Leading to Transform and Challenge

Over the last five years, I have spent time talking to people who have taken on a range of leadership roles. Despite the differences in rank, countries, and nature of institution, there are common themes emerging from these conversations. I share four nuggets and their meaning for transformative and relational ways of being in organisational settings. Some of these reflections, mirror experiences and issues I have navigated.

1. Leadership as a lone journey: A few years ago, I spoke to a director of a global organisation on how they were adjusting to their new role. How did they deal with pressure? How did they manage complex problems in an organisation that was undergoing rapid change? Who did they talk to? I was struck by their response. They relied on a small circle of friends who held similar roles outside their organisation. They did not feel that communicating to staff what it meant to be a leader of their organisation was useful because “I do not think they can handle the truth”. I found that odd, given that this organisation emphasised a commitment to shared leadership and collective accountability. More importantly, I thought that they were in a very lonely place given that 80% of their time was spent thinking, worrying, and speaking about the organisation and its people. This is the experience of most senior leaders. They are often on the receiving end of requests, demands, complaints but never an acknowledgement or engagement with what it means to be them. No one ever asks their senior leaders — how are you doing today? What keeps you up at night? What can we do to make the load lighter? It is important to foreground that these are questions good leaders ask their team members often. Therefore, it appears that in seeing leaders as institutional figures, “bosses”, “managers”, “paid more than me”, it is easier to disembody them and engage them as a role rather than a person in a role. When was the last time you asked a colleague you consider senior how they were doing and were really interested in the answer to that question? What did you do when they told you the truth?
2. What have you done for me lately? A few years ago, I was part of a 360-degree review for a leader who had taken on a new job and was leading a major change management process for the institution. 360 degree reviews are good exercises because they offer an opportunity for a reflexive conversation with people who report to or work directly with a leader. The reviews were glowing, which was a testament to their leadership, particularly at the very complex time the organisation was in. However, I was struck by the concern for the leader’s wellbeing. The staff I spoke to were quick to point out that the organisation’s wellbeing should not come at the expense of the leader’s. Perhaps, it will not surprise you that this was an organisation that centres a range of feminist principles as key to how they operate. Feminism notwithstanding, I believe that this simple action of expressing care was also about an institutional culture, where colleagues saw each other as people who lived and whose lives were not simply about their titles. In institutions where relationships are transactional, leaders are engaged based on what they should do and what they have not done. What they have done poorly but never about what they have done well and how well they should be to keep going. Transactional relationships are by their nature not about reciprocity. In contexts where systemic change is central to a leadership role, and the institution is structured by transactional relationships, it is not surprising that people will acknowledge that change requires an examination of and shift in structural inequalities, while for example expecting a magical negro who is everything to everyone. For example, in the context I describe above, Black and people of colour expecting that senior Black colleagues should do more than others, while letting those who hold more power and responsibility off the hook, is one that we must collectively sit with. Conversely, when colleagues with more position power, and influence do not acknowledge and engage these skewed expectations, it is an erasure of the differential burden on the racialised and gendered other, in contexts where structural power privileges some groups over others.
3. Between accountability and personal discontent: In organisations where exclusion shapes how people understand impact, results are not simply about what is delivered but how people feel. I have seen sound technocrats get the job done well, but no value is attached to what has been delivered by the intended audience, because it was never about the “things”. It was about being seen. Equally, I have witnessed leaders who spent so much time on community engagement, without delivering anything, but people felt good and valued. As a leader, you can spend time responding to what’s on the page in the form of demands for accountability, or recognise that often the real issues lie in what is not being said. Personal discontent in institutions, is often masked as “community” accountability and discontent. As a teacher, I have encountered students who are unhappy with their marks mobilising other students to complain about marking criteria, the marker, or the nature of the assignment. In essence, a personal issue is reframed as systemic or collective when it is not. In an environment where collective responsibility is emphasized, the muscle of seeing and responding to what is not being said must be cultivated by all. While it is easy to invite shared leadership, the responsibility that sits in collective accountability is not one that many are ready to assume.
4. Between a hero and the villain: In my job, I have the capacity to transform outcomes for people by unlocking institutional barriers where they exist and/or pointing people to existing services, which quickly resolve problems they saw as intractable. It is easy for these actions which are not about an individual, to be construed as targeted help and I become a hero. By the same token, it is easy to quickly turn into a villain because of a problem unresolved, an expectation unmet and unarticulated wishes unexpressed. When we place leaders on a pedestal, we choose to forget that they have the capacity for great decisions, bad decisions, mistakes, disappointment and limitations based on the contexts they work in. They are human. In making them heroes for doing their jobs with the seriousness it deserves, our ability to engage them with empathy, clarity, and responsible critique disappears because our expectations sit in two extreme poles — great or bad. Like an academic who writes a great book that everyone raves about, but turns out to be a narcissist or holds dubious political views on a matter you care about, we must remember leaders are people. Our relationship to them should not be pegged on the great thing they did or did not do for you, but the fullness of their personhood and the contradictions that will always be inherent in being human.