Exploring leadership in an era of collapse

I am pleased to be teaching again, in the online course Leading Through Collapse . We just had a class discussion about how to promote positive forms of leadership in an era of collapse. I drafted some quick reflections on the questions that came up. If the following notes stimulate your own ideas, I’d be happy to your thoughts on leadership in these difficult times. The discussion group ‘deep adaptation leadership’ is useful for that. ?

--

The following are some answers to the questions posed from the groups in our leadership Q&A. My answers are intended to open things up, rather than provide comprehensive insight. If you haven’t watched my lecture on leadership , you really need to do so in order for this to make sense!

Question: Hi Jem, our question emerged around "episodic" leadership and how a leaderful group can allow that to emerge and also subside? (The question had lots of nuances but that seems to be the bigger question...)

Jem: I think there is no way around the central importance of people having high motivation for the goal of a group. Otherwise, people will be tempted to become passengers, relaxing into the idea that someone in charge is paying attention to the group's goals, cohesion and resourcing. Then there is the issue of trust, and a culture that welcomes suggestions from anyway, without there being the possibility of shame.

Question: Jem, how does one foster an environment of "leaderfulness," and can you present us with a successful example, especially in the context of collapse?

Jem: The fastest route to such an environment is for the person with the power (money, senior role, or fame/attention), to model a way of being that invites help from others where that doesn’t mean the others become the leader. That way of being is to be open about motivation, knowledge, emotion, skills, capacities, and invite collaboration. The second big thing is to learn from the field of facilitation about how to enable groups to function well.

Question: How does leadership transfer from person to person as challenges posed to the group change.?

Jem: It can't unless key issues have been attended to in the group. First, people need to believe in the common purpose, experience feeling valued, and have the process tools for stepping up and stepping back. Second, people need to be advised of the potential for us to behave in ways that are hierarchical, whereby we think that an act of leadership in one moment reveals someone as a "leader" for that group. Once these things are clear, then acts of leadership can flow through a group. It's important to also remind people that they don't need to feel like they have acted as a leader in a group at some point in order to feel valued... as otherwise ego-needs can lead someone into making inappropriate efforts towards a leaderful act.

Question: How do we usefully lead people to engage in the possibility of collapse and possibility of failure?

Jem: There's no one way. Different people respond to different messages and different forms of communication. Some people listen to senior scientific bureaucrats, others listen to tiktok influencers. Some people listen to spiritual leaders, other people only really listen to their friends. My decision has been to try and help people to engage with this by providing the evidence, conceptual frameworks, mindfulness tools and human networks (chances for conversation) that would help. That's been a motivation for completing my new book, Breaking Together. I also think some people don't need to know about collapse in order to be living appropriately - so I am not trying to communicate with everyone all the time.

Question: How do we synthesize purpose, which means there may be a need for facilitation, and lateral relationships? How do we do dynamic movement of who is facilitating our how does facilitation become a group process?

Jem: First, it is important to recognise that multiple purposes are normal. But for a group to work well then people need a sufficiently shared purpose as well as a personal one. That shared one needs to be real, not a concocted vision to mask the real purpose e.g. profiting shareholders. My belief is that in any group I commit to work with for a significant period, I want everyone to be taught the basics of group dynamics and facilitation... i.e. how groups function and dysfunction. Then facilitation can be a distributed activity. eg telling me in a zoom class that digital hand raising is useful to avoid an implicit invitation to people to just speak out when they felt like it was crucial to the experience in one of our sessions together.

Question: Our group did not fully settle on a single question (ha!) but one of our questions was how to encourage leaderful actions within hierarchical systems when people have been socialized to not take leadership actions if not in “high level” positions

Jem: One technique I've seen over the years is 'playing dumb' when asking a question in public that goes to the heart of basic assumptions. I am guessing that the 'playing dumb' was occurring and I see it as a useful tactic. However, if you are in hierarchical cultures, then it is likely that it is an organisation that you aren’t fully committed to, and therefore it's ok to restrict your time and energy to that and express it elsewhere. I am in favour of quitting-in-post, whereby people stay in a job as they need the wages for a time, but they ensure they are working on other things, or preparing for a move into a life and role they really like. That's accepting we are enslaved by systems in modern societies and finding ways to rebel and be free.

Question: We had no scribe, so here is my take away of what I think we decided: Varying from moral obligation (or manic narcissism,) to fluid identities, can a person successfully choose to be either leader/follower, or only one?

Jem: We are all everything all the time, to varying degrees... so we are all partly moral and partly narcissistic, and different feedbacks can bring different aspects of ourselves to the fore. Therefore, I encourage us all to become better able at noticing that in ourselves and not being judgemental towards others for that if they are prepared to explore what's going on inside them. With increased mindfulness then people can more easily flow into moments of leadership and followership.

--

I haven’t added my leadership writings to Jembot yet, but thought that it might be able to answer usefully by integrating the whole of my book Breaking Together. So I asked it this question from the class: “How do we usefully lead people to engage in the possibility of collapse and possibility of failure.”

This was its reply:

“Navigating the possibility of collapse is indeed a precarious process. It requires an understanding of delicacy as it may evoke fear, denial, or both. Leading people towards this path begins by creating safe spaces for communication. Open and honest discussions about our societal and environmental predicaments are essential.

In 'Breaking Together,' Jem Bendell writes, "The statement that we must have hope is widely heard in modern societies... That is not a view shared by many ancient wisdom traditions, such as Buddhism, which regard hope as a thought pattern that takes us away from meeting reality as we find it. But what do people mean when they talk about the need for hope? Do they mean a wish, an expectation, or a possibility that they work towards?"

He further touches on the issue of societal collapse: "One of the dominant ideas is that without the systems and rules of modern societies we will descend into violence and tyranny...However, evidence from disasters indicates that humans do not all descend into uncaring and violent people, or that those who do are the ones that fare the best. Rather, people are inspired to care for and collaborate with each other."

Hence, shifting the narrative from fear and denial to acceptance and action could be instrumental. Helping people realize that while the structures of society may fail, human kindness and collaboration can persist. It is through these that resilient communities can form.

Yet as I share this perspective, let me leave you with a question for further reflection - how can we productively rewire our cultural assumptions and narratives about societal collapse and failure? How can our societies nurture resilience in the face of such challenges?”

See:? https://ai.servicespace.org/jembendell/ask?op=perma&msg_id=49795

What I like is that Jembot and I give very different answers to the same questions, and yet I am usually happy with the answers Jembot gives. So it doesn’t replace me but complements what I feel like saying at any one moment. One journalist interviewed “us” both, which was fun:

https://www.dilatemag.com/post/rise-of-the-doomsters-a-conversation-with-jem-bendell-his-chatbot

I encourage you to try Jembot as a complement to your studies during the course, as it draws upon my latest work, in a synthesising way. One thing Jembot has is a better memory than the real Jem!

--

Want to join one of our future cohorts? Then subscribe to my blog to receive notice of where I’m teaching next (in person or online).