Interdependent Leadership
Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.
- Mahatma Gandhi
There is an institutional decline occurring in the world today while at the same time there is a rising hunger among people of the world contemplating our way of living. Simultaneously, as an alternative to hierarchical leadership, there is a call for leaders to engage all members of the community in how decisions are being made and to share more of the leadership responsibility amongst those members. Many of our leaders today represent and defend a non-sustainable way of life built upon completion, domination and exploitation of nature’s resources. Yet, as Thomas Berry so eloquently put it:
The earth is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects and thus these values do not reflect our deeper human nature and instead create a sense of separation and 'power over' which comes with entitlement that ignore the needs of other species, other nations, tribes, races, and our own future generations.
In addition to our outdated hierarchical need for organizing activities to enable greater “control” and “efficiency”, we are also incredibly busy and distracted with minor, disconnected tasks which take us away from looking at the whole container. This is largely in part to our inability to individually attend to everyone’s needs in the overwhelmingly complex world around us – for this to occur, community is absolutely essential. One of our greatest losses in leadership today is in our inability to see the interrelationships within all things and the long-term cause and effect patterns of our short-term thinking and individualized rewards systems. Chief Seattle once said,
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
What we need are leaders willing to periodically step back and look at the patterns within the system, look at what is happening to all within, and be willing to name it for those who can’t or aren’t willing to see it. To do this a leader must be willing to step back from the community and withdraw into a silent, contemplative mindful state. Lao Tzu asked the question over 2,500 years ago,
Can you step back from your own mind [ego] and thus understand all things Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.
When a leader demonstrates the courage to step out of the frenetic pace and seeming urgency of the daily tasks to contemplate deeper inside themselves, they provide almost a permission for others to do the same. This simple task can transcend the voice of one into hearing the collective voices of many. A prophetic community can be more effective than a single voice because the community magnifies a clear, single message. The leader must create a process which invites a community to go deeper and deeper and deeper into a conscious articulation of the collective truth. But leadership of this sort requires courage, the courage to draw people into deeper conversations and the willingness to let ideas be shaped and reshaped as they emerge from the whole. Leadership attuned to the common good of a group is the rhythm of life done in a collective manner. Allowing community members to be actively involved in, or at least conscious of, what is going and trusting each other is a commitment to leading from the common good.
