Reversed Leadership is Today’s Logic

Leadership has little to do with hierarchy and everything to do with exerting influence that brings about change.

This means practicing wise ignorance, listening to the edges and managing up. All this leads to acting with today’s logic rather than living in yesterday.

Four practices emerged in my research (Future2043) and conversations with my guests in Imaginize.World , my video-podcast.

We will run through them one by one:

·?????? Practice wise ignorance

·?????? Listen to the edges

·?????? Get air cover: manage up

·?????? Act with today’s logic?

Practice wise ignorance and help others participate as “leaders”.

The diversity of thought and ideas that result from wise ignorance let people and organizations be better prepared when a crisis happens.?

Wise ignorance means the ability to ask questions and listen to the answers as part of an open and participatory leadership style.

I talked with Pieter Franken, who was on the front lines of the Fukushima nuclear accident caused by the earthquake and tsunami. This event was the beginning of the creation of Safecast, now considered one of the world’s most effective citizen science initiatives, and the subject of our conversation.

I asked him how Safecast was organized. His response (shortened:

• “It has been very much a volunteer-driven organization where people are coming in and out and contribute. People can take more leadership and say, ‘I’m going to build this piece, I’m going to work on this piece.’ We are an organization incorporated as a nonprofit. So we do have a little bit of structure because when people donate money to us, we need to properly manage that.
• "But we’re largely volunteer-driven where we don’t have staff that are full-time paid. People come together. Currently, we use something like Slack where everybody gets together, and decisions tend to be taken in a collaborative fashion…. There is no, how do you say, you can’t do this or you can’t do that. Of course it has to stay within a certain scope.”

More info including transcript here: https://imaginize.world/pieter-franken-safecast-citizen-science/

Open your mind and listen to the edges.

Reverse leaders find ways to scan the horizon around them, exploring far beyond their own industry and country.

Listening to the edges is also important in terms of age as well. Not limiting discussion to people of working age but listening to the young.

Nirere Sadrach, founder and organizer of End Plastic Now, started in Uganda in 2020.

He emphasized start young during our conversation when I asked him what educational systems can do to make people aware of the full lifecycle of plastic and its dangers. Children will become leaders and policy makers:

His response (shortened)

• There is a lot we have to deal with if we are to educate our people. Because these people are the ones who become leaders, and the leaders are the ones who become policy makers.
• We have to make sure that we are triggering action and knowledge that can inspire action, and people can change and can practice a life free from plastic.

More info including transcript here: https://imaginize.world/nirere-ending-plastics/

Air cover: manage up

If you feel you are in a “reversed leadership” position, you should take a major precaution, one that Mandar Apte called “air cover” in our conversation.

Mandar is the Executive Director of the Cities4Peace initiative and, among other activities, produced and directed the film From India With Love, a documentary about a trip to and across India and the transformational experience of a group of victims of violence.

In our conversation, he explained that the people in his trips and workshops need to be leaders “of some influence” to use his words, so that they are in position to implement their ideas and be “transformative” leaders.

• "So now it has to be a leader of some influence so that when they come back, they can do some implementation work.
• "So mayors of the United States came with me, police chiefs came with me, leaders of gangs came with me, school leaders came with me. So it was my way of looking at my country through the eyes of these pilgrims. So that was a very different experience for me as a tour guide, but holding the space for transformative leadership.

More info including transcript here: https://imaginize.world/mandar-apte-building-culture-peace/

Act with today’s logic: next practices, not best practices

Leaders in general and particular reverse leaders should not focus on best practices, which are by definition based on the past, but rather look for next practices.[1]

Science is where we need to pay more attention to find next practices. In spite of the fact that science serves as an indicator of what humanity is doing to the earth, it is overlooked by many people even as climate disasters wreak havoc.

Extracts from participants in different countries who participated in my Future 2043 survey illustrate this. The question was “Will scientists be seen as thought leaders, sources of validated information and guidance, or will they be largely considered irrelevant, not trustworthy?

A selection of responses chosen to show the range of opinions:

• “If we don't see scientists as thought leaders, we will be on the way to becoming cavemen once again. United States
• ?“Scientists will in best case get more place through better leaders, but they are mostly busy and not interested to lead. Sweden

?Not everyone was optimistic:

• Scientists will continue to be seen as thought leaders, but fallible. As we saw during the pandemic, experts had sharply divergent views on what needed to be done. If we expect science to deliver a unified message on important matters, we will be disappointed. India

Hopeful...

• “Scientists are still regarded as thought leaders but more people from the public will also emerge as leaders due to the open science movements. Hong Kong

?My questions to you, my readers...

Are we moving towards next practices?

Is reversed leadership becoming today’s logic? It seems to me it is happening in quite a few places. However, the biggest challenge is to get it into the mindset of leaders at all levels.

Remember my opening sentence? “Leadership has little to do with hierarchy and everything to do with exerting influence that brings about change. “

What do you think? Please share your thoughts here about two things:

• Have you seen examples of next practices?
• Have you seen, or even better, personally experienced reversed leadership?
• And, above all, how can we all exert influence that brings about change?

[1] C.K. Prahalad, Indian-American entrepreneur and author. 1941 – 2010.

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