Leadership: Motion - Difference - Bridging

Considering leadership as motion: not simply within one system, but between spaces. At the boundary. Some fragments of thought around this:

Silence as a sharp tool: the ways that silence is felt, imposed, explored. The role of leader to create space – and our comfort with silence. Leadership voice as ‘silence’ rather than noise: the antithesis of the hero leader? What does it take to understand silence? To use it, deploy it, as opposed to filling it or fearing it.

To understand our responsibility: to reach into silence, to understand the contextual nature of voice. To consider how voice is stripped away, taken, opposed, deflected, marginalised, blocked. Considering motion: the leader as itinerant, mobile, at the boundary, in liminal spaces, intersections, to consider leadership in inter-tidal spaces, edge-lands. Leadership beyond the system: dynamic tensions between systems. Multi-dimensional perspectives on leadership as trans-system – operating to carry stories, voice, experience, power, between systems.

Leader as bridge builder: in similarity, consensus, but also into difference and dissent. The bridge as trading space – the role of leadership to protect bridges.

The idea of the Organisation as fractured, tribal, contextual, all as a strength: strength not through diversity, but difference and interconnection.

I think many Organisations are cowed by the dominant language of ‘whole self’, of ‘inclusion’ as a one dimensional picture, and hence fail to recognise the value in our connected difference and respectful dissent. Our ability to be together without creating the ‘other’, or the enemy. That we can be stronger through meta-tribal structures, as opposed to unifying ones.

#WorkingOutLoud on Social Leadership