Better Leaders. Better Futures.

The Time for Societal Leadership is Now!

2011-03-21T14:32:37-06:00

For many, 2010 was a sobering and thought-provoking year, and the early months of 2011 have been little different. Never, perhaps, has humanity been so in need of profound, insightful leadership in all walks of life. And yet, we've fallen considerably short in meeting the need as individual and collective societies.

Reflecting on the significant challenges of the past year, and the growing buzz (or outright doomsaying) about the forthcoming challenges that humanity will face on many economic, social, and environmental fronts in 2011, we are struck by the fact that many of these issues come down to changing our attitudes toward what the Foundation terms "societal leadership".

Societal leadership is not yet another formulaic approach to learning leadership, but a call to change the way that we -- as individuals, communities, organizations, and nations -- think about the role of leadership in society. Equally important, societal leadership includes what responsibility we accept for changing the way our social fabric works.

Within effective societal leadership, there is no room for "us" versus "them".

Instead, we all are part of the complex environments that make society work for better or worse. When we don't accept our personal responsibility for the way the world functions around us, we give our tacit acceptance for the actions of others, whether these are bad or good. When the world is changing for the better, too many of us are complacent in accepting the "free ride" and letting others make the decisions. Similarly, when times get tougher, there are many cases of people who haven't been involved in social life now expecting someone else to provide the magic solutions to life's ills.

Taking Action

While we acknowledge that life is busy and it's sometimes difficult to get involved or keep up with events on all fronts, there are some simple steps you can take to challenge your own status quo as an individual:

1. Attend a community event. It's perhaps one of the simplest things you can do to start changing your perspectives and getting involved. Go to a community association meeting in your neighbourhood, attend a meeting of your local city or municipal council, or just go out to an event that an organization is hosting somewhere in your community. Take the time to say hello to someone, and ask about why they are attending. Share freely, and be open to the new ideas and perspectives you might be hearing.

2. If there's an election happening in your community, go and vote. Many take the right to vote for granted, as declining voter participation rates in most elections (particularly in more mature democracies) will attest. As part of this, make some effort to learn about the issues on the table, and to form your own viewpoint. You wouldn't buy a car without doing some comparison shopping and kicking the tires, so why would you elect a public official who will oversee your local taxes or make decisions on new laws and regulations without a similar level of due diligence?

3. Challenge yourself to get informed about what's happening around you. From your local newspaper to television, radio, and the vast information resources of the internet, there are no valid reasons why you can't learn something new each and every day. Pick an area of personal interest, and start exploring how you and others understand the issues at hand. Are there opportunities for you to get involved and change the way things work for the better?

4. Do something positive to help your world. Conserve water, help a social agency, or do a good deed for someone you don't know. While the issues we're facing can be overwhelming in scope and scale, many of the most effective responses begin with individual acts that add up to massive change. Take pride in the small things -- or the really big things -- that each of us can do to make our world a better place.

5. Get connected. When we try to make changes and act for the better, it's often a lonely experience. Getting connected to others who share similar interests in and passion for change can help to let you know that you're part of something bigger. A good place to start is local meetup groups on the subject. Or maybe you want to register yourself on a global action site like WorldChanging, and start connecting to the intellect and skills of others like you.

And, if you care to do so, share your experiences with us and others through our comments area, or even by becoming a guest blogger with us!

Unearthing the Youth Voice on Societal Leadership

2011-03-21T13:29:27-06:00

By Matt Mayer

Whether at a conference, water cooler or dinner table, when societal issues and a better future are discussed, often unspoken and implied are the shared values which underpin our desire for change. A common belief is that we must “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations, 1987).

Despite this powerful and shared intent, little evidence exists that our everyday decisions seriously consider these important shared values. The Iroquois culture has addressed this by abiding to an overarching law, namely, the Great Law of the Iroquois. It states, “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” By following this law they consciously are embedding concerns for future generations into their societal decisions.

Sadly, very few communities, businesses and political organizations follow such a values-based decision-making protocol. Although we have excellent theories, definitions and research, the long term viability and sustainability of our communities and humanity is NOT being addressed in our institutions. And if they are considered, our foresight often lacks a comprehensive viewpoint and is focused only on our most tangible future generation: our immediate children and grandchildren. But how often do we invite our children and grandchildren into our public, societal-level conversations of their future?

Far too frequently, we undervalue or entirely exclude the voice of the youth in our societal decisions, and in our formal public process of deliberation and decision-making.. We take their inexperience as naivety and therefore exclude them in the very decisions that their future well-being will be based upon. If our decisions are aimed at better futures for future generations, then how can it be justified to neglect their opinion?

In fact, we all have an example where a child has blown us away with their ability to solve a complex problem. For example, the ROCA (“rock” in Spanish) group in Boston aims to move disengaged and disenfranchised youth away from violence and poverty. Embedded in their stages of change model is allowing students to come up with their own words on how to address systemic change. They conclude that systemic change occurs by “incremental shifts in habit;” words that resonate deeply with me. Apart from the youth’s wisdom, their perspective on the present and the future must be included if our aim is to build a strong community and cultivate better leaders for tomorrow.

