‘Command and Control’

Leadership is about enabling people to take a direction (see the section on Leadership Styles in this guide).  In the past we probably would have said ‘making people take a direction’ or ‘telling people what direction to take’.  That’s the way leadership tended to work – both in business and in the public sector.  A leader told people what to do and then made sure they did it.  This ‘command and control’ model of leadership was most popular about 50 years ago and has mainly been in decline ever since.  Globalisation of markets; demand for personalisation of services; increasing environmental complexity, uncertainty, outsourcing and technological change; have all made this approach to leadership harder – and usually less effective.

There remain some jobs and some aspects of work where ‘command and control’ is still widely practised.  In firefighting (both literally and as a metaphor for leadership during times of crisis) for example, leadership tends to take the form of issuing orders and ensuring compliance through regulation.  Some managers you will meet, have a knack of turning every part of work into a crisis, perhaps so that they can justify this approach: the truth may be that it’s the only style of managing they ever learnt and feel competent to use.  Even if they get the job done it is usually at a high cost in terms of the effect on staff and others.  Such managers aren’t often seen as great leaders, even within the most regimented corporate setting.

 

Leaders as Enablers

Local government, in particular, needs leaders who are able to enable rather than stuck in command and control mode.  This is because, as a councillor or other local leader you rarely have any direct authority over the people you are seeking to influence.  These people are not employed by you; most are not employed by an organisation you have authority over; and, in fact, the large majority of the people you are trying to influence aren’t employed in delivering local services at all – they are citizens.  Consider something ‘simple’ to sort out – like litter, for example.  As a councillor or someone involved in a neighbourhood forum etc., you can influence the way council litter-pickers work.  These days, however, the litter-pickers are as likely to be employed by another organisation aside from the council.  And – here’s the thing – if you want to tackle litter for good, the secret is to influence the people dropping it, not the people picking it up?  You cannot command and control residents… (Forget the idea that you ‘win power’ on election night: what you ‘win’, when you are elected, is the right to serve – and in particular the right to speak on behalf of – others) …so you need to try a different approach .   Which is where conversation comes in.

Two-way dialogue (listening and talking) is an alternative to one-way communication (issuing instructions and controlling any feedback in the form of structured ‘consultations and surveys).  Through conversation, leaders can influence and enable others to take a particular path.  In fact, there are those who go as far as to say that leadership is nothing more, or less, than conversation.  For example, here, you can listen to a podcast from Harvard Business School with two writers – Boris Groysberg, a professor at Harvard, and Michael Slind of Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society – who have applied that theory to business leadership:

 

 

 

Learning from Diversity

For local leaders, however, conversation is even more important than simply being a key way of influencing people. Someone once said the shortest distance between a human being and the truth is a story (the someone was Tony de Mello, by the way – a priest, psychotherapist and a storyteller, born in Mumbai in 1931).  A conversation is a story jointly told.  Which suggests that good, effective conversations are ways of jointly discovering how to get to the truth about a particular place or set of people.  For councillors and other local leaders who are trying to bring places together, community dialogue creates the chance to tap into the stories – direct routes to truths – told by the diverse communities you serve.  Conversation is a two-way street: you get to influence people; they get to influence you so as to make you a better informed representative.

 

As is noted in the section of this guide defining communities, neighbourhoods are – at best – ‘communities of communities’: the places where communities overlap.  Nearly all neighbourhoods are diverse.  Ones in Birmingham and other big cities are generally more diverse than most.  Diversity, bear in  mind, isn’t just about ethnicity. It covers:

• age – there are children, young people, middle-aged and older people in every neighbourhood
• gender – women and men and people who don’t want to be defined as either
• social class and culture – have a look at the Census and at a system like Mosaic which use different ways of defining class and cultures in a neighbourhood
• faith – for some people this is the most important way they describe themselves; for others it doesn’t figure at all; for some, not having a religious faith is an equally important factor
• family background – some communities are like extended families
• (dis)ability
• sexuality

and hundreds of other ways in which us humans express our difference, individuality and identity.  (It’s a neat paradox that when you ask most people what makes up their individuality, they will tell you about things they have in common with groups of other people!)

Conversations Make Better Neighbourhoods

Communities already have their own (sometimes less than perfect) means for organising conversations. Local leaders can strengthen them and help create, important (and often rare) opportunities for communities to talk to each other.  Local conversations can add real – financial and social value – to a place.  Without this sort of conversation, we won’t have mixed neighbourhoods, but ghettoes – some rich and some poor, but ghettoes nonetheless.  The evidence is most people quite like living in mixed communities where different sorts of people get along; ghettoes are simply places people dream of leaving?

 

Now What?

Go back to thinking about what definitions relating to community dialogue

Consider whether Gandalf the wizard should have started a consultation instead of an adventure

Find out the secret of constructing great dialogue

Think about who there is in your locality you could be chatting with

OR – follow the menu on the right to have a look at other parts of the guide.