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Creative Nonprofit Leadership

This post shall be the first of  a series on leadership, using ideas drawn from David Castro's book, Genership 1.0. I'm reading it and deciding how to integrate Castro's thoughts on leadership into my thinking about creativity and problem solving in the nonprofit world.

A 2011 report from the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance listed several competencies that survey respondents said nonprofit leaders would need to pay more attention to in the future:
  • Building and leading teams
  • Developing others
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Working as an effective team member
In 2014, a new leadership competency might need to be cultivated as those challenges haven't completely gone away (and more on that in coming posts).

The point is this: Castro talks about the need for a new form of leadership that fosters collective action rather than being about “leading” people to do something. Castro describes at length what genership is and how to do it. But he starts off by talking about leadership fallacies that undermine effective action: 

1. The Messiah Fallacy
2. The Hero Fallacy
3. The Fallacy of Leadership Nostalgia

All three fallacies center on the myth of a messiah or hero who will lead the people to...something. The fundamental flaw in all cases is that the solution to a leadership challenge is hidden either in history or in the person of the chosen leader.  The hero and messiah will rescue the group and tell them how to get things done. Leadership nostalgia makes the revered leaders' long ago ideas and actions a model.

Each is a fallacy for good reason. Leadership lessons of the past might not apply in today's vastly different social environment. Pining for a hero or a messiah distracts people from working together to design a way to address the organization's challenges. This is what genership is really about. "Genership" is the capacity to create with others, the community practice of creating. 

How is that a leadership model? In short, genership is about facilitating collaboration where old-fashioned leadership is about one person telling the group what do do and why. Genership is based on co-creation, not on pulling people along toward a vision. 

You can read more about Genership 1.0 on the book page at Arch Street Press or at Amazon.com. I don't want to make this blog series into a long book report, so I'll not go into more detail on my points than absolutely necessary.

Next week: Cothinking, covisioning and a report on challenges facing nonprofits in 2014.
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