Over the past several years, I have been working with the Grand Traverse Land Conservancy (GTRLC) – an organization whose mission is to preserve and protect the pristine environment of Northern Michigan. I’ve worked with their Board on Governance and strategy, with its staff on cultural alignment, and with their CEO, Glen Chown, on leadership. It’s been the most satisfying experience of my entire career. Their work keeps my hope alive in an increasingly divided and doomed world.
Perhaps my main contribution to GTRLC has been to emphasize the importance of collaboration in its dealings with each other, with sister agencies, and with the community at large. GTRLC is truly a leader and exemplar in radical interdependence. This organization gives me hope and lifts my spirits because I strongly believe that making the shift from a fiercely competitive and independent culture to a collaborative and radically interdependent one is the only way we can shift from the destructive path we are on to one of healing and transformation.
In preparation for this post, I did a search for collaborative leadership and found an excellent article by Tom Hurley from Oxford Leadership on the process for engaging collective intelligence to achieve sustainable growth across organizational boundaries. While he sees collaborative leadership as a vital source of competitive advantage for businesses, I see it as a critical variable in collective success for communities. Still, since the article captures the essence of collaborative leadership so well, I’m going to summarize four main points below with specific adaptations and applications to community collaboration.
COLLABORATIVE THINKING AND RELATING. First, Hurley proposes a need for leaders to expand their repertoire of skills, shift their mindset, and think strategically in a global context with increasingly chaotic and complex problems. His prescriptions are based on the belief that all of us working together can be more creative and competent than any one person or organization working alone. In order to effectively address the problems facing communities, large and small, in today’s world, leaders need to use the power of influence to engage and align people behind a set of common goals. To quote, “success depends on creating an environment of trust, mutual respect, and shared aspiration in which all can contribute fully and openly to achieve collective goals.” This requires meaningful conversations instead of authoritarian impositions. These conversations can only occur when leaders are authentic, open, empowering and trustworthy, and when the passion is clearly about “we” vs. “me” – or about “eco” vs. “ego.” Oh, how I wish I had thought of that one.
PRODUCTIVE DIALOGUE. Second, community collaboration means leading through conversation, taking responsibility for communicating effectively, engaging in collective problem-solving, keeping dialogue open, and exploring divergent approaches to making decisions and solving problems. Conversations are seen as vehicles for learning and co-creating. Community members feel they have a safe space for dialogue and encourage participation from all constituents and stakeholders. Each member makes a conscious effort to listen more, speak less and abandon any need to be “right” or have all the answers. The conversational tone and energy reflect members’ commitment to a healthy, innovative and productive community.
CLEAR NORMS AND VALUES. Third, collaborative leaders in the community create a climate for discovery, ask and entertain powerful questions, suspend judgment, explore assumptions, embrace ambiguity, and articulate emergent solutions. Their over-riding goal is to craft shared agreements. In order to achieve those agreements they create shared values with specific norms that describe what that value looks like in practice. They clarify roles and decision rights, define responsibilities, agree to systems of accountability, create processes for communication, and insist on transparency. Conflicts are seen as potential sources of breakthrough.
BARRIER REDUCTION. Finally, leaders who are trying to foster collaborative communities honestly and boldly confront the barriers to collective success. On a personal level, leaders need to acknowledge any fear they may have of losing power and control, own whatever cynicism they may harbor, deal with any counter-productive habits they may have, and learn new behaviors like listening carefully while suspending judgment. On an organizational level, each agency needs to establish effective communication processes, create trusting and respectful environments, and expose hidden agendas. All stakeholders have to agree to avoid messenger-killing, toxic politics, territorial thinking, and self-centered views.
To me, these ideas translate into new imperatives for leaders. I believe the key characteristics for leaders of the future are to lead with GRACE: be Generous, Rigorous, Authentic, Collaborative and Empathic in order to deal effectively with complexity and ambiguity. I will address that topic more fully in my next post. I’m really excited about helping to apply these principles at GTRLC, but also in my own community of Elk Rapids. Here’s why
The Land Conservancy has just embarked on a major campaign to build a Conservation Center focused on community collaboration and environmental stewardship. The board, the staff, and the community are solidly behind this project, and the anticipated completion date for the building is February, 2023. I’m excited about the Center not only because it will be a beautiful new place for implementing their mission, but also because it will provide a welcoming space for the entire community to engage in deep dialogue about how the community can preserve this piece of the planet. I believe it can serve as a model for other communities.
As I have written in previous posts, Elk Rapids, located 15 miles North of Traverse City, is a charming, rural community in Northwestern Michigan with enormous potential for sustainable growth or precipitous decline depending on the path it chooses. Fortunately for the community, we reached out to Doug Griffiths, the author of 13 Ways to Kill a Community, and were able to retain his services to help our community accelerate progress toward the former vs. the latter. Over the past several months, Doug and his team have interviewed over 100 citizens in our community as well as the officials of all of the agencies, e.g. The Village Council, the Downtown Development Agency, the Chamber of Commerce, the School Board, the Library Board, the Planning Commission, GreenER etc. As a result of this deep engagement and thorough assessment, Doug has submitted his recommendations to our Steering Committee for this project consisting of leaders from all the above mentioned agencies. The recommendations are candid and constructive: lighten the tone, be mindful about language, improve communications and decision making, increase affordable housing, enhance Board Governance in all agencies, and create a culture of civility and respect. There will be specific action proposals for each of those recommendations. We are currently in the process of securing funds for the strategic planning phase of this intervention so that we can establish milestones and mechanisms to ensure collective success. We have already noticed improvements in relationships and transparency. There appears to be very little resistance to moving forward. To me, the biggest barriers to success in my community will be a reluctance to share power and a resistance to accountability.
On a national and global level, the tension between collaborative and competitive manifests in the ways people acquire and use power. In the zero sum competitive perspective, my gain is your loss and therefore my power (wealth, advantage, position) is enhanced, even if transitory or illusionary. The collaborative approach seeks power by empowering more at the expense of some. The more WE might gain, the less I might have. If the goal is large enough and the threat is pressing, we might pursue collective action but evidence (COP26) indicates that is elusive. On a smaller scale it might be easier when the results and evidence of collective intelligence are visible and an irrefutable source of better outcomes. Women seem to understand this more easily than men.
Both of my local projects in community collaboration give me hope because they have the potential to demonstrate that it is possible to establish collaborative and interdependent relationships in the pursuit of collective success and sustainable growth on a larger scale. These two examples may be small, but they are powerful. I have come to believe that change needs to happen on a local level. People need to believe that change is possible. People need to understand that a competitive and independent culture is not sustainable. People need to see that collaborative and interdependent communities can tap the collective intelligence of the community and create a path to sustainability. Over time, I’m hoping that more people will come to realize that the planet and ALL its species are more important than power and profits, that human rights are more important than state rights, and that globalism is more important than localism and nationalism. If we can shift our ways of being to collaborative and interdependent, we may have a chance to survive and grow. May it be so.
Also published on Medium.
Love it Ricky! Thank you