Leadership - the Flip Side

Leadership is an interesting phenomenon.

It is also critically important to the survival of any group, including political parties, government, volunteer agencies and businesses.

Leadership has many styles, some more suitable for the vision, mission, objectives and effectiveness of the organization being led than others ... perhaps.

We'll set that long discussion aside for now and deal with a narrow, but I think also critically important issue, that being the Flip Side of Leadership - namely Followership.

Now as a society we pay so little attention to this aspect that my blog spelling dictionary thinks followership is not even a word.

Let's look at a few examples.

Political Parties: In Alberta and Canada we have Ed Stelmach - Alberta PC leader, David Swann - Alberta Liberal leader, Danielle Smith - Wild Rose Alliance leader, Brian Mason - Alberta ND leader, Stephen Harper - Conservative Party of Canada leader, Michael Ignatieff - Liberal Party of Canada Leader, Gilles Duceppe - Bloc Quebecois leader, Jack Layton - New Democratic Party of Canada leader, Elizabeth May - Green Party of Canada leader.

All these leaders were chosen through due process as enabled by their respective party's rules for selection of leader.

Now comes the interesting part. All of these leaders must cope with dissent from within the ranks of the members of the party that chose them. Some dissenters are more public and vocal than others and except for Ed Stelmach, the most public of dissent comes for parties in opposition. Even Mr. Harper, who is reputed to tolerate no public criticism of his leadership from members within his party might remember that was not the case when he was leader of the opposition. Mr. Stelmach is the only leader who has no opposition experience. (An aside, is that one of the root causes of his current troubles arising from within his own party?)

My point is quite a simple one. The members chose their leader. Some members backed someone else who was not chosen as leader but they remained members of the party after the choice was made. So as we have in government, "The Loyal Opposition", we must have in other organizations, including political parties, "The Loyal Dissenters". Dissenters will have another goal than the leader's in mind or disagree with a given policy, but they remain loyal to the party and support the leader while working to help the leader see their point of view.

I think it is now every member's duty to help make that leader a better, more effective leader. If we see something that we think reduces the effectiveness of the party and therefore of its leader, we have an obligation to come forward with our concerns and proposed solutions. We have a duty to reconcile our positions with those of others and find some way of accommodating others whose concerns appear to differ from ours, yet making sure we don't sell ourselves out at the same time.

Many of us are aware of the leadership issues surrounding our politicians and political parties because they are in the news media. Unfortunately very often this takes form of professional blood sport where we are simply spectators calling out, "Hit the goalie!", or, "Hit the quarterback!". We mindlessly cheer for our team in the mistaken belief that when they start the game they are winning as opposed to playing the game, where if they play well the outcome might well be a higher total score than the other team and a win.

In daily life such as politics, volunteering and business, there is no defined time limit when a buzzer will go to end the "game" in sight. It's living day by day.

This is hard work. It is essential to the success of our democratic governments, even our NGO's and businesses. We have to work across party lines and lines of dissent in accommodating others' concerns in much the same way as we do within the party for the betterment of our whole society, organization or business.

We must not allow ourselves to fall into the politics of contempt wherein we hold contempt for all those who disagree with us. That tears society, organizations and businesses apart to the detriment of all its people. To hold contempt for any individuals or groups is to reduce the resources we need for society and the individuals in it to thrive. We can't be wasting all our resources disabling others in society' leaving fewer resources to accomplish that which needs doing.

So after the leaders have been chosen, we need to ask ourselves what we can do to make them more effective. We need to encourage our leaders to help us work to meaningful effect in the development and growth of our society.

So that means that good Followership is really only good leadership by us who have participated in the process of leader selection, adding our wisdom, judgment and activity to support our leaders' efforts.

The blog dictionary is then correct. In a democratic society, there can be no Followership so it does not need a word. We need to exercise our personal leadership by adding it to our leaders' leadership to make our leaders more effective and stronger leaders.

Mike

Note: Interesting real life exercise in an international company, Xerox, persuading employees to add their leadership capacity to that of the employer's leaders to the benefit of the company and the employees themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/21xerox.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all

Calgary's Snow Woes

Hi All
Remember the big storm? I think some people might still be digging out from that blast late last year.

