How to Cultivate Collective Leadership
Our current interpretations of leadership tend to focus on the leadership of individuals. It exposes roots from historical frameworks—borne out of eras of exclusion—focused on individual traits and behaviors to define leadership.
To a certain extent, it makes sense to interpret leadership on an individual level. “I, as a person, as a leader, want to know what to do to exhibit leadership.” If you’re here, you have probably asked yourself that question at some point. That will (and should) look different for everyone, but what if the common, unifying factor required for effective individual leadership is its ability to cultivate collective leadership?
A recent Untapped Leadership newsletter asked:
If you are leading others from a position at the top of a team or company, how do you break down real and perceived barriers to move towards more collective leadership?
How do you uphold those barriers, and are there ways to mitigate that?
What conditions would need to change in the workplace to promote collective leadership? What might result?
WHAT MIGHT BE MISSED IN THE CASE FOR CREATIVITY, INNOVATION, AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF COMPLEX WORK CHALLENGES IF WE DON'T ACCESS OR OFFER ALL OF OUR AVAILABLE INFORMATION?
Building collective leadership first requires us to broaden our definition of who can exercise leadership and what it can look like. It then calls for us to consider how all of us—whether it be on a team or across an organization—can contribute that leadership fully towards a common goal or purpose.
To build a leadership practice that cultivates collective contribution, consider the following:
Identify the Barriers to Collective Leadership
We all have our organizational charts. We can review lines of reporting and scan our way from the bottom to the top. Most often, the top is thin, and the base is wide. Based on our traditional definitions of leadership, we consider that narrow top—the executive team or person—as the location of where leadership sits.
If we move the organizational chart on paper to the 3-dimensional reality of the day-to-day of how those connecting lines play out, we find the barriers to (and opportunities for) collective leadership.
At each level, what decisions can be considered “top-down”? If you were to reflect quantitatively, what percentage of decisions occur at an upper level with limited input from other levels?
When considering those top-down decisions, what would you attribute as the reason for that decision-making process? There can be many influences on why some decisions occur one-directional. The exercise here is to get very clear on why. We might find instances when an “it’s always been done this way” reason emerges, which is a flag for collective leadership barriers.
Understanding the practices and policies that emerge can be telling of ways our organizations and teams have room to evolve to tap into collective leadership rather than fully relying on the leadership of a few.
Create the Conditions for Collective Leadership to Thrive
Collective leadership thrives when all who are contributing to a workplace and team know that their contributions carry value and that they are just one piece of the full puzzle. It thrives when, from the beginning, it is clear that the leadership of the person or people at the top of the organizational chart are also merely a piece of the puzzle—not the entire solution.
As you monitor the exchanges that occur across different lines in the org. chart, consider how often and in what ways all input is invited. As a supervisor, how often do you gather solutions from your team rather than distributing them? When was the last time you implemented something offered by someone else that diverged from your line of thinking or way of doing things? The more readily you identify the ways in which you might be interfering with someone else’s opportunity to lead, the closer you’ll get to cultivating collective leadership.
In meetings, what are the ways in which you facilitate contributions from all, considering varied communication styles and perspectives? How much weight is given to “reporting out” rather than facilitated dialogue? Meetings tend the be the critical inflection points for cultivating collective leadership, yet we can find ourselves moving through them with the goal of efficiency at the core.
Across organizational relationships, management verticals, and team meetings, there will need to be instances of quick decision-making, efficient practices, and moments of individual leadership. However, what if we concurrently worked to build out ways that facilitate collective leadership that do not intercede efficiency or, counterintuitively, actually promote it?
It’s a worthwhile attempt.
What results are outcomes, impact, and innovations that are only possible through collective contribution rather than individual successes.
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