The lone nut

"Change doesn't happen from the top, to make change you need to let individuals take control." Felicity Ketelaar.

When we think of leadership, we think of ONE person, directing a group of people to achieve a particular goal. We seem to think that it's the role of a lone nut, ONE person with a crazy idea for change, with many followers. But in fact leadership is a team effort.

Leadership begins with the actions of one person, but ends with the empowerment of the followers. This concept is called distributed leadership. The idea is that making a change in an issue does not rely on the leadership of the lone nut, but instead relies on the combined leadership of a mixed bag of nuts. To create this combined leadership, the initiator needs to encourage others to step up and take charge when their expertise is needed.

"Distributed leadership is not something 'done' by an individual 'to' others, or a set of individual actions through which people contribute to a group... [it] is a group activity that works through and within relationships, rather than individual action." (Bennet et al. 2003, page 3)

When the initiator encourages collaboration and teamwork, and allows other people to take their turn as a leader, the goal that everyone is trying to achieve can be reached much more easily. We only need to look at Gru's minions to see this.

Dave, in the beginning is directing the minions so that he can screw on the light bulb. They fail at screwing at doing this because they are relying on the leadership of an individual. But at the end of the clip we see them adopt collaborative leadership and all the minions are able to use Dave as a lightbulb.

This example is a bit silly, but we can take a look into our local community for some inspiration. I recently had the opportunity to interview Felicity Ketelaar, who works for the Refugee and Migration Review Tribunals. These tribunals are currently undergoing a massive change, they are trying to nationalise the organisation.

The tribunals consist of two fairly autonomist offices in Sydney and Melbourne, that have very different cultures instilled into their current systems. In order to nationalise the tribunals, people need to stop thinking of the two offices as separate and instead think of them as one unit. They also need to adapt the separate cultures so that they create a unified one.

People tend to be fearful of big changes like this as they are comfortable with the status quo and unsure of what the result could be in the future. To help people feel like the change isn't being imposed on them Felicity, as part of her role as a change leader (in charge of creating a smooth transition) for the Melbourne office, has given leadership roles to different areas within the tribunals, she has empowered the mixed bag of nuts. 

People on all levels of the organisation have been given roles, from administration to higher level staff. It allows all people to view the move towards this change as a joint effort. They are able to take control of the situation and hence this process of making the change is a result of everyone's combined opinions and ideas.

"Identifying a change champion in individual work areas benefits that particular area and gets people on board." Felicity Ketelaar.

This distribution of activities to different areas of the organisation through change champions (leaders of transitioning the change in their particular area) has allowed, so far, a smooth transition, with most people getting on board. Felicity has made sure that the people at the bottom don't hold her up, instead she holds up the people.

Felicity has found that this kind of environment is difficult to create. She has noticed that it is easier to create when people are genuinely passionate and interested in the issue at hand.

In most workplaces people are all there for different reasons and so find it difficult to align their interests towards a common goal. Their different motivations make it difficult to lead them towards an end goal. This is where, as the initiator, communication and knowing the types of people you are dealing with becomes really important in distributive leadership.

The initiator needs to be able to adjust their communication style to suit the people they are talking to. This allows everyone to work towards a common goal and hence encourage them to take on leadership roles to optimise teamwork, (Carter, Bishop, Kravits 2012). 

Leadership is not just about directing a group of people, it's about creating an environment where people are not afraid to take on leadership roles when it is needed. 

Being a leader can mean being a bit nutty, but it is not about being the lone nut, rather it's about having a mixed bag of nuts.

References:

Text:

Bennet, N, Wise, C, Woods, P, Harvey, J 2003, Distributive Leadership: A Review of Literature, The Open University, United Kingdom

Carter, C, Bishop, J, Kravits, S 2012, Keys to Succes: Teamwork and Leadership, Prentice Hall, New Jersey

Video:

Michael Hughes 2010, Leadership From A Dancing Guy, online video, viewed 12 May 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO8MwBZl-Vc

Kieu Minh Hieu 2013, Teamwork- Minions- Despicable Me, online video, viewed 12 May 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvVEeoKrm48

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment 2014, The Nut Job- Featurette- Teamwork, online video, viewed 13 May 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Rqf82zoiI

Images:

Hakimi, N 2009, Leader Empowering Behaviour: The Perspective, online image, viewed 14 May 2015, https://repub.eur.nl/pub/17701/EPS2010184ORGHakimi.pdf