Picture a small mud hut village in India with no electricity or clean running water. Now imagine a group of mainly uneducated women, both old and young, who are at the bottom of society’s pecking order. These women, and many just like them in Bangladesh, Africa, Mexico and Peru, know exactly what they need in order to build a healthy, sustainable community for their children and grandchildren — but they don’t know how to make their voices heard, or even if their words are worth listening to.

Collaborative leadership and the Hunger Project NZ

That probably doesn’t conjure up an image of a community on the brink of implementing a successful collaborative leadership programme for businesses to aspire to, but Lisa Gunnery, CEO of the Hunger Project NZ, would argue otherwise.

“I have seen, time and again, the powerful results of grassroots leadership. When we stop operating with pre-conceived solutions and start listening to, and empowering the people who know their situation best, change really starts to happen.”

At a recent Think Tank event hosted by Beyond Performance, Lisa Gunnery outlined the Hunger Project’s approach to empowering collaborative leadership in these remote communities — an approach that can be equally powerful when applied in the corporate environment. L&D and HR professionals were challenged to think beyond the traditional structure of hierarchical leadership in order to look at ways of empowering leadership in many.

Lessons learned

Aligning with many of our core philosophies, we were encouraged by the discussions between attendees that explored the lessons shared by Lisa, namely:

• Challenge your organisation to remove the obstacles that exist around a fixed mind-set to one of a growth mind-set. Treat apathy and resignation as the enemy (“I can’t change that, it’s too hard”).

• The first step on the journey to powerful grassroots leadership is the mental progression from ‘I can’t’ to ‘I can’. We often accept and work within self-imposed, or role-related limitations. It takes a change of mindset to accept that good leadership doesn’t need to come from the top and people don’t have to wait for promotion to become a leader.

• When everyone is empowered to change their belief systems at the same time, the whole community naturally moves from ‘I can’ to ‘WE can’. That’s when real momentum starts to build.

• Challenge your organisation’s thinking around leadership. What is true leadership – and where do we see it demonstrated? The best examples may not always be found in the places you would naturally look.

• Choose the right leader for the task at hand rather than looking to the leader for the solutions. We all have a variety of skills and life experiences, so businesses need to look beyond job title and position as the only qualification for project leadership.   Job titles have meaning only when we place meaning on the words.

• It often takes sacrifice from everyone to create a change of circumstance. Letting go of ‘control’ and ego-feeding behaviours gives other people the room to step up and truly collaborate. Good leaders serve others first, trust others will deliver on their promises, and don’t need to overtly demonstrate their credibility.

• Empowering everyone at the same time creates an environment that supports collaboration. People are often restricted by fear and/or resignation (or experience a SCARF response) — the fear of standing up, fear of exposure or simply the belief that we’ve seen it all before and it didn’t work last time.

• Look more widely for step-by-step accomplishments rather than looking for what’s wrong with the work. When used constructively, learning gained through ‘failure’ can often be the key to the next project’s success. Create safe and supported learning environments that encourage initiative and accountability.

• Dropping a pre-conceived solution from ‘on high’ to solve a grassroots problem often fails to achieve the results we’re looking for (like dropping aid parcels to those in need instead of showing them how to create their own sustainable future). Encouraging a more collaborative approach by drawing on the experience of those most affected by the problem you’re trying to solve. ‘Helping’ by taking control could remove valuable opportunities for growth in others.

At Beyond Performance, we are successfully creating employee, organisational and learning experiences that help New Zealand businesses get from ‘I can’t’ to ‘WE can’.

If you’d like some more information to help you inspire collaborative leadership in your organisation, please talk to us.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. African proverb.