Leading By Example 2: A MANIFESTO FOR RETHINKING INCLUSIVE GOVERNANCE
In part 2 of our leading by example leadership blog series, we look to nature to help us explore a new way of thinking about inclusive governance
Let’s be honest. Traditional governance as we know it is not working. And we, the arts and culture sector have a serious problem.
Despite the many problems of traditional board governance and leadership, one that has really stood out for us lately (and highlighted even more so by the death of The Queen) is just how committed we are as a society to upholding the idea that there is, and can only ever be, space for one or a few leader(s). We’ve seen first hand how individualistic ideas of leadership in the sector can breed competition, slow progress and erase the contributions of others in making great things happen.
Despite seducing those in positions of power with feelings of grandeur, self-righteousness and entitlement, we often don’t speak about the ways that these individualistic ideas of leadership constrain, impact and erase leaders too. Often, in order to maintain their positions, board members, CEOS and managers have to exert a lot of energy adopting language, clothes, titles etc. that increase their proximity to a white supremacist, masculine ideal of what leadership is can be stifling at best and deeply harmful at worst. We believe focusing on individual leaders is standing in the way of leading real radical change and galvanising collective action, so we want to propose a new way of doing governance.
For those of you who are new here, Rising is a radical, youth-led social enterprise that supports our diverse, impactful community of young creatives to take up space and affect social change in the cultural and creative sector - and that includes through leadership too. Our advisory board is made up exclusively of young people and we commission young people as leadership consultants and project managers as well as recruiting radical young thinkers onto other organisations’ boards through OnBoard. We have been committed to using Rising as a test bed for interrogating and challenging traditional models of leadership, from how our programmes are run, our policies, to how we hire and treat the team, board and community. We know that young people are leaders now and that challenging the status quo and reimagining what is possible is not just a nicety but necessary in changing the sector and the world. So let’s push it further.
A Manifesto for New Models of Governance?
In August, we decided to give capitalism the finger and close the agency to public facing work. We spent the time together outside resting, connecting as a team and doing the nourishing internal questioning that sustains the radical work we do and hope to continue. In this month of rest, we were deeply inspired by the ways trees, fungi and rivers connect, bring life and resource-share, and we began thinking about how this could relate to a community of practice and leadership. What would it look like if we saw leadership as a resource instead of a position? What would happen if we saw governance as part of everyone’s responsibility to each other instead of something for the select few? How might your role as a board member / leader change if you saw it as part of an ecosystem and not a hierarchy?
Here are some prompts for reflection:
1. Maybe it's not a seat at the table, but a plant in a wildflower meadow?
Tables are restrictive, rigid things that do not allow space for movement, stretching or growth; using them to think about leadership feels redundant and unuseful to us. It’s time we became more expansive with our ideas of what governance is and can be, what that looks like and who can shape it. Seeing leadership as a garden allows us to see that we all have a part to play in guiding and leading organisations, whether it’s the community, the staff, the senior leadership team or the board. These roles should not be seen in a hierarchy, in competition nor as existing in isolation but as interdependent and integral to leading change.
Based on where we are now, seeing governance as a diverse, rich resource for the sector is going to take some collective reimagining, but lucky for us, we’re creatives. We need to stop seeing leadership as a rectangular table and instead see it as a meadow - a self-sustaining space where we can grow the nourishment and tools we need and that is open to everyone.
Question for reflection:How might your approach to making your leadership / governance more inclusive change when you move from thinking about giving more people a seat at the table and instead recognise the garden that people are already a part of and contributing to?
2. Leadership is not about having 'power over', 'power to'...
The Rising Board at our Annual Away Day in August 2022
We’re sometimes surprised at how many leaders see their role and responsibility in relation to maintaining the status quo, despite one of the most exciting things about leadership is the capacity to create movement and change. As we’ve seen in the natural world, over-control and over-manicuring kills natural ecosystems, they thrive instead, on balance, interdependence and trust. Having a ‘power over’ mindset, means that gatekeeping, the management of people and distance from the real work take precedence. A lot of energy goes into maintaining processes that are often detrimental to the work / mission in the name of bureaucracy.
To create leadership change, a ‘power to’ mindset is needed to acknowledge the collective power and resource you have in your organisation. Not seeing yourselves as having control ‘power over’ people and processes, but seeing yourselves and everyone in your organisation as having equal ‘power-to’ problem-solve, be proactive, navigate challenge, conflict and risk. It moves away from dictating people and processes to thinking about the bigger picture and the possibilities you have at your disposal. Leadership should be empowering not just to those who are leaders, but everyone else that leaders are there to serve. Shifting from a stifling ‘power-over’ mindset to a ‘power-to’ mindset, ultimately helps you move from focusing on why you can’t do something to ‘why not?’.
Question for reflection: As a leader/ leadership team how can you create the conditions for everyone in your organisation to feel ownership over your work and mission that goes beyond their roles, inspired by a ‘power-to’ mindset?
3. Honouring Cycles and Seasons
We’ve inherited a scarcity mindset and the need for on-going production from capitalism, but one thing nature teaches us is to honour cycles and seasons. There is a lot of demand for delivering all-year round, for productivity to be king - but leadership looks very different when we lean into periods for hibernation, rest, growth and scaling down. We would argue that growth isn’t just about producing more and scaling up, it's about embedding roots, consolidating and sharing resources and having more opportunities for rest. Take note of the the cycles within of your organisation, treat them seriously and make them visible to your staff, audiences and community. Recognise that your role as a leader may look different depending on the season you’re in, and that’s okay.
Question for reflection: What are the different seasons to your work? In what ways can you honour them, lean into them more and build in effective systems that protect them?
We’ve seen individualistic approaches of leadership stand in the way of organisations fulfilling their civic responsibilities to their staff, audiences and the wider communities that they sit in. We’ve watched exciting, forward-thinking organisations become stagnant and ineffective due to being constrained to the scope of one person’s leadership and the potency of their fear. Fear of change. Fear of letting go. Fear of messing up. Fear of people seeing your humanness. And yet, despite the personal impacts of leadership as it currently is, where people are literally forced to push down feelings of imposter syndrome, self-medicate against burn-out and power-dress themselves into feeling like they belong, they still don’t want to give it up because giving up feels like individual failure. We’ve seen all too many times that once you get a seat at the table it becomes hard, almost impossible, to give it up. What if it was encouraged to share your seat like you would for an elderly person on the train? Better yet, what if we weren’t talking about a seat at a table at all? What if governance could be something else entirely? What if leadership was seen as an ecosystem?
Remember, we’re all plants and none are more important than others - even weeds have place and purpose in an ecosystem. Take time to reflect on:
1. As a leader, what are your seeds? 🌻 ( what are the things that you can plant now to grow for others to benefit from?)
2. Where do you get your sunlight? ☀️ (what are the things and who are the people that nourish you and your leadership?)
3. What waters you and your communities? How can you share that with others? 💧 (think about your resources, how can you share those with others?
Rising have a range of leadership consultancy offers available to our partners, whether it's to bring young trustees on to your board, or you're looking for a critical friend and advice, get in touch with Jess to find out more.
