Command and control leadership compresses what can be known into the shape of what a few people know. When there is no organizational learning, growth is stymied. When knowledge can’t change shape to fit the circumstances, there is no emergence.
An organization can’t become greater than the sum of its parts.
Relational leadership is leadership through facilitation. Facilitating decision making processes that distribute the right information, to the right people, at the right time.
Facilitation removes friction and encourages relational coherence while still providing governance and structured inquiry. It is far more difficult to lead a team towards emergent innovation than it is to tell them, exactly, what to do. This is not a laisez faire approach, I don’t mean everyone gets to be a cat … and you herd them.
Relationship leadership is the design of organizational intelligence.
Stewarding distributed decisions is arriving at a sound decision across three teams with divergent viewpoints – by facilitating thinking well together. Using design patterns and learning processes that distribute authority without losing coherence.
For example, a team recommends a change that involves cross-functional decision making. The team maps the decision process: who’s involved, what inputs do they need, what is unknown and how will they explore, where might delays occur; what conflicts exist and why are people pushing in different directions? They proactively engage in these questions, synthesizing knowledge until their path becomes clear.
Distributed decisions are not delegations. They weave perspectives, ensure transparency and govern by reason, insight, and fairness.
Consider this
Describe one decision recently made for you that would have been better made by you? How would you restructure the process?
Domains →
Delusions →
Paths →
