Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone

Citation

Chilton, S. (2004), "Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 110-113. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810410511332

According to Raelin, author of this book, “we need to establish communities where everyone shares the experience of serving as a leader, not sequentially, but concurrently and collectively. In other words, leaders co‐exist at the same time and all together” (p. xi). The book illustrates several methods for creating such a community where leadership is a collective practice. Both as a case for leaderful practice and as a practical guide for developing leaderful practice, the book succeeds.

Raelin's model of leaderful practice is comprised of four tenets (“Cs”), such that leadership is concurrent, collective, collaborative, and compassionate. Concurrent leadership allows that multiple leaders can operate at the same time. People share power is willingly. Collective leadership means that the group is not dependent on an individual. Instead, leadership may emerge from multiple members of the community. Collaborative leaders advocate their point of view, but they remain equally sensitive to the views and feelings of others.

Each tenet in this model is counterposed to a tenet in conventional leadership.

So while leaderful practice is concurrent, collective, collaborative, and compassionate, Raelin characterizes conventional leadership practice as serial, individual, controlling and dispassionate. The four tenets of each approach can be viewed side by side as a set of continua where we are encouraged to become more leaderful. Underneath each tenet are what Raelin calls “historical traditions” in the form of various behaviors, skills and roles people practice which constitute leaderful practice. An organizational consultant might use some of them in his or her practice or, perhaps coach clients to adapt them. What is new is the integration of these traditions into a coherent model that might replace the dominant paradigm.

Raelin finds that these traditions, or practices, are often misunderstood or rejected by the conventional view of leadership. In some cases, they have been misused, or co‐opted in the service of conventional leadership. In others they represent a deviation from conventional leadership, but not a real challenge to the conventional paradigm.

Part one, “Presenting a new paradigm for leadership: leaderful practice”, introduces the four critical processes accomplished by leadership (set mission, actualize goals, sustain commitment and respond to changes). This becomes a benchmark for comparing the two leadership approaches. Raelin suggests we get rid of the conventional distinction between followership and leadership. They are part of the same process. It is an interpersonal phenomenon, arising out of the interaction of leaderful people. In organizations where creating knowledge important, he finds it counterproductive to even use the concept of follower.

He also suggests we dismiss any distinction between managers and leaders. Like anyone else managers must consider their leadership tasks based on the situation they find themselves in. A manager may demonstrate leadership less by taking control than by supporting others to assume greater responsibility. An employee might demonstrate leadership by assuming responsibility for others.

Raelin devotes a chapter to the development of leaderful practice, which begins with the development of self‐awareness, then self‐leadership and finally team leadership. Self‐awareness might start with some reflection about your own beliefs and actions and how you impact others. This means becoming aware of the mental models you have developed throughout the years. Recognizing we will need a combination of courage and humility, he suggests we open our experiences to others whom we trust. While not a thorough guide, the chapter provides several sources in a survey that includes doing “inner work” on key life experiences; examining our motivations and other qualities; accessing our hidden, psychological dynamics; coaching; and learning how our patterns impact others.

Raelin sees leaderful practice benefiting the bottom‐line impact and quality of work life. Greater trust and support can intervene positively on the bottom line by making a community more adaptable to change. These same features, more inherent to communities than organizations, contribute to the quality of work life. Several tables and figures are provided to demonstrate various dimensions of leaderful practice and other aspects of leadership. For the team that is inclined to develop toward leaderful practice, a table of team roles is provided that individuals can use to determine how they might best contribute to its leadership.

In part two, “Uncovering the traditions of leaderful practice”, Raelin devotes a chapter to each tenet and introduces the traditions mentioned earlier. He has thoroughly researched these traditions, analyzed various practices and illuminated them with compelling stories and argues convincingly for leaderful practice. He provides notes to over 200 sources plus several reflections from his students. In some cases he suggests changes to bring a tradition into the leaderful paradigm. For example, he considers Hersey and Blanchard's life‐cycle approach to group development as a form of situational leadership. Where their model specifies that a position leader's style evolve “telling”, to “coaching”, to “joining”, and finally to “delegating” when the manager effectively leaves the group. In Raelin's model, the position leader remains part of the group: “One of the leadership roles may be to intersect with other units, perhaps in an official managerial capacity. But the members or member who occupies this role does not operate outside the group” (p. 96).

Concurrent leadership – the notion that members of a group can lead at the same time as the position leader – is the most revolutionary of the four tenets in Raelin's view, and “represents perhaps the most critical idea to release us from classic bureaucratic control” (p. 91). With situation management, Raelin says an effective leader should demonstrate a sense of personal and collective reflectiveness to remain effective. These are excellent strategies, I would caution (as Raelin does elsewhere) that you allow for the possibility that the resister may indicate exactly what the group should be doing.

Outside the leaderful model, I might have found stewardship unrealistic without the crutch of a follower's role. But since all members lead and support one another in a model where other traditions are balanced and integrated, it is a powerful tool for the practitioner to deploy.

A learning leader can demonstrate competence by demonstrating the capacity to learn. When leaders balance advocacy with inquiry, by opening themselves up to other views and self‐reflection, double‐loop learning can be practiced to allow a re‐examination of meaning. He also introduces co‐learning, where all members assume responsibility to share their learning in an ongoing systematic process and work‐based learning, where learning is integral to the job.

Meaning‐makers help make sense out of what is going on, as Raelin has done with this notion of leaderful practice. Communities‐of‐practice form wherever people involved with each others’ work come together to share knowledge.

Raelin associates three dispositions with collaborative leadership: “(B)egin any dialogue with a stance of nonjudgmental inquiry … to subject one's own ideas and views to the critical inquiry of others … (and to) entertain the view that something new or unique night arise from a mutual inquiry that could reconstruct everyone's view of reality in an entirely new way”.

A change agent can be collaborative by becoming a model of changeability. He describes how members can collaborate through Kurt Lewin's three‐stage process for change. An updated model adds a denial phase for dealing with confusion and exploration to incorporate learning.

Raelin views influence as collaborative, “when all parties have equal weight to affect the flow of communication and decision making” (p. 175). Compliance is unnecessary when people contribute based on their commitments and the control of their interrelationships is mutual. A review of influence strategies groups might use is provided to help when collaboration is not practical.

As dialoguers, leaders share their own reflections and viewpoints; solicit feedback on their reflections and viewpoints; surface their attributions and inferences while ask others to verify their accuracy; and construct agreements. A model is provided where, by staying in the here and now, you maintain an inquisitive nonjudgmental attitude toward group phenomena.

Compassionate leaders have an interpersonal commitment to the dignity of others. Raelin reviews the concept of the charismatic leadership, ultimately finding no need for its emphasis on romanticism, personality, emotions, culture and social processes. Such leadership is ultimately disempowering. If you are like me, you've got noncharismatic aspects of leadership down pat.

As conscience, a leader demonstrates a clear set of ethical values. These values are primarily democratic. Another is humility, since Raelin no one has an inherent superiority. These notions can be a tall order for some of our bureaucracies. Members earn trust from their community and extend it to others. Impression management undermines trust since being non‐authentic. He recommends leaders have frank discourse about things that community members care about, even when you may be personally vulnerable. This implies to me that care itself is a value in leaderful practice, which happens to be the final tradition of leader as social caretaker. In Raelin's view, social caretakers are concerned how their actions impact the many stakeholders they interact with. This can demand advocating ideas that your community might not accept.

This book can be valuable whether you are familiar with the traditions or not. Raelin's analysis gave me insight into those traditions I had some experience with. It was a good text for learning others. It is impossible to read this without wanting to apply leaderful practice in your own organization.