We don’t need collective leadership, we need corrective leadership!
A Rant
In recent years, the stories of friendships, projects, networks and collectives that fail have been piling up. Because of their own claims, because of questionable practices, because of leaders who don’t walk their own talk, because of the silence of others.
Left, right, above and below we read about “collective leadership”, “participatory leadership” and the important focus on the new “we”. People practise awareness and non-violent communication, sit in a circle and explain their needs to each other. Yes, I think that’s great, I do that too.
But something is missing. If it can still be the case that one person constantly deflects the necessary responsibility, if non-joking jokes are constantly made at the expense of others, if groups don’t get exactly what they have been preaching for years right and the community suffers as a result, if no one stands up to say “stop”, then the whole collective is of no help. When hierarchical flatness is preached and yet grey eminences have all the say, when decision-making structures are on paper but not applied, when people simply behave badly on a regular basis, then participatory leadership my ass.
In recent days, I have found myself and others increasingly in situations where someone should have said something a long time ago, but no one does or did. Out of consideration and misunderstood tolerance, we remain silent. Individually and together. And with every silence in a situation where “someone should have said something” we give another metre to the bullies.
Who do I mean by that? I mean you, who paralyse an entire system with your old hurts and sensitivities and keep it in chains because no one dares to tell you how shitty you behave on a regular basis. Probably this is true for all of us in different contexts. People around us stay silent because it’s so uncomfortable to point fingers at the pain. Because we feel it together. Because we don’t want to admit it, because it could happen to us. Because we have to lean out of the window of shared comfort and test the so-called friendships.
Oh no, then it’s easier to leave. To go somewhere else where it doesn’t work again. Because again no one stands up and says “Not like this!”.
I’m so tired of hearing the stories about this and that and the other. And when I ask if anyone has ever spoken to them about it, I hear “Yeah, no, that wasn’t the right opportunity” or “I’ve already tried that, but it doesn’t help”.
I repeatedly quote a friend (and I’m sorry I can’t remember who it was, please get back to me if you read this so I can reference you properly) who said in 2012 or so: “In the end it all boils down to the question: what do we do with the bullies?”
Of course they are hurt too, of course they have their reasons, of course you can see everything from the other perspective and of course I first assume incompetence instead of malice. And yet society, the community, the co-working space, the family, the circle of friends, the staff, the project all suffer from the fact that somehow everyone is always rolling their eyes and thinking their own way.
So. Instead of leading collectively and letting ourselves be friendly in the front but letting the rifts get deeper and deeper in the back, let’s lead correctively! Let us make it our task to tolerate less and less what is toxic, to say more and more clearly what is not okay. Let us make it our task to mirror to others their effectiveness on systems, in love and if necessary also in “giraffe language”, but let us learn to say no! And let’s learn to mirror to people that they are not suited for a role. Let’s learn to point out where people harm us/others again and again.
People who do not notice boundaries of any kind, need these to be pointed out to them. People who say “Yes, I understand” in two-way conversations but do not change their behavior need the group to be able to see themselves, because they have not learned to take the individual mirror seriously. People for whom it is not enough to tell them once what they do not see, need to be able to experience it several times and witnessed by others. We deprive ourselves of the chance to grow together if we remain silent.
Yes, of course it hurts and is existentially threatening. Of course it is frightening and terribly uncomfortable. Yes, we have not learned this. We learned to muddle through, the teachers who were unfair were gone again in a few years. The bosses who were choleric were only choleric with others who were uncomfortable. So, shut up, be on time, do my job and pretend nothing is wrong.
But should I tell us something? That doesn’t work if we really want to change something. It produces no transformation, no relational thinking, no collective leadership. It produces collective illusions that work past the truth. Do you know it? Dudum.
So. Open your heart, open your soul, open your eyes and open your mouth! Together! And above all: don’t leave those who say something standing alone. A heart, a “I agree”, a nod, a thumbs up, IN the situation, not alone over coffee afterwards. Let’s stand up for the world we want to live in! Let’s learn to say no and hear it!
Let’s give ourselves the gift of corrective leadership! So that together we no longer stray from the path. So that truth and love can grow in the space between us and trust. So that you show me the “right path” and I learn that this is ok and I don’t have to be afraid. So that I can be shown again and again where I have become deaf. Without ejection, without retraumatisation, in clarity, again and again. In staying.
Your impossible behaviour has to do with mine. It arose in relationship and can only be healed in relationship. Let’s allow ourselves the relationship, let’s allow ourselves the “stop”, the discomfort, the “no”. Let us correct ourselves in mutual togetherness!
12.06.2023 kaa
p.s. Leave if it’s not healthy. Silence before you get hurt. Throw out when the measure is full. This is not a plea for martyrs. We have enough of those already.
