Writing is thinking. I use my writing to expand and explore the central themes of my work, as part of a methodology of #WorkingOutLoud. Which is to say that i share my evolving ideas, not simply the ones that are fully formed. Within this process, there is an active development of language, usually unintentionally. As i explore new areas, or revisit old ones, i notice in my writing that certain phrases or ideas repeat, and in that sense i build my own vocabulary (and associated ideas). Today i’m writing about one of those phrases, the notion of our Social Context, and building it out into a broader aspect of the role of a Social Leader.
My description of Social Leadership previously described both our formal and social systems. Indeed, my most fundamental description of what Social Leadership ‘is’ has been to say that your formal power sits in the formal system – everything you can see, own, or control – and your Social Authority swirls around that – held in our communities, relationships, networks, and trust. More recently i have taken to describing Social Leadership as being at the ‘intersection of systems’. This reflects the fact that it is not fully ‘social’, beyond any context of work, but rather at the boundary or border of formal systems. Indeed, weaving it’s way over and under that boundary.
I have always been clear that Organisations need both: they need strong formal authority for the key mechanisms of consistency and conformity to give replicability and scale. This is the pillar of the global Organisations. But they need Social Authority to drive innovation, culture, creativity and change. Indeed, much of what we desire, or need, within our Organisations lies beyond that which is achievable with formal power alone, and we consistently see that leaders have an innate understanding of that, describing how much of their power is held in the permission and consensus of others.
And again, more recently, i’ve been using new work to explore ideas of leadership at the boundary – notions of the self as trespasser, of leadership as ‘motion’, and a dialogue with your practice.
The Social Context describes an overarching perspective on this: the leader operating within both formal contexts, and in a relationship with the Social Context, partly to ‘create’ it, but largely to nurture, understand, influence and engage with it.
The Social Context is therefore a broad space, representing both our individual experience and perspective, but also a more systemic one. I guess almost like a landscape and our experience of walking through it.
Crucial to this understanding is that whilst i previously described both formal and social aspects, i am now more explicit about how our Social Context is not simply a space we inhabit, but rather we create it, and it acts upon us.
This latter aspect is important, as it illustrates the impact of self upon system, an idea i’ve explored extensively in the Quiet Leadership work (which explores the Organisation as an Ecosystem) where we consider intention, action, and impact, and understand that you cannot be ‘in’ the system without both enhancing and degrading it. Nobody is neutral in their habitation.
Potentially this understanding would redefine the understanding of Social Leadership, to describe not parallel systems, but rather the Organisation as a structural entity that is entirely within the Social Context. Like the dome around the snow globe. You cannot, in this understanding, take the Organisations aside from it’s Social Context. It is enveloped, which is, i think appropriate. To abstract the Social Context out of the picture probably invalidates our understanding of how the formal Organisation truly works.
If i stretch myself into other areas of thought, i would also consider that the Social Context is not one thing, but rather one individual thing, so we each bring Social Context with us (like a Worldview), but also as a stage, and hence the understanding of the formal Organisation within it’s context becomes more kaleidoscopic.
This view suits my current understanding (and language) quite nicely, in that it allows us to talk of ‘lenses’ as part of leadership – understanding the lenses we are using, and how other lenses may give a different view of the same landscape.
Again, this is influenced by other aspects of my work (as a trans-disciplinary practitioner – or generalist – this cascade of influence is both a frustration and familiar feature).
It indicates that we may find value in ‘losing focus’, un-focussing our precision lenses, or of becoming wilfully disorientated or lost.
As i say, this is all early stage work. I’ve spent quite a bit of time this year so far in simply relaxing my focus, and exploring disparate ideas. And i think i will continue that for a period of time. But in the near future i will start to do more of this weaving work – drawing together a more holistic perspective around this new ideas, and with the foundation of work done before.
As part of this, i need a willingness to let things go. Some ideas are great, but time limited. Some are the ‘thing’, whilst others are keys that let you unlock understanding. But they are ‘one time’ keys. After you have used them, you can let them go. Or give them away.
Not everything has to be forever. Certainly not our understanding, which should always remain fluid.
#WorkingOutLoud on Social Leadership
julianstodd
Julian Stodd's Learning Blog 