Varina Patel – Fotolia.com

The ideas of collaborative leadership discussed in the previous post seem quite new, and often appear as part of the “paradigm-shift” toward learning organizations and open government. In fact, one of the most innovative thinkers in this field developed and wrote about all this 80 years ago, from 1918 to the early 1930s. That was Mary Parker Follett, an important figure in her day but neglected for decades thereafter. Only recently has her work started to become known and influential again, but her new audience is still relatively small.

Although she used a different vocabulary, this extraordinary thinker pioneered the concepts of collaborative leadership, integrative negotiation and empowerment and creativity through group interaction. She also drew parallels between biological studies of emergent order in nature and human organization and non-hierarchical management, closely related to the recent popularity of collaborative networks as alternatives to traditional hierarchies of authority.

She saw the integration of differences and continuing interaction of groups with different goals as the essence of creativity and achievement in all walks of life. Only by looking for ways to harmonize interests could new solutions emerge In describing the dynamic of individual and group differences. She introduced the concept of integrative negotiation in an early form in The New State, published in 1918, and refined in her essays of the 1920s.

Her conception of the integrative dynamic of the social process led her to rethink the nature of power and leadership. She emphasized the critical importance of exercising power-with rather than power-over. Leaders needed to be collaborative participants in the creative exchange of ideas among organizational or community members. The rigidity of traditional hierarchical lines of authority needed to be erased to allow full scope to the creative interaction that led to progress.

While she was best known for her work in business management in the 1920s, her underlying concern was to define the group basis for democracy. She championed an idea of citizens working together and learning from each other at the community level. Citizen-based community groups needed to be the foundation of a true democracy, organizing in regional and national groups to provide direction to government. She believed that the current political system used the idea of consent of the people as a means to limit the citizen role to voting and exclude the public from real influence in government decisions.

An excellent starting point for understanding her ideas is Mary Parker Follett Prophet of Management, with an introduction by Peter Drucker, one of Follett’s most influential advocates. As Drucker explains it, her work fell out of favor during the Depression years when the emphasis was on building the power of national governments rather than devolving power to citizens. Rediscovery of her work had to wait for the world to come round to her way of thinking.

The book presents a collection of her best lectures from the 1920s, interspersed with commentary by management experts like Warren Bennis.

Here are a few quotations from her writings of 1918 through 1927 that provide a sense of her ideas about collaborative leadership within the context of the ongoing process of social change.

… What then is the essence of the group process… ? It is an acting and reacting, a single and identical process which brings out differences and integrates them into a unity. The complex reciprocal action, the intricate interweavings of the members of the group, is the social process. (The New State, 1918)

… In that continuous coordinating which constitutes the social process both similarity and difference have a place. Unity is brought about by the reciprocal adaptings of the reactions of individuals, and this reciprocal adapting is based on both agreement and difference. … This tumultuous, irresistible flow of life is our existence: the unity, the common, is but for an instant, it flows on to new differings which adjust themselves anew in fuller, more varied, richer synthesis. The moment when similarity achieves itself as a composite of working, seething forces, it throws out its myriad new differings. The torrent flows into a pool, works, ferments, and then rushes forth until all is again gathered into the new pool of its own unifying.

… There are three main ways of dealing with conflict: domination, compromise and integration. Domination, obviously, is the victory of one side over the other. … [C]ompromise … is the accepted, the approved, way of ending controversy. Yet no one really wants to compromise, because that means a giving up of something. Is there then any other method of ending conflict? There is a way beginning now to be recognized, at least, and even occasionally followed: when two desires are integrated, that means that a solution has been found in which both desires have found a place, that neither side has had to sacrifice anything. (Constructive Conflict, 1925)

… [W]hereas power usually means power-over, the power of some person or group over some other person or group, it is possible to develop the conception of power-with, a jointly developed power, a co-active, not a coercive power. In store of factory I do not think that the management should have power over the workmen, or the workmen over the management.

… Circular behavior is the basis of integration. If your business is so organized that you can influence a co-manager while he is influencing you, so organized that a workman has an opportunity of influencing you as you have of influencing him; if there is an interactive influence going on all the time between you, power-with may be built up. (Power, 1925)

… The leader guides the group and is at the same time himself guided by the group, is always a part of the group. No one can truly lead except from within. One danger of conceiving the leader as outside is that then what ought to be group loyalty will become personal loyalty. When we have a leader within the group these two loyalties can merge.

… [A leader] must be able to lead us to wise decisions, not to impose his own wise decisions upon us. We need leaders, not masters or drivers.
(The New State, 1918)

… [W]e want worked out a relation between leaders and led which will give to each the opportunity to make creative contributions to the situation. …

… Part of the task of the leader is to make others participate in his leadership. The best leader knows how to make his followers actually feel power themselves, not merely acknowledge his power.

