Wrong about leadership?

What if we are wrong about the importance of leadership for sustainable development (and anything else)?

Wait, please don't throw eggs at me. At least not yet.

I first began to get tired of the 'we need better leadership' conversation when working for sustainable development in Kenya. There, you couldn't go more than 10 minutes into a conversation (especially about politics, which was a popular conversation to have) without people saying, 'we need better leadership' or, 'the problem with this country is that we don't have good leaders'. It was so common I wanted to roll my eyes and act entirely immature and say something like, 'well, why don't you go and be a leader, then?' It sounded like complaints, not constructive dialogue.

In a recent conversation about 'how do organizations learn (to engage the public)', the issue of leadership came up again - this time, it was me saying, 'its essential that the top leadership get on board the idea'. And I, being the occaisionally righteous person that I am, was sure I was right. I am sure you have lots of examples yourself - getting top leadership behind an idea can make it happen; not having it can be a disaster.

But then I did some more research (always a dangerous endeavor if you want to keep your ideas). And I found an interesting subgroup of organizational development/social change thinkers who suggested that it isn't always necessary - much less possible - to go straight for the snake's head. Actually, they were analyzing power, and essentially argued that framing power as top-down, me versus the boss dichotomy did not provide room for thinking about a more multi-stakeholder approach. In other words, power isn't just top-down. It also exists within people and in between relationships. This has serious implications for leadership. It suggests that people within organizations who are not 'leaders' can still change organizations - if they build alliances across different sectors, engage in ongoing conversations and debates on the issues, find various ways of raising awareness and campaigning for their ideas - as well as being open to changing those ideas. Sometimes, enough support can be garnered from the middle of an organization (or culture) that it can lead to the 'top guys' changing things. And, of course, there are dozens of ways people resist change from the top, and perhaps even more ways the 'middle' people find ways to create change - by making the 'leaders' think it was their idea to achieve a particular type of sustainable development in the first place (a trick some bureaucratic friends of mine excel at).

So maybe leadership isn't the only thing that needs to change. Maybe we need to reassess what leadership is - and who, exactly, we think can (and should) lead.