City council has been struggling with the fact that a single storm could wipe out the annual snow budget and they're wondering what to do about it.

Some partisan councillors completely rule out raising taxes to improve snow removal while suggesting that the City privatize snow removal efforts to improve effectiveness. (Are these snow removal contractors actually a cover for the ultimate in winter volunteer charitable enterprise? Wow! That's pretty cool! Calgary's snow angels complete with big trucks and stuff!)

Others have pondered blaming citizens with inappropriate tires. With pictures of city buses stuck in snow up to their windows, I wonder what tires those would be.

Well, the solution to the snow removal budget, indeed perhaps the whole road-building budget, appeared in my email inbox. (Please click the link below.) The city could make it mandatory that all citizens with vehicles avail themselves of such technology, wouldn't raise taxes, might even lower taxes and every citizen would have some sort of vehicular bragging rights!

Mike
Please click the link.


http://www.gizmag.com/russian-strap-on-tank/14194/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=4a906bd4b8-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email

Heartbroken

Did you see the article in Calgary's and Edmonton's Sun papers on Saturday in which Danielle Smith accuses Premier Stelmach's office of spying?

A couple of things come to mind with that story.

First, why is it surprising that Liberals have been right about this anti-democratic stuff going for the last 40 years? Is that as long as Ms. Smith has been in Alberta? Too bad she's ignored the Liberal comments about all this for all that time.

Second, there's Ms. Smith's picture with the article. She looks dismayed, angry, disappointed and deeply hurt that her former friends would act in this unprincipled way against her. I would be too.

The whole scenario reminds me of a story that comes out of Saskatchewan. For all the years of NDP (and CCF before that) being in government in that province, Liberals and Conservatives complained about that dog-in-the-manger approach to winner takes all the spoils democracy.

I recall hard-bitten CCF-NDP ers while in Saskatchewan moving to Alberta and becoming hard-bitten PC ers. I always thought that paradoxical until this story came out. I then remembered the reactions of some of those people (and others) had to comments that the dog-in-the-manger approach is anti-democratic. "Of course it's their way or the highway and of course there will be no contracts with supporters of opposition parties. That's why they fought the election, so they could win and bend the government (and the public purse?) to serve their interests alone. Wasn't that the point of the election?"

So these people probably did not change their political ideology at all. It's the ideology of power much more than the ideology of effectiveness in enhancing the lives of the citizens. Moving to a new power regime meant simply changing to a different coloured coat.

Democracy in western Canada has a lot of evolving to do to truly have a government of peers, where all persons are born equal.
Mike

Triple E Senate

Remember the clarion call for a Triple E Senate?
That's E for Elected, E for Equal number of senators from each province, E for Effective(ly) check and balance the powers of the House of Commons the Prime Minister's Office.

Elected: That seems straightforward enough. Okay, that's doable.

Equal: That seems easy enough as well. I haven't decided that's a good thing or not, but it's clearly doable and easy to understand.

Effective: That's a bit trickier. To wit from the US example reported by Gail Collins in her Op-Ed piece in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/opinion/06collins.html .

Interesting reading, and amusingly written.
Mike

Bold British Civil Servant - by Canadian Standards

UK Tories like to be "tough-on-crime". That brand has a familiar ring to Canadians.

Anyway, crime does not include misrepresentation of facts with intent to mislead as is made evident by this story in the Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lies-damn-lies-and-tory-crime-statistics-1889927.html

I wonder if Munir A Sheikh, Chief Statistician of Statistics Canada would have found himself in civil servant whistle-blower heaven along with Linda Keen had he issued the same scolding about abusing statistics to make up a bogus issue.

Even police departments in Canada and the US are complaining that the dire warnings about the rise of violent crime in our respective societies are exactly incorrect. The incidence of violent crime is actually falling.

By the way, it's the Republicans, US version of Tories, also making these misleading claims.

The issue is, why make these claims? What's the point? Are they simply besmirching the reputations of non-Tories? Are they using a magician's sleight-of-hand to distract the people while they are actually up to something else? Are they trying to create an opportunity to increase government executive power in this area so it can be applied in all other areas?