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Identifying
and Training Community Leaders
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Lau-Tse, Mujeeb
Khan, Sam duBois and Ana Paula Silvestre
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Concept
Paper .
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What
kind of leadership is needed to lead or to mobilise a community?
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First, we must identify
the nature of leadership itself. This is different from characteristics
of leaders, including characteristics we desire them to have.
There is probably only
one characteristic that makes a person a leader. It is they lead, and others
follow. To avoid the implication that the followers are blind or like sheep,
and that a leader must go where she or he wants those followers to go,
we might reword that and say: "A person is a leader when she or he suggests
or proposes some action and others agree with it and are willing to do
it."
All other characteristics
are characteristics of kinds of leaders, not leadership itself.
When a mobiliser is
organizing a community, she or he needs to identify community leaders and
potential leaders, because leadership is a vital element of that organizing
and organized action. Listen carefully. When some individuals speak,
no one pays attention. When others speak, people listen, and agree with
the ideas put forward. The mobiliser must find and shape local leaders
and potential leaders. If someone says things with which the mobiliser
agrees, but no one listens to, the mobiliser must be firm and go on to
others. When a person makes suggestions that other people take seriously,
even if the ideas are not in compliance with the principles the mobiliser
wants to emphasize, the mobiliser needs to select that person for training
and shaping.
A leader is one who
leads.
Once we understand
leadership itself, it is now time to ask what characteristics can leaders
have that we desire, or see as being most useful
The Thoughts
of Lao Tse
"To lead people,
walk beside them ..."
Although he was writing
about three thousand years ago in China, Lao Tsu's thought are very modern.
He was suggesting democracy in a mild, calm way, long before the time of
Classical Greece. His philosophy is much in contrast with the authoritarian
approach of Confucius.
In the following, Lao
Tse is talking about characteristics leader have, not their leadership
itself.
As for the best
leaders, the people do not notice their existence.
The next best, the
people honour and praise.
The next, the people
fear;
and the next, the
people hate ...
When the best leader's
work is done the people say,
"We did it ourselves!"
Lao-Tsu
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above quotation is taken from the same chapter of the Tao Chi as the "Go"
poem that we use for our central inspiration for community empowerment
training. We are indebted to Mujeeb Khan and his Bhumi organization
in India for suggesting this. Bhumi. |
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| There
are different kinds of leadership that are needed in different contexts
and for different purposes. |
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It is an important
element of making communities stronger, but a different kind of leadership
than as in the military or in corporations. |
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| It
is relatively easy to recognise what we want, but how do we train someone
to obtain it (as a mobiliser and as a community leader), and how do we
train someone to recognise it in a community member, let alone recognise
a potential community leader? |
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| There
is a lot of training in leadership that is used by military organizations,
but that is leadership in a hierarchical organization. |
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The social
organization of a community is not the same as the social organization
of an army or air force, and a different kind of leadership is needed. |
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| Similarly,
there is a lot of leadership training used by commercial corporations,
but corporations are organized differently than communities; again a different
kind of leadership is needed. We want Gemeinschaft,
not Gesellschaft leadership. |
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| There
are many references to leadership on the Internet, and easy to find if
we use any search engine. |
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| There
are many characteristics in leaders that we want: honesty, transparency,
charisma, ability to organize, thoroughness, fairness, loyalty, dependability,
ability to listen, respect for the people, ability to communicate, and
several others. |
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These are characteristics
of leaders we want; they are not elements of leadership per se .
. . trainable and identifiable. |
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| I
have not seen one document that carefully describes what leadership is,
as applicable to a community. |
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Nor are there
simple, non theoretical documents in how to train people to become community
leaders, or how mobilisers can recognise natural and potential leaders
in a community they want to strengthen. |
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| So
I am looking for your input here. Even partial or half thought out
ideas will be welcome, and perhaps we can come up with something through
debate, dialogue and discussion. Also your ideas about which module
to put this in. |
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Sam duBois, our colleague
and my good friend in Ecuador, contributed the following. Note that
he is talking about qualities of leaders that we desire, not the nature
of leadership itself:
| In
a world of "too many chiefs and not enough Indians" (yet another phrase
I have failed to bring into this century...) why leadership? No, just kidding
– I agree with you completely. I once (in a past life, in a former century)
did a degree in "leadership" and what it meant was curriculum co-ordination
and staff supervision in schools ... And they were taking all their research
from the corporate world.
We have a program in
Latin America called "Liderazgo Moral" by Nur University in Santa Cruz
de la Sierra. The Nur was founded by Bahá'ís and friends of Bahá'ís
(i.e., the human race!) and is an interesting outfit. For example (you
won't believe this, but I'll say it anyway) their professors are all trained
in participatory learning, and their classes all follow through a progressive,
active cycle that touches on several different "kinds of intelligence"
(you know, as in Gardner). Professors who know how to teach? Yep!
