Social Leadership happens at the intersection of formal and social systems: unlike your formal power (which is given to you by the Organisations, framed by a contract and rules, held in systems and processes, and through the consensus of the Org itself), Social Authority is earned within a community, is more highly contextual, and is power through the consensus of others.
We can have both, but only if we are able to balance the scales.
When talking about Social Authority, the most common conversation is about authenticity: the roots of our power. When asked to illustrate Authenticity, people most often show the deep roots of trees, or the foundations of a castle, notions of the things that ground us.
Authenticity is like trust: powerful, and yet cannot be bought or demanded. It’s an invested social judgement.
This has been front of my mind this week as i have been developing the Culture Explorer work: how does power run through culture? Does it frame it, shape it, dominate it, or run off it like water off a duck’s back?
To explore this i have gone back to the ‘Power and Potential’ work, the Enquiry Framework i published earlier this year. In this work we consider our multiple systems of power, and how they intersect.
Some stand against each other, some may amplify each other, some negate each other, and some collide in random ways. Some power carries between systems (reputation maybe) whilst others does not (rules, formal power), although even when a type of power does not carry, it’s shadow may do.
In that Culture work i have also been describing ‘shadows of fear’, where the fear has gone, and yet behaviour remains restrained, operating under the legacy, in the shadow.
This is interesting work: i’m really using the Culture Explorer programme (a six part programme) to rework and rephrase some existing work, so it’s interesting for me and helping me to find new language.
In general, in the broadest context of the Social Age, i would argue that we need to relocate our notion of leadership out of the purely formal and into this intersectional space. Into an idea of the Organisation which is more Socially Dynamic, more permeable (both internally, between Domains, and externally into the new Guilds and broader communities).
The Humble Leader
A lot of my time this week has been taken up with dedicating, numbering, and hand illustrating the Kickstarter copies of the Humble Leader. I think i’ve drawn about 300 leaves and signed a lot of pages! After some production problems (which led to several months of discussion about humidity and binding with the printers!) the books look great, and i’m super excited to be getting this out into the world.
Next week the website will go up and it will be published on general release.
In many ways this is my most reflective work (as well as being by far the shortest book, at only just over 3,000 words!). It’s a guided personal reflection, so i share it with some vulnerability. I hope people find value in it, but i am prepared for the fact that it may not be for everyone. That’s part of what writing and #WorkingOutLoud is about: iteration, reflection, listening, and at the end of it, being willing to share where you have got to.
My Writing
Writing has been more fragmented this week: last week was extremely productive, and i felt i did some really in depth work. It was one of those weeks when i felt i stretched myself. This week has been different: i’ve done some illustration i’m happy with, and some good work on the design of the Culture Explorer programme, but almost no in depth writing. It’s funny how these things go.
In general though, this last month or two i have been happy with how the writing is taking shape.
This is one of the new illustrations on ‘Culture and Power’ from the new programme:
https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2022/11/02/workingoutloud-on-culture-and-power/
These two pieces are both exploratory around the next state of the work on the Socially Dynamic Organisation: i’m playing with the idea of the ‘building blocks’ as a different language to talk about adaptation. This may or may not stick.
https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2022/11/01/inventing-the-building-blocks/
https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2022/10/20/evolving-the-organisation/
The final piece takes an idea from Quiet Leadership, the idea of ‘letting go’.
https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2022/10/31/the-winter-storm/
Quiet Leadership
Finally: i am running one more cohort of Quiet Leadership this year: you can find the details and sign up for the four week programme here.
It’s completely free and open to anyone.
Leadership in the smallest of actions.
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