SUPPORTING PIONEERING LEADERS AS COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

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Supporting Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Practice
How to Rapidly Develop New Leaders in Great Numbers
Margaret J. Wheatley ©2002


So the need for new leaders is urgent. We need new leadership in communities everywhere. We need leaders who know how to nourish and rely on the innate creativity, freedom, generosity, and caring of people. We need leaders who are life-affirming rather than life-destroying. Unless we quickly figure out how to nurture and support this new leadership, we can't hope for peaceful change. We will, instead, be confronted by increasing anarchy and societal meltdowns.

Thus, new leadership becomes a central and pressing challenge of our time.

The new leaders are already here

Not only at CIDA, but everywhere there are aspiring leaders who have a firm commitment to lead in new ways, to not repeat the mistakes and abuses of the past. They exist in all communities, clear in their resolve to lead differently. They often say that leadership has chosen them, that it is their vocation to lead at this time. But they are trying to forge new leadership while living in countries and communities characterized by either corrupt leaders or well-intentioned bureaucrats. From whom can they learn new ways? Who are their mentors? How can they quickly learn alternative modes of leadership? And if they've grown up under oppression and colonialism, told for centuries that they're worthless and powerless, how do they let go of that conditioning and truly empower themselves as leaders?

I believe that the old leadership paradigm has failed us and that our current systems will continue to unravel. This has changed what I do and who I choose to support. I no longer spend any time trying to fix or repair the old, or to improve old leadership methods. I spend all of my time now supporting those giving birth to the new, those pioneering with new approaches to organizing and leading. In communities all over the world, there are many brave pioneers experimenting with new approaches for resolving the most difficult societal problems. These new leaders have abandoned traditional practices of hierarchy, power, and bureaucracy. They believe in people's innate creativity and caring. They know that most people can be awakened to be active in determining what goes on in their communities and organizations. They practice consistent innovation and courage-wherever they see a problem, they also see possibility. They figure out how to respond. If one response doesn't work, they try another. They naturally think in terms of interconnectedness, following problems wherever they lead, addressing multiple causes rather than single symptoms. They think in terms of complex global systems and yet also understand this world as a global village.

Presently, many organizations and individuals are engaged in supporting these new leaders, often known as social entrepreneurs. However, the majority of these efforts support these leaders at the level of the individual, awarding them fellowships and scholarships, bringing them from their own communities to study at universities, foundations, and leadership programs. But as yet, no one has determined how best to develop these new leaders in the large numbers that are needed. If we are to resource our communities with new, life-affirming leadership, we need a very different model for how to educate and nourish leaders at a new level of scale.

The challenges of paradigm pioneers

While those who want to support new leaders are struggling with the dilemma of scale, individual leaders face very challenging conditions. They act in isolation, often criticized, mocked, or ignored by the prevailing culture. They have no way of knowing there are many more like them, pioneers struggling with new ways of leading. It is a constant struggle to maintain focus and courage in the midst of such criticism and loneliness.

And, there are other challenges for these pioneers. These arise from the dynamics of paradigm shifts and how people generally behave when confronted with a new world view.

New leaders must invent the future while dealing with the past.
In speaking with these new leaders, it is very clear that they refuse to carry the past into the future. They do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past having, in many cases, personally suffered from ineffective or brutal leadership. They want to work in new ways, but these new ways of organizing, the new processes for implementing change, have yet to be developed. It is their work to invent them, and so they do double duty. They must simultaneously invent a new process or organizing form, and also solve the problems created by past practices.

Learning occurs in community

Because of the world's pressing leader shortage, and these paradigm-shift dynamics, there is an urgent need to support, strengthen, and nurture pioneering new leaders. They are eager learners, willing to try new approaches, hungry for methods and ideas that will work. Yet traditional approaches to leadership development are woefully inadequate to meet their learning needs.

Fortunately, research and work done on both adult learning and on "communities of practice" offer solutions to this leadership development challenge.

The second body of practice and research is that of "Communities of Practice." Some core questions have been: How can people most quickly learn new skills? How is knowledge developed and shared within an organization? The concept "community of practice" was developed to illuminate that learning is a social experience. We humans learn best when in relationship with others who share a common practice. We self-organize as communities with those who have skills and knowledge that are important to us. Etienne Wenger, a pioneer in this field (see, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, 1998), states: "Since the beginning of history, human beings have formed communities that accumulate collective learning into social practices-communities of practice. Tribes are an early example. More recent instances include the guilds of the Middle Ages that took on the stewardship of a trade, and scientific communities that collectively define what counts as valid knowledge in a specific area of investigation. Less obvious cases could be a local gardening club, nurses in a ward, a street gang, or a group of software engineers meeting regularly in the cafeteria to share tips."

Communities of practice demonstrate that it is natural for people to seek out those who have knowledge and experience that they need. As people find each other and exchange ideas, good relationships develop and a community forms. This community becomes a rich marketplace where knowledge and experience are shared. It also becomes an incubator where new knowledge, skills, and competencies develop. In corporations, many of the core competencies (the core skills that are the organization's unique strengths) develop within these informal, self-organized communities, not from any intentional strategic or development strategy.

The literature on communities of practice is filled with stunning examples of how workers learn complex skills in rapid time when seated next to those who have the skill. And of how workers reach out electronically across the globe with a question to colleagues, and receive back immediate, expert advice that resolves a crisis or dilemma.

