7 years ago I wrote a reflection on leadership as part of a Masters Dissertation. In it I described shared leadership as often weak, absent of vision, & an abdication of responsibility. I’m now convinced I was wrong & have since come to believe exactly the opposite. Here’s why.

I guess in my twenties I was drawn to dynamic & driven models of leadership. I thought the strong leaders were those who developed bold vision & delivered clear change. I thought a leaders job was to convince others to get on board with what they wanted to achieve.

Conversely I thought shared leadership was too slow, overly cumbersome & often took the safest option by playing to the lowest common denominator in the room. While I still believe these dangers exist I have come to see shared leadership as essential & beneficial.

If group-think can be avoided & all opinions heard, there is something inherently wiser about a decision coming from a collection of minds rather than an individual. Real strength isn’t driving through an agenda but trusting one another & the process.

Recently I’ve seen this so clearly. The visionary leaders have been pushing to embrace the opportunities of the moment. But vision alone isn’t enough in these days, so the reflective leaders have been helping us ponder what we are learning right now.

But we need more than reflection so the pragmatists have been leading by offering concrete solutions & adding detail to decisions. But we need more than pragmatism right now, so the pastoral leaders have been reminding us of the deep needs of people & how we can respond to them.

It’s so rare for a leader to embody all of these things but in a shared leadership environment there is space for the visionaries to dream, to reflective to ponder, the pragmatists to plan & the pastoral to care. We need them all!

So when leading I need to listen, when part of a team I need to contribute and when being led I can celebrate the diversity of perspectives & solutions that everyone brings to the table. It’s a beautiful thing. #leadership