The Concept of Leadership in Three Conversations
In the last month or so, I have been able to publish three incredible podcast conversations with four exceptional people who work in the worlds of community change and collaboration. I’ve been reflecting on these conversations, because in each we discussed aspects of leadership. Sometimes it was in response to a question I posed or sometimes it was simply the direction of the conversations.
Kerry Graham of Collaboration for Impact (Episode #12) spoke to two kinds of leadership. There are those who are the decision-makers; the ones that rally the system to the change. I have described these kinds of leaders a ‘sparkplugs’, because they start things forward and can see the potential of collaboration to address the issue. Then Kerry goes on to describe backbone leadership that enables the work to move forward. The backbone isn’t setting the direction, but it gives the structure on which the rest of the team, including the ‘sparkplugs’, rely. To continue my analogy, this level of leadership is the ‘flywheel’. Once it gets going, it keeps the momentum. As Kerry describes the backbone, they are highly effective at gathering the data, enabling the team to learn, and they support shared decision-making.
Kerry describes the The Maranguka Project, New South Wales that developed from the vision and leadership of the Indigenous leaders in Bourke, New South Wales, in New Zealand to keep at-risk youth out of the criminal justice system. Her story describes the vision and the impetus provided by Indigenous leaders, but only mentions in passing the role of bringing the data forward in a visual map and training people to use the data to tell the story.
A couple of weeks after the conversation with Kerry was posted, I was privileged to publish another podcast conversation. This one with Anthony Boxshall and Max Hardy of Authentic Co-design (Episode #13). Here again, the sparkplug or champion leader idea comes forward. Anth describes it as the one ‘who sticks their toe in the freezing water first, and then says “Ok, let’s go”’. He’s referring to those organizational leaders, the decision-makers from Kerry’s description above, that have it in their job description to try to solve the issue and who believe something different needs to happen. Max matches this with comments of how community leadership stands on equal ground and are often willing to get involved even though they had previously had poor experience.
Interestingly, the stories shared by Anth and Max were short duration projects relative to the kind of system-level change Kerry was talking about. And there was little mention of the mechanics or the backbone required to keep the work going. I am absolutely sure there was some form of backbone support for the work, and it was perhaps less prominent in the story only because it was a more ‘contained’ project, not as large scale.
And now, this week I am putting out an episode with Liz Weaver of the Tamarack Institute (Episode #14). Similar to Collaboration for Impact, the Tamarack Institute works for community change and in support of community change practitioners. My conversation with Liz explores Collective Impact, but then turns to Collaborative Leadership. Liz too speaks to the different kinds of leadership and the hugely important role of data and evidence to support the work of the collaborative leader. The collaborative leader creates the environment where the people, and resources come together to address an issue. While we didn’t speak directly to the important role of the backbone support (the flywheel), it was pretty clear that the collaborative leader needs to have something behind them to maintain the process, provide data, and keep momentum.
For me, at least, I think there is a cognitive bias at play, because when I hear the word ‘leader’ or ‘leadership’, I think about a person, an individual. But the roles of leadership is clearly shared across the collaborative group. It’s like the term ‘leader’ is too blunt an instrument for what we are trying to describe. Instead, maybe we need to think about the kinds of functions that need to occur. The sparkplug/champion that gets things moving. The flywheel/backbone that keeps momentum. And there are many roles that anyone in a collaborative group can play.
Is there leadership inside collaboration? Something to think about.
Happy collaborating.
Scott Millar, through Collaboration Dynamics, often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. As the host of the Cool Collaborations podcast where he explores fun stories and insights of successful collaboration with guests from around the world, and then dives into what made them work. Cool Collaborations is currently available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.
