Day #105

In Conversation

I want to bring a range of voices into this space as our global Social Leadership community grows, providing a access to different interpretations and experiences of embedding this more human form of leadership into our everyday practice.

Barry Verdin, a systems thinking and leadership tutor and lecturer at the Open University, has maintained a long term relationship with this work, and provides me with a regular opportunity to share and test ideas.

For Barry, Social Leadership is ‘leadership without hierarchy, it is community-based or networked leadership that is independent of job title or position. It is about supporting and nurturing relationships to foster stronger connections between people. It is also about personal responsibility and accountability to your community or network and seeing yourself as part of a complex interwoven network of people. It is something everyone has and is in continuous development.”

I asked Barry how he moved from ‘ideas’ into ‘practice’, and he shared the following: “Ideas and practice are in a continual flux, always influencing each other and in a constant state of mutual development and movement. I don’t see it as a single step or activity, rather it is an ongoing and every changing process of co-existence.”

This type of dynamic spiral is what i expect from Systems Thinking friends! Approaches such as e.g. Action Research would view development in this way. But other views exist: recently someone shared with me a view that ‘Leadership is primarily a mindset’, but i disagree. To view it as such is to just see one part of the circle.

For me, and practitioners like Barry, mindset is important, as is knowledge, but so too is action - and that action is not just the end point or output, it’s part of the actual cognitive development, it’s part of leadership itself.

In ‘Social Leadership: My 1st 100 Days’, i described Leadership as taking place in the arms of our community, so i asked Barry about his own communities.

He shared this: “As part of my own (social) leadership journey I have come to realise I am part of so many communities and I have come to see many relationships as communities which form part of who I am. The value of different communities changes over time and with my immediate priorities and focus. The ones that matter most are those that add value to all community members equally, those that build people up and help keep them there, those that provide strength to members and become like family. I like to think of project teams as communities and the focus is on the community as much as the task. My own favourite communities share a passion not just an interest, they give back to all members and they are open to new community members. I like communities for learning and communities for sharing.”

Use your sixty seconds today to think about this dynamic relationship between ‘mindset’ and ‘action’ - not to find an answer, but to consider what it is, if it exists at all, and how you feel about it yourself.