What is leading beyond authority?
Participants gain in many ways from attending a Common Purpose
course and one is that they learn to "lead beyond their
authority".
This expression was coined by Common Purpose alumni as they
described the impact of being encouraged to lead in situations in
which they were not in a position of authority.
They observed that most of their prior leadership development
had been devoted to developing their leadership in situations where
they were the nominated or accepted leader - when they had a job
title, budget and task to deliver on. And that Common Purpose gave
them a different take on leadership, when they were beyond the
limits of their authority and dealing with issues, problems and
opportunities that required them to work with peers, stakeholders
and partners over whom they of course had no authority.
This meant that they had to learn to lead in new ways and change
their thinking about collaboration. In the past many have
associated collaboration with dumbing down to cobble together a
vanilla consensus solution.
Participants had now acquired the skills to build and sustain
collaborations that make two and two deliver ten.
As a result Common Purpose founder Julia Middleton wrote a book
on the subject in 2007. In the book she interviews leaders who have
either been successful beyond their authority within their
organisation - which she describes as the first outer circle - or
who have succeeded beyond their organisation - the second outer
circle.
Find out more about Julia Middleton's Beyond
Authority: Leadership in a changing world book.
Unique leadership development in South Africa
The challenges of getting leaders to go into the first outer
circle are well known to organisations that wrestle with the 'silo'
problem, when leaders build walls on the boundaries of their
authority and the organisation struggles to connect the parts
up.
They aspire to develop leaders who will operate for the benefit
of the organisation as a whole, dealing with issues that cross
boundaries, problems that leaders could claim were not their own,
leaders who will run the risk of appearing to interfere in other's
business and deal with the complex and messy challenges that will
never fit nicely inside the walls of the organisation.
The second outer circle, that takes leaders right out of their
organisations, presents an even greater challenge.
Yet leaders in the modern world are increasingly called on to
work with customers, stakeholders and partner organisations.
Their organisations are no longer islands entirely of themselves
and they need leaders who can thrive and succeed beyond their
organisations boundaries.
Cities badly need the leaders of its organisations and
institutions to be capable of working together, in collaboration,
for the very same reasons. Otherwise opportunities are missed,
resources wasted and problems built up.
Common Purpose courses help leaders develop the ability to lead
in the outer circles The book "Beyond Authority" looks at how
experienced leaders have avoided the dangers of consensus and
succeeded through collaboration.