LeadWell Foundation witnessed the passion of the youth voice in a workshop we hosted for students in the Grade 10 Leadership elective at Rundle Academy on Tuesday March 1, 2011. We are delighted to share the remarkable wisdom of these youth with the world.

This small group of students was filled with thoughtful words, inspiring ideas and strong examples on how to grow the field of societal leadership (see their use of language in the pictures). As a mostly discussion-based workshop, the students had ample opportunity to diverge and then converge on key concepts (Slide Share presentation).

After a brief presentation and exercise on systems thinking, we zoomed in to focus on the leader as an individual, introducing and discussing the 4C Leader framework that the Foundation uses in its core work. The group then broke into a World Café format and had two graduating conversations around the questions:

“What resonated with you and what is missing?” and

“If we were publishing a dictionary, how would we articulate the entry for leadership? How would this definition translate into a mission statement for our group?”

The harvest of these discussions was a common working definition and mission statement of leadership, which would guide their group for the remainder of the semester and possibly on their future endeavors:

Working Definition of Leadership

Selfless and ethical motivation for pursuing changes

Working Mission Statement

To embrace leadership by volunteering to make a change and, in doing so, help others

The Foundation is proud of the work of the students and, most particularly, their ability to relate leadership to societal issues. As the group moves forward in their studies and volunteers for leadership projects, the Foundation is excited to actively follow and co-learn with them.

The Foundation is also interested in further exploring the space for the youth voice to be heard. If you have further interest, ideas, suggestions, comments or feedback please don’t hesitate to contact us, or to add your comments below in our comments area.

Technorati Tags: societal leadership,societal decision-making,youth voice,future generations

Art of Hosting Calgary Event, Jan 11-14

2011-02-17T16:26:24-07:00

By Matt Mayer, LeadWell Foundation

A rare and exciting Art of Hosting event recently took place in Calgary, AB where I was an attendee on behalf of the LeadWell Foundation.

Attended by social innovators spanning generations, industries and geographies, this event was titled “Leading Change through Dialogue, Learning and Action.” Entering this four day exploratory retreat was a group of social innovators keen to further their participatory group facilitation skills. What left was an equipped and energized clan of social change-agents.

As a background, the Art of Hosting is an emerging and living practice of conversational, participative leadership. The practice employs tools such as WorldCafe, OpenSpace, Chaordic Stepping Stones, 5 Breath’s Design, Circle Practice, Appreciative Inquiry and more (see Art of Hosting website for more details). The premise is that the scale and complexity of the challenges that society faces are too intractable to solve by a single individual and, as Albert Einstein would say, “using the same level of consciousness that created them.” The Art of Hosting breaks this mould by focusing on the collective wisdom that a group (organization, community or society) creates together, unleashing a deeper level of consciousness which informs our vision and actions for a better, more sustainable future.

In essence, it suggests that the answers to the world’s daunting challenges lie within us and are solvable only if we work together, listen together and look upon one another as unique experts. Otherwise, how can unified progress be made and what is the effect on our human relationships, our learning, our work and, ultimately, our sustainability in the process?

Enabling this space for co-creation is a powerful skill for a societal leader. Like most art forms, however, it takes only a few days to learn but a lifetime to master. For the societal leader, this process begins introspectively, involving a fundamental shift in mindset from the longing for a hero to change the world (a task which societal leaders often find themselves signed up for), to becoming a host for changing the world (see “Leadership in the Age of Complexity: Moving from Hero to Host” by Margaret Wheatley).

Changing our lens from the individual to the organization

There tends to be a longing for a charismatic CEO, or the rise of a transformational leader to wield the collective potential of the organization, such as Jack Welch with GE or Ray Anderson with InterfaceFLOR. Though a visionary CEO often sparks the organization to undertake change, momentum is sustained by changing the process of work itself. For example, Jack Welch introduced Six Sigma to GE’s work and Ray Anderson embedded a culture of innovation around sustainability at InterfaceFLOR.

In a working environment, the Art of Hosting ideals represent another reform in group process by moving towards participation and authentic well-being of oneself and the surrounding organization. Analytically speaking, the Art of Hosting suggests that organizations need to nourish three key areas in order to be effective: work, co-learning, and relationships (as represented in Figure 1). The confluence of these three circles, also called the “sweet spot”, is where our greatest organizational potential is found.

From a personal perspective, the key to moving the Art of Hosting into mainstream practice is enhancing the process by which we align the individual as a host and the organization as a host. Within its own work, the LeadWell Foundation is actively experimenting with a community of practice around the Art of Hosting discipline, and learning how to further develop these capacities in societal leaders for the greater good of society.

If the Foundation’s competency with the Art of Hosting may be valuable for you or your organization, or if you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Matt Mayer or explore some of the public resources below.