At last we come to the final three Principles Of Community Leadership; they are Humility, Holding The Tension and finally Creativity.
13 – Humility
When I was a young man Liverpool were tops of the soccer world. (After a bit of a valley period they are doing very well again now).
One night I was watching their witty, sometimes irascible manager, Bill Shankly being interviewed on telly. During the interview I remember the reporter asking him what his thoughts were when the stadium was empty, when everyone had gone home and he was alone. He replied that the time to be humble is when one is most successful, and he gave examples of what he imagined his life might have been like had the cards fallen differently for him.
As he was usually very confident to the point of being cocky I remember being a little surprised at his humility.
That was Liverpool Football Club in the red-hot competitive and comparative world of what was then the English First Division.
What about the community sector where many families have felt neglected or abandoned for generations, and where, in many posts, I have stated that competition and comparison may have been causative factors in their neglect and abandonment?
I remember being inspired by Bill’s humility at an impressionable age. This is because as leaders we need to remember how things can be different but for the good fortune that comes our way. I believe that this is very important in our work as leaders in communities.
And it brings us back to an earlier post where we described the desirability of inviting rather than coercing followers.
While humility might have some benefits in soccer management, I believe that, in organisations that support our Focus Group, it is a leadership responsibility to be humble, because genuine humility has an invitational nature.
There is a balance to be struck between not hiding our light under a bushel on the one hand and maintaining that we are the leading this or the leading that. If indeed we are, it will speak for itself. (The old saying failure has a thousand excuses; success speaks for itself, resonates here).
But the principal reason for humility is not that we want to promote false modesty or even restrain our ambition – it is because we want to protect our organisation from the corporate values of competition, comparison, one-up-man-ship, and a lot of what has been harmful to vulnerable people. (This was discussed at length in the Chapter on Power and Control in Society where we described corporate closed-ness).
It is also good modelling in de-compartmentalising (if that’s a word at all) our organisation – and furthermore promotes the notion that behaviour that would be okay in a good enough family is not out of place in our working environment. Like, sometimes it might be a good idea for us to do work that some might consider routine or even menial – if it needs to be done at that time and no-one else is doing it.
Also, healthy humility has a downstream positive effect not often thought about.
I believe that it encourages staff and leaders alike to think deeply about things – be reflective and self-aware and have a realistic sense of our own importance – or otherwise.
14 – Holding The Tension
The tensions that will inevitably arise between members of staff who are competent, assertive and confident need to be viewed as positive and potentially growthful.
Thinking once again about physics; I tend to view tension in a team as a kind of potential energy and the practice that arises from, or is stimulated by tension as akin to kinetic energy.
Just to explain, potential energy is the energy that a body has because of its situation. It can be described a stored energy. For example, an apple hanging on a tree waiting to fall has potential energy – energy that hasn’t yet been used yet, or released. Kinetic energy is the energy that a body has when it is moving – like when the apple is falling.
In our case, I imagine the tension is energy waiting to be released, and the work done is the energy being released.
As we saw in the Chapter on Energy, conflict can enable creativity and innovative practice. When egos are healthy and manageable, people who have different views will learn from each other – which is also modelling the desirable two-way knowledge flow.
Holding tension can be a challenging (and sometimes delicate) function of community leadership. We saw, when we discussed self-organisation, (and in self-organisation there is always the possibility of tension) that an entity that self-organises is a lot more robust and adaptable than a rigid paint-by-numbers structure.
As good enough leaders we will:
Firstly have the confidence and self-belief to embrace ideas that arise from staff – no matter what their status is in the organisation. (In this, it’s amazing how easily we slip unknowingly into the feeling threatened mode when ideas come from newcomers or staff who are in positions that are deemed to be of lesser importance).
Secondly we will be proactive in seeking out new ideas and trust emergence in the team as much as practitioners will trust it in people who are in distress.
Thirdly we will have enough experience (and intuitive sense) to reach out to staff who have a lot to offer but who are naturally quiet and reflective rather than being outgoing and opinionated.
And finally we will embrace diversity in respect of opinions and views within the boundary of the mission of the Project – and be a good model in this area.
We will see later how important supervision is. It is in the area of holding the tension that the real value of supervision is evident.
15 – Creativity
I have already covered Creativity in some depth so there is no need to go on too long about it here. Needless to say community leaders need to be both creative themselves and foster creativity in all parts of the organisation they are leading.
In the Chapter on Creativity, it is probably the Sub-Chapter on creativity in strategic thinking that is most relevant, and that is what we might mostly associate with leadership.
However, getting away from strategic thinking, it needs to be stressed that in situations where there are frequent crises we need to think and plan creatively. If we don’t, then there is a temptation to default to the logical response that we have mentioned elsewhere. Just to remind ourselves, it is a response that often ignores (or at least negates) the emotional dimension in the crisis.
To choose to be creative at such times is the true test of leadership in an organisation.
Creativity helps us to adapt to the complexities of crises – i.e. rapidly changing situations with competing demands and priorities.