These two very different fields-Critical Education and Communities of Practice-teach the same lessons. People learn very quickly when they have a need for the skills and information. If it will change their lives, if it will help them accomplish what is important to them, everyone can become a good learner. We learn complex competencies and knowledge in a matter of weeks, not months or years. And people learn best in community, when they are engaged with one another, when everyone is both student and teacher, expert and apprentice, in a rich exchange of experiences and learnings.

Supporting and sustaining new leaders

There is important work to be done to effectively support and nurture the pioneering new leaders that are appearing everywhere. It is possible to strengthen and develop these leaders in great number if we work from a new unit of scale, that of communities of practice rather than individuals. It is in these communities that learning accelerates and healthy and robust practices develop quickly.

There are four key areas of work that can support the development of new leadership-in-community. Each of these four areas describes work for foundations, NGOs, governments-all organizations focused on supporting new leadership as the means to create sustainable change.

I. Name the Community

Pioneering leaders act in isolation, unaware that they are part of a broader community. They act on intuition and experience, struggling to not revert to the practices of the past. They feel alone and strange, often criticized, even ridiculed, by their community. They bear such labels as idealists, dreamers, innocents, for believing that they can lead in new ways, solve entrenched problems, and create sustainable progress.

All this changes when they learn that they are part of a community, that there are many more like them. They gain confidence and courage. They find new energy to stay in the challenges and struggles of pioneering the new.

The community they belong to is a community of practice, not of place. The community forms among people acting from the same values and visions. Their practices are varied and unique, but each practice develops from a shared set of values. In this way, the community is very diverse in its expression, and very united in its purpose.

Only certain organizations --those who observe many communities or nations and who see more of the whole--have sufficient scope to name this community. It is never identified by those engaged in the day-to-day work in their separate communities.

II. Connect the Community

In nature, if a system is in distress, the solution is always to connect it to more of itself. As the network of relationships is rewoven and strengthened, the system processes new information and becomes healthier. A human community becomes stronger and more competent as new connections are formed with those formerly excluded, as it brings in those who sit on the periphery, as communication reaches more parts of the system, and as better relationships are developed.

We live in a time when connecting across distances has become much easier. Technology facilitates the formation of communities of practice, through dedicated websites, on-line conferences, list serves. But technology is only a supplement to necessary human and intimate connections, including gatherings of the community, publications specific to the community's interests, exchanges of people and resources.

Members of the community are too busy to develop the connections that would assist them. Again, those who have the privilege of seeing the whole of the community need to support multiple ways for members to connect with one another.

III. Resource the Community

Communities of practice need to be nourished with many different resources. They require ideas, methods, mentors, processes, information, technology, equipment, money. Each of these is important, but one great gap is that of knowledge-knowing what techniques and processes are available that work well. For example, they may be leading a community development process, yet know nothing of new means to engage the whole community, or new processes for valuing all of a community's assets. Without this knowledge, they either reinvent the wheel, or latch too quickly onto whatever process they hear about, even inappropriate or substandard ones.

To bring good resources to eager learners is such a simple and powerful means to promote the learning and practices of these pioneers. And these new leaders are already highly efficient users of resources--they've been stretching meager means for years.

IV. Illuminate and Interpret the Community

There is a critical need to tell the stories of this community, to get public attention for their efforts. Remember how difficult it is for any of us to see a new paradigm, even when it's right under our noses. People, if they even notice them, are most likely to see these new pioneers as inspiring and temporary deviations from the norm. It takes time, attention, and a consistent media focus for people to see them for what they are, examples of what's possible, of what our new world could look like. To develop this level of public awareness requires skillful working with the media.

The power of this approach

We live in a time when coalitions, alliances, and networks are growing. People have created many networks, and some are now creating networks of networks. These networks will be essential for successful change, but they are not as intentional as is a community of practice. Exchanges among members of a network tend to be less focused and more dependent on how and when individuals choose to engage with those in the network.

Communities of practice develop from a need to do one's work more effectively. Because there is such a great need to connect with other members of the community, their work together can emerge quickly as a body of new competencies and methods that spread rapidly throughout the community. Therefore, facilitating communities of practice among pioneering leaders is a deliberate strategy to speed-up the emergence of new ways of organizing, of new global leadership practices that affirm rather than destroy life.

Emergence is life's process for taking local actions to achieve global impact. In nature, change never happens as a result of top-down, pre-conceived strategic plans, or from the mandate of any single individual or boss. Change begins as local actions spring to life simultaneously around the system. If these changes remain disconnected, nothing happens beyond their own locale. However, if connected, then local actions can emerge as a powerful influence at a more global or comprehensive level. (Global here means that the system operates at a larger scale, not necessarily the entire planet.) These powerful emergent phenomena appear suddenly and, most often, surprisingly. Think about how globalization and corporate power suddenly came to dominate, or how the Berlin Wall suddenly came down. Emergent phenomena always exert much greater power than the sum of their parts, and they always posses unique qualities that are different from the local actions that engendered them.

Emergence happens through connections. Therefore, any process that can catalyze connections becomes the means to achieve change at a global level. We are working intentionally with this powerful process when we name, connect, resource, and illuminate communities of practice. Inside these communities, leaders learn quickly, create new practices, and feel supported in their pioneering work. And through emergence, their relatively small, local efforts can become a global force for change, powerful enough to create the world we all desire, a world where the human spirit flourishes as the blessing, not the problem.