Social Leadership: Ecosystem Perspectives

Social Leadership considers relationships and boundaries, not only between formal and social systems, but also more broadly, between tribal and community structures, between domains of disparate knowledge and capability, between systems of action and consequence, between ownership and influence, between certainty and safety, and between complexity and failure. And a host of other aspects. It is in this sense a systemic and trans-disciplinary tool, or lens, for leadership.

A ‘system ’ is made up of an interdependent and interrelated series of components. So the electrical wiring in your house makes up one type of system, and the cells of your body another. But not all systems are equal: some are adaptive, whilst others are fixed. You expect your body to heal, but do not expect your washing machine to do likewise. You have to intervene to fix it.

Systems may display resilience, or fragility. And of course systems can be held within a taxonomy, so the kettle that sits within your home is both part of the electrical landscape, but also arguably a system in it’s own right.

I think a valid perspective is to consider that ‘Formal’ leadership concerns the systems, structures, power, and effectiveness of the formally defined Organisation , whilst ‘Social Leadership’ considers the broader Social Context that flows through and around this. The two are entangled, but whilst both are ‘systems’, they operate in different domains, and through different mechanisms. This perspective hence considers leadership as broader than the formal domain alone, but also less defined in that it acts in a more broadly realised landscape. Not one thing so much as a collection of them.

In my work on Social Leadership i have always been drawn to ecosystem approaches – ecological systems being biological and evolutionary – as they reflect a holistic and complex, interdependent and interconnected perspective.

But also because they do not have one point of balance : ecosystems are inherently in motion, through the life that they host.

Within the system we breathe in, and we breathe out. The health of the ecosystem is not one defined place, but more broadly a wider space. It can be ‘healthy’ in different ways (and at different costs). And to tend to it, to nurture it, is to understand this. For me (and in my more recent language) it speaks of leadership as regenerative, as dialogic, as in motion, as imperfect, as inter-connective, as humble.

To adopt an ecosystem perspective on leadership may also cause us to consider levels of abstraction, itself a valid part of systems thinking approaches. So i can observe a single tree – a system that supports thousands of insects, and is interconnected to the broader landscape – and i can observe the forest in aggregate, or the land as a whole, or the weather that plays across it. Or i can soar above it and see the whole landscape.

To move, to be in motion , to change our location is to change perspective. In Organisational terms this relates to our certainty, ability to learn, the new nature of knowledge, the creation of ‘meaning’, the role of communities, the social currencies that glue them together, of the role of stories and narrative, and to understand aspects of the inter-tidal, liminal, and edge-land zones. Unclaimed or unowned space that is nonetheless part of the ecosystem. Again, this speaks to leadership as an act at the boundary.

An ecosystem perspective on Leadership is a way to conceptualise what leadership is, but equally we can locate leadership upon, or within, the ecosystem – to consider it as a landscape. To switch lens to view the ecosystem as the location or context of leadership (as opposed to the conception of it).

To extend this idea we may also shift our perspective, to take the ecosystem as the landscape, and then to consider leadership as the act of moving through it: this is perhaps to consider leadership as way-finding, navigating, map making, being lost, providing shelter or as an act of the Guide. It may also allow us to consider the landscape itself as meaning .

Whilst my current writing is visualising and exploring Social Leadership itself, i could again shift upwards to look at the overarching context of the Social Age and hence how this evolved context exerts it;s own pressure upon the ecosystem (and hence upon our leadership).

I recognise that my language is becoming obtuse: but this is a space for thinking for me right now. This is about writing as an intense and personal act of sense making: it may be shared, but not to directly convey meaning. Rather to define and explore a space.

#WorkingOutLoud on Social Leadership