, there is the added challenge of dealing with the complex variables that I described in the Chapter on Modalities.  What might be a great plan one day could be completely redundant the following day due to something (positive or negative) that emerges overnight.  Immediately, the plan has to be rewritten (maybe not literally – but at least adjusted) to take account of the new situation.  If we are to be successful in our venture to protect vulnerable families we need to be ready for this. 

Our long term goal as a leader is that, in the above environment, staff will enjoy their work, thrive, maintain their enthusiasm and freshness, and be ambitious for people in distress.

And there is a kind of useful by-product here.

Staff (particularly staff in leadership positions) within the Pillars will often be enthused by good leadership on the voluntary side.  They can open doors to new possibilities, actually inviting community agencies to take on work that is impossible for the Pillars themselves to do, for a variety of reasons.

And this is, of course, a reciprocal process; enthusiastic people within the Pillars have the ability to inspire and affirm the work of leaders and staff within voluntary agencies also. This sounds like a too good to be true win-win situation – but I mention it because I have been personally inspired by wonderful people within the Pillars and how they approach their work. 

The leader in the voluntary agency needs to get the balance right between creativity and outside the box thinking on the one hand and staying safe enough to be attractive to the Pillars on the other.

However, this will never happen if a voluntary agency is considered to be poorly led, unsafe, inappropriate, financially unsound, too critical, or too far out for comfort.

(This is also discussed in in a later Chapter, Getting the Pillars to Believe).

Offering leadership in the area of protecting children who suffer deep trauma, (using the rationale that if we don’t protect the children then the problems will simply perpetuate through another generation) requires a wide range of very complex skills applied consistently, in a delicate way, over a long period of time.

In order to do this without undue delay the leadership offered has to be 1): good enough – and 2): situated in the voluntary agency that is immersed in the work.

The reason for this is that many leaders in statutory bodies (and larger voluntary organisations with close ties to the Pillars) often work, (despite all the rhetoric about joined up thinking) in a fragmented way, with a lot of time and energy going into ventures that might be of great assistance to a mainstream population but of little value to those on the margins.

This is almost always more to do with the norms and values of the Pillars than the workers themselves as people.

The River

You can’t push the river [1] is an old saying about the futility of people trying to change others (or, I suppose) organisations too fast.  (I don’t suppose it is too much fun trying to pull a river either).

The saying got me thinking about rivers in the context of leadership. Because I believe that what people are concerned about, in a genuine heartfelt way, is what will flow in organisations.

With the river as metaphor, and imagining tributaries as concerns, influences, pressures etc., allowing our river to flow involves listening to concerns, trusting that they are genuine, and then, kind of, assessing what the tributaries might bring to our main flow. (Tributaries might be funders – including those within the Pillars – policies, ideas brought by Focus Group, the laws of the land, unexpected events, new staff, different cultural norms and a host of other external influences).

Tributaries might be potentially positive or negative – it is up to us to be discerning as to whether whatever flows into our river is beneficial or harmful. One way or another, they will always be of importance to a greater or lesser extent in respect of the flow.

It is the leader’s responsibility to ensure that the river flows along its natural course, knowing that it is impossible to dam a tributary, but moderating what might have a negative influence, and affirming that which is positive. (Allowing the natural flow can be a very challenging aspect of leadership).

It is challenging because it might involve unlearning prejudices that might get in the way of sharing power with vulnerable people, and in particular prejudices that we have in respect of children’s growth and development as I mentioned already.

As usual I’d like to give a few examples of things we might need to unlearn.

They may be beliefs or prejudices such as 1): competition is good for you, 2): comparison will make you happier 3): fast talkers and quick thinkers are more effective workers, 4): decisions made in our heads are superior to those made in our hearts, 5): time doing nothing is wasted, 6): formally educated people have more expertise than non-formally educated, 7): highly paid distant experts are wiser than those at home —– can you think of more?

Change

(There is a Sub-Chapter on Change in the Chapter on Organisational Matters but these few words look at it from the leadership point of view).

There is an air of unpredictability about change – for everyone.

In change, the community leader needs to trust probability over absolute certainty, being good enough over being perfect – as wise humans have done for millennia.

This is worth considering because while the saying if it isn’t broken don’t fix it is valid enough, it might not be okay in our organisation to let everything stay the same. (Remember we are allowing the root foundations of growth to flourish, and then impact on everyone involved).

We don’t really want to be always running to stand still – because anything worth doing comes with challenges that need to be faced with creative solutions, not throwing our hands in the air in surrender.

And if we never take a chance we will lose out on the richness of resolution of day-to-day problems and little and big crises from which so much can be learned. [2].

A fundamental requirement of invitational community leadership is to reach out to and then maintain frequent contact with people who are left out, marginalised or ignored by society and allow these encounters to have an effect on us and influence our norms and practice – the non-conformist voices.

Sharing power (because allowing non-conformist voices implies just that) can be a very challenging and difficult process.

A lot of practitioners don’t really want to share power.  Some just don’t think of it and others fear it.  Still others think that families don’t really have that much to offer.

Thus the paradigm that prevails is the consult and then impose-top-down-solutions even though there is substantial evidence to say that they fail to reach the families, and therefore the children, that most need our support.  While being of benefit to some children – which is good, of course – parents/children who are non-compliant are often left out.

Surely the children in such families are arguably more at risk.  Once again, (as we have experienced over many years) hidden underneath the non-compliance may be wonderful gifts and potential waiting, given the right conditions, to emerge.

There are many subtle ways to exclude, using different language and having cultural norms very different to people who never had power.  (We mentioned some of them in previous Chapters – for example here).

But ongoing, real and democratic encounter will always assist us in keeping our feet firmly on the ground.  I believe that great ideas will flow from such encounters – if we allow them.

Judgement of whether or not our partners in the Pillars are ready to act on such ideas is necessary too, and our decisions as leaders may need to take account of their readiness.

And if you are a leader I encourage you not to be too afraid of being ahead of your time. Most people who are ahead of their time meet resistance – so you might be pleasantly surprised if you don’t.

[1]. Even though – one thing that causes water to flow in a particular direction is a strong wind!

[2]. As leaders we should never claim more than we deserve but if we believe that we have hit on something innovative and original in efforts to come to terms with poverty, alienation, and all the factors that lead to very intractable problems that are within and around imprisonment (and what I described as characteristics of the Focus Group) we firstly need to champion it in our own organisation and then let the world know about it in a relevant and appropriate setting.

We now come to the end of what was a long Chapter on Leadership.

I said at the start of the Chapter that if we choose to take up a leadership role in an environment where assertive people are encouraged to express themselves it will usually be very challenging.

True leadership in such an environment involves exploring new directions, allowing diverse ideas to form and develop, being congruent, compassionate and forgiving, embracing reality and making it work, taking a calculated risk and accepting the consequences of so doing.

And –  within all that, enjoying it!