Leadership Citizenship - a new way to live the value of real leadership

Executive Summary

I love the idea of 'Citizen Leadership.' Google it yourself and see what you feel and think. I actually prefer Leadership Citizenship. When leaders are local, national and international citizens conscious of your impact on society and contributing to a positive, productive, human being centred way of being, peace and harmony as the natural state of things are restored for us and eventually our planet.

Most leadership it seems to me is the old disproven people management in disguise - power, command and control, authoritarian, dictatorial, patriarchal. It’s for the benefit of a few and not the many. 

This kind of leadership, it’s actually fake leadership, is driven by self interest, often self-righteousness, greed and profit for the sake of it.

This kind of leadership is both arrogant and ignorant. In my view it’s a major contributor to inflation, lack of climate action, inequality, poor adherence to and provision of basic human rights, domestic violence, you name a society ill!

We need real leadership more than ever. 

In 1990 I put forward the following definitions of leadership and management which I believe have stood the test of time:

"Leadership is the art of inspiring people to bring everything they are to everything they do.

Management is the process that means it’s simple for people to bring everything they are to everything they do."

Fake leadership has seen a shift from a society with an economy in it, to an economy with a society in it. This disastrous move has occurred over about 60 years, gradually initially, and rapidly in the past fifteen years or so, accelerating since the GFC of 2007/08.

The consequences are degeneration of our planet, and societies systems and structures, particularly financial, political, educational and religious, energy supply, and human well-being, to name just a few.

Real leadership on the other hand offers us the opportunity of regeneration, I.e “bring a new and more vigorous life to (an area, an industry, institution etc.”

A key for me is that real leadership demands we be responsible leadership citizens locally, nationally and internationally. This means that we must individually address the challenges facing us, and then collectively change/nuance/modify/regenerate our processes so that the current one’s become obsolete and the new ones fit for purpose.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

R. Buckminister Fuller

A key piece of the puzzle is that it's imperative to understand that processes includes policies, principles, practices, procedures, philosophies, systems, structures, ideologies and assumptions.

Become the wise leader you want to be

Ian

PS Being a process innovator is one of the 15 roles wise leaders play well. All of these roles are crucial to being a leadership citizen. Learn more about being a process innovator here. 

You can download the playbook for all 15 roles with my compliments here. 

PSS I highly recommend you read these two books. 

Get Citizens here.

Get Global Citizens here.