Illustration of 4 people in a line, climbing up a mountain, with the leader pointing the way with a red flag

Traditional management follows the Leader-Follower paradigm. Hierarchal, top down, clear accountability. Leader-Leader is about shared responsibility, collaboration, innovation and is based upon the belief that everyone has within them the ability to contribute, to give meaningful input and valuable feedback, to display leadership behaviors and think critically. The organization becomes more resilient, as leadership skills are distributed and not concentrated in one person. The goal is to foster initiative, creativity, and adaptivity. To succeed, Leader-Leader requires deep engagement and fully invested participants. Done well, the organization is stronger, more resilient with leadership skills widely distributed throughout.

The challenge: Leader-Leader is definitely a more complex structure, requiring meaningful mindset and culture shifts at all levels as well as above average communication skills to avoid confusion and ambiguity and roles and duties. Authority figures must be willing to relinquish power AND others must be willing to accept the related responsibility (and possibly stress) and absorb a deeper than normal understanding of the business model and organizational goals and constraints. Leader-Leader is not easy to implement and in the short term can result in the appearance of the infamous ‘J-curve’; things get worse before they get better as folks learn new ways, new systems and procedures.

If it were easy, everyone would do it. The most successful companies of the future will do what it takes to fully engage, fully empower all team members: “An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.” – Stephen R. Covey, 7 Habit of Highly Effective People.

Closing Quotes:

“You don’t build a business, you build people, then people build the business.” – Zig Ziglar, 1926-2012, ‘Meet You at the Top’

“In the past a leader was a boss. Today’s leaders must be partners with their people… they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.” – Ken Blanchard, b. 1939,’ The One Minute Manager’

“The leader-leader structure is fundamentally different… At its core is the belief that we can all be leaders and, in fact, it’s best when we all are leaders. Leadership is not some mystical quality that some possess and others do not. As humans, we all have what it takes.” – L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier