Distributed Leadership – are we up for it, and do we really know what is meant when it’s suggested?

This is the fourth in a series of blogs about the title of NIODA’s forthcoming Group Relations Conference (GRC), ‘Authority, Role and Distributed Leadership in the Hybrid Workplace: the challenge of transforming experience’ 30 Oct – 3 Nov 2023, on-site in Melbourne, Australia, and live interactive online… In this blog we consider distributed leadership.

What do you think of when the term ‘distributed leadership’ is raised?

For at least the last fifteen years, client CEOs have approached me to support them and their staff (starting with the Executive Group) to transition to a more ‘distributed model of leadership’. Typically, what is meant by this are ways of working that are more inclusive and democratic in terms of how decisions are made, strategy is developed and innovation or change is led. This is by contrast with current or previous ways of working that are experienced as more hierarchical and autocratic. My sense is that there are taken-for-granted assumptions that a) distributed leadership is a good thing and b) we all know what it is and how to do it.

The concept of distributed leadership emerged in management and leadership discourses around the early 2000s. It marked a shift away from a preoccupation with identifying the desirable ‘leadership’ attributes of individuals to the recognition that, in practice, leadership is a distributed, co-created and collective process. In the achievement of any organisational task, leadership moves from one part of an interconnected system to another. It can occur anywhere in the chain of exchanges between people in the course of work and it can shift from one person to another and back again. When we speak of organisations shifting to more distributed leadership, we are really talking about changing our perspective on the true nature of leadership and less about a Board, CEO, or Executive Group’s desire for a ‘thing’ to be achieved and transitioned to.

While the language of distributed leadership may have only been a buzzword in organisations for the past 20 years or so, the philosophy and ethos are also embedded in ideas that go back much further. For me, steeped in Western thinking, my mind goes to thinkers like John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Emily Pankhurst, Paolo Friere, Mary Parker-Follett and so many more. Their thinking is imbued with the ideals of freedom, egalitarianism, democracy and social justice. Going back millennia, respect for the unique contribution, interconnectedness and interdependence of all beings have been core principles for First Nations’ communities for the longest time. We may wonder why then, for many people and organisations, a shift to distributed leadership presents such a difficult challenge.

Without going deeply into the whys and wherefores, it seems that in the iterative shifts away from tribal community life (think monarchy, church, imperialism, patriarchy, feudalism, industrialisation, capitalism, individualism, etc.), we have been schooled into paradigms of master-slave, generals and soldiers, winners and losers, rich and poor, bosses and workers, dominance and dependency, us and them. No doubt there have always been counter-streams of thinking, reflected in the work of some of those named above, but surely, the residues of so many centuries of hierarchical ways of thinking about leading and organising are deeply embedded in our psyches, if not our very DNA.

It has only been since the 1940s in Western management theory and practice, that there has been a slow, collective movement back towards more democratic ways of thinking about and being an organisation. This is less than a century as against millennia of patriarchy and hierarchy; little wonder then that the desired shift to more distributed models of leadership seems hard. As alluded to above, the fundamental change that needs to take place is as much a perceptual one as it is structural. For, although people in organisations may have been enacting real leadership all the time, as they go about their work, the shared dominant and deeply embedded paradigm of hierarchy means that neither the individual nor the system would allow them to recognise it as such.

This presents the organisation that has an express desire to embrace distributed leadership with a complex challenge. It is not only the organisational chart that may need to change. More importantly, it is the ways in which we think and how we make sense of what we do that will need to change. In a traditional hierarchical mindset, so many small acts of leadership go unrecognised as such. Consequentially, the felt sense of authority and importance that might flow from correctly recognising and naming these everyday acts of leadership is also missing. What is required is nothing less than a paradigm shift – how do we each come to think of ourselves as leaders and also recognise others as leaders when our internal architecture may not allow for it? How do we completely rewire our internal operating system without switching it off?

In addition to these internal and external rewiring and redesign challenges, there is also the question of possible unintended consequences. Often, distributed leadership seems to be regarded as synonymous with non-hierarchical or flat organisational structures. Indeed it may be the case that shifting to a flatter or networked structure may be a better fit with distributed leadership, but in this evolutionary shift, we also need to consider what additional functions hierarchy may have been serving over millennia. In my field of work, as one example, hierarchy can be seen to play an important role in protecting against some of our primitive destructive tendencies to envy and rivalrous ‘sibling’ competition amongst peers. There is something quasi-parental in the role of more senior manager that seems to mitigate against these things being acted out when the ‘boss’ can take up the role of ‘container’ into which these projections can be directed. There is also the way that hierarchy allows for differences in appetites and ambitions, skills and interests, responsibilities and accountabilities that may be useful to preserve. This raises the question of whether distributed leadership can co-exist with hierarchy.

The intention behind the design of this GRC as a hierarchical organisation is precisely so this question can be explored, along with the many other questions inevitably raised by the ideas in this blog post and the thoughts and ideas that staff and members will bring.

I hope that you will join us in this ambitious endeavour. Scroll to find more information and the other blogs.

Dr Brigid Nossal

September 2023

Distributed leadership – are we up for it?

ps NIODA’s Group Relations Conference is 30 October – 3 November 2023. This is a hybrid event both onsite in Melbourne and live interactive online. Click HERE for details.

This is the third in a series of short blogs about the title of NIODA’s forthcoming Group Relations Conference (GRC), ‘Authority, Role and Distributed Leadership in the Hybrid Workplace: the challenge of transforming experience’ 30 Oct – 3 Nov 2023, online and in Melbourne Australia.
If we work with the idea that whoever we are and whatever we are doing we are always in some kind of role, we can see that the role we think we are in (either consciously or unconsciously) determines how we behave at any given time. Consider these different scenarios:

• Reading a bedtime story to a small child
• Pillow talk with your intimate partner
• Carrying out a performance review with a junior member of staff
• Pitching a new idea to the Executive Group
• Returning a faulty product to a store

Across a day or a week, the same person might engage in such a variety of activities, moving from one role to another: parent, lover, boss, employee, customer etc. We all make assumptions about what role we think we are in and what behaviours are appropriate to these roles, but we are not always conscious about these assumptions. For example, a parent or caregiver reading a bedtime story to a small child might assume that in this role one is gentle, speaks softly and is present and engaged. By contrast, in the role of employee pitching a new idea to the Executive Group, the same person might assume the role demands them to be assertive, even a bit aggressive, confident and charismatic. The behaviours are starkly different, but the person is the same.

In my experience of working closely with people in a coaching context, I have learned that we can be inclined to confuse ‘role’ (and particularly work role) with ‘personality’ or personal character traits. I recall working with a CEO who was due to meet the Chair of the Board for a performance and pay review. They wanted to ask for a raise that was long overdue. The client felt paralysed and terrified in anticipation of this meeting. The prospect raised old issues of self-worth they had carried into adulthood due to an overbearing parent who often undermined them. I invited them to take themselves and their personal history out of the equation and to consider what they thought the role of CEO of this organisation deserved to be paid in order to attract and retain the right person? This was one of those moments of transforming experience. For this client, the answers to these questions were clear and they were able to quickly shift from the unconscious role of child to the conscious role of highly competent CEO. The behaviours appropriate to the role of CEO were clear and the client was able to negotiate the raise in an uncomplicated and assertive way. Asking ourselves and others the questions, what role are you in now and what are the behaviours appropriate to that role can free us up to make different choices about how we inhabit the roles we take up and, how we shape these roles.

By definition, roles always exist in relation to other roles: parent to child; lover to lover; employee to colleague, team or boss; leader to follower; customer to provider – even hermit to the rest of the community. In the workplace, every role is in some kind of interdependent relatedness and relationships with other roles and the nature and quality of these are arguably the most important determinants of organisational efficiency, effectiveness and health. Thus, being clear about one’s role, what is required of it, what behaviours are appropriate to it, how it is connected to and impacts other roles, and how it affects us are amongst some of the most vital considerations. In the temporary learning organisation of the GRC, there are many opportunities to explore these things for the individual, within a group, as between groups and within the GRC as a whole.

The Primary Task of this GRC is:

“With a spirit of enquiry, to explore and study the exercise of authority and leadership in the taking up of roles through the interpersonal, intergroup and institutional relations that develop within the conference as an organisation in its wider context”.

By studying roles in the different events of the GRC, members can explore and experiment with the roles that they either find themselves in or have claimed for themselves. These roles may be explicitly or unconsciously chosen or given. Such roles are not pre-determined by conference staff, rather, they are invented and co-created in the experience of the conference. For example, when we stop to examine and ask ourselves this question, ‘what role am I in now?’ we might discover that wittingly or unwittingly, we have become the spokesperson for the group, seemingly with the role to do the talking on behalf of the group. The roles we take up can also be more subtle, and even unconscious. As an example, a member might find themselves crying and feeling a lot of emotion. Under examination, it becomes possible to hypothesise that they have been unconsciously chosen by the group to take up the role of ‘the emotional one’, doing this work on behalf of the group. On reflection, this member might realise that this also happens at work. Once discovered, it becomes possible to consider other role options and even test them out during the five days of the GRC.

Through this deep investigation into the roles we find ourselves and others in, it becomes possible to make sense of group and organisational dynamics by asking such questions as: ‘what is the purpose of these roles?; ‘do these roles serve or work against the task we are trying to do?’; ‘what roles would best serve the task of this group?’ and ‘who is best placed to fill them?’. When roles are under-examined in organisations this can lead to all manner of problems and inefficiencies. For example, where the boundaries and task of roles held by different people are not clear enough, it can result in what look like interpersonal conflict, but what is in fact role confusion or role clashes. Under-examined roles can lead to role overload and impossible roles that lead to stress and burnout. So, by gaining skills in examining roles in the GRC and gaining insights into the roles we seem habitually to find ourselves in, a vast array of new choices and resources are opened up that we can apply to our back-at-work context.

Beyond this, as we face into global environmental and ethical challenges, this exploration of role also invites the question, ‘how do we want to show up and what role/s are we prepared to take up, both inside and beyond organisational settings?’

These are the reasons why and how role, as a unit of study within the GRC, is so important.

I hope that you will consider joining us. Scroll to read the other blogs, or learn more here.

Dr Brigid Nossal

August 2023

Why is the idea of ‘Role’ important?

ps NIODA’s forthcoming Group Relations Conference is 30 October – 3 November 2023. This is a hybrid event both onsite in Melbourne and live interactive online

We’re all born to someone bigger and older than ourselves, and in the first years of life, we are completely dependent on our caregivers for survival, nurture and learning the ways of the world. Do we ever stop to wonder how these early experiences and relationships with parents, caregivers, teachers, the school principal shaped the way we think about and respond to authority? What hidden assumptions may have been laid down that continue to impact current work relationships and, indeed, workplace design?

This is the second in a series of short blogs examining the title of NIODA’s forthcoming Group Relations Conference (GRC): ‘Authority, Role and Distributed Leadership in the Hybrid Workplace: the challenge of transforming experience’. Learning about authority and authority relations is one of the key takeaways from a GRC experience and a fundamental aspect of our experience of work.

The GRC is a temporary learning organisation that is co-created by its members (both staff and members). Our task is to study, through the experience of becoming an organisation, the dynamics as they emerge. I think of it as a kind of research laboratory in which we each take up the dual roles of being Jane Goodall and being the community of apes that she was so carefully observing. You can imagine that in this process, authority relations naturally manifest. This offers a unique opportunity to both discover and shape how authority in this temporary system of the GRC is established, negotiated and challenged; by you, by other individuals, by sub-groups and by the membership as a whole. If you bring an open mind to this process, it is really fascinating to explore.

Authority in a GRC can be discovered through what is said, by whom and in what tone, in how decisions are taken, in groups that form and dissolve and in how these things make you feel. For example, do you feel authorised and like you have agency to influence outcomes or do you feel silenced and powerless, as if someone else calls the shots? What is informing this experience? Is it what is really going on right now in the conference, or is it what you assume to be going on based on other similar experiences of being in groups and systems? If you wanted to, what would you need to change to transform the experience you are having? How is this the same or different to what you experience in your work organisation? These are just a few of the questions that are available to conference members to become curious about.

Through exploring and reflecting upon authority relations and our own and others’ responses to those we see as holding positions of authority within the GRC, we have the opportunity to examine what may be familiar and/or previously unchallenged assumptions. For example, there may be someone in the group whose tone of voice, combined with their age, gender and work role always seems to command attention in the group – everyone stops to listen. Why is this so? Another member in a small group, from the moment you first encounter them, may leave you feeling intimidated. What is it about them that makes you feel this way? It is only when we stop to reflect on these questions that we can discover the way past experiences may be shaping current work and authority relations even though, in reality, the situation is very different. Discovering these kinds of hidden assumptions can be very liberating and open up new opportunities for how we perceive and exercise our own authority, our own authorship in our lives.

The invitation in the GRC is to explore dynamics at a number of levels: individual; interpersonal; small group; large group; intergroup and the whole organisational system within its context. So far, we have considered the individual and interpersonal levels of enquiry. There is also much to think about and learn from how authority is being experienced and exercised at these other levels of group, intergroup and system-wide. For example, we can study how authority is resisted and/or how much compliance and conformity seems to be in play within the system. We can consider what cultural, societal, or even global factors may be influencing these authority relations. Is authority experienced and felt in the same way when people gather in small groups from when everyone is together in the room? What kind of authority is listened to and what kind of authority is rejected and rebelled against in this system? How do you feel? What are you observing about how the group seems to be responding in these different configurations? What authority do you want to take up and act upon right now and what do you observe others to be doing?

This offers you just a brief insight into the rich learning that is available to you in a GRC. You can think of the conference as representing a microcosm of contemporary organisations and the authority relations that we assume to be operating within them. Together, we bring these assumptions into the system of the GRC and sometimes reproduce our own experience of authority dynamics just as we experience them in our back-home workplace. By making them explicit and available to be studied, it is then possible to consider, both individually and collectively, is this how we want them to be or, could we be doing things differently and better?

Through taking this deep dive together into the study of authority relations within the GRC, we can emerge after five days with fresh insights and new resources that usually bring clarity about what it is that needs to be transformed in the way we work together in our own organisations. This learning can usually be immediately applied back at work and, from what members say, and from my own experience, it goes on for many years to come.

I hope that you will consider joining us. Scroll to read the other blogs, or learn more here.

Dr Brigid Nossal

July 2023

What is the big deal about Authority?

ps NIODA’s forthcoming Group Relations Conference is 30 October – 3 November 2023. This is a hybrid event both onsite in Melbourne and live interactive online

This is the first of a series of short blogs exploring NIODA’s forthcoming Group Relations Conference title, ‘Authority, Role and Distributed Leadership in the Hybrid Organisation: the challenge of transformation’.

First, what is a Group Relations Conference (GRC) and why is it important for leaders, managers, and anyone interested in organisational life to attend one?

A Group Relations Conference is a unique opportunity to learn from experience about yourself, groups and organisational dynamics. Generally, our work days are so filled with meetings and the pressures of work there is no time to stop and consider some fundamental questions such as, what’s really going on here? How am I showing up as a leader and follower? Are we working to purpose and, if not, what is getting in the way? The GRC is an opportunity to pause and explore some of these questions in depth.

The GRC is a temporary learning institution. I think of it as an incubator for in-depth exploration of contemporary organisational life. Members and staff bring with them into the conference their experiences and often hidden assumptions about organisations, work teams, and how authority and leadership are exercised. We also bring less conscious, habitual ways of behaving and taking up roles. In the GRC, without the distraction of day-to-day work tasks, it is possible to learn about these hidden assumptions both in oneself and in others. We also have the chance to try out different ways of taking up leadership within a group and within the temporary learning organisation as a whole.

In the GRC, members and staff are a bit like anthropologists or ethnographers. Together, we work on the conference task and we immerse ourselves in the co-creation of the temporary learning organisation. At the same time, we study what is happening, as it happens, to discover what it reveals about organisational life. The task of this conference is:

With a spirit of enquiry, to explore and study the exercise of authority and leadership in the taking up of roles through the interpersonal, intergroup and institutional relations that develop within the conference as an organisation in its wider context.

The title of the conference will also influence how we go about the task. As the conference will take place in a hybrid format, we can study how this impacts interpersonal, group and intergroup dynamics. We can then consider what this means for our back-at-work context and how we might apply this learning. The reference to distributed leadership is also an invitation to explore. It is a concept that has been used a lot in leadership and management circles over the past 15-20 years, but what does it mean in practice, especially in the context of a hybrid workplace?

This GRC is designed in the Tavistock tradition. It was invented by a multidisciplinary team in post-war London in the late 1950s and has been evolving ever since. These days, GRCs are held all over the world and attended by many senior leaders. One reason for this is that GRCs are a highly efficient way for people to learn in-depth about group and organisational dynamics and the influence that unconscious processes can have in shaping organisational life.

The conference design is an inspired innovation; the temporary learning organisation is highly structured and contained, which at the same time allows for maximum freedom of expression and shared exploration. Past participants have described having learned more from a five-day conference than they learned in three years of an MBA. One organisational leader who attended a GRC at the beginning of his tenure as CEO credited the experience with laying the foundation for his success over a 30-year leadership career.

It is difficult to write about this upcoming GRC in concrete terms because it has not yet taken place. What I can say with certainty is that if you are a curious, courageous, and open-minded person with an appetite to be stimulated and stretched, both intellectually and emotionally, then this conference is not to be missed. Be prepared to learn deeply about organisational dynamics and maybe even be transformed by the experience. You can learn more here.

Dr Brigid Nossal

June 2023

What is a Group Relations Conference (GRC) and why is it important?

ps NIODA’s forthcoming Group Relations Conference is 30 October – 3 November 2023. This is a hybrid event both onsite in Melbourne and live interactive online. Scroll to read more…