I'm sure that you can
instantly find unlimited material on the Web in Spanish, but a number of
the founding geniuses are native speakers of English, so I'm sure that
a request to the U will readily get you to someone who can poke around
in their project proposals and doctoral dissertations and come up with
more material than you were really looking for!
Their programs include
planning projects with communities. For example, when folks lament that
this logical planning framework is too difficult, my Bernarda (who studied
with the Nur) just smiles and runs them through it the way Nur did the
log
frame, and in a little while no one is afraid of it anymore! She has
campesinos/as coming from all over the province to work on projects and
their trappings, using the Nur materials and approaches.
When Liderazgo Moral
started a couple of decades ago, and no one had heard of it (now they have
done lots more in Ecuador, including a World-Bank-funded M.A. program for
thousands of teachers!) I used to explain it this way (it's better in Spanish,
but still makes enough sense in English):
Normal leaders dominate
others to serve themselves – moral leaders dominate themselves to serve
others!
Sam duBois |
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Ana tackles the difference
between leadership in corporations and the military versus what is needed
for community mobilization and action:
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This discussion
about leadership in communities is very interesting, and I would like to
share some of my thoughts about it, apologizing me for my terrific English.
I think the key is
the difference of structures in army, corporations and communities like
this one; the first two have vertical structures and the last aims to have
horizontal structures. So, I think that we have to find a different kind
of dynamics; not thinking just on leadership but that every and each role
is absolutely necessary in a group to achieve a goal. The group's psychology
could help us to understand this better (see group dynamics and group roles).
The main question is:
"Should we still think on leadership, as we did up to now, or should we
try another form of thinking about groups or organizations?
We are very used to
personalize groups, to think in one person who is the leader, who dictates
to the others, who represents the others, who is the face of a movement.
But, instead of this, I think we have to promote that the team is the more
important than an individual leader, that every role in a group is important
in it, not only the leader. For example, leaderships could be the
shared with 2 or more persons, or the group could have commissions for
different functions, and one of these is in charge of representing the
group. If we think horizontally, we should promote horizontal structures
too.
I'll think more about
it, and everything I could find on this matter, i'll share with you.
Cheers
Ana Paula Silvestre |
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Hassan reminds us
that some communities have hierarchical structure and their leaders appear
to resemble those of the military or corporations:
| Here is my
thought on the topic:
Whereas all said is
correct in some way or other. But the fundamental question that remains
is why we need leaders or leadership in communities. Of course, the
answer varies from communities to communities based on their context. However,
the basic idea behind community leadership or leader for community, is
to have leader or leadership that could provoke community or keeps community
together (mobilized in other words). Beside, community also need
leadership for facilitation of thought process on various issues and their
solutions. Of course there could be variety of other reasons for
having leaders or leadership in community.
While it is right that
there is a structure difference between armies/corporates and communities.
yet there exists a vertical structure in many communities ..... where establishment
of horizontal structure is a larger aim of community interventions in many
community development initiatives. For example, in Pakistan, there
always is a community notable or group notables to lead community and he
is (or they are) usually someone who is thought to be above the community
(Just as a corporate director or military top official). He has to
decide the fate of community leaders. In case where exists feudal system.
there are these feudal lords as self-proclaimed leaders of communities
and they are in many ways worst than military dictatorship. Of course,
their decision making process also varies from case to case. In communities,
where communities are closely linked to each other, the notables undertake
a consultative process and the decision is reached through a complete consensus
or by voting. Whereas in other case, the notables verdict is final
and is to be followed by rest of the community fellows whether they are
pleased are not. Of course this kind of leadership should not desired.
Within communities
there often exists structures based on cultural values, religion, local
values. In worst case, these structures become worst barrier to the community
development and we often call them cultural and religious institutions.
What we or I here often
mean is we need a participatory leadership, or in other words shared leadership,
in communities. But we really need to learn the academics or philosophy
of leaders and leaderships types. They are types are mainly determined
based on the conduct of a leader or the decision making process he/she
likes. If he/she likes to impose, its autocrat or whatever ..... continues
...... (may be bit later) ....
Now why we need leadership
training for community mobilizers? Because they are always present in communities
trying to mobilize them or do other actions as per projects or needs of
communities. They are some way or other leading community. So they need
a good understanding of the leadership skills in order to better take on
their work. Caution for them is to always check if they are trying to impose
anything on communities or there are trying create those hierarchical structures
themselves by trying to master of communities' fate/decisions/issues .......
May be more later .....
I need to refine my ideas more .... for this I would some feedback as well.
Hassan Mirani |
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| Leadership
and Mobilization: |
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The mobiliser must identify community leaders
and potential leaders and train them to continue to mobilise the community,
and strengthen it after the mobiliser leaves. It is more effective
to search for the leaders, even if they do not yet share the values we
promote, and mould them to the values of community leaders we desire, than
to find individuals who have the values we want, but have no innate abilities
to lead the community.
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2008.11.28