leading others - communities and organisations

This slideshow explores what type of leadership we need in organisations in the 21st Century. It will look at how pioneering leaders have found ways of disabling the control mechanisms within their organisations to unleash the potential of the people, for the good of all."When the leader is a bad leader, the people hate him. When the leader is a good leader, the people love him. When the leader is a great leader, the people say 'We did it ourselves". Tao te Ching.It has been prepared by Patrick Andrews. Patrick is a business adviser and activist, with a legal background, working at the intersection of business, law and sustainability in search of the new models for organising in the 21st Century. He spent more than 15 years as a corporate lawyer and project manager, working in the UK and overseas for large corporations. For the last 10 years ago he has been exploring how we can encourage more healthy, responsible and sustainable approaches to business, working with businesses and charities and social enterprises of all kinds. He is also a director of Working in Trust, a charity that promotes a hybrid type of business structure designed to encourage more responsibility, compassion and dynamism in business.In these turbulent times, we need some leadership in our organisations. Despite the proliferation of books and courses on leadership, in most organisations it is conformity that is the norm, not leadership.Leadership is about being true to yourself, having the courage of your convictions. It comes from a place of love and trust, a belief in the fundamental rightness of the universe that gives you the confidence to be who you are, not who you think you should be. And it is not the exclusive domain of those at the top of some organisational chart – the CEO, the Prime Minister, the headmistress. Anyone can be a leader.Organisations are very good at suppressing leadership, at all levels. Those in authority feel the need to control what is going on, and so they establish control mechanisms and procedures.As Margaret Wheatley pointed out, " We never effectively control people with these systems, but we certainly stop a lot of good work from getting done.”