Greetings, fellow nonprofiteers. A few years ago, well quite a few years ago actually, I was working with some people at Alverno to develop a rubric of leadership competencies. I was running Future Milwaukee at the time, and we wanted to develop an advanced leadership program. The folks at Alverno, as always, were wonderfully creative, thoughtful, and great to work with. We did develop a competency model based on a slot of research into other models, and we used that in the last year of my tenure at Future Milwaukee. I have also used it in workshops when talking about leadership.
Lately I have been doing some thinking about the difference between “leadership” and “leading.” In the nonprofit sector we have a lot of leadership development programs, with the now mothballed Future Milwaukee among them. This is where we teach the competencies like the ability to develop a vision for the future, or risk-taking, or even public speaking. Some really developed models talk about not only the competencies you want to develop in yourself, but also the competencies you over-use. In my case that was risk-taking.
But that is different from actually leading. The reason this has come up in my mind is that a number of friends and colleagues have been victims of some pretty bad leading, recently. The people doing the bad leading are generally accepted as leaders in our sector. I started thinking about what happened in each of those circumstances.
What it boils down to so often is power and the power dynamic in any hierarchical organizational structure. No surprise, right?
Don’t get me wrong: I am not a proponent of a flat structure as the cure-all for all organizations. I really do believe that there is something to be said for a tiered structure for a nonprofit. To me, flat, hierarchical, shared, or revolving leadership structures all can work depending on the team that is in place and if it reflects the values your organization holds dear. For example, an organization promoting equitable society probably should not be structured with a very stiff hierarchy and a large split between the staff and the board. But that’s the topic for another blog (and a potential upcoming workshop series, btw).
In any corporate structure there is probably some kind of politics at play. We are all people. When there is an Executive Director that person is a leader, seen as leading the team. The Director or even the Co-Directors have others reporting to them and that means there is a power dynamic. How that leader manages that power dynamic demonstrates if they are leading well or not. Aye – there’s the rub! Here are some of the issues I noted in the circumstances of my friends and colleagues.
· Egotism. In one case there was a person with founder’s syndrome who did not believe that anyone else could manage the organization as well as they could. They created doubt and confusion about the actual circumstances of the organization, making it seem like they had to be in charge in order to make sense out of, and then clean up the mess. “Look at me,” they seemed to be saying. “I am the only person who can do this so how could you even think of replacing me.”
· Despotism. In another case, the leader’s actions made it look a lot like they felt threatened. A number of people who were doing their jobs and doing them well were let go. The leader in question had given them a vision and clear direction. These staff members took that and ran with it. They developed ideas and initiatives and put them it into action to bring that vision to reality. To the leader that meant they had strayed, even betrayed the direction they had been given. “You have done something beyond what I told you to do,” they seemed to be saying. “So, you have to go.”
· Totalitarianism. The final case is an example of not allowing any decision to be made anywhere in the organization but at the top. This is a very large organization with an extremely rigid and overwhelming bureaucracy. Every decision has to get multiple sign-offs but people at various levels of the structure, always ending up at the “C-suite.” That has led to an organization that is becoming slow and unable to respond quickly to opportunities and needs. “We are the wise elders who control this grand edifice,” they seem to be saying. “Nothing may proceed unless we give it our blessing.”
What I see in each of these cases is a lack of trust. The leaders of these organizations have great reputations – they are held up as examples of great leadership. But, in each case, they have not been leading well because they do not trust other people on the team. It all had to come back to the leader as the only place where the right decision will be made.
A number of years ago, as I embarked on the journey that has led me to working as a consultant on capacity-building in the nonprofit sector, I was hired by Bill Durkin, who recently passed away. One comment Bill made still resonates with me as a great description of the difference between leadership and leading. He said that leading well means you have to believe that people will say the right things and make the right decisions even if you are not in the room.
Egotists, despots, and totalitarians do not believe that. Legislators who try to strip people of voting rights do not believe that.
Just saying.
A good leader sees success and demonstrates leadership, believing the team can get it done.
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