Foundations of Total Learning

1.1. The Individual Level

Exploring the Anatomy of Collective Leadership

Our approach to individual leadership provides a simple but most important point for understanding collective leadership.  Behind every collective is a range of individuals.  We all think and act differently.  We all have our values, and often, these values will compete for priority among groups of all sizes.  

Groups themselves clash.  

Collective leadership is not easy.  

We will start the journey of discovery in the next section by emphasising that we need to understand ourselves before understanding others.  We are individuals with selfish motivations.  This view was the ‘ah ha’ moment for Stephen Brookes in 2006 when he saw Richard Dawkins's 30^th Anniversary edition of “The Selfish Gene”.  At this point, he began to explore whether it was the selfish gene – innate to our sense of survival – which gets in the way of collective leadership.  The idea of the Selfless Leader then emerged.  The idea influenced his research for the next ten years (Brookes, 2016).  Before delving into our journey of exploring collective leadership (the style for selfless leaders), we briefly introduce the essential concept of self-will.  The question is whether this sense of self will make us different from animals.

Previous research has shown that when it comes to decision-making, going with our gut usually makes for a better outcome than if we go on intellect alone

 (Perry, 2018)

From the Anatomical to the Metaphorical 

Metaphorical language often describes leadership and followership, particularly popular with anatomical allegories and personal mythology (Lindsay, 2013).  Examples include getting our feet wet rather than diving right in, a strong pair of hands or a touch (of the hand) on the tiller, putting your heart into it or deciding with a heavy heart, and so on.  As Lindsay argues, metaphors are deeply entrenched in our everyday language and help us to make sense of our lives and dictate to a large degree how we live our lives (Lindsay, 2013: 5).  

Both anatomical and metaphorical language helps us understand the complexity of collective leadership more broadly and intelligent leadership more specifically.

A 5 minute nugget.

Click on the Link below for the activity [NOTE: Link is currently a placeholder - takes to the longer version of the history of leadership which needs to be amended/moved]