Like many of today’s writers, Follett rejected the idea of leadership as the exclusive province of a trained elite who imposed their own vision and purpose while assuming primary decision-making power. For her, the leader ensured that a group was organized to permit the dynamic discovery and harmonizing of the differing ideas of its members. It was a role of designing and supporting the process that could build commitment and allow individuals to share power in influencing creative decisions. It’s unfortunate that such ideas had to wait 80 years before becoming part of mainstream thinking once again.

Related posts:

1. Defining Collaborative Leadership

© Maxim Malevich at Fotolia.com

What kind of leadership is most effective in building collaboration around public policy issues?

Most discussions of leadership work from the top down. They describe the personal qualities and skills of the leader that inspire staff of an organization or members of a community. Effective leaders of this type are charismatic figures who set the vision, embody the energy and will to realize it, and instill a sense of purpose in others. They are the drivers of success.

For decades, though, a counter-movement has pointed to the importance of collaborative leadership based on a quite different concept, as I’ve written in several previous posts. It begins not with the leader but with the collaborative forms of organization that demand a different type of leadership.

These groups operate on the basis of shared power and management among peers, rather than direction from the top through a hierarchy of authority. In a time when many things feel broken, collaborative networks of organizations and individuals have emerged to meet critical needs. Government with its rigid divisions of authority keeps disappointing while collaborative groups emerge to accomplish what government isn’t doing well or can’t do through its rigid structures.

Collaborative groups are often referred to as self-organizing, based on models drawn from scientific study of complex adaptive systems observed throughout nature. In practice, however – at least in the public policy world, such efforts usually depend on convening by a collaborative leader who organizes a group around a specific issue. Someone has to make the first move, but that doesn’t mean they control the process.

To be most effective, a collaborative policy or problem-solving group has to operate as if its members were peers. I say “as if” because generally there will be great differences in their levels of experience with the issue, the resources at their disposal, technical expertise, and the authority and influence of the agencies they represent. But the point of the process is to take advantage of the creativity of interaction among these diverse perspectives. It is not to emphasize differences, setting one participant apart from another or empowering some over others. That may be the reality outside the collaborative space, but, within it, results depend on mutual respect and reciprocity in the exchange of ideas.

To tap into the problem-potential of a group, each participant has to feel recognized and valued. The contributions of each need to build on one another and evolve into the most inventive and effective solution possible. That permits participants to share the sense of ownership of the product and increase the likelihood of good-faith implementation.

This may sound overly idealistic, but it’s a model that’s been proven to work – sometimes. It’s also a model that’s often undermined by distrust, politics and, above all, the wrong kind of leadership. So what’s the right kind? Practitioners and researchers have answered the question in many ways, but there are a number of common qualities and skills that emerge from their work.

The leader has to be able to identify a problem that needs a collaborative approach. That requires an ability to look beyond the narrow interests of his or her own organization or community to consider potential contributions of other groups – including those with long histories of antagonism. Leaders need the abilities to draw these disparate interests together, share control and credit for the outcome and support the process through great skill in framing issues and facilitating effective dialogue.

Most discussions of effective leadership for collaborative public policy work backward from the characteristics of the process to the personal qualities needed to convene and manage it. Such an approach focuses on specific examples drawn from extensive experience and/or formal research. For example, Russell Linden uses this method quite effectively in Working Across Boundaries: Making Collaboration Work in Government and Nonprofit Organizations

While he describes the specific tasks required of collaborative leaders, he also brings out the personal qualities that inspire participants and help win their trust. Here’s the way he identifies these qualities:

• Resolute and Driven – always looking for opportunities to collaborate and feeling energized by the process

• Modest- able to share ownership and credit for success, willing to relax control and participate as a peer

• Inclusive – uses “pull” by tapping into motivation and inviting participation rather than using personal power to “push” or coerce people to participate

• Collaborative Mindset – sees connections to larger purposes, such as building a culture of collaboration or working with a group to relate the immediate issue to an overall vision

Such leaders, Linden finds, make excellent conveners and champions of collaboration. They help evoke the less tangible side of the process – the trust and commitment that add to the motivation of trying to satisfying interests and needs. These dimensions of the process, though, do not result from the personal impact of conventional leadership but rather by evoking meaningful and creative participation by the members of a group.

Only the members themselves can produce a solid result. They have to share ownership of the group, stay open to different perspectives and invest their creative energy and commitment. But effective leaders bring them together in the first place, build confidence in the fairness of the effort and embody the values of collaboration through their own participation.

.

Related posts:

1. Innovative Thinkers on Collaborative Leadership: Mary Parker Follett

© Jason Yoder | Dreamstime.com

Is diversity necessarily a good thing when it comes to solving problems? We tend to assume that we’ll get better results from groups of people from different backgrounds and possessing a variety of skills than we we would from groups with a single orientation. That means diversity of many types, not only differences of culture, ethnicity and gender, but also variety of expertise, intellectual perspective, values and interests. They are all important for collaborative public policy.

