Private Security Professionals of America

By Denisa Oosthuizen  |   Submitted On September 28, 2011

Collective leadership is based on the knowledge behind collaborative efforts and collective leadership rather than the leader's often "command-and-control" approach. It is not a new concept, yet it was recently brought to the attention of major corporations, CEOs and management alike, by one of Deloitte's global project, aimed at studying effective collaborations and their impact in organizations worldwide.

Leaders who want to succeed in today's global economy must acknowledge the power of collective leadership and understand that this is not a mere debate about traditional leadership versus the new direction in leadership. According to Head of the Deloitte Centre of Collective Leadership (DCCL), Stephen Langton, collective leadership is as much as the opposite ends of the old leadership coin: both the leadership implication which refers to telling people what to do and the collective mindset, which is people saying what they want to do themselves.

People have always associated that with the political meaning of capitalism and communism. We have been trained to think that there is leadership and there is followership. And yet, that cannot be the case, one cannot exist without the other. The new term of "collective leadership" is deliberately bringing together the opposite ends of the coin, but the concept itself is not new at all. You can find it superbly written in the writing of Lao Tzu 3000 years ago in which he said: "Of our best leaders, their people say we do it ourselves.” If you look at the leaders who most succeeded, they haven't been doing all the work; they just set up an inspiring, safe environment where people are clear and capable to want to work for themselves; and that's where we are going back now.

For far too many times we have been told that leaders are the conditions of success. They are paid to be the condition of this success. Success is credited to them, failure is blamed on them. And yet, a leader is just one human being, fragile, with moods and changes in its vision. In collective leadership, what we want to enforce is that the leader will be celebrated for creating the conditions for others to succeed. There is a difference between telling people what to do and teaching people; it looks so easy, yet we haven't been doing it.

A large number of organizations' failures are linked to the failure of its leaders. One of the first questions we should ask the leaders is "When was the last time you have asked your people for advice?” One of the leadership weapons we haven't been using is the ability to ask questions. Leaders must have the humility to say "I don't know the answer, but as a team we will find it out.” In most organizations, the management and the CEOs need the tools and methodology to create and ensure that these conditions are met.

Collective leadership embodies different expressions of cooperation levels within companies. There are different patterns in different organization, determined by various variables. The patterns explain the conditions for people to choose to cooperate. There are organizations where people don't need to cooperate, networks with unique tasks and functions.

There are many variables involved, but the clearest that define the patterns fit on these two drivers: "where did your task get manufactured or where does it come from (you or your boss)?" and "when you have got the task, how much freedom do you get to interpret and deliver it?"

The eight archetypes defined by Deloitte explain this better than anything: for instance, in the Conductor and Orchestra archetype, there is a boss (the conductor) and not much variance of changing how the piece of music will sound. One cannot interpret tasks in any other way than just based on the skills they have (the orchestra). In the Architect and Builders, the architect has the blueprint, but the engineers have to make the decisions every day in exactly how it's going to be achieved.

In total, eight themes have been identified where cooperation happens deliberately and several blends of these themes, referred to as "split archetypes.” Deloitte is an example of this - all eight archetypes are present in any of their firms. This is normal - the people on the media side of the firm all about creativity, in the audit side, you cannot stray from the regulations. The question here is not "How do we get everybody in the same culture?", but "How do we accurately see and structure chaos?” This is the role of the benchmark system: to determine and choose the appropriate "chaos.”

How important is the structure of the organization itself (formal or informal) in fostering a collective leadership? In the case of the collective leadership, it is not crucial. You can have a very flat structure, which is purely a command and control archetype. But let's look closer at start-up entrepreneurs. How many entrepreneurs are themselves the conditions for their start-up succeeding? They are working with their people, but since the beginnings, entrepreneurs will see their businesses as their show and, as much as they want to be popular, they are the dominant star. The model will best be described as the Conductor and Orchestra: "It's my vision, I have a specific way I want us to grow, you are great at what you are doing, but you need to help me with my plan.” Most entrepreneurial start-ups are classically very flat; there is no luxury of multiple levels. As they get successful, the old model cannot continue to work for the optimum level to be achieved and the question that needs to be answered is "what are the conditions of success here?"

Collective leadership looks at how you are lead now and how would you like being led to succeed. There is not a specific formula that shows you will succeed with a specific archetype or model. The best to explain this is to look at Cirque du Soleil. The way they are designing their wonderful performances is very collective: everybody has a voice. But imagine that in all their performance the lights go black and the fire alarm goes off: in that moment, how do they need leading? They won't need a leader who brainstorms with each on how to exit the building. In that moment they want someone to scream "Everybody listen to my voice, follow me out of this room" and so on.

It's a brutal command and control because that task needs it. The reason behind having the archetype, the identity and the task together is because without the task, the others are not helpful. Profiling people to understand what the task is gives them the context to source the leadership and choose how they want to be lead.

Other example is the integration and restructuring of distressed banks in a downfall economy. Thousands of people are forced to work together as a result of a merger. The generation of leaders that has been leading the bank for the last twenty years was doing to these people what he thought they needed, by leaving them alone. The surveys of these banks showed that people were screaming for command and control: "Tell us what is going to happen. Command me.” We can't say, for example, that command and control is bad for an organization. The right leadership style is the one that is right for the group of people that has to fulfill a specific task.

How can collective leadership be shared throughout an organization? It can be a simple discussion between leaders and their teams in a coffee shop. The revolution is here about the leader saying not "Here is what I want you to do,” but asking "What are the conditions that would help you succeed?" and listening. To those who have dedicated years of my career to understanding leadership, that is the revolution they never had.

Whenever there's a change, it becomes easier to get it right. When an organization goes from a long-term success into a crisis, at that moment everybody is looking to be led. The challenge though is where we no longer have a crisis and we are letting people lead themselves. We are coming out of a crisis which was about survival. We are going in a crisis which is about sustaining performance.

A lot of this is geared towards the generation who is going to inherit. Certainly, there is a generation coming through which is far more informed, far more aware of this topic, with a greater instinct to be selfless. The difference this time is the access to technology, the access to be able to communicate together. You can't hide leadership any more. An active leadership now is not governed by how people experience it, but by witnesses (thank Twitter for example). The new generation will perceive collective leadership as common sense, not revolution.

South Africa, for example, has been an inspiration for us worldwide. The country itself won't trumpet and push it, but we do. If you look at innovation, South Africa has put over 40% growth into investing in education in the past three years. To an extent so often in the international press, South Africa has always had the power of unions since the middle of the 19th century, which is a collective voice of employees. The collective power displayed there is simply amazing.

We cannot specify the future through the lens of collective leadership, but we can look at the country's current economy. In a booming economy, it is far more common to have a leadership style which is geared towards growth, aspiration. If a nation has a strong growth aspiration and a strong economy, high levels of employment, it would likely lead to a model which is considering the authority and power of the employees.

In a struggling nation, you would probably most identify a command and control structure because that is what people want. What we see now happening in Egypt and in Libya resembles, for example, Poland's revolutionary act in 1989 and creates a different leadership, a leadership people need and can identify with it based on how they want to be led.

Collective leadership starts with understanding people's needs and listening to their voices. All in all, it shows how individuals can collaborate to achieve extraordinary results together.

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Denisa Oosthuizen is the Publisher and Managing Editor of WealthWise magazine, an African free bi-monthly digital guide to wealth creation and wealth management, investing, business and entrepreneurship. Visit http://www.wealthwisemag.com.

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