What big challenges are you bringing to Lead Together?
Leading in times of change can be at times challenging. The latest times provided some leadership challenges to ensure the continuation of the vision.
When in times of uncertainty I either chose what my gut feeling tells me, or I ask for help from those who can figure out how to lead an ever changing movement that is Chicas Poderosas. The entire Summer I spent visiting regenerative farms, filming and documenting their processes of Permaculture Design for the land, the principles of building a sustainable and collaborative community with shared values. And after one of the gatherings re:build, there was a group of people who were at the event and wanted to continue to exchange ideas and planning on whatsapp, and they shared a course called Lead Together with Susan Basterfield.
“After the collaboration in the book Lead Together, exploring the key principles and practices for transforming top-down leadership into dynamic human systems of shared responsibility and accountability.” http://www.leadtogether.co
And this is the flow of life taking over and showing me the way.
The first question we were asked: What big challenge are you bringing to lead together?
I realize some big challenges: How might we ensure a feeling of belonging as well as shared leadership? How to make more space to co-create with a group of persons where everyone feels equality valuable & leading the process with trust. How to step outside the hierarchical model and create safety for people to fail forward and lead together?
The next conversations that follow will help us address our challenges from different perspectives. Self-management & lead together — reinventing organisations.
Leading a community is like leading an organisation. People need to feel safe to participate and feel that they belong.
How do we move from a posture of servant to steward? As a leader I want to practice with the others to bring their leaders out of them. Not imposing a concept of good or bad, but allowing others to lead and practice decision taking and taking the helm.
The courage to practice a new repertoire of leadership
One concept shared that was new to me was the The four levels of listening by Otto Scharmer:
This concept of moving along your position to have different perspective into listening was quite interesting. Coming from a culture of using non violent communication to address conflicts, this new perspective brings that empathy listening to another level.
Creating a liberating structure that allows for listening for potencial. How do we build these principles together so that everyone feels safe? What are the principles that we need? People search for authority figure? How do we move from wanting to be parented to parenting ourselves?
During this course what I wan to practice is to build a solid shared self-managed model, and what I need to unlearn is try to control it all.