We may believe in the value of diversity from intuition, ideological conviction and personal experience. But do we have rigorous models and empirical evidence to support this belief?

Scott Page says that both logic and evidence prove the benefits of diversity in his thought-provoking book, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. Page, a professor of complex systems, political science and economics, provides a firm basis for the value of diversity, but the case he presents is not a simple one.

Cognitive Diversity

He finds that all forms of diversity are not equally effective. To get to his main conclusion. It’s the differences in perspectives and methods of approaching problems that most often lead to better outcomes. This is what he calls cognitive diversity. Variety in the way problems are framed and interpreted helps a group get unstuck when a single approach can’t produce a workable solution.

Differing ways of looking at the world, interpreting experience, solving problems and predicting future possibilities work together to produce a distinctive mental tool set. Groups with this sort of variety consistently outperform groups working with a single problem-solving perspective.

Identity Diversity

When it comes to convening a collaborative policy group, though, diversity usually refers to cultural, ethnic and gender balance. Identity diversity, as Page sees it, satisfies the crucial need for fairness and equity, but, by itself, doesn’t ensure better problem-solving. Again, the picture is complicated because there are many forms of identity diversity – culture, gender, age, socio-economic status, among others. The evidence of this study points to cultural diversity as having the most significant impact.

Variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds often correlates with more creative and effective solutions than other types of identity diversity. That’s because differing cultural perspectives, language and experience can also mean different ways of thinking and defining problems.

Page gives an example of the native Micronesian concept of travel and navigation. In western cultures, we orient our position in relation to place or geographical features that we move past. The Micronesian idea is just the opposite. A boat on the ocean is considered to be the fixed point, and islands are said to move past the boat. Instead of moving toward a destination, the destination moves toward the boat.

A group including people who can look at a problem like this in opposite ways is much more likely to come up with innovative solutions than one dependent on a single perspective. Cultures develop their own sense of what’s important and what the mind needs to focus on, and that leads to very different ways of defining and solving problems. So cultural difference is most effective when it’s also characterized by cognitive difference.

That link, however, may not always exist. People from differing ethnic or cultural backgrounds may acquire the same training, skill sets and experience as people from the prevailing culture. In that case, they’ll likely think about things in the same way, and the deeper differences disappear. Other types of identity differences can also add richness of thought, but the data link cultural and ethnic identity with the greatest overall benefit.

So Page’s advice would be: Don’t stop with cultural diversity. Also make sure that participants don’t all rely on the same toolsets to solve problems. The group needs to have a rich variety of perspectives, interpretations, methods of solving problems and approaches to predicting the future – that is, all the elements of cognitive diversity. That added dimension increases the likelihood that such groups will find a more creative and effective result.

Preference Diversity

Probably the first thing that comes to mind in putting together a collaborative group – indeed its main purpose – is to include the full range of interest groups most likely to be affected by a decision – and most likely to oppose it if they are excluded. What about diversity of interests? Isn’t that essential to coming up with a better solution than one devised by a group representing a single interest? Again, Page’s answer is – not necessarily.

In fact, the most consistently disruptive element that turns up in Page’s research is divergence of interests and values – or preference diversity. That’s understandable since interest groups tend to complete with one another and fight to get their needs met. Drawn into a collaborative group, they’re often not communicating well but still battling over fixed positions. Even if the group also possesses variety in problem-solving tools and cultural perspectives, divergent goals work against the beneficial effect they can have.

As he summarizes it: [Groups] with diverse cognitive toolboxes and diverse fundamental preferences have higher variance performance (they locate better outcomes and produce more conflict). So, if such can find a way to work together, they are likely to excel in producing creative solutions. But if they can’t get along, they can fail pretty badly.

Collaborative Leadership

What does that mean for a public official who wants to convene a group with just these characteristics? Is it as risky as a roll of the dice?

Not at all. Evidence shows that these complex groups get off to a rough start, often because they have to negotiate over the definition of the problem to be dealt with. There are many other reasons, such as hostility to new ideas, poor communication, efforts to control agendas, and so on. Over time, however, they can learn to work together more effectively. A key reason for success that the studies point to is good group management.

Page’s work doesn’t explore group process very deeply, but the best way to achieve effective group dynamics is to manage the process with collaborative leaders, possibly working with professional mediators and facilitators. In other words, people with the experience and skills to help groups work through conflict. The divisive force of fundamentally differing interests is strong and requires skill to manage effectively. Nothing will guarantee success, but effective group management can make all the difference in helping people learn how to get along and collaborate effectively.

Page’s work represents some of the most rigorous, and often challenging, thinking about diversity that I’ve encountered. The Difference. is a big book in many senses – in its thoroughness, complexity of analysis (though simplified and well presented for lay readers) and richness of ideas. Whether or not you agree with its methods and conclusions, it makes a powerful case for the value of diversity.